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January 31, 2023 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 31 January 2023

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NeverMindTheBollocks

Meanwhile, there’s been no rain in Bluff this month. Looks like the North is hogging all the rain. Why won’t the Government do something?

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2023/01/weather-south-island-faces-potential-heatwave-with-sweltering-temperatures-forecast-this-week.html
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January 31, 2023 8:01am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  It’s a fickle thing this Climate Change/aka Global Warming….. Droughts and Floods at the same time.
  
  Oh, for an equitable distribution of water… time to level the playing field across the motu!
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:18am
  - krazykiwi
    
    One of my peers, his yard a little flooded, implored us to “take the climate models seriously”. I replied that ‘the climate models’ didn’t predict this, and the things they did predict haven’t come to pass. No reply.
    
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    January 31, 2023 1:20pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Why won’t the Govt do something? They are too busy trying to dig up shit on Chris Luxon.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:31am
- MCōs
  
  On Saturday my wife dropped me off at a cafe down Dominion Rd while she went shopping at a couple of nearby Chinese supermarkets. Unfortunately they had been flooded and only had takeaway coffee. Fortunately they had a seat outside.
  My nephew from that neck of the woods sent me a panoramic photo of a beautiful cloudless sky.
  I drank my coffee and trudged up the road still struggling with long covid. I sat in the car outside the second supermarket.
  Apparently the whole floor was wet and you didn’t want to buy stuff from the lowest shelf!
  On the way home there’s a dip in the road with a narrow stream I’d never seen before, but now there was a pile of rubbish up against the fence and a car that had floated onto the road blocking one lane. One of hundreds waiting for a tow truck.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:48am
  - Cassandra
    
    Sydney and Queensland annually. Nothing one can do except: 1. Sort out drains, and 2. Build properly – why does Queensland have Queenslanders? Electric cars n NZ will have zero impact.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:03am
    - alloytoo
      
      “E” in “EV” stands for External combustion, usually in Huntly 🙂
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:34am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        Whoooosshhh!
        
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        January 31, 2023 3:25pm
- grumpy
  
  No rain in Bluff, drought in Westland……it’s that bloody new Right Wing Auckland Mayor hogging all the water!!!!!!
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:20pm
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  They are too busy minding their bollocks 😃👍🏻
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:21pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Marie Kondo has kids and discovers that life is not as she would have it. Yet another opinionated person runs smack into reality. There’s a lesson there for the younger generation, but I doubt that they will heed it.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/30/queen-of-clean-marie-kondo-says-she-has-kind-of-given-up-on-tidying-at-home
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January 31, 2023 8:01am
- slightlyrighty
  
  When Idealism meets reality, it’s a wake up call. The progressive left survives by removing itself from reality….
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:18am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Almost as if you are talking about Jaspinda. Idealism to reality, to wake up call, to removing herself.
    Yip, yip, that’s what it is!
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:34am
- Sparrow
  
  Who the f…is Marie Kondo ?
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:20am
  - slightlyrighty
    
    The Patron Saint of Housework..
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:08am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Sounds like she likes cleaning up shit. Can NZ employ her for after October this year?
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:36am
    - Brian McDonald
      
      Having any other noticeable symptoms of not being able to get over a former PM Steve?
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:19am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        You mean the PM who always wanted to fuck over NZ like all previous Labour PMs?
        That is all Labour are good at. Just a wrecking ball.
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:20am
    - TS Child
      
      I dunno Steve – she’s going to go through every single thing and ask you if it sparks joy. It could be quite traumatic as we sit with each thing and thank it for its service. And the end product would be devoid of the worst of the clutter, it would also be highly regulated. Think we might be better with someone else …
      
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      January 31, 2023 1:23pm
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        I know she is a head case, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.
        Just like people who wash their hands every 10 minutes.
        
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        January 31, 2023 3:28pm
- Sacha
  
  I remember back in the ’60’s when I had 3 young children, all the American ‘home’ magazines featured instructions on keeping house.
  I was particularly impressed by one article that said that a conscientious wife and mother would change/launder the sheets on the beds every day, and had pictures of a happy wife and mother with her happy husband and children. I think there were about 4 kids, maybe 5.
  It probably was a massive advertising campaign for washing machines and soap powder.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:53am
  - Ehlana
    
    Happily, these days, a conscientious wife and mother can trust her husband to consider the environmental implications of all that power and water use and conclude that the sheets aren’t dirty, so they don’t need changing.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:58am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    I know a medical Microbiologist who reckons normal households need only change their bed sheets once a month or so.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:12am
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      And if its kids in University flats, once a year…..
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:38am
      - Loddenthinks
        
        Yours have sheets? Luxury!
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:13am
    - TS Child
      
      Hmm. Maybe. But I’d avoid staying at their place if I were you…
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:39am
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Does this person smell and have weird insects buzzing around his/her head?
      
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      January 31, 2023 8:11pm
    - Ghost
      
      Is that what turns their hair pink?
      
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      January 31, 2023 8:17pm
  - In Vino Veritas
    
    American stuff is nonsense. More women should read Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:37am
  - slightlyrighty
    
    My mother had a saying. “A home should be clean enough to be healthy, but dirty enough to be happy”
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:04am
    - Swifty
      
      What a great saying.
      
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      January 31, 2023 12:08pm
    - kevn
      
      Another saying is ‘housework makes you ugly’….
      
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      January 31, 2023 8:38pm
- Alan Wilkinson
  
  Yes, I laughed yesterday when I saw the headline somewhere else. Who knew children make a difference?
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:10am
Mike

Ulphia is the patron saint of frogs.
She placed the frogs in the area around her hermitage under interdict as a result of their loud croaking, which kept her awake at nights. A 19th century hagiographer noted that the frogs in the area around the oratory of Saint Ulphia were, indeed, very quiet. However, if these frogs were taken elsewhere, they became boisterous once again.
Her feast day is 31 January, the day she croaked.
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January 31, 2023 8:03am
- mandk
  
  Curiously, very few baby girls are named Ulphia. Why is this?
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:00am
  - Mike
    
    Alternative spellings are available: Ulphe, Olfe, Wulfe, Wolfia, Wulfia. ‘Modern’ variants only limited by your
    imagination. Let me know how the christening goes.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:40am
    - Don Beckett
      
      Oh I think it would be much better to honour St. John Bosco, an Italian priest who, in the 19th century and when the industrial revolution was having such an impact with young men moving to the cities to find work, set up hostels and schools in Turin & other industrial cities to teach these young men trades, and how to live with virtue in the cities.
      So lets celebrate the life of St. John Bosco. God bless him. 🙂
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:58am
      - Mike
        
        Do prayers to real people who have been made saints by a pope have more efficacy than prayers to imaginary saints?
        
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        January 31, 2023 1:17pm
      - Don Beckett
        
        Why would I expect anything else from the milkmaid ?.
        Maybe we can check how the Salesian order progressed since its founding in 1857.
        The Society grew rapidly, with houses established in France and Argentina within a year of the Society’s formal recognition.
        Over the next decade the Salesians expanded into Austria, Britain, Spain, and several countries in South America. The death of Don Bosco in 1888 did not slow down the Society’s growth. By 1911 the Salesians were established throughout the world, including Colombia, China, India, South Africa, Tunisia, Venezuela and the United States.
        
        The Society continues to operate worldwide; in 2021, it counted 14,232 priests & brothers in 1,703 houses. It has presences in 134 countries.
        So it appears that their work has been blessed by God, despite the rantings of atheists like the milkmaid.
        
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        January 31, 2023 1:49pm
- Okahu
  
  She placed the frogs in the area around her hermitage…(!). I wondered where you were going with this for a moment.
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:55pm
Loddenthinks

In $1uffed this morning: how Auckland’s weather is only going to get worse, it’s caused by emissions, and it’s “our fault” – the headline on the main page is: The bad news is the rain won’t stop, and yes, it is our fault”.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/131098242/rain-records-are-going-to-keep-falling-after-aucklands-floods

Also in $1uffed this morning: advice for young people on how not to be distressed about all the climate religion being rammed down their throats: https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/sustainable-living/131066498/feeling-anxious-about-the-planet-here-are-three-ways-to-stress-less-this-year

I wonder if they could be connected in some way…
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January 31, 2023 8:04am
- Frank the tank
  
  Even if we went to zero carbon tomorrow – China, India, the US and the third world won’t
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:18am
  - Loddenthinks
    
    Agree, however it’s worth pointing out that there’s no such thing as “zero-carbon” or “net zero” – carbon is in everything, and without it we’d die in a nano-second of the earth’s history.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:27am
    - kowtow
      
      Yep , talking of carbon zero is idiotic , it’s just another easily trotted out catch phrase .
      
      But really for complex climate dynamics to be reduced to “don’t drive a 4X4 , or don’t gas bbq” , is utterly laughable. Professors , pollies and journalists ; they should be ashamed of how cretinous they sound .
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:03am
      - Widogast Corwin
        
        I love it when reality collides with politicians and activists. Global gas consumption will not peak until about 2040.
        
        https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/oil-and-gas/our-insights/global-gas-outlook-to-2050
        
        As Germany has found, if there is no gas, and no nuclear it is coal. A system that is reliant on solar and wind is not going to heat Canada and northern Europe in winter. Neither will it power 40 million air cons when it is 40 degrees in eastern Australia.
        
        Households in Germany are now paying nearly 3 times what New Zealand households pay for electricity. This cost burden is driven by the decisions of politicians.
        
        https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
        
        Politicians can say what they like but they can’t beat the laws of physics and thermodynamics.
        
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        January 31, 2023 9:45am
    - wisteria
      
      Zero carbon is as silly as the use of the word organic.
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:40am
      - Master Mariner
        
        Even more so,
        Can anyone please explain zero carbon and carbon free 2050.
        More importantly , What is the roadmap? to get there.
        All very vague, But hey, It sounds good.
        
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        January 31, 2023 10:45am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    Even if we went to zero carbon tomorrow, the weather would continue, and floods would occur somewhere in NZ, as they have done since time immemorial.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:49am
    - mandk
      
      Indeed.
      
      Unless you are a young Earth creationist, you need to accept that the face of the planet has been shaped by extreme weather events repeating themselves over many millennia.
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:03am
      - Scott
        
        Your favourite young earth creationist here! 😊
        I would say that the climate has changed from the flood. The universal flood that covered the earth and is recorded in the written and oral histories of people and tribes all over the world. So the climate today is not as per God’s original design.
        
        Having said that the whole underpinning of climate change is religious. It’s the secular version of the Christian apocalypse. Christianity is still in the air and climate change is the secular version, coming from Christianity but a perversion of it. It gives a sense of meaning to those without God.
        
        So we have swapped one religion for another. But here’s the thing – the world is not going to end because of climate change. It’ll end when Jesus returns.
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:08am
      - Loddenthinks
        
        @Scott: Jesus isn’t coming back. Instead of giving him chocolate, we nailed him to a cross.
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:16am
      - Swifty
        
        “….and oral histories of people and tribes all over the world.”
        
        That is untrue.
        
        The Chinese, as but one example, who were writing at the time this global flood was supposed to have happened, and who’s writings have survived, made absolutely no mention of it.
        
        Not one.
        
        And anyway, how could any oral histories have survived your global flood – I thought Noah and his family were the only ones to survive?
        
        And owing to a massive boat they built, so large it could accomodate and sustain a pair of almost every living creature on the face of the earth, that Noah and his tribe were able to locate and round up.
        
        Honestly Scott, I don’t know how you can peddle this nonsense with a straight face.
        
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        January 31, 2023 12:18pm
      - Scott
        
        Flood legends occur all around the world. I don’t know about the Chinese but what I said was true.
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth#:~:text=The flood-myth motif occurs,and Pyrrha in Greek mythology.
        
        Regarding the ark it would have been big. The animals came to them which was a supernatural event.
        In terms of species there may not have been multiple breeds of dogs for example. There might have been two dogs from which all the breeds have descended.
        
        Other evidence for a universal flood include fossilised fish on Mount Everest.
        https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/nothing-fishy-about-ancient-marine-fossils-on-everest/
        
        Now the author of the article has a different explanation of course. But nevertheless the fossils are there.
        
        So God did judge the whole world by a flood. In the future he will bring judgement when Christ returns.
        
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        January 31, 2023 1:11pm
      - Mike
        
        Scott possibly looks on it as a resolute display of faith to profess in the ‘truth’ of patently ludicrous legends as if they were facts.
        
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        January 31, 2023 1:20pm
      - Swifty
        
        Scott, you are absolutely right that many, many societies have historical flood stories.
        
        I assert that these cannot be taken as anything other than describing localised (flooding) events – funnily enough just like what’s happening within the North Island right now.
        
        You assertion however is that ALL these stories are describing the SAME event, all at the same time. Most grateful if you would provide evidence to support this assertion.
        
        Regarding Everest, I’ve a story that may be of interest to you, a Masterton lad.
        
        In my youth a spent a large portion of my time living on farm blocks in the Wairarapa – particularly the (Fred) McKinstry block off Te Ore Ore Road and that of one of his sons, off Westmere Road, south of Wainuioru – once part of Brancepeth Station.
        
        I probably spent a year on and off on the Wainuioru block as a kid. The block backs on to the Maungaraki Ranges which is about 500 metres above sea level. Scratching around the back of the farm one day I noticed the sections where tracks had been cut for 4WD and tractor access.
        
        They were full of sea-shells, I’m presuming millions of years old. Dense, large layers of white sea-shells, about the size and shape of pipis – the entire height of the section, perhaps six or eight feet.
        
        Can you just imagine what local Maori would have made of this find, should they have made it? Can you just imagine what kind of stories they might have made up to account for sea-shells that high up and so far inland?
        
        Please don’t fall into the same trap Scott. It makes you look at bit silly.
        
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        January 31, 2023 2:08pm
      - Swifty
        
        “The animals came to them, it was a supernatural event….”
        
        Are you seriously suggesting one pair each of moa, kiwi, tuatara, kakapo and all the rest walked to Palestine (across oceans) hopped on the ark, landed in Mt Ararat or somewhere else, de-arked and then walked back to good old NZ?
        
        Or have I got the story wrong?
        
        PS – you haven’t explained how oral histories from other societies survived if the flood wiped everyone out, except Noah and whanau.
        
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        January 31, 2023 2:18pm
      - Scott
        
        Yes fair questions. Sea shells on the top of mountains would indicate a single world wide flood as per the biblical account in genesis 6 to 9. The water couldn’t get that high without flooding the whole earth.
        
        The flood destroyed all life on land and the air. All that was left were 8 people and the animals and birds on the ark.
        When the waters receded and the ground was dry, genesis 8:14, then everyone left the ark to refill the earth.
        
        The problem of how did the moa then get to NZ is a problem for both creationists and evolutionists. A young earth creationist would not invoke millions of years however.
        
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        January 31, 2023 4:26pm
      - Swifty
        
        Scott, the moa et al didn’t get here, they evolved here from earlier bird forms.
        
        Moa present no problem for ‘evolutionists’ whatsoever.
        
        You however haven’t answered any of my key questions, once again.
        
        How could oral histories survive if there was no-one alive to repeat them?
        
        What is your evidence for the assertion that all flood oral and written histories describe the same (global) flood, rather than merely local events?
        
        How did two of each NZ flightless bird, for example, find their way to the middle-east and find their way back, across oceans, and not leave a single trace of their journey in the fossil record?
        
        Sea-shells on top of mountains COULD indicate a worldwide flood, but could also indicate tectonic movements over millennia. What is the more reliable path to the truth? Scientific enquiry or faith that the Bible is literally true?
        
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        January 31, 2023 5:05pm
      - Scott
        
        “How could oral histories survive if there was no-one alive to repeat them?”
        Once again the world population was 8 individuals. History and oral history comes from them.
        
        The most reliable history is God’s revelation. He was there.
        
        The moa had to get to NZ. Evolution requires a single celled organism that evolved into everything else.
        However the pre flood earth would have been very different and maybe joined together and then separated after the flood?
        
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        January 31, 2023 6:43pm
      - Mike
        
        Good effort, Swifty. Faith is notoriously impervious to reason though, so don’t expect Scott to start making sense anytime soon.
        
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        January 31, 2023 7:07pm
      - Swifty
        
        Scott, please tell me you never teach this stuff to children and dress it up as the truth.
        
        Please tell me that.
        
        Please tell me that when kids ask you questions about this stuff you say ‘I don’t know’ rather than fill their heads with this fantasy.
        
        Please tell me that you have never spun the ark story to kids and told them it’s the literal truth.
        
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        January 31, 2023 8:08pm
      - Scott
        
        Hey I’ve answered your questions. Remember – ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’
        
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        February 1, 2023 7:55am
    - Odakyu-sen
      
      This “zero carbon” means what carbon compounds again?
      It much be a catch-all to include carbon dioxide and other chemicals that contain carbon.
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:01am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        Presumably all organic C compounds…as they eventually produce those nasty green-house gases..CH4 and CO2.
        
        Should we tell the little kiddies that between 12-16% of their bodies is Carbon…and every time they shove yummy food into their mouths they are adding to their C burden?
        
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        January 31, 2023 12:31pm
      - Mike
        
        ‘Zero carbon’ is a slogan, like ‘predator free’, ‘balanced budget’ or ‘three strikes’. Signals to rally support for more sophisticated concepts.
        
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        January 31, 2023 1:48pm
      - NZer In Exile
        
        One of Milky’s various accounts: “‘Zero carbon’ is a slogan, like ‘predator free’, ‘balanced budget’ or ‘three strikes’. Signals to rally support for more sophisticated concepts.”
        
        Care to give a succinct and clear explanation of these “more sophisticated concepts”? Or is this just vapor-ware bluster?
        
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        January 31, 2023 8:16pm
  - Nickc2
    
    IMO, it’s the greatest hoax thrust upon mankind since religion.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:32am
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      Funny you should say that Nick. A few years back, I was sitting watching my daughters class doing a climate change presentation. Had a mum and dad beside me who I knew (and they are fantastic people), and they are full on Christians. I said that climate change was the greatest hoax in human history. She said nope, try the theory of evolution. Of course we branched of into a discourse on it, with me asking whether she had heard of carbon dating, and what she thought about it. It was interesting listening to their perspective.
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:42am
      - Swifty
        
        I have some friends like that.
        
        They ‘believe’ all science except for the one area which is inconvenient to their faith and it’s that one, and only that one, they label a hoax.
        
        Their faith has caused them to become deluded.
        
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        January 31, 2023 12:21pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Yep, all pointless. If all western countries went net zero tomorrow their efforts would be swamped by the developing world’s emissions. And all for a crap hypothesis that’s been comprehensively shot full of holes.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:01pm
- Colville
  
  According to Todd Niall every bad thing in Auckland is the fault of Wayne Brown.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:19am
  - herb1
    
    It’s just that the media are grumpy that they unexpectedly have to do some work.
    Unexpectedly because of years of supporting left wing Mayors with unthinking and uncritical articles.
    Suddenly a right wing Mayor is elected and “ oh shit we have to think about something negative to write about him”.
    Bugger have to find the switch to turn on brain.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:31am
    - Nickc2
      
      IMO, our MSM are doing their best to have Nanaia Mahuta (or her replacement) install a bunch of Commissioners to run Akld Council.
      It’ll sound the death knell for Hipkins if that happens.
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:42am
      - Paulus
        
        Before doing that look at the ultimate F.UP that the Commissioners have done to Tauranga put there by Mahuta, and two more full years to go.
        Tauranga is a discraceful multiple building sites like new giant Council Offices, Maori Museum, Cultural Centre and Library not needed. and as for the main road transformation for cycles it is beyond belief, and I have just come in from there shattered.
        
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        January 31, 2023 10:52am
    - NothingLeft
      
      It’s actually super convenient for far left (eg journo’s) to have a right wing devil to blame for all the ill’s created by a decade of leftie rule of Auckland.
      
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      January 31, 2023 12:06pm
  - Frank the tank
    
    It’s a narrative from the PM’s office. They want Brown to look bad so central government can swoop in and be the savior.
    
    Niall and his cohorts are just willing dupes.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:53am
    - Loddenthinks
      
      From the sad, near defunct Herald, on Brown:
      
      “Experts in communications and disaster say it points to a relationship with the media that doesn’t reflect the needs of those living in a disaster-struck city.”
      
      Yes, well. I wonder how that happened MSM? Yes, I know you’re used to simpering lefty politicos and wannabes giving you sound bites, and posing for Vogue covers whenever you click your fingers.
      
      It’s not like that now. Boo-frickin-hoo.
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:41am
    - G the giant from Dunedin
      
      Government getting the blame for closing schools, and telling people to stay at home from work, they are saying it’s 2023 it’s lockdown, and the government have locked them down, I wonder how many answered the phone in Auckland over the wet days during the polls
      
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      January 31, 2023 12:31pm
  - Mike H S
    
    Who is Todd Niall?
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:53am
    - Bloody Dago
      
      Journo hackster leftie spinny person
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:02am
      - Mike H S
        
        Irrelevant then.
        
        6 0
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        January 31, 2023 11:58am
    - Peter Lane
      
      Was one year ahead of me at Kelston Boys High School.
      
      Non entity.
      
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      January 31, 2023 4:17pm
      - Papalazarou
        
        Me too! Hello Peter. John H here
        
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        January 31, 2023 8:00pm
- Mark Hanley
  
  What Auckland needs now is a no nonsense intelligent Mayor with a history of sorting out problems like inadequate Auckland drainage! A Mayor who prioritizes the incredibly difficult task of changing the Council’s culture and personnel to refocus on the needs of ratepayers.
  
  A Mayor with the backbone to ignore ridiculous criticism from: a Mayor with no demonstrable management success, a green party politician who tried to foist marijuana legalization on NZ despite the horrific results of legalization overseas, and the corrupted ramblings of NZ’s reporters.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:20am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    It says a lot about the calibre of folks who attacked Mayor Brown in the midst of a crisis.
    
    In less than 24 hours of the deluge, the local civil defence management systems are up and functioning over a region serving 2 million people.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:36am
- ClanMcleod
  
  Loddenthinks – covid was a trial run for climate lockdowns. That’s next on the agend……..hold on, I think we just had our first one………
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:24am
  - Loddenthinks
    
    Yep, no school for anyone – a brilliant move to prevent kids who can walk to a local, unaffected school from doing so. There are dozens of such schools in Auckland.
    
    You will do as we say. You will lock-down until we, your protectors, decide it is safe.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:29am
    - Nickc2
      
      No doubt the teachers (if you can call them that) will be paid for a week of doing nothing?
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:46am
      - Ehlana
        
        I believe it was being suggested that they teach remotely this week. Which will, of course, take absolutely no time to set up and, in the administrators world, every family has the space, equipment and adult supervision instantly available to make that work.
        
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        January 31, 2023 10:49am
    - Bobba Fret
      
      Well it’s not like our education standards are dropping or anything//
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:47am
    - Paulus
      
      A large number of major schools Heads are furious at this.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:54am
  - Hollyfield
    
    Hasn’t been much of a lockdown so far. I don’t know anyone who has obeyed the call to stay at home. The office was full, the roads looked the usual kind of busy. The motorway, outside my office window, looked as usual. I’m sure there will be some who have done as they were told, but most people are just carrying on.
    
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    January 31, 2023 6:42pm
- TS Child
  
  There’s no real downside to trying to find sensible (keep breathing Kiwi Bloggers – I said SENSIBLE) ways to be environmentally friendly. But in this case I do wonder if the big volcanic explosion in Tonga had an impact? I understand large explosions tend to dump a lot of debris and water into the atmosphere and that this sort of weather is a likely result. Open to correction from any weather/ volcano experts who might be lurking …
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:35am
  - Master Mariner
    
    Yes, I posted something a few months about how the Tongan eruption blasted debris into the stratosphere and even water vapour into space.
    That altitude the winds behave very differently as opposed to the surface.
    Yep, By blasting particles that high will accumulate moisture to form nuclei and water/ice etc.
    Interesting.
    But at end of the day with the Indian Ocean warm water forced Eastwards and the La Nina forcing warm water Westward ends up with an unusual effect of both coliding .
    In a nut shell, Warm water raises and forms clouds, And from clouds comes rain.
    Rain needs particles/nuclei to bind too and with the extra particles from the Tongan eruption creates a perfect enviroment for a super saturated troposhere/stratosphere ( ice).
    Well what goes up must come down, Predicting where it will come down is what was lost on Northland weather event.
    Really should of been monitored from the Coaral sea Hourly, I believe because it was down rated from a tropical cyclone to a Inter tropical low , all eyes lost focus.
    NZ has a history of Inter tropical lows retaining moisture and then dumping it on NZ.
    Get metorologists back for weather reporting, Not mis reporting climate change at every turn.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:58am
  - Loddenthinks
    
    Downtick for condescension
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:31am
  - JohnRidd
    
    Here is a link to a video about how the Tongan eruption affected the weather.
    
    I think it is very reasonable to think our wet summer is a result of 3 La Ninas in a row combined with the effect of the eruption.
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAf9llte0WE&list=LL&index=5&t=264s
    
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    January 31, 2023 1:06pm
- Akitio
  
  When 50 million tons of water vapour from the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption enters the stratosphere the laws of physics tell us it will come back down. It might also cause a bit of warming.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:54am
  - Master Mariner
    
    Yes indeed, However I learnt some even went into space never to return.
    Learn something new every day i guess.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:00am
- Raphael
  
  Add in the details from this Space.com article: https://www.space.com/tonga-eruption-water-vapor-warm-earth
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:11am
- cas
  
  We had some older grandkids staying with us recently and 2 of the 3 were climate change warriors.
  
  How many cars in your family, said I . A family of 5 with 5 cars but to be fair 1 lives in another state in Australia. Oh said the eldest, I might try and use public transport a bit more.
  
  The other family of 4 has 5 cars between them. For both of us 1 car suffices.
  
  I didn’t call the kids hypocritical as I think they could see that themselves.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:24am
- rangitoto
  
  They would be saying the same thing if there was drought. If it is is unusually dry = climate change, unusually wet = climate change, unusually cold = climate change, unusually hot = climate change. Karl Popper had something to say about this kind of theory. ie pseudoscience.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:29am
  - Bullion
    
    If it is warmer the atmosphere holds more water. I’m sure you’re smart enough to see how that could result in less rainfall in some areas/conditions or more rainfall in other areas/conditions.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:58am
    - alloytoo
      
      Your logic does not follow, the air in the area with less rainfall would surely have greater capacity to carry more water?
      
      Unless the off shore wind turbines are reducing the energy available to carry the moisture to shore?
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:27am
  - mawm
    
    Rangi – if you deleted the word “unusually” they’d still be saying the same thing.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:31am
- 70andstilllearning
  
  Ummm. Watched the Auckland EM update earlier (08:00) and noticed that NEMA have provided Auckland EM with an “advisor” (minder?) to assist and provide a national perspective. He made a comment ( from his national perspective presumably) that Northland was under a RED rain warning and experiencing heavy rainfall at the MOMENT. ?? How come the radar is indicating at worst some moderate rain cells? – oh!! one brief drop just in the “heavy” range around 7:30 – 45 minutes ago.
  Please Mr Roger —-? , NEMA advisor, communicate facts – not your embellished agenda driven verbal garbage!!
  EOR
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:38am
- amospicton
  
  The link seems t0 have been removed (funny that) but I’m sure I saw that of the 10 wettest days ever recorded in Auckland this is the only one this century. Now if this was caused by global warming then surely most of the 10 would be this century? I suspect it was ‘weather’ not ‘climate change’ but that’s an inconvenient truth.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:43am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Emissions my left tit. Alaska has over 300,000 glaciers, many that humans have not set foot on. Anyway, many are receding, but what is not mentioned is they were receding thousands of years before the industrial revolution.
  Try Exit Glacier, Seward, Alaska. I have been there. Marker pegs in the ground showing where the glacier face was wat back to 1900. But that is it. Years before the industrial revolution the glacier flowed into into the ocean at Resurrection Bay, some 12 miles away.
  Emissions is plain and simple bullshit.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:50am
  - alloytoo
    
    Viking heavy industry resulted in Greenland being green?
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:29am
- Alan Wilkinson
  
  Stuff = crap by morons for morons.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:11am
- Grumpy Silver Haired Female
  
  This video of Konstantin Kisin speaking to the Oxford Union (it’s 8 mins, so give yourself time because it’s worth watching it all) sums up my Climate Change warmongering belief very clearly.
  Hope you enjoy it!
  https://youtu.be/zJdqJu-6ZPo
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:18am
  - alloytoo
    
    I love the bit where he says his wife had the baby (they’re old fashioned that way)
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:32am
- Chris Nisbet
  
  From our very own environment.govt.nz website we see these projections for Auckland…
  The value are percentage change.
  We know RCP is a pile of shite (admitted even by the ‘experts’), so we can ignore that one.
  (Apologies for poor formatting)
  Auckland & Warkworth
  Summer
  rcp 8.5: 1 ( -8, 12)
  rcp 6.0: 0 (-14, 19)
  rcp 4.5: 0 (-11, 12)
  rcp 2.6: 1 ( -7, 12)
  Autumn
  rcp 8.5: 1 ( -8, 12)
  rcp 6.0: 0 (-14, 19)
  rcp 4.5: 0 (-11, 12)
  rcp 2.6: 1 ( -7, 12)
  Winter
  rcp 8.5: 1 ( -9, 9)
  rcp 6.0: 1 (-12, 9)
  rcp 4.5: 1 (-11, 9)
  rcp 2.6: 1 ( -6, 7)
  Spring
  rcp 8.5: -5 (-11, 4)
  rcp 6.0: -2 (-13, 10)
  rcp 4.5: -2 (-13, 9)
  rcp 2.6: -2 (-10, 7)
  Annual
  rcp 8.5: -1 ( -7, 4)
  rcp 6.0: 0 ( -5, 7)
  rcp 4.5: 0 ( -5, 5)
  rcp 2.6: 0 ( -4, 4)
  
  The upshot: The models (no sniggering) aren’t even sure of the sign of the change, and could be as much as (wait for it) 2% different from what we get today.
  Whoop dee fricken doo.
  Took about 2 seconds to google this – Fricken journalists are fricken useless!
  Look for yourselves here…
  https://environment.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Files/Climate-change-projections-2nd-edition-final.pdf
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:28pm
Cinematic

Fellow Aucklanders, welcome to day 1 of lockdown – for kids anyway (you know the bastards were itching to do it to all).
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January 31, 2023 8:06am
- Frank the tank
  
  Yep the whole progressive left were itching for this.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:19am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Technocrats love this shit. Getting paid to watch Netflix and scratch your arse all day.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:25am
- pdm
  
  Who is the current Minister Of Education.
  
  As I type it is Chris Hipkins – along with Jacinda Ardern and Daniel Andrews `The Master of Lockdowns’.
  
  Says it all reaally.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:41am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Yip, yip, that’s what it is!
    The Arden tentacles reach far.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:52am
  - Paulus
    
    Remember Hipkins’s mother is a top Educationalist so we are sure he will listen to Mummy, as he does so before I am sure.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:57am
- MCōs
  
  Wayne Brown recommended schools be closed, don’t forget.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:56am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  They can thank Chippy from the Hutt for lockdown 23
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:33pm
Tony Stuart

Does anyone else find it rather ironic that the first Let’s Get Wellington Moving project to be completed will actually slow the flow of traffic on SH1 to Wellington Airport?
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January 31, 2023 8:07am
- Mike
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Indeed. Everyone knows that the last km to the airport needs to be kept a free as possible so that people late for their check-ins can move at the maximum possible speed.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:11am
- slightlyrighty
  
  I await the first accident there.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:19am
  - pdm
    
    The first of many I suspect SR.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:42am
- ClanMcleod
  
  Ironic – yes. Surprising? No.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:26am
- Widogast Corwin
  
  It is idiotic. If there is a demand for pedestrians to cross that road, it should have been an over bridge.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:24am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Widogast Corwin – it’s the fabled NASA v Soviet space programme story.
    
    NASA spent 3 years and 2 million dollars inventing a pen that would write in zero gravity.
    
    The Soviets used a pencil and paper.
    
    Probably not true, but the message is salient.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:44am
    - Ghost
      
      Yeah it isn’t true. The space pen was made by Fisher Pen Company and gifted to NASA
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:49am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Slow = less potholes to maybe fix one day.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:53am
- wgtn_dude
  
  It gets worse. Now I don’t know the reasoning, but it looks like another controlled pedestrian crossing is being built across Jervios Quay … right under an existing footbridge.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:51am
  - Mike
    
    Is that the older footbridge north of the city-to-sea bridge?
    
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    January 31, 2023 1:51pm
All_on_Red

Morning- hope you are all safe.
Remember the November Floods in Australia?
This is what caused it.
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/how-a-tongan-volcanic-eruption-almost-guarantees-a-flooded-summer-for-australias-east-coast/news-story/3b1be3a36b5681ce70d7327392ed0129

Here is NASA discussing the amount of Water erupted.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Luis Millán, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He led a new study examining the amount of water vapor that the Tonga volcano injected into the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere between about 8 and 33 miles (12 and 53 kilometers) above Earth’s surface.

In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.’
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere

This Australian Documentary goes into more detail.
‘How Tonga’s Eruption caused the worst floods in Australia’s History’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAf9llte0WE&list=LL&index=5&t=266s
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January 31, 2023 8:09am
- alex Masterley
  
  It doesnt appear that our “climate scientists” have not picked up on this empirical research and instead seem to rely on reading entrails of goats (or what ever is convienient to sacrifice).
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:24am
  - Brian McDonald
    
    Alex, the Tongan volcano has been discussed for weeks as a reason for less ozone in the area and therefore greater burn time from the sun. Slip slap slop I think was the main narrative, one that caused Mr. Luxon during a cricket game to display how a shoulder stand allowed the feet to block out the sun if one did the shoulder stand also holding the bat to knock away bugs and penetrating sun rays. Unfortunately, it didn’t enthuse the public who went for hats and sunscreen instead and suggested he stop rolling around the bloody wicket and get a real job.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:43am
    - Loddenthinks
      
      Cool story bro
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:35am
- Matt Long
  
  146 million tons of water does sound a lot, let’s compare that with a metre of rain which will likely be about our summer rainfall total.
  A hectare is 10 thousand square metres, so 10 thousand tons of rain per hectare. The area of Northland is 1.4 million Ha. So the summer rainfall for Northland is roughly is roughly 14 billion tons.
  In terms of excess over “normal” summer rainfall, we could say 10 billion tons.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:35am
  - All_on_Red
    
    The water which erupted is not falling here (or in Oz).
    Its more nuanced than that. The Article and Documentary explains.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:50am
  - rockape
    
    I captured about 9 of those tons and put them in my water tank over the last few days.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:26am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      You do of course have a water meter registering how much you use so 3 waters can charge you?
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:00am
  - Joely Doe
    
    146 Trillion kilograms of water
    I think your calcs are missing a few zero’s
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:39am
  - rangitoto
    
    They aren’t saying that the extra stratospheric water is directly raining out. Water vapour is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. The additional water boosted into the stratosphere by the volcanic eruption acts like a thermal blanket and the excess can stay up there for quite a long time.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:47am
- Joely Doe
  
  the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere
  
  ? That’s not my understanding… happy to be corrected.
  1 Terragram equals a trillion kilograms
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:30am
  - thirteenstars
    
    I’ll correct you.
    
    A teragram = 1 trillion grams. It’s a 1 with 12 zeros. 1,000,000,000,000.
    Divide by 1,000 to get kilograms. So 1 teragram = 1 billion kilograms. 1,000,000,000. A gigatonne.
    Divide again by 1,000 to get tonnes. So 1 teragram = 1 million tonnes. 1,000,000. A megatonne.
    He’s right. 146 teragrams = 146 million tonnes. 146 megatonnes.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:09am
    - Joely Doe
      
      Yep, I will concede.
      
      That’s what I get for trying to use that many Zero’s before coffee.
      
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      January 31, 2023 2:29pm
- Bullion
  
  The 1.2 degrees of warming means that the atmosphere can hold more water- 7% to 8% more water. The potential for large rainfall events are increased.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:37am
  - Don Beckett
    
    Which means much less chance of sea level rise. So which is it ?
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:51am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Hang about, he has to change hats to answer than Don.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:03am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Humans caused the eruption then. Gotta blame humans somehow.//
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:57am
- Grumpy Silver Haired Female
  
  No no, it’s climate change, caused by irresponsible Kiwis! No really, I listened to an expert idiot talk about how this excessive rainfall is caused by human induced climate change and wondered if that person was aware of the Tonga Explosion effect. Blinkered thinking.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:22am
- Justitia
  
  Thanks for these great links All on Red, I’m sharing them widely and I urge others to do the same to try to counter the insidious climate change catastrophist b/s that many people, even Wayne Browne ffs, are buying into.
  
  It’s astonishing how NIWA are deflecting any discussion of the impact of the Tongan eruption on New Zealand’s weather. But then they have their noses firmly in the climate change alarmist funding trough. Bring back the DSIR, they were real scientists.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:47am
artemisia

Herald today – <b?New Zealand’s tax system is under the spotlight (again). What needs to change to make it fair?
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January 31, 2023 8:11am
- artemisia
  
  Couldn’t edit above for some reason. To add, the experts like the idea of a wealth tax because some have more assets than others. Don’t seem to mention that a lot of it is age related – people who have bought assets over many years from tax paid income. A wealth tax would change behaviour – luxury cruises will sound like a good idea.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:20am
  - Ian Boag
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    like the idea of a wealth tax
    
    I think the logic is something like – we tax income and consumption, but why not wealth? A CGT is one way this could be done. Noone suggests that the rate of such a tax would look like 100%.
    
    people who have bought assets over many years from tax paid income
    
    Also from the proceeds of untaxed capital gains.
    
    Tax is the price of living in a relatively civilised society. I’m sort of relaxed about it.
    
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    January 31, 2023 8:49am
    - herb1
      
      Yeah most people with a history of living off other peoples money are “ sort of relaxed about it”
      
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      January 31, 2023 8:55am
      - Ian Boag
        
        I was a uni lecturer for about 15 years until 1991. If that is “living off other people’s money” then guilty as charged ….
        
        Whose money do you live off … ?
        
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        January 31, 2023 9:23am
    - artemisia
      
      How about those who pay tax on income from assets at marginal tax rate? Like shares, for example. Personally don’t have a problem with a comprehensive CGT, provided it is comprehensive. Like including family home, farm, bach, jewellery, classic cars and the Rothko bought in the 1960s. Otherwise exemptions get tweaked according to the government of the day, eg baches removed from Labour’s proposed CGT. Because reasons.
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:13am
      - Ian Boag
        
        those who pay tax on income from assets at marginal tax rate
        
        Yep – that’s how income tax works. How else would you do it? Make rental income tax-free?
        
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        January 31, 2023 9:26am
      - Jack5
        
        What counts is the total tax take, and a more effective and fairer capital gains tax is needed in NZ, but with adjustment so the total tax take isn’t higher.
        
        New Zealand is in a tiny minority, perhaps near-alone, among developed countries on its minimal capital gains tax. Our present system diverts into property development capital that would help agriculture, horticulture, tourism, and new industries.
        
        When you dig into overseas systems cited by property investors and pals who fight capital gains tax, you nearly always find these nations do have such a tax. In Switzerland, for example it seems to be applied by local governments – the cantons. In some countries it is property-sale duty.
        
        One problem in capital gains tax is its effect on small businesses, and farms, when the owners sell up after years of building up their assets. With the technical advances in small-business accounting (Xero, etc) there must be ways of easily and economically avoiding such big end-of-career hits. It should be easy to deal with annual asset gains cheaply, and keep annual tax on them modest.
        
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        January 31, 2023 10:09am
      - Paulus
        
        But how many people are actually positive Tax payers – about 55% I am told so 45% are tax recipients – isn’t that the problem ?
        It is the Welfare State when I read that 398,000 working age people not working get a financial benefit each two weeeks.
        Summat is very wrong !
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:03am
      - Pineapple Lumps
        
        Artemisia – would a comprehensive CGT also come with:
        1. Tax deduction for assets that depreciate (as opposed to tax solely on appreciating assets)?
        2. Inflation adjusted gains? – inflation creates a false impression that an asset has appreciated when all that has occurred is it’s replacement and maintenance cost has gone up
        3. A means to deduct improvements from the overall CG such as nice landscaping done with by the assets owner?
        
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        January 31, 2023 6:55pm
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      “Proceeds from untaxed capital gains”. Yep, and a decent chunk of those capital gains caused by Government policy. Inflation for example. Rural Urban Boundary in Auckland, for example. A wealth tax is just another way Socialists steal other peoples money, since to pay the tax (particularly if you have assets and not great income) you have to sell the asset! Be great to be a farmer wouldn’t it? Having to sell bits of the farm to pay the tax. But stupidity is directly correlated with Socialism, so there are no surprises with this suggestion.
      
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      January 31, 2023 9:57am
      - Paulus
        
        The greates Capital Gain has been since the Ardern Labour Government poured $60 Billion into the market place with no real accountability.
        House prices soared because of it.
        My happily in retirement mortgage free was $700k house as was 4 years ago now has a value according to research of $1.1 million so I am a rich bitch because of it, tax free.
        Thanks Ardern, Robertson, and of course not forgetting Chippy.
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:08am
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      And “Tax is the price of living in a relatively civilised society”. I don’t think anyone is arguing with this Ian, its the quantum of the tax that is the issue. The problem is that Government can never spend within their means. They constantly increase taxation to give their constituents stuff for free to get voted back in.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:02am
      - Swifty
        
        You’ve got it.
        
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        January 31, 2023 12:29pm
    - artemisia
      
      How about taxable imputed rent on main (owner occupied) homes? That would level that particular playing field.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:15am
      - Ehlana
        
        I’ve never understood the logic of “imputed rent”. So I save for a deposit, take out a mortgage, pay it off and on top of that am expected to pay tax on an imputed rental income from renting my (mortgaged) house to myself?
        If you’re going to impute a rental income on owner-occupied housing, will you also impute the costs of maintaining said house, including bringing it up to the government mandated rental standards?
        
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        January 31, 2023 10:58am
      - In Vino Veritas
        
        A better solution would be for Government to not spend as much artemisia. That would solve the lack of tax revenue and people could enjoy their assets without looking over their shoulder for the Government to come and take their assets by 1000 cuts.
        
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        January 31, 2023 4:48pm
    - Surely Knott
      
      If a person gets taxed on their income. Then They spend it. Person one decides to travel the world, drink in bars and restaurants an DC has no savings. Person two stays home takes a risk and starts a business, and buys a house and pays off a mortgage. Person one wants to tax person two again, so he can have t he same benefits without the sacrifice.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:21am
    - Bobba Fret
      
      I work hard to get ahead and earn more and pay more tax so someone else doesn’t have to.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:51am
    - Aquarius
      
      [Mod, debate what a persons says, no need to make it personal]
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:04am
    - JeffW
      
      Do you donate to IRD, over and above what you have to? You and all the other lefties who want more tax are free to go ahead.
      
      11 1
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      January 31, 2023 12:37pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  “What needs to change to make it fair?”
  The Govt, change of Govt.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:06am
Inandout

There is an American author on Hosking who compares Biden to Churchill in the way he handled Ukraine and the US economy. Everything he says comes back to MAGA and Komical Karene is ignored, in fact all Biden’s faults are ignored. I suspect Mike won’t dig too deep as this guy has written a book and is Mike’s guest.
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January 31, 2023 8:15am
- I remember when
  
  Churchill compared to Biden.
  Neither knew when it was time to quit politics!
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:41am
  - MCōs
    
    Not like here.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:58am
    - Pineapple Lumps
      
      Actually many would include Jacinda – she should have quit much earlier!
      
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      January 31, 2023 6:57pm
- Fuzzysnuggleduck
  
  You misheard. He compared Zelensky to Churchill, in that he meant the war is popular in the US, and that was a strong point for Biden domestically.
  What I learnt was that the author was a big Biden fan, giving him “7 or 8” out of 10 as a score, and referred to Trump as ‘crazy’ and ‘MAGA nuts’ and the “threat to democracy” more than once.
  Was such a partisan position by the author that it makes the book only of interest to the already politically converted, and not to the genuinely interested in politics or history.
  Yes, Trump is a pompous buffoon but Biden is also a dodering old wreck and their are skeletons in the Biden closet. Americans who only think in these polar opposites of veneration and hate actually only have the choice akin to the South Park election between a ‘Giant Douche’ and a ‘Turd Sandwich’.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:44pm
Yvette

Polls
Hipkins is yet to actually change any Labour policy, so is not any change in Labour’s popularity, a negative comment against Ardern or a hope Hipkins will be better than her, without any evidence of that so far?
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January 31, 2023 8:18am
- Inandout
  
  Yvette, he says he has ‘an abundance of talent’ to draw from in his reshuffle. Poor Chippy.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:26am
  - In Vino Veritas
    
    Don’t be surprised he said that In. Like Ardern, he wouldn’t recognise talent if it got up and punched him in the face. When you have spent your career surrounded by mediocrity, even the bottom dwellers look good.
    
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    January 31, 2023 12:43pm
- Tricati
  
  Correct – Hipkins may ditch the TVNZ/RNZ merger, Robbo’s Employment Insurance scheme, and at a stretch, change the merging of the Polytechs. They wont touch co-governance or the separatist health changes and that will be their undoing, no matter how they try to package it. And lets face it, Hipkins fame as Mr. Fix It is a joke as every portfolio he has been in charge of is a shambles, though you wouldn’t know as our MSM don’t seem inclined to scrutinize those areas.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:33am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    MSM don’t seem inclined to scrutinize those areas, because they will end up with an empty wallet. Labour Govt blackmail – who knew?
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:11am
  - JackRabbit
    
    “And lets face it, Hipkins fame as Mr. Fix It is a joke”
    
    A “fixer” would be a more accurate term. If you have watched “Michael Clayton” starring George Clooney, (it’s worth watching) you will realise that Hipkins IS a “fixer”. An evil version of Michael Clayton. A “fixer” is also sometimes known as a “cleaner”.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixer_(person)#Cleaner
    
    A “fixer” is someone who covers up and conceals the truth for his team or clients, burying evidence and organising hit jobs on the opposition, either physically or through propaganda.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:05am
    - Salacious Crumb
      
      Completely agree. Hipkins is “Mr Fux It” – standard performance level for this government.
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:57am
  - Paulus
    
    Hipkins will fiddle around the edges and ignore the fundementals as he cannot upset the Maori Caucus.
    Cannot be trusted on his words as we well know.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:11am
- Gravelroad
  
  @Yvette re polls-
  The positive poll results for Labour are concerning.
  Sure, I guess Mr Hipkins could expect an initial warm welcome from the Labour faithful and those interested in “fairness” and shafting the rich.
  But, as others have mentioned. He hasn’t done anything yet.
  That is to come with his proposed reviewing of inappropriate cabinet positions and the alleged winding back of unpopular policies.
  If he succeeds in spinning these, Hipkins and his party are likely to get increased support – not less.
  I don’t think the election is now a done deal for National. They need to reassess their PR capabilities.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:50am
  - Philview
    
    I am a National voter but can see that the party’s continued attack lines on Labour policy while not promoting any of their own solutions is risky. The media attack National for being an empty vessel. Chris Luxon has been saying all week new leader but same failed policies. Such a comment does invite a question ‘What are National’s policies’. I hope Chris leaves himself enough time to explain National policy once we close in on the election.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:16am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  He is not changing any of the policies, he has stated he will slow them down for a while
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:36pm
slightlyrighty

Last night’s polls, and the commentary surrounding them, were quite simply the act of Labour Cheerleaders gushing about their new man after the first date, and planning a life together.

It’s like leaving a relationship that you finally realise was a toxic one, and starting a new one, without realising that you’re simply making the same mistake.

If I can channel a sassy African-American woman for a moment….”Girrrl!, You bein’ played!”
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January 31, 2023 8:25am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Lock down 23 for Auckland has already lost him support
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:36pm
Surely Knott

How did the media drongos get hold of Wayne Brown’s private what’s app messages?

The only time we saw J Ardern’s private messages (to Richie hardcore) were obtained via lgoima.

Media criticise Wayne brown for communication, yet the Minister of Ed fails to consult with or tell the schools they’re closing and the mp in charge is not named in the headline or article! And the minister of transport doesn’t get shaming headlines even though waka kotahi staff go home on Friday mid flood instead of continuing to tweet live traffic updates, and have to be called back after media calls and questions mp.
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January 31, 2023 8:27am
- Wayne Mapp
  
  One of the people who received the message will have informed the media, or told a friend who then informed the media.
  
  The group will have been larger than close friends and family, hence the risk.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:09am
- Raphael
  
  The lesson Wayne Brown has just learnt is never put into writing anything you don’t want to be headlines in the MSM.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:16am
  - rangitoto
    
    Perhaps he wanted us to know that he thinks the media are drongos. Many would agree with him.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:52am
  - Mike
    
    Perhaps he has also learned not to tell acquaintances what he thinks about having to give up precious leisure time during a civic emergency.
    
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    January 31, 2023 1:56pm
Maggy Wassilieff

Here’s info on the folks who have just been appointed to lead the 3-Waters Regional entities:

https://www.threewaters.govt.nz/news/chief-executives-for-water-services-entities-confirmed/
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January 31, 2023 8:28am
- herb1
  
  Deliberately pick whiteys so everyone will ignore that they answer to Iwi selected persons, or is that Mahuta selected
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:35am
  - kowtow
    
    Just like the Romans , they got their chosen locals to do their dirty work.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:05am
- Loddenthinks
  
  Well, info on 3 of the 4 appointees. The other one, their preferred candidate, withdrew “for personal reasons”.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:52am
- Gravelroad
  
  @MW-
  So all these three gents have previous experience of managing water resources for Councils or government entities – apparently achieving great success.
  And yet the spin around the desperate need for 3/5 Waters is that Councils and others have done an appalling, mis-managed job at providing and managing water related assets and that heaps of citizens can’t guarantee to have clean water coming out of their taps.
  So these guys are going to fix then?
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:12am
- Handyman
  
  When Labour said they will not focus on three waters what they meant was:
  1. Accelerate three waters with hiring, administration setup and enter into as many long term contracts as possible. (Legislation can happen later).
  2 Embed as much as possible so it is impossible to wind back if Labour lose the election.
  3. Tell all media not to mention three waters.
  4. Prime army of Labour social media trolls to call any mention of three waters “far right conspiracy theory – also racist”
  5. Never mention three waters
  6. Change the minister to a person who can answer every question with “I am new and still getting up to speed. No decisions have been made”.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:15am
- In Vino Veritas
  
  So, we have three guys who have been involved in, or running the management of assets that have been apparently under performing and underfunded. And they get to run the new entities. What could possibly go wrong?
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:28pm
  - Mike
    
    Hah! I can only imagine the response had the three appointees been Māori with no experience of managing infrastructure.
    
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    January 31, 2023 1:58pm
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      Exactly the same Mike. And there are plenty of Maori out there that have limited qualifications to be on Boards for instance, that are now there because of their race rather than ability.
      
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      January 31, 2023 4:51pm
- Nickc2
  
  Short term careers for all of them!
  The ink on their employment agreements will hardly be dry before they are given the arse by an incomming Govt eh?
  Fuckin Political Opportunists all of em!
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:38pm
redeye

There is not much this government hasn’t screwed up but has there a bigger disaster than Waka Kotahi?
Climbing road toll. Cars being damaged by potholes. Big spend up on highway parties. Incomprehensible advertising campaigns.
Last year they spent months building a big roundabout here in Motueka only to have to rip it up rebuild a couple of months later. The pedestrian crossings were in the wrong place.
And then when Aucklanders needed them most they all knocked off for the long weekend.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300795396/waka-kotahi-apologises-after-staff-clocked-off-for-the-weekend-during-disaster
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January 31, 2023 8:33am
- Cinematic
  
  Yep, I was following that WK thread, then they’re like – we’re off home guys. Unbelievable abdication of duty.
  
  Laziness and incompetence are the hallmarks of this government and it’s seeped into every government orifice.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:07am
- redeye
  
  I forgot to mention their 20 thousand dollar plastic zeros.
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:06pm
Maggie Pie

RANDOM IMPERTINENT QUESTIONS….

Are the media a pack of drongos?

Is a ducks arse watertight?
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January 31, 2023 8:34am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Just in case some KB folk don’t speak Stryne:
  
  https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/blog/article/799/
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:42am
  - Don Beckett
    
    ‘Drongo’ was a name for a – um – drongo, in use back in the ’40’s & ’50’s when I was at school.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:28am
    - Maggie Pie
      
      You must be about the Mayors age then Donald?
      
      Play tennis??
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:00am
      - Don Beckett
        
        I used to play tennis until I was 65, among other sports – mainly yachting. 🙂
        The mayor is only 75 odd isn’t he? Just a spring chicken 😆
        
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        January 31, 2023 12:17pm
- Cinematic
  
  A survey of the public would reveal about 95% believe journos are a pack of drongos, I’d say. What’s better is the journos know it, the article by Fisher in the Herald is laughingly lame.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:42am
  - artemisia
    
    Maybe Mayor Brown did it on purpose. Media and drongos in the same sentence all over the media today.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:20am
- KiWombat
  
  Oh Maggie, you’ve made my day with that one !
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:43am
- Frank the tank
  
  No just very good at taking instructions from above.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:04am
I remember when

Time flies.
Unlike many of the airlines.
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January 31, 2023 8:35am
- artemisia
  
  Time flies? Can’t, they go too fast.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:18am
Rusty

Just thinking of Auckland’s rain deluge how come the water city of Venice has not been wiped out by water through climate change?
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January 31, 2023 8:38am
- Pavel
  
  You’d think that if sea level rises were happening the people of Dubai would stop building low level islands.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:31am
  - Widogast Corwin
    
    China is busy constructing gigantic airports on man-made islands.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalian_Jinzhouwan_International_Airport
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:01am
- MCōs
  
  As it happens Venice is in all sorts of trouble.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:06am
  - rangitoto
    
    Mainly because it is sinking.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:19am
CAKE FACE1

My big fear now is that New Zealand is in a socialist doom loop.

The National Socialists came to power in Germany during the Great Depression.

This is no coincidence. Totalitarian solutions are commonly sought when there is some economic or social disaster.

This is why Labour first flourished with the Covid hoax, and now are doing well with the recent floods. The strong man (or woman) who offers simple solutions during a crisis becomes popular with the public, who typically lose their capacity for critical thinking. NZ had the toughest lockdowns in the world during the Rona hoax.

It is dangerous times. Our best and brightest will leave the country, for greener pastures. The State will soak up more citizens to become bureaucrats, creating a client State. The welfare roll will increase, creating still more State dependency.

The medium to long run effect is even worse. I had a huge number of friends who came from former communist countries. They were young in 1989, when the Berlin wall came down. They coped well with the transfer of their country to a market-based economy. They explained to me that their parents, who grew up with communism, never adapted or coped with the change to democracy, freedom and the market economy. They were lost without communism, because they had no resilience. Old people in Romania still typically yearn for the monstrous Ceausescu regime. Radical change is hard for people who are older.

When you add in the fact that many of our youth can’t read, write or add, you can sense that the country is on a precipice. I know many Greeks when I lived in Europe (there are 10 million in Greece, and the same number living overseas), and I asked them about their economic collapse. They said to me that that they were completely blind-sided by their economic situation. The average person had no idea what was coming. They thought everything was fine before it collapsed in a heap.

Alas, I see similarities in New Zealand. Our private debt is off the scale. Our current account deficit (exports minus imports) is the worst in the OECD, and the worst in our history. The State is getting relentlessly bigger, but public services are getting only getting worse.

My view is that if the socialists win again, the chances of an economic collapse are very high. We are in a desperate situation.

Socialism has claimed over 100 million lives, and left a trail of terrible suffering for a billion souls. Once socialism takes hold, it can be impossible to shake. More socialism leads to economic and social collapse, which leads to greater levels of socialism, in a vicious socialist doom loop. See Venezuela as an example.

Personally, CAKE refuses to become yet another victim of socialism. If the socialists somehow contrive to win the next election, I will leave you to it.
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January 31, 2023 8:42am
- Ruawai
  
  What can you do to fight it? You can’t send your kids to school if the government has closed them.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:56am
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Home school. We did it for 6 months when the psychopaths were advocating masks and jabs for schoolkids. Took a bit of setting up. We reluctantly went back into the system once the insanity seemed to pass.
    Now we’re reconsidering again. These people are delusional ideologues without a single clue how to run the country.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:08am
  - kevn
    
    @Ruawai… Centralised gummint says ‘shut them’. Schools/parents not allowed to make a decision.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:23am
- Taieri
  
  Once socialism takes hold, it can be impossible to shake
  ———–
  
  Countries of the former Soviet bloc prove otherwise.
  
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  January 31, 2023 8:57am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    At some considerable loss of life and freedoms along the way for many victims.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:18am
    - Taieri
      
      True.
      Perhaps people have to experience real socialism to appreciate what they had before.
      
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      January 31, 2023 10:48am
- ISeeRed
  
  Just vote National! Luxon will save us!
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:02am
- septic skeptic
  
  I’m seriously considering the same. A term of Labour/Green/MP/(NZF?) is probably all that is required now to extinguish New Zealand as we knew it.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:26am
- cmm
  
  Doom loop combined with entitlement and blaming. Bad combination.
  We might not have a substantial population of Jews and gypses to pick on, but we do have Boomers and Rich Pricks.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:35am
  - Salacious Crumb
    
    There’s always the unvaccinated. Oops, they tried that already.
    
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    January 31, 2023 12:01pm
- Grunter
  
  Well said CAKEFACE1
  NZ is in a perilous position with the world on the brink of a massive global debt mountain collapse. With Trillions of $’s printed and Govt spending through the roof in most countries (socialism), we are in for a prolonged period of stagflation, sovereign debt defaults and social unrest/wars. These things work in cycles (just look at history). The good news is once we all get through the next 5-10 yrs the lunacy of socialism, money printing, and getting paid to do nothing will come to an end for a decent period of time. Of course, the cycle then repeats. NZ of course could weather the global storm reasonably well if we choose, but the odds aren’t high that we get decent leaders to steer us through it. A quick direction charge is needed to minimise the damage. Move to a liberal, free market economy, crash Govt spending and centralised state control, and stay out of global wars that don’t concern us.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:48am
  - mawm
    
    Instead we get lessons in te Reo and a hugely costly drive to reduce our minuscule contribution to the atmospheric CO2 which clearly shows no relationship to global temperatures.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:26am
Maggie Pie

Wasn’t it fab to hear Katie back on ‘ZB-Early-Edition’ 😀
I recorded the entire show and have been listening to it on loop.
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January 31, 2023 8:49am
- greybeard
  
  And Hosking was on fire !
  His opinion piece at about 7:25am was superb. He had obviously been bottling a lot up over his holidays!
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:14am
  - Maggie Pie
    
    YIP – great as always!
    
    What a relief to finally see the back of those other 2 wokesters that were filling in over the holidays. God knows how much damage they must do to Mike & Kate’s ratings while they’re away?
    
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    January 31, 2023 1:06pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Will this happen in NZ? The socialists are in control!
https://rossduhboss.com/fda-will-announce-indefinite-annual-rollout-of-covid-19-vaccine-report
6 1
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January 31, 2023 8:49am
- mawm
  
  Yes. I suspect the WHO “treaty” on pandemics will be signed before this government is replaced, digital ID/vaccine QR and CBDC will be introduced. Chinese-style social control will occur and you will not be able to participate in life as we know it unless you are current with the “vaccine” schedule. There will be no pushback by National or ACT.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:31am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    “Those who opt out will not be punished”
    
    Love, Jaspinda.
    
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    January 31, 2023 3:46pm
alloytoo

Next time someone mentions climate change I plan to point out that the current climate change policies did nothing to prevent or mitigate the current weather catastrophe.

If anything the current policies make it harder to respond to crisises by making us poorer.

Time for a rethink.
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January 31, 2023 8:49am
- Taieri
  
  the current climate change policies did nothing to prevent or mitigate the current weather catastrophe.
  —————
  
  That’s because they haven’t gone far enough. But once we achieve the Net Zero, all will be fine. It will only rain at night, thunderstorms will be a thing of the past and there will be no more strong winds.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:00am
  - Rusty
    
    @Taieri.
    
    The climate change experts haven’t figured out how to prevent earthquakes which cause just as much devastation as extreme weather.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:15am
    - alloytoo
      
      Yet climate change policies effect our ability to respond that sort of emergency as well.
      
      4 0
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      January 31, 2023 9:22am
    - Taieri
      
      The climate change experts haven’t figured out how to prevent earthquakes
      ————
      
      They will, once the Green Party of Aotearoa takes over and passes required law.
      
      5 0
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      January 31, 2023 10:50am
  - alloytoo
    
    and no one will get sunburned ever….
    
    4 0
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    January 31, 2023 10:12am
- Alan Wilkinson
  
  Only a halfwit would think longterm risk overrides shortterm risk. The developed world is full of such idiots. How did it get like this? When you educate an idiot you get an educated idiot. It is only the educated idiots who think like this.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:26am
- Paulus
  
  Its not, it is Global Warming is it not ?
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:33pm
cmm

I was really surprised by Hipkins’ bounce.
I didn’t realise that Cindy was disliked that much.
I also didn’t realise there was such a ginger in group preference or I would have exploited it more!
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January 31, 2023 8:59am
- ClanMcleod
  
  cmm – what is really surprising is that nobody is questioning him on his role in removing important information regarding risk to young people from covid vaccinations. He was covid minister when it happened.
  
  https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/thomas-cranmer-covid-and-our-kiwi-kids-part-1
  
  There has been media blackout on this act of malfeasance and more concerning, the opposition have either missed it or are ignoring it.
  Why? If it is proven that Hipkins approved this despicable act he would be political toast.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:12am
  - kevn
    
    @Clan… Plenty of skeletons in hipkins cupboard. This would just be one of them.
    
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    January 31, 2023 10:39am
    - ClanMcleod
      
      kevn – absolutely, particularly during that role as covid minister. So many disastrous policies that he is ultimately responsible for.
      I wonder which “experts” he has lined up for when the wheels on the bus go round and round.
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:47am
- Inandout
  
  cmm, Darren Hughes was a ginga.
  
  7 0
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  January 31, 2023 9:42am
  - fightingtemeraire
    
    He is now head of the UK Electoral Change organisation that wants the UK to drop FPP.
    
    7 0
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    January 31, 2023 11:12am
- Alan Wilkinson
  
  The gullible are taken in by the media “new broom” hype for a shiny new PM. As they were when Jacinda was crowned. They will soon get bored with their new toy.
  
  11 2
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  January 31, 2023 10:30am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  You clearly haven’t been getting out, she was toxic, mention her name and people snapped or laughed
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:39pm
Maggie Pie

TWITTER TRENDING

My partner only just received this vid but he’s not sure of the location?

Great to see our AOS not taking any shite!

https://twitter.com/JeremyMcilvride/status/1619579552988270592

He recons the perp might have had a ‘sawn-off’ 🙁
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January 31, 2023 9:01am
- Inandout
  
  Maggie, hopefully with JA gone the police may be given a bit of freedom to do their jobs.
  
  12 0
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  January 31, 2023 9:40am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Jaspinda will never be ‘gone’ A narcissist is forever.
    
    4 1
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    January 31, 2023 4:01pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Bad acting. Must be a clip that will be shown on Short of Talant Street.
  
  2 1
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  January 31, 2023 4:00pm
  - Maggie Pie
    
    Nope…real enuff SteveO.
    My partner just found out it happened in Palmy.
    
    https://twitter.com/me_gbg_nz/status/1619936631007608832
    
    3 1
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    January 31, 2023 5:05pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Comments and Emails on Stop Co-Governance yesterday:

That sums things up nicely. I can remember the German/Samoan traitor David Lange saying :
“Successive governments since 1970 have been working to reduce the Pakeha population to less than 10% by 2030 – 2035 and less than,preferably much less than, 5% by 2050”
This was said in the documentary ‘The Changing Face of New Zealand’ which aired on T.V. 3 narrated by D. Lange 6 months before his death.
NO-ONE can get a copy of this documentary which was publicly funded by NZ on Air.

Is this true? Why is it censored?
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January 31, 2023 9:21am
- David Garrett
  
  Steve O: Oh dear…I used to think you were one of the more sensible commenters here…
  
  And I know I am going to regret this….but how do you figure Lange was “German/Samoan”??
  
  What I recall Lange saying at Canterbury Uni 100 years ago, in response to a student’s comment that Maori were somehow superior to us because they arrived first: “Everyone in New Zealand is or was an immigrant”.
  
  That comment didn’t please the Special People there.
  
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  January 31, 2023 9:54am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Not my words. It was a copy and paste by Barry T, on January 30, 2023 at 11:27 am, on Stop Co-Governance yesterday.
    Reply to Barry:
    Sue on January 30, 2023 at 4:56 pm
    As John McEnroe would say “You can’t be serious!”
    
    Yet you are quoting from some source, so can you please provide the link so I can read David Lange’s incredulous statement.
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:31am
BeaB

Where’s Phil Goff when you need him? Remember those glib paragraphs he could utter so effortlessly?Can he explain how he left Auckland in such a vulnerable state? The media drongoes are wetting themselves attacking Wayne Brown. Where are the fingers of blame pointing directly at Goff?
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January 31, 2023 9:32am
- kevn
  
  @Bea… Cranmer has a good substack story showing Akld Council past thinking.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:13am
- Paulus
  
  Goff has done a bunk to London as our AMBASSADOR – Gawd elp us !
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:35pm
cmm

Funny how the MSM are trying to skewer Brown over his media drongo comment, probably completely misreading public sentiments.

MSM: “Right, we’ve got him now! He can’t get away with calling us drongos. The public won’t stand for that.”

Public: “Thumbs up Wayne, you tell those MSM dickheads!”
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January 31, 2023 9:40am
Jack5

Anyone here seen the Modi video that the BBC seems to have joined the Indian Government in hiding?

https://restofworld.org/2023/why-is-the-modi-documentary-so-hard-to-find-some-blame-lies-with-the-bbc/
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January 31, 2023 9:50am
Maggie Pie

PLEASE GOD – MAKE THIS RAIN STOP!!

We’ve had a set of sheets out on the line since last Thursday 🙁
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January 31, 2023 9:56am
- alloytoo
  
  And the bonfire and fiery cross won’t light either?
  
  (apologies, the image just came to my mind)
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:15am
- kevn
  
  @Maggie… Have (one of) your tennis besties told you about how Wayne Brown has a favourite tennis ball nicknamed Simon?
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:16am
  - kevn
    
    the harder he hits it, the more it spins…
    
    14 0
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    January 31, 2023 10:42am
  - Maggie Pie
    
    LOL!! just txt to all the girls 😀
    
    8 0
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    January 31, 2023 11:33am
- Taieri
  
  We’ve had a set of sheets out on the line since last Thursday
  —————-
  
  My neighbours have had theirs out since last Xmas and hasn’t even been raining all that much here.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:46am
- Inandout
  
  Maggie, take thee to a white goods store and buy a dryer.
  
  5 0
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  January 31, 2023 11:25am
  - Maggie Pie
    
    We’ve got the latest Bosch 8kg…. but my partner likes his sheets stiff.
    
    7 1
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    January 31, 2023 11:37am
Scooter

How can you not love Mayor Brown after he called media Drongo’s. One word sums them up, they will be spewing into their latte’s.
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January 31, 2023 9:59am
- David Garrett
  
  Scooter: No apostrophe in lattes mate…
  
  The apostrophe does one of TWO things: 1) standing in for a letter, as in it’s for it is; and 2) to indicate possession of something, as in David’s boat – the boat belonging to David, as opposed to all the other boats in the world.
  
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  January 31, 2023 10:54am
  - slightlyrighty
    
    One could argue they own the Lattes in question?
    
    2 1
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    January 31, 2023 11:09am
    - David Garrett
      
      It would still be wrong…if they were “Bill’s lattes” the apostrophe would be in Bill’s and not the lattes
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:12am
      - Inandout
        
        DG, use of apostrophes make sentences understandable and presumably the reason they were invented. Some sites have continuous text correction.
        
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        January 31, 2023 11:20am
  - David Garrett
    
    Don’t (Do not) be like that mate; I’m (I am) just trying to help!
    
    8 1
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    January 31, 2023 11:09am
    - Scooter
      
      Someone is triggered by a ‘ or lack there of.
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:42am
  - Loddenthinks
    
    @DG: neither is there an apostrophe in “Drongo’s” and nor should it be capitalised. Nobody likes a corrector, so it’s important to do it properly 🙂
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:21am
    - David Garrett
      
      Lodden: Actually I am quite happy to be corrected – even a spelling/grammar Nazi like me makes mistakes from time to time.
      
      I have never forgotten the red circles around the word “approbation” in an essay I once submitted; I meant the opposite: “opprobrium”
      
      Never again did I use a “big word” unless I was damn sure what it meant. Hat tip to the late great Vincent Orange, of Canterbury Uni. He was a superb lecturer.
      
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      January 31, 2023 11:28am
  - krazykiwi
    
    DG, as our resident grammar pedagogue I thought you’d enjoy this. Makes me smile every time.
    
    8 1
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    January 31, 2023 1:26pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Stop Co-Governance. Julian Batchelor.

https://www.stopcogovernance.kiwi/blog/sean-plunket-and-the-platform-continue-to-give-us-media-coverage/
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January 31, 2023 10:08am
Scooter

Is Wayne Brown the antithesis of Jacinda.
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January 31, 2023 10:10am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  One can only wait and see.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:34am
- Prince
  
  Well he was elected at first go, not chosen.
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:00pm
sparkhole

1 Kilogram = 1 thousand grams
1 Megagram = 1 million grams
1 Gigagram = 1 billion grams
1 Teragram = 1 trillion grams
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January 31, 2023 10:21am
Hugh Jarse

The bullying of Wayne Brown in the media is just phenomenal. Hell have no fury like a leftie spurned I guess.
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January 31, 2023 10:29am
- kowtow
  
  Pure misandry .
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:04pm
Handyman

Three comments in one…
1. After “five years of failure”™ Labour (and by extension the media) still blame John Key for everything wrong in the health system.
Yet after 5 minutes in the job they blame Brown for Auckland having poor infrastructure.

2. BTW, suspicious lack of photos of the rail tunnel?

3. Regarding the Drongo comment. The media have responded with their version of “Don’t you know who I am?”
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January 31, 2023 10:44am
cmm

South Africa looting is getting silly. Less than 100km from where I grew up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7-MsRlOBY0
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January 31, 2023 10:53am
- Inandout
  
  Crazy stuff there, but, the roads look better than ours.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:12am
  - cmm
    
    On that stretch they’re pretty good. On average there is a pothole in SA for every 30 metres of road. By pothole, I mean a pothole.
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zux9JK6uMWs
    
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    January 31, 2023 11:42am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      So SA has a Waka Coathanger too?
      
      8 0
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      January 31, 2023 11:59am
      - cmm
        
        Coathanger is broken boss…
        
        4 0
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        January 31, 2023 12:48pm
      - Salacious Crumb
        
        No but it’s a common theme in 3rd world countries
        
        4 0
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        January 31, 2023 12:56pm
- mawm
  
  Someone is going to put a bullet through his head if he carries on like that.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:58am
Taieri

All of you firearm users get your wallets ready…

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/131100221/firearms-licence-fee-could-rise-by-almost-500
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January 31, 2023 11:11am
- Prince
  
  The gangs must be upset about this.
  Oh, hold on…
  
  8 1
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  January 31, 2023 11:58am
- info@cruzpro.com
  
  Cars kill way more New Zealanders than guns.
  
  Why are firearm license renewals more expensive than drivers license renewals?
  
  Ridiculous firearm license costs are just another way to remove guns from the population.
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:28pm
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    More cars than guns? Oh wait, there are the handed in guns, so that is a guide??
    Wish the Police would give a hint about how many guns the gangs have….
    What’s that? No eye deer?
    
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    January 31, 2023 4:09pm
    - info@cruzpro.com
      
      There are about 5M cars and 1.5M guns in New Zealand. Roughly 3 to 1.
      
      The number of road deaths is about 400 a year and the number of gun deaths is about ten per year. Approximately 40 to 1.
      
      If deaths are a consideration then car licenses should be regulated/charged more than gun licenses!
      
      BTW: Many more die due to suicide than are killed by guns.
      
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      January 31, 2023 7:09pm
- Swifty
  
  Then what the hell do we pay taxes for?
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:08pm
- Swifty
  
  So if this government is going to sock it to ‘users of the firearm licensing system….’.
  
  In order to be consistent will we now see Labour bringing in charges for those who choose to use the social welfare system? Who choose to use the criminal justice system? Who choose to use the helpline for any government department?
  
  Like hell they will.
  
  Let’s face it. Labour hates the idea of New Zealanders owning and using firearms. They don’t think we can be trusted with them.
  
  So with a combination of confiscations and pricing us out they will have their way.
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:20pm
  - Ghost
    
    First rise since 1999, can you name any other fees that haven’t gone up since then?
    
    3 3
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    January 31, 2023 1:24pm
    - Swifty
      
      There are literally hundreds of fees, imposts, rents, charges, royalties, gratuities etc embedded in legislation which haven’t been changed for decades.
      
      But that’s beside the point ghost.
      
      Is the Labour government now signalling the complete adoption of user pays right across government services? And do they propose out taxes go down as a consequence?
      
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      January 31, 2023 1:51pm
      - Mike
        
        You are broadening the argument to a ludicrous extent to make a rhetorical point.
        It is commonplace for user fees to be imposed in many of our regulatory systems: firearms, driving, air travel, food businesses, etc.
        I was mocked on Kiwiblog a couple of weeks back for making the point that user pays could be extended to almost anything, from traffic congestion charges etc to fees for using almost anything usually regarded as a public good.
        I think your point would be better confined to considering whether firearms users are being asked to pay a disproportionate share of the costs of their licensing system when compared with similar systems, or whether other schemes have had fee level unreviewed for longer periods.
        
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        January 31, 2023 2:17pm
      - Swifty
        
        You are mocked on KB for very good and sound reasons.
        
        Your points re disproportionality etc are well made.
        
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        January 31, 2023 2:31pm
      - Ghost
        
        No it’s just that your post above it just absolutely stupid.
        
        Costs have gone up, they are looking at how much to raise them by, the government already subsidises the licenses.
        
        Sweet someone hasn’t had a rent rise since 1999 care to tell us who? You claim hundreds of fees haven’t gone up since 1999 buy havent actually given any, just hundreds.
        
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        January 31, 2023 2:46pm
    - GJM
      
      So adjust for inflation, and that 8s reasonable, but not dealers license at $2.8k per year per person,or a pistol shooting endorsement for $1400. Want to display some guns at a club gun show, like the Antique Arms association as a collector? Be $1400 for the day
      
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      January 31, 2023 8:35pm
      - Nickc2
        
        This does not apply to Gangs!
        
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        January 31, 2023 10:07pm
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Control, it is all about ‘control’
    
    4 1
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    January 31, 2023 4:11pm
kevn

@Tai… Less firearms owners but new admin costs more.
Rooting NZ.
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January 31, 2023 11:15am
Taieri

Not living in Auckland I don’t know much about its Mayor Wayne Brown.
But somebody is missing the point here, I think:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/131098463/mayors-score-hits-and-misses-while-fronting-disasters#comments

Comments are particularly enlightening (?)…
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January 31, 2023 11:18am
ClanMcleod

The Thomas Cranmer blog post re minutes from Auckland Civil Defense and EM committee makes for interesting reading. Remember, Wayne Brown has barely gotten his feet under the table.
He inherited this clusterfuck.

Auckland Council’s Civil Defense and Emergency Management Committee meets every quarter. The minutes from the last two meetings held on 14 June and 30 August of last year, together with a recording of the August meeting, highlight two issues which the review may also consider.

The first issue is that whilst the Auckland Emergency Management (AEM) team is headed by some highly experienced individuals, many of the team personnel are relatively new to the job and, as at the last meeting, the AEM team was struggling to fill several roles due to a countrywide skill shortage in emergency management.

The second issue is that infill housing in areas where the council is aware of a flood risk is identified by the Chair of the committee, Councillor Sharon Stewart, as a problem that could “come back to bite the council”.

Indeed. Hardly something you can blame on the new Mayor.

https://cranmer.substack.com/p/auckland-clr-sharon-stewart-it-could?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1090995&post_id=99539985&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
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January 31, 2023 11:23am
- Gravelroad
  
  @Clan-
  “ Hardly something you can blame on the new Mayor.”
  But let’s do that anyway because we liked the other candidate better.
  The wishes of those who voted for Mr Brown mean nothing to the self-appointed judges and enforcers in the msn.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:37am
  - Prince
    
    Brown is a gift for the media.
    Male.
    Pale.
    Looks old.
    Right wing.
    Not skilled in obfuscating in press conference.
    
    20 1
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    January 31, 2023 11:57am
    - peterwn
      
      Media has got it the wrong way round with Wayne Brown – they think they can bully and push him around. Wayne has his own way of dealing with the media. He referred to them as ‘drongos’ that he has to deal with. PR experts claim it is not quite the right way to handle things, but Wayne will be teaching much to the media about PR in the next nearly three years.
      
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      January 31, 2023 1:12pm
      - Nickc2
        
        Go for it Wayne, tell these egos on steroids keyboard-bashing child Journalists that the world is not governed by the 4th Estate, never was, and hopefully never will be.
        
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        January 31, 2023 2:13pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  All easy. Wayne Brown just has to say one thing to make them step back.
  “You are Fake News!”
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:14pm
sirknz

Does Labour’s rise in the polls just prove how misogynistic Labour voters are?
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January 31, 2023 11:31am
ClanMcleod

This blog post is specific to the UK. We can be pretty sure the exact same information applies here in New Zealand.
The Ministry of Truth is no longer an entity in a novel by George Orwell, it is a real thing.

One of the key elements of an evidence-based approach is you’ll obtain the truth in the end. Many of the supported policy interventions, with the benefit of hindsight, now seem absurd. However, how many have been harmed in the battle to obtain the truth?

The government’s experts and advisors claimed certainty when it didn’t exist; creating policies overnight, it retrospectively used poor-quality evidence to justify the actions; it over-relied on modellers, opinions and poor science – in doing so, it had to defend itself with covert surveillance operations.

As in NZ, all dissenting voice were shut down or smeared. It is an unprecedented attack on democracy, here and everywhere else.

Disturbing doesn’t begin to describe it.

https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/the-ministry-of-truth?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1029183&post_id=99770275&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
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January 31, 2023 11:35am
- mawm
  
  ALL of the policy interventions were predictably of no benefit, some were even known beforehand not to be effective such as masking. That is why they were not included in the major countries’ pandemic plans.
  
  I was listening to Dr Mike Yeadon being interviewed (interjected?) recently by Alex Jones (I know!). When Yeadon first popped up I thought he was a little bit nutty but now it seems as if he was 100% correct. His predictions for where this all is going is scary.
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:11pm
- kevn
  
  @Clan.. Not unlike the other UK Ministry of Truth = (UK Dept of Defence) daily versions of the Ukraine debacle. Test their DOD updates against many other sources, even Hungarian news. Almost polar opposites.
  
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  January 31, 2023 12:28pm
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Up is down, black is white, 2+2=5.
    
    That Orwell fella should have been a fortune teller.
    
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    January 31, 2023 3:11pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Poet, and didn’t know it
      
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      January 31, 2023 4:16pm
ClanMcleod

Squirrels are superheroes. Here’s the proof.

https://tinyurl.com/twvp59fu
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January 31, 2023 11:38am
Maggie Pie

And here’s something else that REALLY p*sses me off…..
you can’t buy any of the hand-made English umbrellas in Auckland.

I’ve bought 4 bits of Chinese crap from the supermarkets in the last few weeks and every one has blown inside-f-ing-out!
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January 31, 2023 11:51am
- Ghost
  
  Maybe you are just too full of wind for them? Try cutting back on the Indian food.
  
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  January 31, 2023 11:54am
  - Maggie Pie
    
    😀
    
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    January 31, 2023 12:41pm
- Inandout
  
  OMG Maggie, you are so right. Even $200 Blunt brollies are made in China.
  
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  January 31, 2023 1:36pm
  - Maggie Pie
    
    Well that’s right. No one minds buying quality!
    Last time my partner was in the UK he bought himself a fabulous FOX with a maple knob.
    That was nearly 4 years ago. Refuses to let me use it.
    
    4 3
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    January 31, 2023 1:58pm
    - Colville
      
      have you heard of this thing called the internet?
      You can shop on it, its not JUST for porn!
      
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      January 31, 2023 3:04pm
      - Maggie Pie
        
        Yes it’s amazing isn’t it 😛
        
        My partner was saying when he was growing up, it was hard to come by.
        
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        January 31, 2023 4:20pm
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        Yes, it is, well that’s what a friend told me
        
        4 1
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        January 31, 2023 4:20pm
      - Ghost
        
        You just blew Maggie’s mind, she was still renting her porn on dvd
        
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        January 31, 2023 4:26pm
- Mike
  
  I feel sorry for you being unable to order a new umbrella, or three, from the UK. Do the firms there refuse to ship to your suburb?
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:21pm
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    You really are an annoying little shit Mike.
    Why??
    
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    January 31, 2023 4:19pm
    - Maggie Pie
      
      Best just leave him be Steve.
      I not even sure he’s aware his posts make him sound mentally ill 🙁
      
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      January 31, 2023 4:25pm
- ClanMcleod
  
  Everything is made in China, but the best thing you can do when it comes to umbrellas is buy one from a golf shop. They are generally pretty good quality. You pay a bit more for them but they are better than most of the crap out there.
  
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  January 31, 2023 3:14pm
  - Maggie Pie
    
    Not allowed.
    Had a big stripped one once that the ANZ gave me for Xmas.
    Went to put it in the back of my partner’s Bentley one night and poked a hole in the leather on the door 🙁
    
    Insurance paid for the whole thing to be replaced thank God.
    
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    January 31, 2023 3:33pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  “Climate Change”
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:17pm
Surely Knott

The Disinformation project says on its website that it ” is an independent research group” studying misinformation…

It is not a charity, a society , has no details of it’s funding, and no annual report , no govt or logos showing who it is associated with. It consists of 3 people. They act as regular media spokespeople and are politically partisan.

But if you look back at the dis-info projects old research reports it says ” Our project is part of the
Aotearoa New Zealand National Centre of Research Excellence for Complexity, Te
Pūnaha Matatini.”

Wikipedia says Te Puna is “Funded by the New Zealand Government,” “The leadership of Te Pūnaha Matatini investigators has supported the setting up of independent research programmes, including Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa and The Disinformation Project.”

“The New Zealand Government developed the Centres of Research Excellence (CoREs) in 2001 …

Te Puna lacks transparency also. It is not obvious on Te Puna’s page that it is funded by the govt. The logos across the bottom of the page are Universities. And it says it’s hosted by Auckland Uni. You have to drag out their annual report and read to the back to find who funds them which is the Tertiary Education Commission (a crown agency) for $2 Million. It is also not mentioned by the media when they are used as spokespeople, that they are govt funded researchers.

These Quango’s blur the lines. Should the Disinfo Group be subject to LGOIMA. Are they legally required to have a govt logo if they are funded by the govt. Are they legally required to have a Te Puna logo as that is the entity who they are employed by. Is it misleading to say they are independent.

Should all spokespeople from Disinfo Group (eg Kate Hannah) and Te Puna (Siouxie Wiles, Shaun Hendy, Michael Plank etc) be described clearly in the media as govt funded researchers and spokespeople instead of pretending to be independent university academics.

If the Dis Info Project hide the fact they are govt funded researchers how can they be held to account including via lgoima. Aren’t they just a govt deparment.

Are our universities and academics compromised.
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January 31, 2023 1:08pm
- Mike
  
  Are our universities and academics compromised.
  
  No.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:22pm
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Mike – cheers for the definitive answer…….//
    
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    January 31, 2023 3:26pm
- krazykiwi
  
  Academia is a dumpster fire fueled by reality adjacent liberal academics. At one time STEM subjected were safe, but now they too are falling under the spell of woke, and the self-loathing.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:25pm
- cmm
  
  The liars that told you 80,000 grannies would die.
  The liars that told you sea level rise would be knee deep by now.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:25pm
- Swifty
  
  I wouldn’t necessarily refer to them as ‘government-funded’, I think it better to describe them as ‘taxpayer-funded at the direction of the NZ Labour Party’.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:35pm
  - ClanMcleod
    
    Swifty – start digging deeper. Some of the funding sources will horrify you. Auckland University has had money from the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Horrific sources of money. The Wellcome Trust has ties back to those pushers of eugenics.
    
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    January 31, 2023 3:27pm
- I remember when
  
  “The leadership of Te Punaha Matatini investigators has supported the setting up of independent research programmes, including Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa and The Disinformation Project.”
  
  Perhaps they will become more successful as they gain more experience.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:37pm
- Taieri
  
  “The leadership of Te Pūnaha Matatini investigators has supported the setting up of independent research programmes
  ————
  
  Independent of what?
  There’s no such thing as an “independent” scientist , as anyone drawing a salary is dependent on its source.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:37pm
- ClanMcleod
  
  Surely Knott – 100% yes. These propaganda organisations hide under the skirts of university respectability. The universities permit it because they get a financial benefit from it.
  
  https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2110/S00081/why-is-sean-hendys-modelling-group-getting-6m-for-advice-treasury-is-paying-30k-for-elsewhere.htm
  
  Otago University has a little organisation within their ranks called “The Infection Group” – they operate with all the Otago logos etc making it look like they are another branch of the university.
  Here’s their front page.
  
  https://www.otago.ac.nz/infection-group/funding/
  
  Looks legit, then look who funds them. GAVI and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Gates basically owns GAVI)
  
  When I contacted Otago University and asked them if they were funded by the Gates foundation they denied it point blank. It turns out The Infection Group is a separate legal entity but operates under cover of the university front. So the university can deny being funded by Gates. No doubt the receive “rent” or some other payment from The Infection Group that keeps the wheels greased.
  
  How transparent……//
  
  Just one other example of the extent of the graft going on. There is an impressive looking “academic” website called “The Conversation”.
  
  The Conversation – academic rigour, journalistic flair
  
  https://theconversation.com/nz
  
  Looks great from the front end. Funded by?
  
  https://theconversation.com/us/partners/the-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation
  
  Oh my word, who could have guessed???
  
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  January 31, 2023 3:25pm
kevn

@SK… Sounds like a home for mis/disinformation hosting the worst of them.
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January 31, 2023 1:26pm
Maggie Pie

Wayne Brown leads ’40-Love’…..

and ready to serve for the match.
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January 31, 2023 1:39pm
Stu2

Looking from afar Wayne Brown looks politically inept. He should have been able to redirect the Friday press conference to the event, not what he did or didn’t do.

I’m curious – how is he working with the power blocks on council? Is he going to get things done or become isolated?
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January 31, 2023 1:42pm
- I remember when
  
  “Looking from afar Wayne Brown looks politically inept.”
  Perhaps that’s why a lot of people preferred him.
  Maybe, hoping that something will be achieved trumps political.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:26pm
- Mike
  
  Wayne Brown ran on a ‘Fix Auckland’ ticket. There are 20 councillors with listed affiliations as:
  Labour Party: 5
  Independent: 3
  Putting People First: 2
  Communities and Residents: 2
  A Positive Voice for the Shore: 1
  For the Shore: 1
  WestWards: 1
  Auckland Independents: 1
  City Vision: 1
  Manuerewa-Papakura Action: 1
  Team Franklin: 1
  no affiliation: 1
  A mayor has very little ability to get anything done without backing from a comfortable majority of councillors. Perhaps we could hear a comment from someone who knows a bit about how these various councillors’ ideas for their ‘super’ city align with the mayor’s priorities.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:35pm
- virtualmark
  
  It’s the dilemma of running on a platform that’s basically “I’m not a politician, I’m a guy that will get things done”.
  
  That might be true. But sometimes a Mayor (or MP, or PM etc) needs to act like a politician – where they need to be seen, need to present that they’re calmly in control (even if in reality they’re not), need to be a visible front-man/woman.
  
  In those moments over-stressing “I’m not a politician”, or even worse publicly demonstrating that you don’t have any political instincts or talent, is a bad thing.
  
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  January 31, 2023 3:29pm
- ClanMcleod
  
  I prefer “looks inept” to looks “kind and caring and leading with empathy.” We know how the smiles and hugs worked out. I’ll be more than happy to give Wayne Brown at least a year.
  
  He inherited a basket case. It will be the same for National come election time if they win it.
  
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  January 31, 2023 3:33pm
  - MCōs
    
    Why should he be given a year to figure things out?
    There’s more to running a city than chopping jobs and salaries as he’s finding out.
    
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    January 31, 2023 9:38pm
Surely Knott

Biden announces covid will end May 11.

Why May 11??! Who knows follow the science.

When will the pandemic laws in NZ be renounced. Is May 11 the science for us too or is their different science.
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January 31, 2023 1:49pm
- krazykiwi
  
  The science is whatever the totalitarian de jour declares it to be. Most people, possessing neutral-selected critical thinking gearboxes are just fine with this.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:27pm
- kevn
  
  @SK… We will need koha science to get it over the line.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:32pm
- virtualmark
  
  No he didn’t. He said that the Covid 19 **Public Health Emergency** is ending on 11 May.
  
  Basically that removes special powers from the likes of the FDA and CDC, and it means that Covid vaccines will no longer be funded by the Federal government. It’s basically saying “Covid is just part of the general medical environment now, it’s nothing special.”
  
  To be honest it’s a pretty boring announcement. But yes, it’s much easier to build up a rage the way that you said it.
  
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  January 31, 2023 3:25pm
Swifty

Average house price in Christchurch up 50% in just three years:

https://i.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/131106799/christchurchs-average-home-value-up-nearly-50-in-three-years

I just don’t know why Labour MPs aren’t hanging their heads in shame.
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January 31, 2023 2:11pm
Maggie Pie

Had to larf…

Political reporter Jason Walls was speaking with that pair of wokestas on ZB noon.

They asked him who his ‘wildcard-selection’ would be to pick up the Education Portfolio in Chippy’s cabinet reshuffle.

When Jase said…. “Anahila Kanongatta Suisuiki” the older one of the two clowns believed him!! 😀
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January 31, 2023 2:11pm
I remember when

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is sometimes closed because of the dangers caused by strong winds.
Now the media is used to advise that such a closure may occur.
I was just wondering what is the advantage of having advice like this?
How much superior is it compared with looking at the weather and realising it is a possibility.
Not ‘scary’ enough!
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January 31, 2023 2:17pm
- 70andstilllearning
  
  Obviously Northland CDEM don’t consider MetService Red alerts ‘scary’ enough.
  The final paragraph’s interesting
  
  “We don’t know for certain that we will need to make use of these emergency powers but given the potential for the main impact of this event to happen overnight, we’ve done it now as a precautionary step so we have them available if they’re needed.”
  
  Wonder if they’re worried that unlike WB some important people might not be around during the night – when they are needed formalise it?
  
  https://www.facebook.com/civildefencenorthland/videos/state-of-emergency-declared-for-northland-as-a-precautionary-stepa-state-of-emer/836440800753998/
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:56pm
  - Alan Wilkinson
    
    Fatuous and pathetic politicking. Since yesterday morning we have had just 2cm of rain by my gauge. We were predicted to get about 8. And a bit of gusty wind.
    
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    January 31, 2023 6:22pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    So, with all this rain up North, what’s happening in Kaeo? Used to be that a light mist caused the place to flood. Could it be that properly designed & built infrastructure does the trick?
    
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    January 31, 2023 7:25pm
- NothingLeft
  
  Closing the bridge to cars and heavy SUVs is silly, they are low enough that side barriers largely shelter them from wind. Tall light vehicles like unloaded delivery trucks, white vans, double decker buses, road maggots, caravans, perhaps motorbikes etc are the problem. Just close it to risky vehicles.
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:20pm
I remember when

If you are standing on the Motorway, ankle deep in water, about to abandon your car – wouldn’t you want to know a ‘State of Emergency’ has been declared.
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January 31, 2023 2:22pm
- Ghost
  
  If you are standing ankle deep in water at an Elton John concert surely you’d have the brains to know the concert won’t go ahead.
  
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  January 31, 2023 2:30pm
- Stu2
  
  What would a state of emergency have resulted in, with such widespread flooding?
  
  I assume all available emergency services would have been active by then. Declaring an emergency might have given access to services from further afield. But probably not quickly.
  
  Anyone know?
  
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  January 31, 2023 3:07pm
- Prince
  
  I don’t think that would be important to me at that time.
  
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  January 31, 2023 6:41pm
cmm

It’s funny to see every political commentator and his dog offering advice to Chippy in opinion pieces.

They wouldn’t have dared to do that with Cindy for fear of being accused of mansplaining.
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January 31, 2023 2:23pm
Maggie Pie

Anyone else like me who thinks…. if ‘milkey’ can’t scratch with the big cats, he should stay out of the litter box?
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January 31, 2023 3:03pm
- kevn
  
  @Maggie… milkey should stay IN the litter box.
  
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  January 31, 2023 5:39pm
mogg

Global warming / climate change is getting worse. Children are suffering climate change induced stress.
There is now a massive new post alongside the Hutt River, painted black and red showing record flood levels. Only one little problem the highest recorded flood level was in 1859 then 1898, 1939 and a more recent 2005.
What’s more the 1859 flood beat the 2005 flood by a big margin, I estimated it to be about 650 mm.
The lying bastards.
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January 31, 2023 3:16pm
- rangitoto
  
  I recall the 1976 floods were quite big.
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:19pm
  - Swifty
    
    In 1976, we lived alongside Wellington’s Tyers Stream, running down from Mt Kau Kau reserve – it burst it’s banks and was a good metre up the sides of the house.
    
    She was a biggie alright.
    
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    January 31, 2023 4:40pm
    - Prince
      
      Yes, we lost a bank down the side of our house, and our bus home to Ngaio was ploughing through water on the Hutt Road.
      Funny, I don’t recall Mayor Fowler being front and centre, a ‘State of Emergency’, Muldoon donning the gumboots, press conferences etc etc.
      I guess we were more resilient and able to look after ourselves back then. Happier days.
      
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      January 31, 2023 6:37pm
  - mogg
    
    Indicated on the post but still lower that those mentioned above.
    
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    January 31, 2023 5:50pm
- Mike
  
  I’d have to check re 1939, but the 19th century floods predated any river control works.
  
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  January 31, 2023 7:18pm
Swifty

Initial estimates of the cost of the flooding put at around half a billion dollars:

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/483345/north-island-floods-may-cost-economy-about-466-million-economist-says

Funny, that’s about the same ANNUAL cost the NZ Labour Party imposed on businesses for adding an extra public holiday.

“It’s on me” said Ardern.
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January 31, 2023 3:22pm
krazykiwi

How to tell when you are over the target:

“This is not the only reason that we express our concern around this event. The toxic, and often violent, rhetoric touted by Peterson—whose quasi-academic ideas are misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and racist has led to an increased environment of hate.
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January 31, 2023 3:37pm
Hugh Jarse

Anyone else out there who thinks Browns characterisation of the media as “drongo’s” is wrong ?. I thought it was quite restrained given it was a personal text.
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January 31, 2023 3:44pm
slightlyrighty

Nanaia remains minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Maori Caucus has spoken.
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January 31, 2023 3:48pm
- Colville
  
  But lost Local Government…. that messy 3 waters thing!
  
  ..that is a big lump hiding under the carpet !!
  
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  January 31, 2023 5:29pm
  - Ghost
    
    I remember before Xmas there was talk that Ardern would take it off her after Xmas because she had done all the hard work and just leave her with foreign affairs.
    
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    January 31, 2023 5:40pm
Doc Holliday

Dear climate deniers,
Thanks for the laughs about atmospheric physics.

CO2: Stefan-Boltzmann
H2O: Clausius-Clapeyron
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January 31, 2023 3:49pm
- All_on_Red
  
  Thanks for the laughs about your flying skills.
  That Sea Level rise is tricky huh.
  (this never gets old)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idMa4a6eA9M
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:38pm
- Alan Wilkinson
  
  Anyone who uses the term “climate denier” is self-identifying as an idiot.
  
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  January 31, 2023 6:15pm
Maggie Pie

Chippie tells waiting media… “He rates Michael Woods”

So did Hugh Wrights once upon a time..

LOL!!
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January 31, 2023 4:00pm
- slightlyrighty
  
  Michael Woods as Minister for Auckland. Haven’t they suffered enough?
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:16pm
  - Ghost
    
    Minister for Auckland? Is there a minister for any other towns or cities.
    
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    January 31, 2023 4:27pm
    - Bob
      
      Michael only knows auckland, and there are no other portfolio’s that he would have been able to cope with.
      AS Assistant Min Finance, he and Robertson combined, will nearly equal a half competent Min of Finance
      
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      January 31, 2023 4:41pm
      - NeverMindTheBollocks
        
        You got that wrong, Bob. It’s multiplication, not addition.
        
        1/4 * 1/4 = 1/16
        
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        January 31, 2023 7:33pm
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    His name is Michael WOOD. And he’s an egotistical twit.
    
    6 1
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    January 31, 2023 5:01pm
- Suze Wainwright
  
  I think aotearoa’s voters will initially be happy with this fresh, new team – for now anyway.
  
  It will be interesting to see if they can enable the fresh, new concept of ‘Delivery’ within the next few months…
  
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  January 31, 2023 4:29pm
  - Swifty
    
    They’ll need to start by looking up the meaning of the word.
    
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    January 31, 2023 4:46pm
    - NeverMindTheBollocks
      
      Not needed. Just edit Wikipedia.
      
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      January 31, 2023 7:34pm
Swifty

If Hipkins has elevated into Cabinet some new people because of their ‘enormous talent’ then what does that say about Phil Twyford?

He’s been previously described as ‘highly talented’ and ’eminently suited as Housing and Transport Minister’.

What has happened to change this? Has Twyford revealed himself to be incompetent and full of hot air or was Ardern’s judgement about him totally wrong a few years ago, meaning Ardern was incompetent, and full of hot air, in putting him into the positions he held?

It has to be one or the other!
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January 31, 2023 4:30pm
- Mike
  
  Your characterization of course implies that no one demoted from the cabinet ever deserved promotion in the first place. I’m sure I don’t need to list examples for you to concede that point.
  
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  January 31, 2023 7:23pm
Swifty

Look at the language used…..

“As a former school principal and education expert new education minister is uniquely placed to address the post-Covid challenges our education system has faced and get our kids back in the classroom and learning,” Hipkins said.”

‘uniquely placed to address….’

Not ‘will solve’.

Not ‘will be accountable for’.

Not ‘will turnaround by 2026’.

Not ‘will be measured by’.

No, just ‘uniquely placed to address.’

Piss weak.
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January 31, 2023 4:45pm
- Prince
  
  ‘Get our kids back in the classroom’. And the first action is…close Auckland classrooms for a week.
  You can bet the truancy statistics will be ‘managed’ henceforth.
  
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  January 31, 2023 6:28pm
greybeard

“Minister for Auckland”.
Jesus wept.
If Efeso Collins had won the mayoralty this would never have happened !
This is nothing more than a pathetic reaction to the fact that Wayne Brown was elected as mayor.
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January 31, 2023 5:40pm
- Ghost
  
  Who is the new minister for gangs?
  
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  January 31, 2023 6:26pm
- Maggie Pie
  
  Yep…and wifey is a City Coucillor! Pillow talk much!!
  
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  January 31, 2023 6:27pm
  - Nickc2
    
    Corruption for the whole world to see!
    So fuckin blatant. The new PM may have a penis, but nothing’s changed eh?
    Wayne Brown, keep your back to the wall. Labour can’t accept the fact that they lost the Mayoralty.
    Hipkins has shown his true colours. He’s a vindictive bastard.
    
    13 1
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    January 31, 2023 6:42pm
    - Maggie Pie
      
      Exaclty right Nicky!
      
      It nothing more than a Vascularized-Composite-Tissue-Allotransplantation.
      
      https://twitter.com/StuMorrisonNZ/status/1620302068182568962
      
      😎
      
      4 1
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      January 31, 2023 7:54pm
- kevn
  
  @grey…. Poor Akld gets wood for brains as well as the flooding.
  
  8 1
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  January 31, 2023 6:58pm
Ghost

Adverse Events Following the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine (Pfizer-BioNtech) in Aotearoa New Zealand

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4329970
5 1
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January 31, 2023 6:25pm
- kevn
  
  @Ghost… Only 12 months out of date and a bit white washy.
  
  4 1
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  January 31, 2023 6:57pm
Ghost

The shaming images that show where our iPhones, laptops and Tesla cars REALLY come from: The truth about the Congolese mines where kids are paid $2-a-day to dig for cobalt

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11668015/Devastating-photos-cobalt-mines-Democratic-Republic-Congo-power-Apple-Tesla-more.html
7 2
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January 31, 2023 6:45pm
- info@cruzpro.com
  
  Hi big G,
  
  When I zoom into the photo you link to I have a really hard time seeing any kids.
  
  Can’t fault you about being concerned about child labour however – keep it up!
  
  3 2
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  January 31, 2023 6:53pm
  - Ghost
    
    Sounds like you need glasses
    
    5 1
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    January 31, 2023 7:06pm
    - Maggie Pie
      
      What I don’t see is any Portaloos.
      
      Where on earth would they relieve themselves or even wash their hands?
      
      6 3
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      January 31, 2023 7:10pm
    - info@cruzpro.com
      
      My eyesight is pretty good for a 75 year old.
      
      Actually the people in the photo you linked to appear to be adults, not kids.
      
      I don’t like kids laboring but your photo does not seem to show kids laboring.
      
      0 5
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      January 31, 2023 8:07pm
      - Ghost
        
        Obviously not good enough if you can’t see there are several photos and a video of the children.
        
        4 0
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        January 31, 2023 8:11pm
  - kevn
    
    @info… You need to scroll down the article, there are multi children pics and adults.
    A shameful mining process.
    
    4 0
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    January 31, 2023 8:37pm
Maggie Pie

Tings tghat make you go hmmm….

Eveyone knows Naniaia hates flying….so whhat point in making er Foreign Minister?
Funny hearing HDPA suggest that she may be standing down before the nezt election.

Maybe to take up the role as of CEO of ‘3-Waters’?
9 1
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January 31, 2023 7:39pm
Ghost

Hmmmm

https://www.correcttheinternet.com/
3 0
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January 31, 2023 7:54pm
Ghost

Hmmm, and yet with these credentials you still thought a concert would go ahead. Weird

I understand rainfall, and stormwater runoff. With a masters degree in hydrology, I started my professional career doing flood modelling. Living in Malaysia I experienced monsoonal rains. The warmer the temperature, the higher the rainfall intensities and the greater the amount of flash flooding.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/131114283/a-disaster-experts-experience-of-a-disastrous-friday-night-in-auckland
2 0
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January 31, 2023 10:19pm
- Ghost
  
  I wonder where there is w footpath so high above the road that when you step off you end up so deep in water
  
  At 4.50pm near Commercial Bay, in torrential rain, a man walking towards me slipped on the flooded footpath and fell heavily onto his back.
  
  Stepping off the footpath to help I went up to my thighs in water. Just like Malaysia I thought.
  
  1 0
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  January 31, 2023 10:25pm

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