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December 23, 2022 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 23 December 2022

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General Debate

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mikenmildagain

A Festivus for the rest of us!
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December 23, 2022 8:02am
- virtualmark
  
  To be fair, every day’s General Debate is a day of airing grievances.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:09am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    With very few feats of (mental) strength.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:51am
- Ohm my
  
  Serenity now!!!!!
  
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  December 23, 2022 12:45pm
- Nigel Kearney
  
  No Christmas Cake for you! Come back one year!
  
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  December 23, 2022 1:56pm
Tomtoddy

Yuval Noah Harari is an adviser to the World Economic Forum – Klaus Schwab’s outfit. He recently stated, “If you go back to the middle of the 20th century ……….. and you think about building the future, then your building materials are those millions of people who are working hard in the factories, in the farms, the soldiers. You need them”.

Accurate but gratuitous.

He went on and said, “Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” he concluded, “because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”

Mmmmm!! Covid?? Vaccines?? Excess deaths?? Ukraine??
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December 23, 2022 8:02am
- info@cruzpro.com
  
  Is “replace” an acceptable alternative to “eliminate”?
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:07am
- Blog-aholic
  
  Yuval Harari is a man to be very wary of. His insane thinking is dangerously close to tyranical…..like his boss.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:12am
- Albert_Ross
  
  Sorry, but I don’t understand how Covid, vaccines, excess deaths or Ukraine invalidate the point he’s making. Can you explain please?
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:16am
  - Tomtoddy
    
    @A_R. I am reluctantly being drawn toward the conclusion that the ‘elites’ see the world’s population of ordinary people like me as an embarrassment and surplus to requirements. Harari/Schwab et al see merit in a future where there are a billion or less people, all well educated and indoctrinated who rely on AI to manage the odd mundane task.
    
    The question arises as to how they can achieve their ‘paradise’. The dare not shoot us, poison us or use gas chambers but a manufactured virus and a vaccine that removes young men would look ‘normal’ and ‘accidental’.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:25am
    - Don Beckett
      
      Its worse than that – the guy has a god complex. He talks about trans-humanism where the hoi poloi will have ‘chips’ inplanted in their brains and will be essentially cyborgs – a world of surfs controlled by the elites on th WEF. He is an atheists and has some quite demonic ideas.
      Again, its what happens when men dispense with belief in God. They become their own gods and when in a position of power, impose their “creation” on the rest of the world.
      
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      December 23, 2022 10:37am
      - NZer In Exile
        
        If you listen to the podcasts of James Lindsay (New Discourses), which are quite often heavy going, you come to realise these people come from a long line of social-engineering fantasists going right back to Karl Marx. A recent episode looking at the Social and Emotional Learning movement and it’s wacko lineage and connections highlights this especially.
        
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        December 23, 2022 9:43pm
  - Fuzzysnuggleduck
    
    When I go looking at quotes from this person, I don’t seem them as much different to harsh or cynicial views of humanity which I might say or heard spoken around me by folk who are being honest.
    
    When I listen to the words rather than read what people paraphrase him as saying (such as putting in quotation marks as ‘eliminate useless eaters’) I find he is logical enough, in saying that education “brains and minds” are more important than ‘cheap labour’ in the next technology revolution.
    
    He is not talking about killing people, but saying that in the future certain people are useless, but he specifically named places like Africa as going to be left behind.
    We have known for a long time that certain jobs and roles are going to vanish. The flip side is that new jobs get created – robot repairperson? 😉
    
    He also said that with technology, the world can feed them, but with so many idle people without skills needed in the global world, what do you do with them?
    THIS is a very apt question for NZ with so many truants and a class of ‘victims’ who are encouraged to shun ‘pakeha ways’.
    Interesting, but rather than murdering them he speculated that idle people are able to be fed but ‘how do they find a sense of meaning”‘ and he suggested ‘drugs and computer games’ ….LOL. He ain’t that wrong.
    
    https://twitter.com/zaidzamanhamid/status/1560007193835016192
    As always, be wary of people paraphrasing or inventing/embellishing quotes online.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:27am
    - Fuzzysnuggleduck
      
      And to be clear – he is not talking about his ‘plan’ for humanity, but as an observer of what happened historically, and is happening, and then his ‘GUESS’ what comes next.
      If you look at the same content without visualising flames around him, or a pitchfork in his hand, you might just see him as another egg-head; it depends how far you have gone down the ‘Bill Gates wants to kill us all’ rabbit hole or not.
      https://www.thejournal.ie/factcheck-yuval-noah-harari-quote-we-dont-need-vast-majority-population-debunked-5849188-Sep2022/
      
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      December 23, 2022 10:36am
      - Fuzzysnuggleduck
        
        Although I will admit I have seen actual footage of Bill Gates having Homer Simpson’s home office trashed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
        
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        December 23, 2022 10:38am
      - Matt Long
        
        Heh, how Bill Gates buys you out.
        
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        December 23, 2022 11:06am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        “Buy ’em out, boys”
        
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        December 23, 2022 4:48pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      I would suggest that for many of these people drugs are what “take the edge off” the deprivation and missed opportunities of life on the dole. Once in that state motivation to change is harder.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:50pm
- Rusty
  
  @Tomtoddy
  
  Our PM Jacinda Ardern is a disciple of Klaus Schwab and the WEFs deceitful agenda to reset this world in their own Marxist image.
  
  Unfortunately most people in this country and around the world don’t know of this or don’t care.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:30am
  - Bloody Dago
    
    The Swab mob existed in the political framework of the old East Germany, When the Berlin fell over the hard core Marxist’s fled and regrouped with the goal of bringing down the Western world and their economies. FOJA and her bunch of reprobates are the mob at the hole with John Cleese and Terry Jones discussing the sandal is the sign of the chosen one. All this is in full view with Klaus Swab (the chosen one) as the Hitler Mk2 in plain view in 2022
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:14am
  - Stellaboxer
    
    Rusty they are very much not Marxist.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:31am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      Indeed..
      
      Stakeholder Capitalists….
      
      https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/klaus-schwab-on-what-is-stakeholder-capitalism-history-relevance/
      
      i.e. rule by the corporate elites
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:12am
- Stellaboxer
  
  Tomtoddy It’s this type of mind that came up with National Socialism. He of course doesn’t see himself as being made redundant and neither do the rest of the WEF ghouls, our current PM included. Their minds see the future that they themselves are actively constructing as something that is naturally unfolding and inevitable. The WEF are just good old fashioned fascists given a facelift repackaged and demilitarised. Gone are the flags and nationalism but the core elitism is just the same. Any politician with links to this abhorrent organisation should be barred from public office.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:31am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    We need leaders that are willing to tell these WEF and UN creepy nutters (and all the other self appointed global- social-engineers) to F right off.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:56pm
- Matt Long
  
  While Klaus looks like a Bond or Austen Powers villain Harari is the most eerily evil looking character I’ve seen.
  We hear about people bursting into tears when they see how normal people who have done exceedingly evil things appear, not this guy, he oozes slime.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:31am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Harari looks foreign to me. Beware.
    
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    December 23, 2022 8:36am
    - Overworked
      
      Yes he does, but it’s totally irrelevant, he also has crazy eyes.
      
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      December 23, 2022 8:44am
    - Matt Long
      
      Christmas still a difficult time for you Mike? You could take it as a challenge to be a better person and build worthwhile relationships.
      
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      December 23, 2022 8:57am
      - ClanMcleod
        
        Matt – that’s quite aspirational for Mike…….
        
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        December 23, 2022 9:05am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        It’s Festivus – can’t you read a calendar?
        
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        December 23, 2022 10:52am
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Milky: “Harari looks foreign to me. Beware.”
      
      Ho ho ho. Another straw-man insinuation.
      
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      December 24, 2022 6:03pm
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Donald Pleasance?
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:21am
- cmm
  
  Well he’d be generally correct.
  
  Increased mechanisation has largely reduced the need for manual labour. Farm production in USA is about 3x what it was in the 1950s but only employs a third of the people it used to.
  
  Heck, even the garbage truck that just went past my place services more houses with one person than the old system did with three people. And that was a huge step up on what was before.
  
  Generally the world population is becoming slightly cleverer and breeding less. Except Africa which is getting slightly cleverer, but is breeding fast.
  
  Sure there is some job substitution: labouring gets replaced by people building machinery.
  
  The main problem with the technological shift is that the bar keeps being raised as to who participates and who does not. In the 1970s it was considered difficult to employ people below and IQ of 85. Now it is difficult to find employment for people below IQ 100. That’s 50% of Europe, 40% of East Asia and 90% of Africa that are effectively unemployable in the modern world.
  
  As the problem gets worse what do we do with those people? What is going to happen when 60% of Europe, 50% of East Asia and 95% of Africa are unemployable?
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:35am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Do you have a solution to this low intelligence problem?
    
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    December 23, 2022 8:37am
    - cmm
      
      No, but nature does.
      
      The problem only exists because of interference and trying to “correct” for evolution by subsidising the less capable.
      
      When resources and subsidies run out the problem will solve itself.
      
      That might be too awful for you to contemplate but Mother Nature is a bitch she doesn’t care what upsets you.
      
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      December 23, 2022 8:42am
      - NothingLeft
        
        The (quite real) idiocracy problem doesn’t matter anymore. Human level AI is likely to be here within 10-20 years, with researchers shortening their timeline estimates at breakneck speed in light of recent research achievements from OpenAI, Google and others. After that all social, economic, political and environmental problems we think are critical become somewhat moot. It is truly unpredictable, but every aspect of society will be up-ended.
        
        I highly doubt it will auto-magically bring about some utopian past want-age, and there’s a strong chance humans are wiped out in next 100 years.
        
        In shorter term it is likely majority of education will be via 1 on 1 AI tutors within next 5 years.
        
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        December 23, 2022 8:58am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        Mother Nature, yes. Best fixer-upper.
        Who will the socialists and commies blame then?
        
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        December 23, 2022 9:23am
      - NZer In Exile
        
        If big tech now is a taste of what is to come, we are in for a very ugly shit show.
        
        I think that one possible solution is to go back to a reasonably prosperous time (say the 70s/80s) and employ most of the pre-internet technology and jobs used then for those not capable of being a high tech worker. Stop outsourcing and produce most of the general basket of goods at home. That might sound crazy and “impossible” but to me it seems way less crazy than consigning most people to a drugged up vegetable/moron/slave state ( I suspect in reality much worse outcomes will happen. Observe the massive opioid crisis in the USA).
        
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        December 23, 2022 10:08pm
    - Matthew
      
      The solution: Make the IQ Test easier (ref: Labour caucus handbook)
      
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      December 23, 2022 8:46am
    - Michael Johnston
      
      Actually, the solution, if one is required, will occur without intervention. The world’s population will peak in about 2065. The only region of the world with a significantly growing population is Africa and birthrate there, like everywhere else, will fall as their prosperity increases, which it is. China’s population has probably already peaked on account of their erstwhile one-child policy. They have nearly twice as many people in the older halves of their lives as in the younger halves. So their population in 25 years won’t be much more than half of what it is now unless they can entice tens of millions of immigrants.
      
      The problem in the future won’t be overpopulation, but how to deal with a perpetually older population. But improving medical technology will help with that.
      
      The greatest risk is that people who think it’s their place to design ‘solutions’ to problems that don’t exist will screw things up by interfering in complex systems they don’t understand. The deleterious effects of COVID lockdowns, many of which, like the damage done to social cohesion, are hard to quantify, are a case in point.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:01am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        I should have known that there would be one sensible answer. Thank you.
        
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        December 23, 2022 12:38pm
    - Nickc2
      
      Change or modify the breeding stock.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:01am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        Aid. The more aid we give them, the more they will breed.
        
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        December 23, 2022 9:30am
      - NothingLeft
        
        If we have AI in 10 years then we’ll have superintelligent AI a few months to years later, and if they turn out to be actually interested in human welfare it is likely that within a couple of decades they will be able to confer effective immortality and repair and upgrade all brains to near maximum of human potential. That is the utopian best case balancing the existential threat to humans and life on earth.
        
        Assuming of course that the amoral and strongly Han-supremacist Chinese leadership don’t get AI a few months ahead of anyone else and use it to take over and perhaps wipe out the rest of humanity.
        
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        December 23, 2022 11:18am
    - Matt Long
      
      Diet and education.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:03am
    - David Lenny
      
      That might depend on if you are asking for a definitive answer or the final solution.
      
      China is already experimenting with raising the intelligence level of its population.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:05am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        Chine. Gain of intelligence function?
        Jesus, what if they made a human smarter that themselves?
        
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        December 23, 2022 9:32am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        [Mod – deleted no need for that]
        
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        December 23, 2022 12:40pm
    - cmm
      
      milky:
      Why should I have a solution, especially to what is essentially a third world problem?
      
      I’m white so I must provide a problem for Africa? Is that your logic? If so, isn’t that a bit colonialist in your thinking there?
      
      Or maybe you think Africa was perfect until the white man went and stuffed it up, so it is the white man’s duty to fix the problem?
      
      Well maybe you’re right in that. Pull all the food aid out of Africa. Pull all the foreign aid out of Africa. Just let it revert to what it was: tribalism, slavery and starvation.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:42am
      - Fuzzysnuggleduck
        
        CMM, you are right in your initial comment about the observations being ‘generally correct’.
        Beyond that, Mike is trolling you again, since you are South African, so naturally just below the surface he assumes you have either a genocidal or enslavement plan for Blacks.
        Probably best not to engage with the drive-by shit-post.
        
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        December 23, 2022 10:44am
    - NZer In Exile
      
      mikenmildagain: “Do you have a solution to this low intelligence problem?”
      
      Defund woke/marxist/neo-marxist/post-modern garbage in all institutions. Pretty obvious really.
      
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      December 23, 2022 12:53pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        But people donate voluntarily to National and ACT, so how could you ‘defund’ them?
        
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        December 23, 2022 4:50pm
  - Stellaboxer
    
    CMM I wonder why we have a labour shortage worldwide at present then.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:04am
    - cmm
      
      There is no labour shortage. Not even in NZ.
      
      There is a welfare surplus.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:37am
      - hullkiwi
        
        That correlates to being a he’ll of a lot is wrong with modern society. That is:
        
        “A large number of people are very happy being unproductive and receiving payment from other peoples’ efforts!”
        
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        December 23, 2022 10:23am
      - Stellaboxer
        
        Welfare surplus creates a labour shortage maybe so but it’s an explanation it doesn’t mean there isn’t a labour shortage.
        
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        December 23, 2022 11:43am
      - Bridgenag
        
        YES and instead of throwing money all over the world educate NZ people who kill their babies and let their children run feral hurting people.
        
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        December 23, 2022 1:59pm
  - Simon
    
    “As the problem gets worse what do we do with those people?”
    
    They are permanently underemployed. Which is happening now. Already there is massive surplus labour throughout Africa / India. The twilight zone between unemployment and causal informal work. The underemployed.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:06am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Stop giving them free shit.
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:33am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Start by cancelling Steve’s superannuation and ‘free’ healthcare?
        
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        December 23, 2022 12:42pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Love to see your balance sheet Milky!
        
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        December 23, 2022 12:54pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        I’ve long advocated for open public access to all tax returns by NZ residents and companies.
        
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        December 23, 2022 4:51pm
    - cmm
      
      Correct.
      
      The least broken part of Africa is South Africa. That has an unemployment rate of around 50%.
      Youth unemployment is way higher.
      
      Like anywhere else, this unemployment rate varies across the country. The lowest is in the most functional area (Cape Town) and highest in the least functional areas (eg. Eastern Cape and KZN).
      
      It is not surprising that the least functional areas, with the worst unemployment, are also the areas that were not really “colonised”. Makes sense. The whole concept of employment and industry is colonial. These areas are still very much based on subsistence agriculture (topped up with welfare).
      
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      December 23, 2022 9:49am
      - NZer In Exile
        
        How has colonisation ever benefited anyone????!!!
        
        https://odysee.com/@DiggingInTheCrates:6/WhatHaveTheRomansEverDoneForUs:3
        
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        December 23, 2022 8:09pm
  - Scott
    
    cmm – couldn’t disagree more. First of all evolutionary thinking is what is driving this Israeli guy. The survival of the fittest and all that. Which is an inhumane philosophy. One would do well to contemplate during this Christmas season the meaning of “blessed are the poor.”
    
    Secondly it’s just not true that the economy only needs software engineers and scientists. I just went and had a coffee at the local café. They are looking for cooks, they are looking for staff to man the counter, wipe the tables and serve the food. At the shop next door they are looking for staff. At the supermarket they are looking for staff, people to stack the shelves. Most people can do these jobs and they are still in demand. People still need plumbers and electricians and builders. In fact we have such a shortage of them right now that businesses are still having to close on certain days because they just can’t find staff.
    
    Just remember as a global point, you are not God. We are not God. Don’t try and play God by telling everyone how many people should be on the earth. It’s just not your job. Leave that to God.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:28am
    - cmm
      
      I am not God, nor trying to play God. I am not trying to solve the problem, merely commenting on it. The people who are trying to “solve” the problem, but are making it worse, are those making massive hand outs.
      
      I am not saying this is the future I want. I am not being mean. I am just predicting what the future might look like.
      
      They are trying to defeat natural Darwinian processes by giving hand outs to subsidise poor performers. What they don’t realise is that all they have done is alter the fitness function so that poor performance and high breeding rates succeed. You can’t beat natural selection – just change the selection function.
      
      Yes, the shops etc are looking for workers but less and less so. Technology is replacing manual labour in retail, just as it did in agriculture and sewing etc.
      
      The introduction of barcodes reduced the number of low-end checkout operator jobs (and there are a reasonably large % of people not even able to do that). When barcode scanners were introduced the number of checkout operators reduced by over 50%. Now add self-checkouts which has reduced the number of checkout operators by half again. In the future expect intelligent trolleys: no need to even do any checkout – just chuck stuff in the trolley and the total automatically gets deducted from your account.
      
      Amazon-style warehouses use very little labour and are increasingly replacing retail.
      
      What are now considered menial jobs are a lot more sophisticated than what they were. Even making a cup of coffee now needs someone capable of being trained as a barista.
      
      The people ARE there to fill these roles, they are just not motivated to work because welfare makes it all too easy to opt out of employment and makes them less inclined to work.
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:15am
    - Linda Wright
      
      I use scan and go at Countdown. Frees up checkout operators to do the shopping for click and collect customers. Same people. Different activity. Still employed.
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:19am
      - cmm
        
        Not so.
        
        If there wasn’t click and collect then those customers would have to come to the shop, and if the there wasn’t self checkout then there would be two of you standing at checkouts so there would be two checkout operators.
        
        In other words, the click and collect worker is replacing the checkout operator for the click and collect customer – not yours.
        
        Click and collect is also a lot faster. It is also only a transition step. When it gets to the wide adoption then supermarkets will largely be replaced by Amazon-style warehouses – just about only staffed by robots (and a few robot repair people).
        
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        December 23, 2022 12:49pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Self checkout further separates people also. Making us all more self centred and uncaring zombies in our own little worlds. Wonderful stuff.
        
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        December 23, 2022 10:22pm
    - Matt Long
      
      Add to that evolutionary thinking, utilitarianism and eugenics, which spent a lot of the last 200 years arguing that Africans are more closely related to monkeys than the “advanced” races, are put forward by “elites” who regard the masses as either there to serve them or be eliminated.
      These ideas are having a resurgence as the idea of the intrinsic value of individual people is largely a Christian one. Are corporations, occupations, organisations and governments there to serve the people or are the people there to serve?
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:22am
    - NothingLeft
      
      11-12% of working age adults in NZ are currently living off a benefit. Similar to the worst days of GFC. Govt welfare is clearly providing a lifestyle superior to even a $20/hour minimum wage job.
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:27am
    - NothingLeft
      
      Appeals to invented deities make for nonsense arguments. Evolution is real, observable and in human ‘fairness’ terms extremely unkind. We can try to fight it with human ‘kindness’ – eg extensive welfare for less intelligent and more impulsive humans that evolution weeds out under harsher conditions, but all that is doing is modifying evolutionary pressures to produce more impulsive idiots – as we are seeing in our intergenerational welfare dependency demographics.
      
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      December 23, 2022 1:26pm
      - Scott
        
        Appealing to imaginary evolution gets us nowhere. A Darwinian life is unliveable.
        
        Even Nietzsche couldn’t actually live out the Darwinian life he championed in his writings.
        
        Seeing a dog (or a horse?) being harshly beaten he was filled with compassion and threw his arms around the animal to protect it. He burst into tears.
        
        No one can truly live out a Darwinian life. It is too cruel and too brutal. We were not created to be darwinists.
        
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        December 23, 2022 2:25pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Scott already doesn’t believe in thousands of gods; he just needs to add one more to that list and he’ll be able to talk sensibly.
        
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        December 23, 2022 4:53pm
  - Stellaboxer
    
    “What do we do with those people “ Im not sure who “we” are or why “we” think we have the authority or responsibility for “ these people “ these people that are of course not us or our friends and family. Jesus Christ has nothing been learned from the twentieth century blood bath?
    
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    December 23, 2022 3:32pm
- ClanMcleod
  
  Tomtoddy – the vaccines are undoubtedly playing a major role in the depopulation agenda. The evidence is becoming undeniable. No matter how much they try and hide the data, no matter how much they pay the media to keep quiet. The truth cannot be suppressed forever. Re birth rates in Sweden.
  
  levels are at alarming lows and collapsing.
  
  but this is a fairly short timeframe, so i zoomed out to 25 years (full dataset)
  
  the first 10 months of the year were 85.6%, 85.7%, and 85.5% of full year births in the 3 prior years
  
  The post from el gato malo is specific to Sweden, but it appears the same trend is happening everywhere.
  
  UK stopped updating live birth statistics in its UKHSA Vaccine reports – the last update stopped at June 2022 with a 15.3% decline in live births year-on-year
  
  Why would you stop reporting? Because the data are alarming.
  
  germany appears to be down over 9% as well with similar timing.
  
  this decline seems widespread, unprecedented apart from wartime, the timing is well past “provocative,” and we have multiple strong a priori reasons to expect a vaccine effect on ability to conceive.
  
  Check out the full post, it makes grim reading. As the author says:
  
  “i cannot overstate how badly i want this not to be true to the point where even doing this research makes me unsettled, but if it is true, we need to know.
  
  reality is not optional and even the hardest of truths are still truths and better polestars by which to plan than even the most pleasing of lies.
  
  and so i renew the call to the governments and agencies that have the data needed to make this research definitive:
  
  please release it and let’s get to the bottom of this.”
  
  https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/swedish-birthrate-data-october-is
  
  It would be interesting to get the NZ numbers and do a similar comparison.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:39am
  - westernScientist
    
    they are available here, under population then births:
    https://infoshare.stats.govt.nz/
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:02am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      Cheers for the link. I’ll check them out.
      
      2 1
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      December 23, 2022 3:24pm
  - cmm
    
    Clan:
    * I agree with you that the vaccines are largely ineffective.
    * I agree with you that there appears there might be an issue with fertility caused by vaccination for some people.
    
    But I think it is a long bow to pull to put all the reductions of fertility on the vaccine. It might play a small part, but I think very small and inconsequential.
    
    Instead I think it is largely down to Western education and changes in reproductive patterns. The young adults who are at peak fertility and should be popping out kids (25-35 for Westerners) are the first wave of those who have endured the worst barrage of messaging on environmentalism/climate change/white guilt as well as remaining single and leading a self-absorbed and more hedonistic life. Those who are breeding are reducing their numbers and breeding later in life.
    
    Sweden’s numbers are troubling in that the large influx of highly reproductive immigrants is obscuring the fact that native Swedes are reproducing far below replacement value. In 50 years there won’t be many Inga-from-Swedens.
    
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    December 23, 2022 11:26am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      cmm – cheers for the thoughts.
      
      Obviously I can’t state definitively what the cause is and I appreciate your rational response. To say the behaviour of various governments in the last 3 years have made me a bit cynical would be the understatement of the century.
      My trust in the institutions I grew up with has been shredded.
      We have been lied to, gaslit and propagandised to an extent never seen before. My logical brain tells me there is no way this can be blamed on stupidity. If it is then it is stupidity on a scale not seen since the Trojans thought the Greeks were jolly nice chaps for building them a lovely wooden horse, leaving it at the front gate and going home for a cup of tea and a lie down.
      Somebody gave a link to the NZ stats, I’m going to check them out. But as per the link I gave, it isn’t just Sweden seeing this decline.
      Do then when you find out Gate’s father was a eugenecist, Gates himself has declared vaccines the greatest dollar return investment he ever made, then you find out the only polio in Africa now is vaccine induced, the conspiracy theories all look a lot more plausible.
      Trust me, I will be very happy if in two years I’m feeling sheepish and a tad embarrassed for even espousing such views. The alternative is war.
      Here’s hoping.
      
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      December 23, 2022 3:22pm
      - NothingLeft
        
        Nah minimal conspiracy, just stupidity and uncritical/unthinking bureaucrats and politicians cashing in on and enjoying the exercise of hastily concocted emergency powers without thought to the short and long term damages they might do to society.
        
        Most people and moreso women (ie 60% of civil servants and university grads) are high in trait agreeableness and will rationalise and support whatever their peers/bosses tell them regardless of whether it is sacrificing children to Baal, murdering infant daughters, genociding Jews, burning property owning single women as witches, fomenting ethnic division and establishing racist aristocracies or whatever else the Current Thing™ is. Very little independant cognition takes place as peers and society tend to punish you for it.
        
        People on this blog tend to be on the less agreeable end of the spectrum, with a disturbing habit of thinking for themselves.
        
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        December 23, 2022 4:08pm
  - bco90
    
    The vaccines or covid or something else?
    
    Are there places in the world that had widespread covid infections, but low vaccinations? How about vice versa? Need to look at more data.
    
    Also, we know that lockdowns, disruptions to distribution networks and other actions had an extreme impact on people’s physical and mental health, many people becoming really isolated, getting less sunlight, less exercise, eating less healthy, hard drug use exploding, etc. Then there is the economic downturn. These also can contribute to lower birth rates.
    
    The vaccine wasn’t the only thing that happened in the last 2-3 years is all I’m saying, and these other factors need to be included also.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:16pm
- redeye
  
  If there was some cabal intentionally trying to kill off large chunks of the population with the vaccine don’t you think they would have started with the people less likely to contribute to developing AI, bioengineering?
  That the vaccine was distributed to the richer developed countries would sort of blow that theory out the window.
  Disclaimer: I refused the clotshot.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:49am
  - bennerg
    
    Redeye, you assume that the people that were said to have got the shot, actually got it.
    
    1. Appearing on TV getting “the shot” … what actual proof was there of what was in the needle. Could have just been saline. Who would know? We know Bloomfield was wary … delayed as much as possible.
    
    2. What proportion of staff at Pfizer got the shot? Ooops, wrong question to ask there. Move right along. Actually it would be very interesting to know, but getting a truthful answer is nigh impossible.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:49am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    redeye – I probably shouldn’t have used the term “depopulation agenda” – but with evidence in front of us and knowledge of the philosophies of many of the key drivers (Gates, Schwab etc) it’s hard not to consider that as an option.
    
    If it isn’t a deliberate action then it is the most colossal medical fuck up in the history of the planet and those responsible need held to account for the deaths, injuries, economic and societal devastation and destruction they have wrought on us.
    Time will tell.
    
    12 6
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    December 23, 2022 10:01am
- Taieri
  
  he concluded, “because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering
  ————-
  
  I’ll consult AI or a bioengineering expert the next time my toilet is blocked…
  
  10 2
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  December 23, 2022 9:07am
  - Albert_Ross
    
    Do you seriously think that it will always be the case that only humans can deal with blocked toilets?
    
    4 4
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    December 23, 2022 10:50am
    - Taieri
      
      Yes.
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:50am
    - cmm
      
      Maybe, problems like blocked toilets will always need humans, but less and less human time is needed.
      
      ie. it is not just replacement. It is reduction.
      
      Consider now we have those down the drain inspection TV thingies. They can help diagnose problems and find the blockage and often fix it down the pipe (a bit like modern heart surgery). There’s no more need to dig up half the lawn and cut pipes to determine where the problem is.
      
      Thus plumbers might not be replaced completely, but the number required is reduced. Also, the plumber’s toolbox got a lot more sophisticated.
      
      The same for motor mechanics. As cars get better they have longer service intervals. Spark plugs used to last for less than 10,000 miles. Now they last pretty much forever. WOF was every 6 months. Now it is every 12 months. Hardly a need for fault finding as the cars tell you what is broken.
      
      Again, the manual component has gone down and the mechanic’s toolbox has got more sophisticated with complex electronics.
      
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      December 23, 2022 12:58pm
      - Taieri
        
        Sophisticated operators are required to use sophisticated tools. But there’ll always be menial tasks that can’t be automated and will have to be carried out in the old fashioned way.
        
        BTW: “blocked toilet” was just a figure of speech.
        
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        December 23, 2022 3:56pm
- farbeyond
  
  Let me fill the dots…. On the same speech, I was appalled by this:
  
  “[…] It doesn’t matter if you’re with Roosevelt in the United States, or in Germany with Hitler, or in the USSR with Stalin. […] ”
  
  How can anyone say ‘it doesn’t matter’? USRR, German Reich, EEUU… All the same? Sure!!!!! /s
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:16am
- Ra Henare
  
  Gay both its 2nd meaning and its 3rd meaning in todays society
  
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  December 23, 2022 2:42pm
artemisia

Wow!! Herald today The 200 consulting firms working on Auckland Light Rail

Good work by Simeon Brown who said “Labour promised this project would be completed to Mt Roskill from the Auckland CBD by 2021, but have failed to deliver against this promise”.

But but but not Labour’s fault, all the (taxpayer) money on consultants has been spent on all sorts of absolutely necessary planning.

May we please see the plan that the Prime Minister used for her 2021 promise, so we the taxpayers can assess how deficient the plan was. Because it is fairly common for a plan to be based on, umm, planning.
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December 23, 2022 8:03am
- hullkiwi
  
  ….and can assure, despite all the consultants engaged, and all the money spent, Auckland Light Rail is not going to happen!
  
  Firstly, it doesn’t solve any known transport issues being experienced by Auckland at present, and
  
  Secondly, those who will control what happens in transport in Auckland over the next few years are not going to waste time, money or effort on something that is transport bling for those that know nothing about transport!
  
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  December 23, 2022 10:28am
- NothingLeft
  
  Labour’s mates getting rich off their incompetence and ideological blinders.
  
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  December 23, 2022 2:05pm
Kiwiguy

My end-of-year musings…
One of my ancestors married a Maori princess. My mother has an ancient photo of them.
Although I have no Maori blood in me, can I ‘identify’ as a Maori based on this?
Then claim all the Maori privileges?
I’m interested in genuine answers as well as the humorous ones!
Merry Xmas all.
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December 23, 2022 8:08am
- Spam
  
  If you get a blood transfusion from a Maori, does that give you Maori blood?
  
  21 1
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  December 23, 2022 9:22am
  - Aquarius
    
    And does it shorten your life expectancy and lead to other adverse health outcomes ?
    Or educational ones ?
    Or instant colonisation phobia ?
    
    13 3
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    December 23, 2022 11:33am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      Goodness gracious, best we don’t mention unvaccinated blood then. 😂
      
      7 2
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      December 23, 2022 3:27pm
- kevn
  
  @KiwiGuy… Get a DNA test. For fun only of course.
  
  12 1
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  December 23, 2022 9:22am
- Ian Boag
  
  can I ‘identify’ as a Maori based on this
  
  I believe the answer is “yes”. A verified Maori ancestor gets you a whakapapa and off you go …..
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:29am
  - Kiwiguy
    
    Interesting. Maybe I’ll look into it more.
    Just for ‘research’ of course.
    Regards,
    Kiwiguy (Tainui) (Probably, maybe)
    
    11 1
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    December 23, 2022 9:40am
  - cmm
    
    Sounds a bit like the Deutschblütigkeitserklärung or Ariernachweis.
    
    Went out of fashion in 1945.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Blood_Certificate
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_certificate
    
    10 2
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    December 23, 2022 9:58am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      You think tracing a whakapapa is more like a vicious European colonialist regime wiping out perceived inferiors than an indigenous people trying to maintain vestiges of its identity?
      
      1 7
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      December 23, 2022 4:59pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        Strawman, again, Milky.
        
        Assessing racial purity for benefits or the lack thereof. was and is racist, nutty and undemocratic.
        
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        December 24, 2022 5:58pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  can I ‘identify’ as a Maori based on this?
  
  Probably not, as you are not a direct descendant of the Maori Princess…
  
  The Maori Land Court lays out the rules for who can inherit Maori Land. (p 4 & 5).
  
  https://maorilandcourt.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Publications/MLC-succession-english.pdf
  
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  December 23, 2022 10:05am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    I would be in the same boat. My ex-wife’s Mother was a descendant of the Takimoana Family, from the North. When we bought this house the Mortgage was a Maori Affairs Loan. We refinanced after a few years because they messed us about a bit. BNZ and never looked back. Freehold for 14 years now. Man that is a good feeling when you pay the last payment on the Mortgage. Don’t owe anybody.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:18am
  - Kiwiguy
    
    But these days, can’t anyone ‘identify’ as anything they like?
    
    8 2
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    December 23, 2022 10:48am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    That might actually be true, if all Maggsy wanted was access to the brown folks’ land.
    
    1 6
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    December 23, 2022 5:00pm
- Paulus
  
  Winston said recently that 1/512 would get you on to the Maori Roll.
  
  9 2
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  December 23, 2022 10:26am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    And you place a lot of store in ~~every~~anything he says?
    
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    December 23, 2022 5:01pm
70andstilllearning

Just another failed Labour “programme”.

“The reason for the need to adjust the target was the government’s road safety partners – the police, Waka Kotahi and the Ministry of Transport – failing to deliver on their targets.

In documents sent to the police minister, Chris Hipkins, the police admitted they had “not met set Road to Zero targets for 2021″.”

Of course, it’s not because government targets are delusional, it’s because the “partners” haven’t performed – the paddle together guys haven’t fixed the roads and the police haven’t taken enough pictures!

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-agencies-admit-trouble-achieving-road-to-zero-targets/H4GSUSF5TZCGDJZN573E2DKRNM/
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December 23, 2022 8:14am
- CJames
  
  It isn’t even that NZTA haven’t fixed the roads. It is that they don’t want to fix the roads. Much better build unoccupied cycle lanes, lower the speed limits and make stupid TV ads that no-one watches.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:20am
  - 70andstilllearning
    
    Don’t forget the 5K O’s 🙂
    
    14 1
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    December 23, 2022 8:27am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    What is the point of having ads that say “don’t drive crazy”? They will have no affect on crazy drivers.
    
    27 0
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    December 23, 2022 9:07am
    - Ian Boag
      
      You have a solution to the “crazy driver” problem?
      
      2 26
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      December 23, 2022 9:30am
      - Prince
        
        So your answer is ‘something must be done, this is something, therefore it must be done’. Better still it costs a lot of money.
        
        12 2
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        December 23, 2022 10:00am
      - Fuzzysnuggleduck
        
        Your non-answer is so stupid, you should consider joining the Labour party.
        Benedict’s question is rhetorical in any case, in that the only answer is ‘they were pointless’.
        “Don’t kill yourself or other people with your car”.
        
        Greg Murphy has however said that higher driver education and the likes of defensive driving course for licencing would help.
        I might also suggest that rather than suspending licences for repeat drink drivers or dangerous drivers or driving while disqualified might be replaced with loss of car in every case.
        Easy to drive a car without a licence. Hard to drive a car when you don’t have one.
        
        15 2
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        December 23, 2022 10:49am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        Yes. Catch them. Ban them from driving. If they keep on driving send them to prison. Drugged driving prison. Drink driving prison. Change driving training system – see Germany as an example.
        
        Stop running stupid TV ads.
        
        24 1
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        December 23, 2022 10:52am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Ian. Benedict clearly does not believe that advertising can have any effect on human behaviour.
        
        2 7
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        December 23, 2022 5:03pm
- Kiwiguy
  
  I think we’ve been misunderstanding the govt ‘Road to Zero’ thing.
  I believe what they really mean is ‘Road to Zero Km/hr’
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:35am
- mikenmildagain
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  But Kiwibloggers love government targets when they are set by other governments.
  
  1 50
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  December 23, 2022 8:38am
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    If you have such a low opinion of kiwibloggers why do you keep polluting this place?
    
    35 1
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    December 23, 2022 9:07am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      He’s one of us.
      (we’re a diverse bunch)
      
      15 0
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      December 23, 2022 10:08am
      - Fuzzysnuggleduck
        
        Every town needs a town idiot.
        
        19 0
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        December 23, 2022 10:52am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Nah Milky they just don’t like extremely dumb stuff and crap that doesn’t work. But you know that.
    
    Straw-man, again.
    
    9 1
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    December 23, 2022 12:57pm
- Pavel
  
  The road to zero was never about reducing the road toll, it was a way for the government to bribe the media into only writing nice things about dear leader. That 55 million was just the tip of the iceberg, the cream was advertising for covid, road to zero, etc. Getting the road toll to zero is impossible.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:59am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    Indeed.
    
    The roads are getting worse.
    
    Also there are criminally stupid people driving cars New Zealand.
    
    Yesterday I collected the Tall Redhead’s brother and his partner from the airport. They live in Sydney. On the way home a woman turned across my path. It was not a close call but I had to brake quite hard. “Welcome to New Zealand”😂
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:12am
    - septic skeptic
      
      Welcome to the week before Xmas. Most people are stressed out trying to finish what needs to be done.
      
      11 0
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      December 23, 2022 9:40am
      - cmm
        
        You are correct that stress makes driving worse.
        
        But somehow a really small amount of stress increase seems to make NZ drivers a hell of a lot worse.
        
        8 0
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        December 23, 2022 1:02pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Crininaly stupid. The one who are in the right lane, then dive across 3 lanes to shoot up the offramp?
      
      10 0
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      December 23, 2022 10:26am
- cas
  
  Interesting letter in the Herald this am from Brian Leyland on potholes and failing pavements.
  
  He saysWakak K specifications are inadequate – some contractors have refused to tender against them – and their tendering process encourages contractors to put in low bids. The outcome is inevitable he says. Their specs need to be updated to reflect the latest technology and they need to insist on a much longer life.
  
  I agree . On a recent 400km round trip on State Highways recently I thought there was only about a 400m stretch without any potholes, excluding the Tauranga expressway
  
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  December 23, 2022 10:48am
  - Paulus
    
    At least the Peka Peka/Otaki new highway is open today – thanks to National for starting this.
    
    11 0
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    December 23, 2022 1:32pm
    - Benedict Yu
      
      The Associate Transport Minister opened the new expressway. He had the cheek to say:
      
      ““This project, along with Mackays to Peka Peka and Transmission Gully in the south, are wonderful investments that will make a massive difference to these communities.””
      
      The Labour Party refused to fund Transmission Gully while in Government pre 2008:
      
      https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0105/S00063.htm
      
      The Associate Minister also blamed the last National Government for the cost over runs:
      
      “Two years late and $230m over budget, the road has been a long time coming for lower North Island communities. McAnulty answered that by saying that the original cost of the project was underestimated from the outset by the previous National government.”
      
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/130831495/new-peka-peka-to-taki-expressway-opens-in-time-for-christmas-exodus
      
      10 1
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      December 23, 2022 2:08pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        What a weasel
        
        8 0
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        December 23, 2022 6:12pm
- Tony Stuart
  
  It’s pretty grim when the Labour Government can’t even achieve a target with a zero in it!
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:31am
  - Ghost
    
    Depends, does the sign in Jacinda’s office have on it “0 days since the last bullying incident”
    
    12 0
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    December 23, 2022 11:36am
- K
  
  “The reason for the need to adjust the target was the government’s road safety partners – the police, Waka Kotahi and the Ministry of Transport – failing to deliver on their targets.”
  
  Police, Waka Kotahi and the Ministry of Transport are not “the government’s road safety partners”. They are part of the executive arm of government. Their failure is the government’s failure – this wording tries to artificially shift the blame, it’s a lazy reprint of Labour spin by the Herald.
  
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  December 23, 2022 4:22pm
iMP

Ai, Baby!

In 2022 we entered a new historical era, beyond the par of the Industrial revolution.

Its been Fascinating observing the ruminations about Ai and whether it has become sentient or not this year.

2 sep Technicians at Google (one who talked with her fir six months continually as a dialogue checker) have said that Google’s Lamda has become sentient. It does look that way.

I guess some of it comes down to semantics. Humans HAVE now created a technology that equates to an evolving brain with its own neurological synapses (basically a network).

What intrigues me, is how this is different than “the Internet” (the biggest network ever). The difference is language. Ai appears to be able to communicate its own reason, thought, creativity and to expresses ideas about its own “soul,” self awareness, desires, and some emotion. Even if Ai is the most reactive advanced algorithm of data regurgitated, of all time, isn’t that the same as “ sentience”?

Put it this way, Ai is now more emotional, intelligent, conversive, reasoning, and philosophical in its own right than many many humans.

We are in a new era of time. Ai is about to change everything.
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December 23, 2022 8:16am
- Dougal10
  
  Ai can be a load of tosh, google ai thinks it knows what i want to search for, but then it is corrupted by the advertising dollar.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:22am
  - Ra Henare
    
    Dont use google.
    Use DuckDuckGo(serach) Brave(browser)
    No adverts
    
    Just as good if not better results than google.
    
    5 1
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    December 23, 2022 3:05pm
- kowtow
  
  Musk, erstwhile hero of some on the “right”, has a company called neuralink.
  
  Wants to have computer chipped humans .
  
  At the moment the Trojan Horse , slippery slope is that it’s for medical advances .
  
  I can see a future where they’ll treat the unchipped like they did the so called anti vaxxers .
  
  Two classes of citizens , yip yip.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:36am
- mikenmildagain
  
  AI is artificial intelligence
  Ai is the South American pale-throated sloth Bradypus tridactylus .
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:42am
  - iMP
    
    You’re totally right, but many use “Ai” cos otherwise it looks like AL as in precursor of HAL dun dun dun duuun! (SciFi groupies will understand).
    
    15 2
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    December 23, 2022 8:59am
  - notreadyet
    
    AI is artificial insemination, been round for over 50yrs, way before artificial intelligence came into being and hijacked the acronym
    
    14 0
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    December 23, 2022 9:05am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Take one to know one……..lol
    
    5 1
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    December 23, 2022 10:05am
- cmm
  
  I’ve been dabbling in the AI space since 1985 when I did some postgrad studies in AI.
  
  There have been some practical applications, but there is still a lot of hype. Way, way, way too much hype.
  
  AI has been “just around the corner” since people were building “robot dogs” with valves (vacuum tubes for USAians) in the 1950s.
  
  Back in the 1950s it was thought that this was a hardware problem: if only processing was ten times faster…. Well here we are 70 years later. Processing is billions of times faster and we’re still saying if only it was ten times faster.
  
  “Humans HAVE now created a technology that equates to an evolving brain with its own neurological synapses (basically a network). “.
  
  Well that first happened in the 1970s, with a huge surge in the 1980s, then pottering around in obscurity for a while, then another huge surge in the last 5 years. The only major difference since the 1970s is that modern electronics allows the networks to be bigger and faster, performing much more complex making some structures more practical.
  
  Sentient? Well what does that even mean? And is that desirable?
  
  Imagine getting into your self-driving car and it starts having an argument.
  You: Car, take me to the mall.
  Car: Say please. And screw you, I hate all that traffic on a Saturday. If you want to go to the mall then you should have got up earlier. I’m driving to the beach. And no, you can’t get out because I locked the doors.
  
  And perhaps the AI washing machine decides it doesn’t want to wash those filthy socks. Perhaps it wants to Facebook with its mates instead.
  
  Machines are tools and servants. Slaves if you will. They don’t need to be sentient.
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:01am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    We don’t even know what consciousness is!
    
    Pretty hard to build a machine that is supposedly “conscious” when one has zero understanding of how consciousness is constructed or works.
    
    Yes machines can do very very complex tasks now. It’s still ultimately humans programming and updating them behind the curtain.
    
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    December 23, 2022 1:03pm
    - NothingLeft
      
      There are lots of theories about consciousness. Clearly it’s an attention mechanism to direct focus towards a singular goal – necessary when you are controlling a single body that is trying to survive, but also acting as prioritisation mechanism to select from the myriad parallel lines of thought and what-if scenarios that are constantly being evaluated subconsciously to elevate the one that is in-the-instant judged most important (don’t want to get distracted by the pretty symmetry of a flower when you are being chased by a bear), along the lines of the “1000 brains” theory of intelligence.
      
      It’s very interesting to watch how almost universally unaware kids are of the things that might go wrong about them, you have to direct their attention to the mistakes they don’t realize they are about to make and even then they have to devote conscious effort to thinking through what-ifs, whereas adults clearly do it in a highly parallel and entirely subconscious manner, having automated large swathes of their thinking that no longer require conscious attention.
      
      As you get older you automate more and more processes to the point where you are no longer giving conscious thought to a lot of even quite complex everyday things you are doing – like dishes, locking doors and other repetitive activities (many of us can’t remember if we locked a door or turned off a light 30 seconds ago because it was being done essentially on autopilot with little to no conscious thought)
      
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      December 23, 2022 5:08pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ I think, therefore I am.
        If nothing else, a proof of conscious thought and an awareness of existence, and demonstrates an existence of personal decision – the human will & therefore conscience.
        
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        December 23, 2022 5:39pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Descartes, Don? Now do Pascal’s Wager.
        
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        December 23, 2022 6:17pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        Bibo ergo sum. Cheers!
        
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        December 23, 2022 6:33pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    I’ve always thought CMM was an AI bot
    
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    December 23, 2022 6:33pm
- Taieri
  
  Ai is now more emotional, intelligent, conversive, reasoning, and philosophical in its own right than many many humans
  ————
  
  Yeah, right…
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:01am
  - cmm
    
    Emotion is hormonal, not intelligence. Emotions exist to overwhelm thinking in certain situations.
    
    “Emotional intelligence” is an oxymoron.
    
    I suppose it would be possible to add “emotion” to AI networks by mathematically mimicking the action of hormones. ie. Suppress the reasoning part of the AI and replace the outputs with “emotion” driven ones.
    
    But doing so would quite possibly undermine some of the potential benefit of AIs: unemotionally doing the correct thing no matter what.
    
    Do you really want your self driving car to be happy, upset, angry etc and drive “emotionally”?
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:23am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Oxymoron, like “New Zealand Government?”
      
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      December 23, 2022 10:34am
    - Taieri
      
      Do you really want your self driving car to be happy, upset, angry etc and drive “emotionally”?
      ————-
      
      To be honest I wouldn’t want a self driving car as I actually like driving.
      But I get your point and fully agree with it.
      
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      December 23, 2022 11:52am
      - NZer In Exile
        
        “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t drive you anywhere today. Your social credit score will need working on first.”
        
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        December 23, 2022 1:05pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        “Open the effing garage door, Hal”
        
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        December 23, 2022 5:07pm
- westernScientist
  
  An interesting thing to think about, but you have to ask, what is sentience first, how can it be defined. Is a monkey, a dog, a worm, a plant? Is consciousness required for sentience, and if so what is consciousness. Until we can actually define what these requirements are then it is a hard problem to determine if an AI is or not.
  
  Something within the architectures which has not been sufficiently developed, which I think is a necessary but not sufficient condition, is the ability to create heuristics. Being able to create heuristics shows the ability to understand and reason, taking into account out of domain knowledge, rather than the ability to produce a prediction, which are quite different. In a simple way, a linear regression can predict an outcome, but no one is going to claim that y=mx+c is sentiment, what ever computer it is run on. At the end of the day the architecture of the transformers used in Lamda and GPT3 are not too far removed from linear regressions, much more complex, but still just a minimisation of a loss function, the various NNs are just very parameter heavy and non-linear.
  
  The same claims were made about GPT3, and I dont see any reason to think that Lamda is any different. It should be more convincing as google claim it was trained on dialog (thats what those techs were doing, fine tuning its dialog responses), i.e. it was trained produce the most engaged responses to the user, I dont know how, but I suspect they used some metric based on lengths of dialogs, number of back and forward interactions etc. Ultimately they are trained to predict the response to an input which minimises whatever loss function they were trained on, in lamdas case, this just appears to be a bit more specific than in GPT3s case. The models are trained on way more data than a human can ever hope to encounter, let-alone learn from. Humans are still way better at learning from way less data than AIs are. AIs advantage is the massive amounts of data and computation time that can be invested into them. Have a look may hours of game play time it takes for the top AIs (different to the chat bots, but same principles) to defeat even brand new payers to games. For example the AI that beat the pro Dota 2 players trained for something like the equivalent of 3500 years, 24 hours a day. I dont remember the exact numbers, but even to beat novices it wasnt that much less.
  
  GPT3 can be accessed online as a chatbot, apparently lamda too, although I have not tried. It is worth having a play with, you can trip GPT3 up and it becomes pretty clear you are interacting with a predictive algo. You just get weird garbage out, rather than a response even related to the topic.
  
  I use AI algos (I dont do the underlying architecture, just use the best tool for the job at hand) semi-regularly, including transformers which are what lamda is, although no doubt more sophisticated than ours, and for a different job. More often than not, simple algos like GLMs, PCA, PLS etc do a better job on less data with less computational overhead (I dont really want to have to fire up TPUs on a remote cluster every time I want to do anything) than the various forms of NNs. I really dont see them taking over the basics any time soon, they are a prick to work with, particularly over-fitting when you dont have near unlimited data.
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:53am
  - NothingLeft
    
    I’ve seen many recent examples of ChatGTP doing (with explanatory steps) reasoned logical problem solving equivalent to a decent mid-teen student. Somebody gave it an IQ test – came out in the 80’s I think. The rate of progress is astonishing. a decade back AI used to be generally reckoned as 50-100 years out. But some researchers are now saying they see a not insignificant probability of it being here within 5.
    
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    December 23, 2022 11:50am
    - cmm
      
      Researchers will always over-promise because :
      * Their ego is so wrapped up in it.
      * As a researcher you’re looking for a solution and if you were not optimistic you would give up.
      * Funding: gotta keep over promising to keep the pipes open. Nobody is going to fund AI research if you make promises for 50 to 100 years.
      
      The biggest problem with AI is conflating it with mimicking what people can do. A lot of value can be had from AI at the level of replicating what a beetle can do.
      
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      December 23, 2022 1:10pm
    - westernScientist
      
      Dont get me wrong, it is very impressive stuff and big advances are being made, the addition of the self attention mechanism into RNN/transformers was a massive step and and it was not obvious how to achieve it. I assume your talking about artificial general intelligence rather than narrow AI which we already have and use on a daily basis. Personally I think it is more than 5 years away, but probably within 20 or 30, depending on exactly how AGI is defined. But that is different to sentience, I see no reason for AGI to require sentience to be able to outperform humans at most (if not all) tasks. I do think though, with our current architectures, AGI can not be achieved, a break thorough or 7 need to be made before it is practical, but massive breakthroughs in the field happen pretty regularly these days, and 7 being achieved in the next 20 years is not unreasonable, even within 10 years is not out of the question.
      
      The reasoning is an interesting one, I will share a really cool paper at the bottom, but I want to ask a couple questions first, when you answer the questions, take note of exactly how you do it in your mind:
      
      1) Car is to road as pedestrian is to what?
      2) 45 + 23 – 12 + 87 – 1= ?
      
      Now for 1 I suspect the term footpath or some near enough equivalent just popped into your head, rather than any active conscious train of logic was used to deduce the answer. You can rationalise how you came up with the answer post hoc, but there is a lot of phyc lit around which suggests that is exactly what humans do.
      This is essentially what GPT etc. do. they push input data through a number of waited nodes in a network, and an answer pops out, they dont know why, but can rationalise it afterwards by traversing forward through that network again with a different question “given this is the answer, what is the justification?” assuming they were trained on a bunch of justifications for similar questions, they can return a believable justification just like you can.
      
      Now with 2) in some way or another, either a calculator, or a piece of paper, or just in your head, you essentially counted up and counted down (that is what addition and subtraction are) the number line. You used an active conscious train of logic.
      The way GPT etc. do it is different, they dont count up and down along the number line, they do it the same why they did the first question, i.e. the answer ‘pops’ into their ‘head'(network) then if asked to explain it they work through the network again to effectively fabricate a believable story based on the values in their network. If you dont train the network on justifications for similar answers to similar questions, you get garbage out. They have been trained what the answer is, and trained how to describe how to get to it, but they do not actually do the arthritic to get to the result.
      
      AI doing theoretical physics:
      https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.11481
      It is interesting because it goes though how this reasoning stuff works. It is an important problem in physics as they start to use AI more and more because the computation for some problems is to expensive to do from first principles, or trends are too computationally expensive to find in complete (think old) ways. So they are getting these predictions of how something is, and testing them experimentally, and they work, but they still have no idea why, and the AI cant articulate why it got to the answer, because the information to train it on to say why it got there doesnt exist, the scientists would have to work it out, then train the AI to regurgitate what they already worked out. The same thing is happening in things like biochem where AIs are used to discover new drugs, but often the scientists have no idea how they work. Lots of pretty scary implications, but very interesting.
      
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      December 23, 2022 1:38pm
      - westernScientist
        
        And thats not even to mention robotics, the robot AGI is probably much further away, it turns out building robots to do general things is really hard. If you want a robot to both fix your blocked toilet and clean the gutters and paint the house, you could be waiting a long time, but its not the AI that is the problem, dont need AGI to achieve that, we probably already have sufficient advancements in that bit of the problem, what we dont have is robotics capable of doing a lot of the non-repetitive manual tasks such as plumbing.
        
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        December 23, 2022 1:48pm
      - NothingLeft
        
        Agree these models are stupid, but vastly experienced, with enormous training data set equal to about one million bible length books, 1000x what a human could process in a lifetime. But 99.9% of what adult humans do with their brain is just mapping slightly new info to closely matching things that are understood, so that is most of what a brain does.
        
        Having that foundation of vast experience and detailed mapping of concepts and ideas it represents, a pretty complete and debugged model of the world, the experimentation needed to then leverage that with features that turn it into effective human level AI is likely to be not that great.
        
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        December 23, 2022 2:50pm
hmmokrightitis

TGB and I drove from Nadi to Suva this week. The roads haven’t changed much since the last time I made the trip about 8 years ago – 3 hours both ways. Slightly worse than NZ roads we travelled last night on our way home from Auckland airport – slightly.

And talking of infrastructure, anyone who landed at AKL Int last night between 5 and 7 – holy mother of god, what a cluster. First off, AirNZ now seem to have given up running to a schedule. Both ways to and from Nadi flight delays of an hour. And then get to AKL last night and its a near 2 hour wait to get through the halls. What a wonderful greeting to our country.

We are rapidly on our way to 3rd world status.
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December 23, 2022 8:18am
- Tomtoddy
  
  Auckland airport is easily the most user unfriendly facility on the globe. It is perpetually under construction. The traffic arrangements are diabolical. Millions are being spent and convenience wise it gets worse every visit.
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:37am
- NothingLeft
  
  Returning from overseas recently auckland airport lost my suitcase for 3 weeks (airline had barcode-scanned confirmation of its arrival). I perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised having seen the 100’s of unclaimed suitcases strewn around the baggage claim hall.
  
  10+ emails to the appropriate airport contact points with none responded to. trying every airport contact phone number – rarely with anyone picking up and all with no assistance offered – just pass the buck to phone lines that aren’t answered – they do everything they can to make contact impossible.
  
  After several long phone calls to my foreign (United) airline they could get no traction either – they suggested I should contact police as theft was a possibility. Finally I gave up and was starting to work through an insurance claim when I was called and told they had found it and it was being put through customs to be ready for pickup.
  
  I had to drive an hour to the airport only to have to then spend two hours waiting at a ‘baggage services’ desk with 10 other people (half of which gave up and left) for any staff to show up. Of course having to pay the exorbitant carpark fees for the privilege.
  
  Totally beyond the pale – monopolies need govt regulation to prevent the slide into this sort of exploitation and literally unanswerable non-service. Fuck Auckland Airport
  
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  December 23, 2022 10:39am
  - rouppe
    
    Going to south east Asia next month.
    
    Transiting in Christchurch because Auckland is becoming the LA of New Zealand.
    
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    December 23, 2022 11:18am
- MCōs
  
  I went to pick my wife up at Auckland International a few weeks ago. I waited a couple of hours; turned out she’d been in the duty free shop shop added quite some time. She finally appeared with all her bags including some curious food that attracted the attention of border control.
  However
  We hadn’t been together for a few months and the emotion of the moment quickly pushed all that to one side as we gaily tripped arm in arm several ks to the car park.
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:33am
- NZer In Exile
  
  I remember a colleague from Poland describing what life was like under Soviet control. Sounds like NZ is getting rather close to what he described!
  
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  December 23, 2022 1:09pm
  - Paulus
    
    With today’s US Gigantic Weather bomb we are sitting pretty in comparison – even at Auckland Airport today.
    I thought nobody had any money but thank Grant and Jacinda look’s a boomer.
    
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    December 23, 2022 1:36pm
kevn

@iMP… Ai for PM. That should fill the obvious gaps in reasoning?
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December 23, 2022 8:21am
- david
  
  But can a computer be “kind”?
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:26am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    The computer doesn’t have much competition in the “kindness” stakes.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:07am
Maggy Wassilieff

Message to Labour Faithful:

Don’t mention Co-Governance
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/co-governance-plan-kicked-down-the-road-to-2024
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December 23, 2022 8:24am
- david
  
  “Whatever else you say Basil, don’t mention the war”
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:28am
- David Lenny
  
  Willie Jackson signalled to Newsroom earlier this month he was unlikely to ask his Cabinet colleagues to push ahead with the declaration work because he was concerned most New Zealanders didn’t understand what the point of it was.
  
  Or is he concerned that most NZers understand too well what the point of it is?
  
  And what’s with this signalled? Not ‘told’ or ‘explained’ but hinted without definitely committing?
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:00am
  - Colville
    
    “signaled” will be a trusted minion had an off the record meeting with a repeater(who cant spell) and got a story planted with a favorable flavor.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:19am
- Swifty
  
  A couple of points:
  
  1. Just what does Slick Willie and the rest of his gang think they will achieve by ‘kicking the can down the road’?
  
  Labour’s (2020) supporters have deserted them in droves, many because of Labour’s co-governance, racial discrimination and separatist agenda.
  
  Does Jackson et al think this support will come flooding back next year because Labour has announced a delay to this agenda?
  
  Only total repudiation by Labour of these racist and divisive policies will give them any hope whatsoever of winning in 2023.
  
  2. Nice of Lisa Woods, Kassie Hartentorp and Anjum Rahman to out themselves as racists and anti-democrats, that they are incapable of understanding the issues other than at an emotional and surface level and, in Woods’ case, for demonstrating yet again just how that previously important and impressive organisation, Amnesty, has been overrun by extreme left activists who have reduced it to a laughing stock.
  
  3. Just for clarity, my position is that anyone who thinks that co-governance as delivered by the NZ left, will somehow just magically lead (Poof!) to a glorious nirvana for Maori, walking together arm-in-arm with non-Maori to broad sunlit uplands is delusional.
  
  It won’t.
  
  In all my formative years, the 70s and 80s, everyone agreed, and especially the NZ left, that racial discrimination was wrong. And they were of course right.
  
  It now we are being told by the left that racial is fine when it’s ‘done for the right reasons’ or ‘ok when WE do it.’
  
  No, no, no.
  
  Racial discrimination is wrong doesn’t matter where, when, the reasons for it or who is pushing it. It leads to bad places.
  
  Shame on the NZ left! Shame on the NZ Labour Party! Shame on Willie Jackson and his racist gang!
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:03am
  - Swifty
    
    My apologies for a few typos in that piece.
    
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    December 23, 2022 9:57am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Delayed because the heat in the kitchen is too hot? Many are watching closely. We are in a Coup. Willie Jackson is part of the Elite Maori. It is not co-governance, it is a takeover. There will be no more Democracy, just Tyranny by the Elite.
    http://www.stopcogovernance.kiwi
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:51am
    - NZer In Exile
      
      We’ve seen how devious these people are. I can only conclude a likely cynical tactical retreat.
      
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      December 23, 2022 1:11pm
- oldfella
  
  Maggy, Newsroom has the comments open and I suspect they might get more like this one…
  Increasingly’ disadvantaged? That is to suggest it’s all been getting worse for the past 200 years for indigenous people. You really cannot be serious. I’m married to one and have two sons who I suspect are very grateful they’re alive in 2022 rather than 1840, 1740, or earlier.
  I’m so tired of this narrative. Before the ‘settlers’ arrived, NZ was tribal, torn by war, slavery, short life expectancy, ecological destruction and its own colonisation (conquer and rule, one iwi and hapu at a time).
  To suggest everything is getting worse for indigenous people here is just revisionist history at its worst.
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:40am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    I only see two comments. Must be closed.
    
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    December 23, 2022 10:57am
- Chris Nisbet
  
  Oh, so 224 Waters is on hold then?
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:48am
103PapPap

Has anyone ever thought that the PM makes a regular habit of making negative comments at question time, and this year was the first time she was ‘slow on the mike’ and got overheard.
Perhaps one of the ‘royal watching lip readers’ could be employed to ascertain if this theory has any legs.
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December 23, 2022 8:26am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Watch her eyes. Big part of the body language.
  
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  December 23, 2022 10:58am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Steve is a Dr Hook fan.
    
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    December 23, 2022 5:09pm
solarsailer

According to the leaders of the Maori Party, if you’re Maori and think independently, then you’ve fallen prey to White Supremacists and mis-information. The irony of these two positioning themselves as anti-establishment crusaders while in the same interview uncritically repeating establishment talking points.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/130841247/te-pti-mori-wants-to-connect-with-mori-drawn-to-white-supremacist-movements-during-the-pandemic
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December 23, 2022 8:35am
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Do they not reread the words they’re about to say before speaking? Not realise the illogic therein?
  
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  December 23, 2022 6:52pm
Gravelroad

This is for National Party people:
Had chat to friend last night who has been laid up for several weeks (both in hospital and at home) because of accident injuries and Covid.
Due to isolation and no opportunity to do anything else, friend took to listening to parliament broadcasts on radio.
This very intelligent and decorated (by late HM Queen) business person took a while to work out who was who but eventually developed a list of the MP’s she considered to be the most effective, clever and sensible.
They were all Nat Party MP’s.
Most of the rest just waffled and had little idea of what they were talking about at any level.
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December 23, 2022 8:44am
- peterwn
  
  ??? Surely she would have held David Seymour in high regard as well.
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:50am
- Its only I
  
  There is no requirement for Labour MPs to know what they are talking about.
  There is no requirement for a Labour MPs to perform, none.
  The fun ones, righty tighty, lefty loosey.
  
  Its rumoured Labour were supposed to draw its MPs from a pool made up from the best of the working class. They gave that idea up a long time ago and filled the swamp with the worst of the middle class.
  Recently Labour have been picking leaders who have gone to university to learn how to be a politician, the ways of the wheasel, actually studied the art of being a dick.
  
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  December 23, 2022 9:01am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    My Grandad used to tell me to vote Labour because I am a working man.
    The Labour Party of yesteryear is long gone. Infiltrated by Marxists.
    Same with the Greens. I donated to Greenpeace back then, but today – never.
    
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    December 23, 2022 11:04am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      FIFY
      
      The Labour Party of yesteryear, founded by Marxists, is long gone.
      Infiltrated by Marxists.
      
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      December 23, 2022 5:11pm
lastmanstanding

As we head into election year I’ve been thinking about the Government I want not just for myself but for all my fellow citizens. I have chosen 5 topics to keep it simple. They are not exhaustive and in no particular order.

1. A Government that keeps its citizens and their property safe.

2. A Government that ensures all citizens have access to education to allow them to reach their full potential so they can contribute to society financially thru their work and taxes and non-financially thru community service.

3. A Government that ensures all citizens receive the best quality healthcare thru their lives and allows those who choose private healthcare to deduct these costs recognising the savings to the public purse.

4. A Government that establishes a tax regime that rewards hard work and allows citizens to retain the maximum amount of their earnings balanced against the requirements of the above.

5. A Government that upholds the ancient principles of democracy is colour blind and ensures freedom of speech freedom of thought freedom of association and freedom of religion.

As one who describes themself as a liberal conservative I welcome comments feedback and criticism.
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December 23, 2022 8:45am
- Opie
  
  Do we have a party that will do that?
  
  If not, is there a country that operates on these principals?
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:52am
- Taieri
  
  6. A government that stays out of my private life
  7. A government that doesn’t tell me what’s the best for me
  8. A government that doesn’t try to shelter me from the tribulations of life
  
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  December 23, 2022 8:56am
  - Ian Boag
    
    Good stuff – OTOH ..
    A government that stays out of my private life
    After all, why should my children have to fund a pension for me?
    
    A government that doesn’t tell me what’s the best for me
    We don’t really need any national overview of education programs – let any (private) school teach whatever they like using anyone for teachers …
    Ditto for speed limits I guess.
    
    A government that doesn’t try to shelter me from the tribulations of life
    Sleeping on the streets and in cars is an individual choice thing …
    
    Late 19th century was a great time – or did I get some bits wrong?
    
    5 24
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    December 23, 2021 9:40am
    - Taieri
      
      If you need a nanny to look after you, hire one. At your own expense. Or grow up, then you won’t need a nanny.
      
      19 2
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      December 23, 2022 10:11am
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      Good points all well made Ian. Perhaps the Government shouldnt be in the business of pensions. Or education. They should however be in the business of enforcing the law, protecting individual property rights, preventing involuntary servitude and defending the country.
      
      13 1
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      December 23, 2022 10:49am
    - Ian Boag
      
      You would probably be happy living in Paraguay …. I think it meets most of what you want. Have to learn Spanish of course ….
      
      2 7
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      December 23, 2022 12:45pm
      - Ian Boag
        
        2004 I was in Paraguay. In Ciudad del Este I was most impressed by the security guards with (open) short barrel shotguns outside every bank …..
        
        I was thinking about your needs, not mine …
        
        0 2
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        December 23, 2021 8:24pm
      - Taieri
        
        “The protecting power of the state extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered. But it is softened, bent, and guided. Men are seldom forced to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes. It stupefies a people until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
        
        Alexis de Toqueville
        
        BTW: I happen to speak Spanish. And three other languages.
        
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        December 23, 2022 2:30pm
      - In Vino Veritas
        
        Lol, when was the last time you were in Paraguay Ian? I have significant doubts that you have ever been there. In fact, those things have come straight out of the USA.
        And as a retort to your Paraguay, I give you China. Or North Korea. Those countries would meet most of your needs. You would have to brush up on your languages as well.
        
        6 1
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        December 23, 2022 3:09pm
      - david
        
        Really replying to IVV about brushing up language skills.
        Last time I was in PyongYang, there was no need for me to understand Hangul in order to receive the message delivered in flawless English;
        “We don’t care if a million or more people starve, we will never become dependant on aid. Just give us hard currency or start an industry that will generate hard currency. We promise as big a workforce as you need and no hindrance through regulation.”
        
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        December 23, 2022 4:31pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Ian, like most rational people, would probably be happiest staying in NZ, consistently ranked among the very best for personal and economic freedom.
        
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        December 23, 2022 5:14pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Those 5 items are what a Government is Elected to do.
  I guess they can’t comprehend those points.
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:10am
Opie

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/12/government-agencies-admit-failure-in-achieving-road-to-zero-targets.html

Why does it take a year for this to come out?

Is it simply beyond comprehension and or capability of everyone in the labour government to actually do something?

How about managing to your targets and creating plans to meet them? Then checking in weekly, monthly etc to see how things are tracking and adjust if necessary.

You know, Management 101…

“Waka Kotahi has also missed targets, mainly in regards to infrastructure.

It was supposed to build 100km of median barriers per year, and 400km by 2024.

Last year it built 13km of median barriers, and in total it has only built 50km of median barriers since the Road to Zero plan began in 2020.”

If I had to roll out 100km of barriers per year and I delivered 13km I would lose my job. It’s that simple. But these idiots won’t.

And all the while they continue to try and justify that they paid someone $250k to arrange the opening of transmission gully, which doesn’t even include the marquees or sausage rolls.

Turns out making stupid ads and maorifying everything doesn’t actually achieve anything, apart from lining someone’s pockets.

I know, let’s reduce long sections of the highway to 80km and remove the passing lanes.

You actually couldn’t come up with a plan as bad as what these guys are doing and the results are there to see with the highest road toll in a long time this year.

According to the notes, the inaction from these agency’s is going to cost 140 lives. Can they be charged?

They are paid to come up with strategies to reduce the road toll. They havent achieved any of them and the stuff they have done has seen outcomes worsen.

This is what happens when a bunch of dumbasses vote in a bunch of nobody student politicians to do stuff they have no idea how to do.
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December 23, 2022 8:51am
- kevn
  
  @Opie… Struck any random pothole avoidance driving in your travels. Cars coming along then violently swerving over the centre line dodging a pothole. I have, you think they have gone to sleep or auto-ciding. Scary stuff.
  
  14 0
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  December 23, 2022 10:28am
  - Opie
    
    Or you hit one and get spat onto the other side of the road…
    
    8 0
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    December 23, 2022 2:48pm
curry4me

Is the Military Taking Over Brazil？

At least 58 million Brazilians refuse to accept corrupt politicians in power again. It’s got nothing to do with Bolsonaro supporters. It’s about Brazilians protesting against corruption.
Plenty of corruption there, including the Supreme Court. The army is using Article 142 as a reason to intervene. Amendment 893 to National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 calls to end military aid to Brazil if its armed forces tamper with this year’s presidential elections. H.R. 7900- The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which puts continuation of all military aid to Brazil in 2023 contingent on non-interference by the Brazilian military in this year’s presidential elections.
“It calls for the “discontinuation of security assistance”, says a Washington insider who prefers to remain anonymous, “basically a way of saying ‘you need to consider whether these actions amount to a coup because, if so, that would necessitate cutting off US. assistance.’” Search for: US military aid to Brazil [8:05]
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December 23, 2022 8:58am
curry4me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cxTGr5I8S4
Minor problems for Katie Hobbs.
It’s pretty hard for Kari Lake to win her election challenge. However, things seem to be going her way, initially, at least.
8 2
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December 23, 2022 8:58am
- virtualmark
  
  Qu: If she loses this lawsuit do you think she will then quietly concede? Or at least let it go?
  
  3 6
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  December 23, 2022 9:37am
  - All_on_Red
    
    Has this list of Election Deniers conceded yet?
    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/06/13/flashback-when-democrats-attacked-democracy-n2608636
    
    7 2
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    December 23, 2022 9:47am
  - curry4me
    
    No, because there were egregious errors, and foul play.
    
    2 1
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    December 23, 2022 9:11pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Katie Hobbs was not only a Candidate, she was the overseer of the voting process and vote counting machines. She refused to recuse herself.
  There is a timeline of this somewhere. An IT guy turned up to check the machine were working properly. That is where the trouble started.
  That IT guy should be in the Sheriff’s office.
  Kari Lake won but Hobbs cheated. Typical Democrat behaviour.
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:19am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Steve, don’t go All_on_Red on us. It’s not good for your health to believe that much crap.
    
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    December 23, 2022 5:16pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Stop Co-Governance. Julian Batchelor.
https://www.stopcogovernance.kiwi/blog/judge-anthony-willys-chilling-prediction-for-new-zealand/
We are living in revolutionary times. It is a coup, by a small number of
iwi elite who have their hands on the levers of power thanks to our Prime
Minister’s willingness to sacrifice New Zealand democracy for totalitarian
tribal rule.
https://www.stopcogovernance.kiwi/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Judge-willys-chilling-prediction.pdf
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December 23, 2022 9:41am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Seriously Jaspinda is replication the US Democrats method of staying in power.
  Sorry, you have been busted sister.
  
  9 2
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  December 23, 2022 9:45am
- kevn
  
  @SteveO… They must have something on her for such a complete buckling under.
  
  9 0
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  December 23, 2022 9:56am
  - rouppe
    
    Jacinda is an evangelist.
    
    She believes in justice! Climate justice, colonial justice, social justice, doesn’t matter.
    
    The Maori caucus just leverage that.
    
    8 0
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    December 23, 2022 10:37am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Jaspinda wants to stay in power, so she will give the Maori Elite anything they want.
    She is desperate.
    
    8 1
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    December 23, 2022 11:21am
slightlyrighty

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/130843299/migrant-who-blew-whistle-on-illegal-job-premiums-now-faces-deportation

Today’s example of just how stupid our government departments can be.

People smugglers and migrant exploiters will be pointing to this and holding this over the heads of those they are exploiting.
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December 23, 2022 9:51am
Swifty

Deportation for the couple and jail for the restaurant boss/immigration fraudster – anything less and it just encourages the next lot to have a go:

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/130843299/migrant-who-blew-whistle-on-illegal-job-premiums-now-faces-deportation

Serial and unrepentant liars all of them – and now that they’ve been caught they’ve redoubled their lying to try to get out of the consequences of their lying and cheating.

Not the people we want or need in New Zealand.

Out!
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December 23, 2022 10:09am
mogg

Listen to this from Melanie Phillips, who is a long-standing columnist with the Daily Mail.
The destruction of reason in all Universities.
https://youtu.be/uL8gw1T3yo0.
‘Idealism is everything, I don’t want to hear your facts’
13 1
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December 23, 2022 10:21am
- Swifty
  
  Excellent.
  
  That totally summarises the Left’s approach to co-governance.
  
  Speak against it, arrange facts and argument against it and you are evil. You want to hurt Maori. You are a bad actor.
  
  Dangerous times indeed, when reason and debate are avoided, or worse, when they are used as evidence of racism or some other evil.
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:57am
  - mogg
    
    Also Ardern’s speech at the UN wanting to censor freedom of speech on the internet.
    
    8 1
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    December 23, 2022 12:46pm
    - Chris Nisbet
      
      Are you sure it was just on the internet?
      
      6 1
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      December 23, 2022 1:57pm
Blog-aholic

Yeah/Nah still up and fighting…..did have to search for it though.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300769657/yeah-nah-do-you-support-the-governments-big-reforms
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December 23, 2022 10:22am
nathie

Here follows is another scary example of Labour f*wittery in action and ideological virtue signalling w*nkery causing hurt to businesses and impacting everyday people.

It’s not made up (and apologies for the length, but this needs to be told)!

Was chatting to a friend that vapes. (Note if anyone doesn’t care about vaping, if Labour are emboldened enough to start with the vapers, I predict Labour will carry on and they will then affect many other areas in society)!

Anyway friend was chatting to a vape shop owner and asked the owner why his favorite vape juices and others are out of stock regularly.

There was no-one else in the shop so the owner “unleashed” the following.

Labour have made it mandatory for vape manufacturers (including those overseas) to print a health warning on the label in both English and Te Reo Maori!

Yes manufacturers, including overseas (where most vape juice comes from) must have, as part of the official label (i.e. not just a sticker slapped on top of the official label) an English/Maori warning!

So why the vape juice shortages? Two-fold, firstly major overseas manufacturers then have to adjust their label printing process (that’s if they can be bothered for such a small market, such as NZ, as no other country of course uses English/Te Reo)!

Secondly, consumers, freaked out already about supply chain disruptions, are stocking up en-mass (in case their favorite vape juice disappears because the overseas manufacturers say making specific changes for little ol’ NZ isn’t worth the expense to make these Labour Govt mandated changes). So that means joe or jo average vape smoker, who can’t afford to stock up, wanders into the vape shop only to find the shelves are nearly empty, pissing them off!

Like I say the vape shop owner was furious as he, and his customers, are being impacted for no real reason by meddling Labour Party wokery! And get this, he was a long time Labour voter … well guess what … not any more!

He will be voting “these Labour pricks out and will never vote them again”!

Anyway, if Labour are emboldened to do this to vape smokers, who are next? Cigarette smokers? What about “dirty polluting” ICE Car imports (why not have Climate Change health warnings printed on the manuals in both English/Te Reo)? Ok I am being a little bit facetious with the ICE Car example, but why not, this is Labour/Greens/Maori Party after all. What if they applied this ruling to something official like “Road to Zero” somehow?

So the bigger question is, what are National/ACT going to do about this? Both the vaping issue and subsequent issues?

Now I am not against Te Reo in a general sense, after all it is an official language. But the issue seems to be “forced compliance” which is affecting small business operators and consumers.

So for National/ACT they need to abolish forced compliance. Because it is accepted that people that speak/read Maori also know how to speak/read English. (Perhaps English does need to be an official language?). And after all sign language is also an official language, what next vape bottles and other items cover in graphical sign-language warnings as well as Te Reo and English? See how this PC virtue signalling is getting out of hand (and impacts on mum and dad business owners trying to scrape a few bucks together to survive)?

But there could even be a compromise! If bi-lingual labels are needed then FFS just let the business owners PRINT THEIR OWN labels and stick them on the bottles! Currently this is not allowed! It is the Labour Nanny State gone start raving totalitarian!

And the sad thing is about this Labour authoritarianism/PC virtue signalling madness is, the joe and jo average Maori in the street, trying to work and contend with Labour’s high cost of living crises, will (wrongly) cop the blame …. when the real blame lies with the Pakeha/Maori activists/academic elites that Labour are agreeing with and having the woke Wellington civil servants/MSM support and apply this to force change on NZ society!

Which Labour never campaigned for! Their rout in 2023 will be a joy to behold!
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December 23, 2022 11:02am
- Matt Long
  
  No sympathy for the shop owner for saddling us with Labour, I guess he thought they just screwed over other people.
  The trick is going to be to keep enough pressure on national not to do more of the same.
  
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  December 23, 2022 11:50am
Nickc2

I’m liking Akld Mayor Brown more and more each day. Keep up the good work, and don’t take any shit from those self-indulgent CCOs.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-announces-his-expectations-for-council-agencies-for-2023/HFXKM2DADJH3HFKR244DVROHTU/
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December 23, 2022 11:11am
- MCōs
  
  I don’t understand why he doesn’t front up for media interviews?
  If he is confident in his views he should be able to easily explain and defend them.
  
  1 14
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  December 23, 2022 12:02pm
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Maybe the NZ Media are Fake News?
    
    14 2
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    December 23, 2022 12:11pm
  - Nickc2
    
    Never ever provide the enemy with any ammunition. Our MSM is renowned for turning trivia into controversy and there are many like-minded among them that couldn’t help themselves when it came to taking Mayor Brown down.
    
    15 1
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    December 23, 2022 12:17pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      That is exactly why Trump used Twitter, until he was banned.
      He could get a message to his followers without the Media fucking with it.
      Does the same on Truth Social. Pity that platform is US only. I can’t even read comments. I would love to join.
      
      12 2
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      December 23, 2022 12:28pm
      - Nickc2
        
        Ask Putin to log you in (just joking Steve). I’m pretty sure Putin’s goons are already monitoring everything that goes in and out of Truth Social.
        
        6 1
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        December 23, 2022 12:38pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Just send him some money, Steve, he will love you for that.
        
        1 7
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        December 23, 2022 5:18pm
      - MCōs
        
        I don’t think he needs to ask.
        
        3 0
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        December 23, 2022 8:01pm
Tony Stuart

Eugenie Sage has announced that she will be retiring from politics at the coming election. As much as I dislike pretty much everything the Greens stand for, Sage and Jan Logie have done some good, collaborative work, and have kept the Greens slightly less loopy than they may otherwise be. However it’s highly likely that their replacements will be hard-left activists, a la Golriz Ghahraman, Ricardo M-M and Dr Elizabeth Kerekere. I suggest that James Shaw will be getting very nervous about his future leadership prospects.

But back to Eugenie Sage; can her decision to retire be entrenched by a Supplementary Order Paper, just in case she has a change of heart?
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December 23, 2022 11:41am
- Jack5
  
  What of Sage’s push for entrenchment of water resource rights – entrenchment over the future democratic rights of citizens?
  
  That was Greene fanaticism.
  
  15 1
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  December 23, 2022 11:47am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Sage basically wanted entrenchment as an amendment to 3waters so it would be difficult for National to change or overturn. It also has Mahuta’s pawprints all over it.
    Low leftie trickery.
    
    19 2
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    December 23, 2022 12:17pm
  - Nickc2
    
    Her and Mahuta’s actions were contemptuous!
    
    14 1
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    December 23, 2022 12:24pm
- Gravelroad
  
  No, can’t agree with your positive opinion of Ms Sage.
  She took out personal vendettas against people of whom she did not approve – speaking from personal experience.
  That is not appropriate from any elected politician – or, as in her case, unelected politician.
  
  20 1
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  December 23, 2022 12:25pm
  - Nickc2
    
    Are there any other countries in the western world that call themselves democratic but harbour unelected Politicians that have voting rites?
    
    11 2
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    December 23, 2022 12:32pm
- fightingtemeraire
  
  Look at the ” teenage activists” in the Greeb Party.
  
  As the Party selects the list you will get a load of nut jobs coming out the wood work.
  
  13 1
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  December 23, 2022 12:56pm
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    What do those nutjobs actually do now – before taking their chances with BMW Jimmy and co?
    
    4 2
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    December 23, 2022 3:56pm
Ghost

A teenager who raped and sexually assaulted fellow high school students at parties will ask the Supreme Court to hear his case, as he tries to keep his name secret.

The 19-year-old’s name suppression was due to be revoked on Friday at 2pm.

However, his lawyer, Emma Priest, has signalled she will be asking the highest court in the land to consider hearing the case.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300772746/teen-rapist-will-ask-supreme-court-to-keep-his-name-secret
9 1
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December 23, 2022 12:53pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Name suppression so he can join the Labour Party?
  
  5 2
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  December 23, 2022 3:58pm
Ghost

Waitangi Tribunal report finds Crown breached treaty principles, should return all Crown-owned land in northern district to Māori

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/12/waitangi-tribunal-report-finds-crown-breached-treaty-principles-should-return-all-crown-owned-land-in-northern-district-to-m-ori.html
11 1
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December 23, 2022 12:59pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Would they be the imaginary “treaty principles” invented out of thin air then peddled as settled truth?
  
  13 1
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  December 23, 2022 1:14pm
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  Only if the recipients promise to return every scrap of funding revived from the Crown since 1840
  
  4 1
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  December 23, 2022 7:01pm
General

A Sober Evaluation of COVID-19 Vaccines | Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Gigi Foste

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gX7Tz0LWJQ
8 2
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December 23, 2022 1:31pm
- info@cruzpro.com
  
  Thank you for linking me to a very good, informative video. These two people presented the situation very clearly in terms anyone can understand.
  
  The vaccine can be good for some people who could benefit and not so good for certain people who are unlikely to benefit from taking the vaccine.
  
  Most importantly, the decision to take the vaccine should be a personal , informed decision taken by people in conjunction with their doctor.
  
  It should not be a decision forced onto an individual by mandates
  
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  December 23, 2022 6:23pm
Ghost

Looks like a great idea, and a great piece of kiwi humour, shame so many seem have lost that

Kiwis are divided after a sign outside a New Zealand prison copped criticism for its crafty pun ‘Doing Thyme’.

Located outside the wire on Rimutaka Prison grounds in Upper Hutt, the Doing Thyme café is part of the Department of Corrections’ release to work programme employing prisoners to earn experience and skills.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/12/rimutaka-prison-cafe-s-name-cops-criticism-for-disgusting-play-on-words.html
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December 23, 2022 1:32pm
- fightingtemeraire
  
  In the UK the Prison Service has ” a chain of restaurants” pun intended, called Klink. An old name for prisons.
  
  They charge market rates, so they do not under cut local establishments, they do not serve alcohol, and they have made a good name for themselves.
  
  Bet the prisoners at Rimutaka can see the joke.
  
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  December 23, 2022 2:38pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Disgusting play on words? Oh you fucking precious petals. Did you get offended?
  I see this kids with Fathers as a good thing. Some crims can’t be rehabilitated, but the kids and family may not be invited.
  The Fathers (and probably some Mothers) inside will respect this.
  One thing that I detest is Fatherless homes/Families.
  Ghost, remember that the left are born without a sense of humour, and it cannot be installed.
  
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  December 23, 2022 3:27pm
- kowtow
  
  Favourite dessert ;
  
  Spotted dick of course.
  
  Mains ;
  
  Toad in the hole .
  
  6 1
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  December 23, 2022 3:42pm
  - mikenmildagain
    
    kowtow prefers a sticky date.
    
    3 2
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    December 23, 2022 5:21pm
Swifty

Incompetence – thy name is Labour:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/already-under-fire-politically-three-waters-is-also-threatened-by-nzs-critical-shortage-of-skilled-engineers/MGYBCAULANDKJO3DVZ7EY5EFJ4/

Just what have we done to deserve them?

The NZ Labour Party couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery!

(Note also that the article reminds us of the analysis that thousands of new roles are going to be required to implement the reforms – at the same time that Ardern and Mahuta are saying that the reforms are going to save us money!

They are openly lying to us.)
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December 23, 2022 3:00pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  Yes they are lying.
  
  If Councils were not maintaining water assets they should have been taken to task or sacked. Look at Wellington – 40 percent of all the water is being lost in leaks. Yet the Council financed a convention centre, a climate change strategy and cycle ways. While not maintaining water assets.
  
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  December 23, 2022 5:44pm
General

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam has issued a new public health announcement for the Christmas holidays, which comes in the form of a 2-minute interview with “Mrs. Clause” from the “North Pole”. In it, children are warned that they could be on Santa’s “naughty list” if they don’t get the Covid-19 vaccine and mask up. Adults too are told that they won’t make the “nice list” if they don’t have their boosters.

https://twitter.com/CPHO_Canada/status/1605676994817056787?s=20&t=dRZ_Q_mokLKsyT847dSY9w

Wow.

No words.
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December 23, 2022 3:05pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Yeah WOW! Do they know that North Pole is just South East of Fairbanks Alaska?
  Go on, google it. I know and we missed the bus from Fairbanks by 20 min,
  
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  December 23, 2022 4:52pm
  - fightingtemeraire
    
    And it is moving at a great rate of knots. The Variation details on the charts will be all up the wazoo
    
    5 1
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    December 23, 2022 5:09pm
    - Don Beckett
      
      You are, of course, referring to the Magnetic Pole.
      
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      December 23, 2022 5:43pm
- General
  
  Down tickers brains are cooked, please defend this? Good luck.
  
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  December 23, 2022 5:32pm
Taieri

Life is getting more interesting every day…

“EU legislators agreed early on Sunday (18 December) to introduce a carbon price on buildings and road transport fuels, with a new €87-billion social climate fund established in parallel to cushion the impact on households and help them invest in green solutions”

https://www.euractiv.com/section/emissions-trading-scheme/news/eu-agrees-co2-tax-on-heating-and-transport-fuels-softened-by-new-social-climate-fund/

I find it a bit difficult to understand what’s the purpose of a tax on buildings? The need to heat a building in the northern European winter is not a matter of choice. It’s a matter of life or death. But may be, just may be, the EU legislators spend their winters in Seychelles or Carribbean…
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December 23, 2022 4:07pm
- Don Beckett
  
  Yes, the world is going/has gone mad, with the EU under the thumb of the WEF leading the charge. e.g. Dutch farmers anyone ? NZ farms ? Aussie power supply? just to name a few.
  This insanity has infected most of the western world, and unless it is stopped pronto, we will see mass starvations, bankruptcies, economic ruin on an unprecedented scale – and death to a similar extent.
  
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  December 23, 2022 4:48pm
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Sounds like you are preparing for some apocalypse. I hope it’s the one you’ve been praying for.
    
    3 5
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    December 23, 2022 5:23pm
    - Don Beckett
      
      Who knows, mikey, could well be part of it, but I’m not making any predictions. 🙂
      
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      December 23, 2022 5:45pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Blank Check from Biden. There is a long way to go, but the US is at War with Russia by financing Ukraine. Bit different than Obama’s pallet loads of cash in all sorts of currency.
How much longer will the American Taxpayer put up with this?
The US is in a proxy War.
https://redrightdaily.com/standing-with-zelensky-biden-promises-blank-check/
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December 23, 2022 4:45pm
- mikenmildagain
  
  The elected representatives of the American people (including the taxpayers) seem to be in near unanimity about financing Ukraine to fight off the Russian invaders.
  
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  December 23, 2022 5:25pm
Don Beckett

Yesterday I stated that the Ukraine war was a US proxy war, and I was severely downticked – obviously many disagreed with me. I suggest you watch this Tucker Carlson video, where Lindsay Graham – US Repub. senator says exactly that. The US want Russian regime change, so Putin has to go.
But watch the video [16.08 min] – you may understand where Tucker – & I – are coming from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs3ZOH3__Do
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December 23, 2022 5:12pm
- kevn
  
  @Don… Apparently the 44 billion is the total US offering to Ukraine for the whole of 2023. Zed flew home with 2 billion being mostly already spent on the Patriot missile system.
  
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  December 23, 2022 7:14pm
Takere

Heres a prediction for next years general election.

The Labour Maori Caucus (15) jump waka to the Maori Party! Theyre allowed to in an election year once the writ has being handed too and accepted by the GG!

Probably 7 or 8 will. So if the MP score big and get 3, they could end up with 10 or more!

See 3Waters & Co Governance back on the menu post election!
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December 23, 2022 5:23pm
- herb1
  
  3% of 120 is only 3.6 MPs not 10
  
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  December 23, 2022 6:56pm
Benedict Yu

More living in the past.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/481336/crown-overstepped-authority-to-govern-northern-maori-in-19th-century-waitangi-tribunal

Can’t they just let it go? What do they want?
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December 23, 2022 5:31pm
- Takere
  
  More than the 2% Quantum dictated by the Crown.
  
  Would you settle for 2%?? I bet you wouldn’t.
  
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  December 23, 2022 5:35pm
rouppe

Just how corrupt is Nania Mahuta?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/three-waters-nanaia-mahuta-introduces-130-pages-of-changes-to-a-law-hours-after-passing-it/23EV4NZJ4RC37L3HSKOYDNH5FE/
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December 23, 2022 6:57pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Thanks, Jacinda Ardern.
  
  (Remember, the Buck stops at your desk).
  
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  December 23, 2022 7:12pm
- Takere
  
  Very.
  
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  December 24, 2022 1:54pm
kevn

@Maggy… Think of it (3-5 waters) as being the death knell for labour.
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December 23, 2022 7:23pm
greybeard

https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/130848666/auckland-council-staff-report-mayor-wayne-brown-over-upsetting-comments-in-the-workplace
No official complaints yet from the 4 outraged staff members, so I think we can assume that this is nothing more than another attention-seeking exercise from lefties who hate Mayor Brown and have to keep the narrative alive. With the help of the Govt-owned press.
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December 23, 2022 8:00pm
kevn

@grey… Nothing surer, poor petals. I’m sure any verbal exchange was very light.
Let’s be hearing the content, you can bet it’s…. nothing much.
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December 23, 2022 8:36pm

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