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November 13, 2024 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 13 November 2024

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NeverMindTheBollocks

Two child abuse scandals.

Justin Welby resigns. Una Jagose not.
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November 13, 2024 8:02am
- Ian Boag
  
  It’s all pretty awful. I bet Luxon wonders why he is the person in the chair here when it has been going on forever and he has been PM for a whole year (and an MP for a whole four years). At the very least it might have been nice to add Ardern, English (?), Key, Clark and even Bolger to the list of those whose namea are on the apology.
  
  But the one that bothers me is Una Jagose. She is the head of Crown Law. She is not a politician. As I understand it, Crown Law is the government’s own law firm. They act for the government. In these cases Crown Law was the “defense” counsel and therefore used every aspect of the law to put the case for the people they act for. Personally I find it totally repugnant that something like the statute of limitations is a get-out-of-jail card for the stuff that has been going on here. I understand it has been successfully used in some cases. But it’s the law and perfectly legal for it to be used in advocating a case. And a judge cannot ignore it.
  
  Ms Jagose and her team are just doing their job. Like any other “defense” counsel. I am surprised that she apologised.
  
  AFAIK her personal feelings about the ethics of the case are irrelevant. I can’t remember ever reading about a counsel coming out after winning a case and telling the world his/her (acquitted) client should morally have gone down.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:50am
  - G the giant from Dunedin
    
    The one that bothers me is once again Hipkins, apologising for all Labour parties. He had nothing to bloody do with it, he should have done something last year, Labour had the findings since early 2021
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:49am
- peterwn
  
  Arguably Una Jagose was operating within her brief, that is to provide defence when government agencies are under attack. This is part and parcel of an adversarial system of justice. Having said that, things are systemically wrong with the way the State’s legal entities handle their work. The Justice Ministry recently canvassed views on raising the barrier on jury trials to ease court congestion and reduce the aggregate workload of jurors and potential jurors. In my opinion significant improvements could be made if Crown Law and Prosecutors changed their attitudes on how cases are handled. It is not a matter of collecting scalps, it is all about delivering an impartial, economic and effective justice system to society.
  Personally I am not at all sure whether the likes of families of victims should be paid large amounts of compensation, but those forced to rack up significant expenditure in the face of Crown Law’s stonewalling should be compensated for this. Parallels can be drawn to the Post Office scandal in the UK. Such a situation must never be allowed to occur in the future and NZ should also ensure that its state institutions are properly regulated and controlled to facilitate this. It should also be recognised that the processes themselves have a serious effect on those potentially accused of crime and it seems in some cases that the Police and prosecutors deliberately abuse their power to gaslight and ‘punish’ those not guilty of any relevant crime. The recent Paul Burns case springs to mind (the guy with the placard comparing abortion with slavery). It was only when a high power lawyer got involved pro-bono that the Police decided to chicken out rather than face a humiliating and painful session in Court.
  I think the Solicitor General could well be pressured to resign in the near future. Also any chance of judicial office in the future (former Solicitors General are often offered judicial appointments) is probably down the gurgler.
  As for the former Archbishop of Canterbury (Anglican) he follows in the footsteps of the previous Pope who similarly did not do what he should have to deal with issues in the Roman Catholic Church. Similar to an Anglican Bishop in northern New South Wales who was forced to resign some years ago for not dealing with abuse properly. Indeed members of the Church were so outraged at the circumstances that the ex Bishop was subsequently defrocked (ie un-ordained). Such a fate could possibly await Justin Welby too.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:19am
- G the giant from Dunedin
  
  Not all the loud mouth sneering at government you have seen in media over this issue have been the Māori people effected, and as usual, they are asking for money, even though money will come next year. Also many sound like they had been paid money and blown it but blame the government for them not getting support not to waste the money, I am actually over this issue, which I was behind originally. Pay them next year and leave them to rot.
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:46am
  - Paulus
    
    I am puzzled as to the Abuse in Care Royal Commission’s conclusion we saw yesterday, and current position, and have given it considerable thought from what we would call a Macro position.
    Firstly am please towards a conclusion, in the Prime Miniter of New Zealand giving a full and heartfelt apology for all of the previous Governments non commitments to do anything about it.
    In fact running away from it.
    What we are hearing now from those supporting these tragically displaced persons at some time in their lives is of course money.
    I understand that many have been financially compensated but as usual now want more.
    They have appointed Lawyers to handle their specific compensation – who is paying these Lawers – taxpayer probably ?
    One said on Radio that she expected to be going for some years yet.
    Whilst I am sad that such occurred as far back as 30 years, how did these people come to be in care, and the subject of this long and fruitful enquiry ?
    They received treatment in today’s terms as torture, but was considered apparent and appropriate medical treatment at the time.
    It has been said that 85% of these people are Maori which in itself is more than damning.
    It appears that from recent media interviews some have been shunned even by their own – Iwi and Whanau – why ?
    Surely it should be asked, in the terms I am writing, from a broad perspective, this but cannot find more, only what happened.
    Who decided, and by what critera, were these people identified as in need of such differing terms of care or treatment ?
    We do not appear to have asked more than a few at the Commission, being people who made some of the decisions affecting many lives, why ?
    To be at this part of the conclusion is itself some part of fruition of the tragedy.
    And this has taken many years to reach this point.
    I am deeply saddened the more I hear and read, and as a very elderly New Zealander. feel like so many things in recent years, truly sorry and saddened that such was allowed to occur in my lifetime, and be told so little about it until this Commission.
    
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    November 13, 2024 2:05pm
    - Ian Boag
      
      considered apparent and appropriate medical treatment at the time.
      
      Not sure when sexual abuse was last considered appropriate ….
      
      There did seem to be some “punishment” aspect to ECT.
      
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      November 13, 2024 2:26pm
  - Burtland
    
    250,000 people, $15k each – $3.75B
    
    $170M on just the report
    
    and no one prosecuted ?
    
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    November 13, 2024 2:18pm
    - KH
      
      There is a big hole in this report despite $170 million spent.
      It’s said people were traumatized on leaving state care. It’s not mentioned they were already traumatised when entering.
      Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend nothing happened to them before the state needed to step in.
      Best keep that quiet.
      
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      November 13, 2024 2:45pm
    - Burtland
      
      another of Cindy’s fiscal cliffs …
      
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      November 13, 2024 3:04pm
  - OlderChas
    
    Yes, G, I saw that guy too. Almost sounded like he was seeking extra compensation because the Government did nothing to stop him blowing all his previous compensation! (I wonder what he blew it on?)
    
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    November 14, 2024 8:05am
Scott

One of the benefits of Kamala losing is that we have been spared an Obama 4th term. It is clear that Joe Biden even in 2020 was not up with the play and has got even worse since. So whose been running the show? The most likely candidate is Obama who stayed in Washington and has regular meetings with high level people.

David Samuels talks to historian David Garrow :
“Why is he living in the center of Washington, D.C., then?
Well, how much time is he spending there as opposed to Martha’s Vineyard? I have no idea.

Between July Fourth and Labor Day, sure. The rest of the year, he lives in a large brick mansion in Kalorama, Washington DC. Doesn’t it strike you as weird that he’s an ex-president, he’s comparatively young, and he’s living in the center of Washington, D.C.? The original excuse was that Sasha had to finish school. Then you could say, “Well, the opposition to Trump needs a figure to rally around.” But now Sasha has graduated from USC, Trump is gone, Joe Biden was elected present, but he’s still there.

Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I mean, I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama’s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in.

I have been puzzled at the Biden administration’s continuing attachment to the Iran deal.

The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.

Rob Malley is just one person. Brett McGurk. Dan Shapiro in Israel. Lisa Monaco in Justice. Susan Rice running domestic policy. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington.

Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government, and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan communications. ”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/david-garrow-interview-obama

Say what you will about Trump. At least he will be the actual president. 😎
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November 13, 2024 8:02am
- imalwaysright
  
  Its a coup.
  It began with the rigging of the 2020 election and the installation of Resident Biden.
  They needed Harris to take over as Resident because Sleepy is technically dead.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:59am
Swifty

Surely this isn’t mis or disinformation from Massey wallahs is it?

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533616/rocket-lab-us-headquarters-threatens-nz-academic-with-defamation-action

What is the Disinformation Project’s view on this?

Hahahahahah!
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November 13, 2024 8:04am
Dougal10

If you don’t speak/understand maori or nz pidgin you couldn’t gain excellence in this years level 1 ncea english exam.
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November 13, 2024 8:05am
- AitchW
  
  To be fair I vaguely remember one or two questions about the meaning of common Maori words in the 1978 school C English exam.
  
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  November 13, 2024 5:40pm
Yvette

Pharmac to disestablish its Māori advisory group
… Te Rōpū was formed in September 2021. Its eight members are from around New Zealand, representing a variety of health professions, including doctors, pharmacists, researchers, and directors.

Members were nominated by Māori Health Professional Bodies (MHPB) Te Ohu Rata o Aotearoa (Māori medical professionals), Ngā Kaitiaki o te Puna Rongoa (Māori Pharmacists Association), Te Rūnanga o Aotearoa – Tōpūtanga Tāpuhi Kaitiakitanga o Aotearoa (Māori Nurses), Ngā Pou Mana Tangata Whenua Allied Health, together with the two Whānau Ora commissioning agencies.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533562/pharmac-to-disestablish-its-maori-advisory-group

Is the importance of this news item, not what is going, but what is left behind?
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November 13, 2024 8:06am
- ISeeRed
  
  WTF are these entities? More koharuption.
  
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  November 13, 2024 3:46pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    “koharuption”
    
    Very good.
    
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    November 13, 2024 8:09pm
pdm

How come the Auckland Harbour Bridge is being closed to accommodate the wishes of the Hikoi heading towards Parliament. These people apparently travel by that Colonial invention The Mini Bus mostly.

They must be very `Special People”!!!

Other more worthy groups have apparently applied for closures, often at weekends, and been declined.

I cannot but hope it pisses down with rain and temperatures are in the very low teens as they wander across.
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November 13, 2024 8:08am
- John Loveridge
  
  Maori activists are like a bunch of spoiled children who have never been told NO. Give them an inch and they take a mile every time, because everybody is scared of upsetting the little preciouses. Well, bugger them. I’m with Seymour.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:11am
- Kiwiguy
  
  You want temps in the low teens? Why so charitable?
  I’m thinking low single digits, please.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:17am
  - imalwaysright
    
    Kelvin
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:04am
- Cassandra
  
  Special People getting Special Treatment. Again.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:26am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  It is done for the TV cameras and news ravers.
  Other groups get declined because they can’t brand the Bridge Authority and Waka Kotahi as racist.
  No rain today. Easterly breeze, so no cold southwesterly.
  These hikoi marchers must be using their annual leave entitlements for time off work.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:32am
  - In Vino Veritas
    
    Time off work? Seriously Steve?
    
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    November 13, 2024 8:50am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Satire. I purposely did not put // at the end.
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:30am
    - JackRabbit
      
      I’m in favour that “Job Seekers” should turn up for 40 hours a week, at a job training / seeking facility, except for time where they have scheduled job interviews.
      
      If they are a no show, they don’t get paid.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:18am
      - slijmbal
        
        On the bright side will be easy to get a WINZ appointment today ……
        
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        November 13, 2024 1:23pm
      - Ghost
        
        Or perhaps they have jobs. The organiser of the protest does
        
        https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/06/17/making-mokopuna-decisions.html
        
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        November 13, 2024 4:53pm
    - kowtow
      
      Looks like an awful lot are taking time off school .
      
      How responsible is that of the parents.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:56am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Got that wrong. It is raining. Drizzle coming up Hellyer’s Creek.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:04am
  - pdm
    
    Steve I heard a NewstalkZB personess at 7.30am or 8am saying she was thrilled (I am sure that was her word) to be there and taking part in the crossing.
    
    NewstalkZB have some work to do with their Newsroom staff.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:12am
    - lifesgood
      
      Ugggh! have you ever heard Tim Roxbourgh and Tim Whatever, two lefty idiots if ever I’ve heard. I suppose you can at least say Newstalk is balanced. Hurrah for Hosking and Du Plessis-Allen.
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:53am
      - Countrygirl
        
        Tim Beveridge is way better than Roman Travers.
        
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        November 13, 2024 12:44pm
      - leoj
        
        Except Tim B suffers from TDS
        
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        November 13, 2024 10:10pm
    - Inandout
      
      pdm, it was an embedded Herald reporter who was amongst the bus tour people at a park near the bridge.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:26am
      - pdm
        
        IAO – thanks.
        
        lg – Tim Roxborgh I agree if the other Tim you mean is Tim Beveridge I think he leans at least into the center if not slightly to the right. He is no rabid lefty like (Tim no U in) Roxborgh.
        
        Speaking of NewstalkZB Tim’s – has Tim Dower retired?
        
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        November 13, 2024 11:52am
    - Miritu
      
      Why do you support Newstalk ZB, another legacy media outlet (although not as bad as the others)? There are plenty of alternative and superior news sources to better inform you
      
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      November 13, 2024 12:10pm
      - Michael Sommerville
        
        Please list them.
        
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        November 13, 2024 1:05pm
      - pdm
        
        Old habit but, even so Mike Hosking and HDPA are very good and work nicely with my listening times.
        
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        November 13, 2024 4:47pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Lots of kids and teenagers around, school must have finished early this year.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:12am
    - RoboRob
      
      Exams are on so its seniors on exam leave. Uni exams done.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:14am
  - john1234
    
    Who’s tuning in to TVNZ News this evening to get Te Aniwa “Maori Fan-Girl” Hurihanganui’s breathless coverage of all the Maori wonderfulness?
    I will fast-forward the whole thing to the sport and weather.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:59am
    - graham
      
      Same here john1234 – we record the news but don’t start watching until around 6:20 or later, specifically so that we can skip through items that don’t interest us. And my, there have been a lot of those recently.
      
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      November 13, 2024 12:25pm
      - ISeeRed
        
        TV news? LOL Have you heard of the Inter-net? You’re using it right now!
        
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        November 13, 2024 3:50pm
    - Slim
      
      I find it much more calming to read the news from where i like as opposed to watch an opinion of it i don’t agree on.
      I’ve watched 1news maybe 4 times since the election and cancelled my Herald subscription about 2 months ago.
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:17pm
  - crikey
    
    And how many of the marchers are kids who ought to be at school?
    
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    November 13, 2024 1:06pm
    - OlderChas
      
      As shown in a post above, Naenae School is taking the whole school to the protest. Let’s hope it doesn’t all blow up and some of the pupils get hurt or traumatised.
      
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      November 14, 2024 8:19am
- Swifty
  
  I haven’t bothered finding out the detail – is that right, they’re not physically walking the whole way?
  
  I did remark t myself that they’ve only left Northland a couple of days ago and they’re already in Auckland?
  
  I thought that was bloody quick – even Roman legions didn’t march that fast.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:40am
  - Jethrod
    
    We will probably find they had a grant from the maorl affairs department for expenses//
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:22am
  - kowtow
    
    On the Platform it’s being called the “carkoi”.
    
    Relating to the comment re the closing of the bridge for them , where England goes we go . Two tier policing.Happened during the scamdemic too , with the racially justified roadblocks.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:32am
  - cmm
    
    “even Roman legions didn’t march that fast.”
    
    Well of course not. They were primitive people who didn’t have Maori technology.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:06am
  - pdm
    
    Not even Norman Read [ Mod – fixed name ], Gold medalist for the walk, at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics would get close at his peak.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:07am
    - pdm
      
      Thanks mod – cannot even remember what I put – Neville maybe.
      
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      November 13, 2024 11:53am
  - James Stephenson
    
    Even Craufurd’s Light Division only managed 30 miles per day between Lisbon and arriving late for the Battle of Talavera. Roman legions are agreed to have managed 30km, but then they built a fort at the end of it…
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:25am
    - fightingtemeraire
      
      “Black Bob” founder of the Rifle
      
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      November 13, 2024 11:28am
  - John Loveridge
    
    Roman legions didn’t have Toyota Hiaces.
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:11am
    - Colville
      
      Ford Rangers and Dodge Rams.
      
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      November 13, 2024 2:36pm
- lastmanstanding
  
  Luxon told Plunket he doesnt like any part of the Treaty Principles Bill. So he doesnt like,
  
  1. The Government governing for all citizens.
  2. The Government honouring the Treaty settlements.
  3. The laws applying equally to all citizens.
  
  Luxon is tone deaf and hasnt read the room. He is ignoring the polling. He is New Zealands Kamala Harris.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:58am
  - Grunter
    
    Luxon’s ignorant reply to Plunket is political stupidity. This video will be perfect cannon fodder for Seymour just like the TVNZ netballer interview.
    
    This is exactly what Seymour wanted – the Leftards tripping over themselves showing them up for what they are.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:10am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      It is good to watch Seymour being so calm and on target. He doesn’t lose his rag.
      They try and rile him up but he is not having a bar of it.
      
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      November 13, 2024 11:39am
  - pdm
    
    lastman – Luxon is heading towards being Jacinda Mark II on this matter at least.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:14am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      I agree. IMO he should have refrained from commenting until the end of the select committee process. Now he can’t retreat.
      
      He is seriously misreading the nation on this.
      
      BTW marches and shouting and circuses are no substitute for serious debate.
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:23am
      - Philview
        
        I hate to say it but I have doubts if the mood of the nation cares. The media are fully captured and pump out misinformation. Unless you study politics carefully you would think this is about the oppression of Maori rights rather than a bunch of extreme separatists making a noise.
        
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        November 13, 2024 11:29am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        More like misleading the nation I would say, Benedict.
        
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        November 13, 2024 11:51am
    - cmm
      
      “on this matter at least.”
      
      On what issue has he shown any spine?
      
      He’s as soggy as a Timtam in a mug of tea.
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:35am
      - JackRabbit
        
        Chocolate coated as well.
        
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        November 13, 2024 9:58am
      - thirteenstars
        
        Don’t leave it in so long.
        
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        November 13, 2024 10:17am
      - PurplePen
        
        I much prefer wine biscuits dunked in cold milk.
        
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        November 13, 2024 10:40am
      - sirknz
        
        You should write Verity Johnson’s similes for her, yours are actually good.
        
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        November 13, 2024 11:38am
      - pdm
        
        thirteen stars
        
        Isn’t that what the actress said to the Archbishop?
        
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        November 13, 2024 12:25pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Word salads included.
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:37am
  - I remember when
    
    Luxon isn’t ignoring the polling.
    A Three News poll last night showed people 52% to 48% against the hikoi.
    The Select Committee will determine whether public sentiment moves the voting numbers.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:27am
    - plc
      
      New Zealand’s answer to Neville Chamberlain
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:46am
    - RoboRob
      
      Stupid poll. I am ‘for the hikoi’, I 100% support peoples right to protest and march in a peaceful, legal and orderly way.
      
      I am also 100% for Seymours bill.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:21am
    - Inandout
      
      Irw, I haven’t watched local news for years so those poll numbers are from a small section of TV viewers.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:30am
    - PurplePen
      
      With govt agencies recently being partisan, how does Seymour or the Select Committee ensure the public servants actually honestly and professionally process submissions.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:43am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        I said the other day that NZ Public Sector are starting to act like dodgy Democrats.
        
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        November 13, 2024 11:56am
  - cmm
    
    … but fence sitting and trying to be everyone’s friend has always worked in the past…
    
    I think that if Luxon doesn’t start to pull his head in he will face a shower of flying dildos – thrown by National voters.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:34am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Hope peaches and cream have plenty of stock.
      
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      November 13, 2024 9:39am
      - PurplePen
        
        Plenty available on AliExpress.
        
        8 0
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        November 13, 2024 10:44am
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        PP, just had a look – dam cheap as well!
        
        5 1
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        November 13, 2024 11:59am
  - kowtow
    
    Luxon tends to talk in short ,bullet point like sentences .( lots of them and quickly too)
    
    It’s the manicured CEO thing and no doubt deliberately crafted .On the campaign trail he constantly trotted out ; “one man one vote” in an effort to sell his commitment to democratic principles and no doubt a lot of people bought that but here we are at the detailed bit , and where is that principle now.
    
    His delievry is ok perhaps when selling a product to punters but it doesn’t apply for important , nuanced and detailed constitutional issues .
    
    I still reckon his strings are being pulled by the behind the scenes power brokers of the National party on this issue. As per his master Key .
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:40am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      He tends to speak fast when he gets rattled, when the questions get difficult.
      
      8 2
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      November 13, 2024 12:01pm
  - John Loveridge
    
    I’ve written to Luxon stating that the Treaty Principles Bill is my bottom line. Shouting at the moon, I know, but I’ve got to say something. And just maybe, if enough people make their feelings known, just maybe he will shift his dial.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:52am
    - PurplePen
      
      Wrote also but suggested his govt could publish a site that assists in informing the public discussion that is to occur.
      
      11 0
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      November 13, 2024 10:46am
    - dutyfree
      
      While it is your right to make it your bottom line I think you miss the target. The question for National to discuss with the Nation is what is their vision for democracy in NZ? If it includes co governance what does that mean? Does it include a “partnership” perspective and if so what does that mean?
      
      Saying he does no support the Bill does not tell us anything about what he does support and what it means for our democracy.
      
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      November 13, 2024 12:20pm
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Luxon really needs to explain in detail (to a skilled interviewer who expects straight answers) what his thinking is on this to the NZ people.
    
    At this point he appears to be supporting absolute irrationality.
    
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    November 13, 2024 8:13pm
- Close Hen Counters
  
  I am livid that a bunch of dead beats prevents the productive from getting to work on time today – waititi was greeting them on the North Shore marae … and we as taxpayers are paying for that
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:08am
  - cmm
    
    I am livid at the police etc allowing this to happen.
    
    You can’t blame activists. They will be activists.
    But you can blame the people that enable them.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:37am
  - Ghost
    
    Were you livid when anti mandate protestors closed the bridge, or blocked streets in Wellington? Or when farmers slowed traffic down with their protestors. One farmer protest took us an hour to move a few km’s. some went into town a different way, others didn’t care and were hooting their support to the farmers. Brain tamaki closed the bridge for a protest march.
    
    Protests happen, they often interfere with traffic, some people support, some they don’t. What a great country we live in that we can protest the governments.
    
    11 19
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    November 13, 2024 10:09am
    - Inandout
      
      Ghost, then by your reasoning a weekly bridge walk is OK, by any group, because they are displaying their right to protest.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:33am
      - Ghost
        
        We don’t actually have that do we. It’s rare for the bridge to close for a protest. But people here have no problem with streets closing when it is a protest they support
        
        It’s like free speech, some people here support free speech, some support only speech they believe in. You don’t have to support what someone is saying or protesting, but as I said it’s great we live in a country where you can protest the government.
        
        6 15
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        November 13, 2024 10:41am
      - Burtland
        
        so they carkoi up to the bridge, hikoi across it, then carkoi off – what a load of bollocks
        
        12 0
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        November 13, 2024 2:38pm
      - Ghost
        
        hikoi has a few meanings, one is journey.
        
        3 2
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        November 13, 2024 2:44pm
    - leoj
      
      The lockdown protests were in cars until they got to Wgtn.
      
      1 1
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      November 13, 2024 10:17pm
      - Ghost
        
        https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-harbour-bridge-anti-mandate-protest-bridge-reopens-and-police-explain-why-thousands-of-protesters-were-allowed-onto-bridge/RS3N3PEF22TL5NCPQXZ7GGHED4/
        
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        November 13, 2024 10:27pm
- penguincouple
  
  A nation’s founding document should unite its people.
  
  Time and time again this Treaty thing proves to be divisive and an obstacle to this country moving forward (quite literally today).
  
  It’s time for some serious discussions on the status, not just principles, of this document.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:11am
  - imalwaysright
    
    If it wasn’t divisive the activists wouldn’t be able to blackmail the country.
    
    Its not about maori or mana, its about money.
    
    23 1
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    November 13, 2024 10:11am
  - JackRabbit
    
    The Treaty, like the Road Code, is not divisive. Problems only arise when people decide to ignore it, and/or flout or make up their own rules.
    
    We do not rewrite the Road Code because of red light runners, or because cyclists and scooter users don’t know the road code, and continually flout it.
    We simply enforce it.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:25am
    - imalwaysright
      
      I propose a march against the Principles of the Road Code !!
      
      Footpaths only, stop for the lights, and give way to the Right…
      
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      November 13, 2024 11:55am
- all true
  
  If you take away their social benefit there would be not be any Hikoi
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:44am
  - Miritu
    
    This draws attention to major differences to the mandate protests. Mandate protesters in many cases had their lives destroyed…lost careers, lost livelihoods, lost family and friends, devastating health impacts, and more.
    
    How does the proposed bill negatively impact anybody?
    
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    November 13, 2024 12:21pm
artemisia

Pharmac has decided to disestablish its Maori advisory group, Te Ropu, established in 2022, and will focus instead on several other health ‘partnership’ groups.

The co-chair of Te Ropu Eugene Berryman-Kamp is concerned that Pharmac “receiving advice from a non-dedicated source … could impact its ability to deliver outcomes for Maori”. And is also concerned for the cultural safety of the small number of Maori staff at Pharmac.

Baby steps.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533562/pharmac-to-disestablish-its-maori-advisory-group
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November 13, 2024 8:10am
- Mark Hanley
  
  The clever way to implement the new treaty principals. Small steps which minimize protest and unrest, whilst you prepare the nation for the new treaty principals law.
  
  Ps. MY policy is to ignore the hikoi. it will achieve nothing so there is no reason for us to take any notice.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:26am
  - NZer In Exile
    
    Extensively educate the public on ALL the facts through social media, TV and Radio (including the inconvenient and messy facts about pre-European Maori life being absolutely no more righteous or “equitable” than the colonisers’ culture). Also include all the powerful commentary from the likes of Apirana Ngata and others which disprove the prevailing disingenuous far left narratives on the subject. Then a binding referendum requiring 80%+ support for a change.
    
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    November 13, 2024 8:21pm
- Cassandra
  
  Ahhh, “cultural safety”, great excuse for Special Treatment, and handy that it’s undefined, like a ToW Principle. Strength to Seymour’s arm – actually to his brain.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:29am
  - G152
    
    Actually I listened to most of yesterdays apology and noticed a small but significant fact..
    They only mentioned young Maori, Islanders and rainbow.
    No-one said diddly squat about the young molested Europeans in their apologies
    
    36 2
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    November 13, 2024 8:36am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      No-one said diddly squat about the young molested Europeans in their apologies
      
      Ah…the feral class.. aka white trash…
      Na, no one gives a stuff about them.
      
      23 2
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      November 13, 2024 10:24am
  - Taieri
    
    the cultural safety
    ————
    
    What does it actually mean?
    
    20 0
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    November 13, 2024 8:50am
    - imalwaysright
      
      T
      That’s the point. “Cultural safety” is meant to be difficult to define. That allows them to continually move the goal posts and lower the bar.
      If it was called “Cultural danger” they would have to quantify and qualify the danger.
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:16am
    - sirknz
      
      Your organisation should match exactly the proportions of the population that you represent, except for whitey.
      
      5 1
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      November 13, 2024 11:42am
    - Burtland
      
      one ‘culture’ to rule them all
      
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      November 13, 2024 2:43pm
- Swifty
  
  By that definition Pharmac should have ‘dedicated sources’ for every ethnicity in the land.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:41am
  - PurplePen
    
    Apparently not. It’s the bit in the ToW where it says the Crown will protect Maori. Somehow that’s evolved into protection from all manner of invented danger and not just the threat of invasion from other nations in 1840.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:51am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  How strange that ” the four Māori health professional bodies, iwi Māori Partnership Boards, and the Hauora Māori Advisory Committee within the Ministry of Health” offering advice and oversight for Maori health outcomes aren’t enough for some people.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:06am
  - cmm
    
    Well of course not. They don’t do anything useful. They just create a trough for more snouts.
    There will always be more snouts – therefore more, and bigger, troughs needed.
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:12am
- Benedict Yu
  
  AFAIK the physiology of Maori is identical to other humans. They will not respond to medications in some unique manner.
  
  I would genuinely like to see the reports of this now defunct advisory group.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:26am
  - artemisia
    
    Pharmac is subject to the Official Information Act. Implementation of recommendations from Te Ropu reports …. ?
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:39am
- Swifty
  
  I wonder how much the Te Ropu members got paid for their services?
  
  And I presume the Iwi Māori Partnership Boards and the Hauora Māori Advisory Committee within the Ministry of Health are also paid positions?
  
  It’s not a feature of decolonisation and co-governance that is discussed nearly enough – that it is bloody expensive compared to the status quo, with all the new taxpayer-funded roles that need to be created.
  
  I wonder how much the average Joe and Josephine in the street realise how much this is all going to cost them when they airily express their support for de-colonisation and co-governance etc.
  
  Or do they operate under the illusion that someone else is going to pay for it all?
  
  Or maybe, just maybe, they haven’t thought through the implications at all….
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:27am
  - Burtland
    
    “why WE might need to pay more tax” – what they really mean is THEY
    
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533503/why-we-might-need-to-pay-more-tax
    
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    November 13, 2024 2:48pm
Yvette

Luxon Misses the Mark
Why doesn’t he like the Treaty Principles Bill?

… It’s incomprehensible that the Prime Minister says there is nothing about the Bill that he likes.
How can a Prime Minister not believe in the right of the Government to govern and not like every citizen and resident in the country being equal before the law?
The counter factual would be that he thinks other entities can make law and some people have different rights to others.
His attitude is appalling and bordering on, well, treasonous.

In response to a question from The Platform’s Sean Plunket, Christopher Luxon said about the Treaty Principles Bill “there isn’t anything I like.”
… “It’s a very simplistic interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi which has served us incredibly well and to simplify it down to this is a disservice to the Treaty of Waitangi.”
https://peterallanwilliams.substack.com/p/luxon-misses-the-mark

“There’s no principles, the Treaty is written. That’s it.”
The King expectedly focused on preserving the Treaty and warned against accepting its use in the judicial system as an accurate interpretation. “Don’t look to the courts to understand the Treaty, look to the marae.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/maori-king-calls-for-hope-over-protest-while-dismissing-govt-treaty-bill/M2EXZG3JLNHTPFKEEUFK7Z5QXY/

“There’s no principles, the Treaty is written. That’s it.” – is this simplification a disservice to the Treaty of Waitangi?
What is there “not to like”?

_____________

Since over a year before the Treaty Principles Bill outline was presented for approval to the Cabinet over which he presides, Christopher Luxon has repeatedly stated “National will kill the bill after the committee stage”, which may be a habitual factor in his now thoroughly holding a belief that is contrary to what others perceive as reality.

Or us others, in our belief perseverance, repetition compulsion or confirmation bias, in our mental reaction to each occasion Luxon has uttered his mantra, are a little fucked in our heads as well.

Then the badly translated Real Estate and Protection Agreement that is the Treaty, but said to be a founding document of a nation, is of unfounded literary expectation that renders it an unreality in the first place.
“There’s no principles, the Treaty is written. That’s it.” may be a statement similar to “It is what it is”, Her having considerable input into “It being what it has come to be”– an unresolved kōan or kenshō, which Hone Harawira with the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti ‘Lets make this hīkoi build a nation’, is not about to clarify.

That may be the reality, which is really sad.
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November 13, 2024 8:15am
- Benedict Yu
  
  This is my opinion. The Treaty has not served the nation well. Because ever since I have been in this country, conflict about the Treaty has been in the news literally every day. That is the opposite of “served us well”.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:29am
  - John Loveridge
    
    It’s an albatross around our necks that should be torn up and burned.
    
    23 0
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    November 13, 2024 9:54am
- imalwaysright
  
  The treaty’s purpose expired on Feb 6 1840 when the final signatory lifted the quill from the paper.
  From then on, it was purely a record.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:25am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  I subscribed to Peter Williams Substack. There is a lot going on there. $5 a month!
  
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  November 13, 2024 12:10pm
  - pdm
    
    I get his email for free
    
    Does $5 a month get one a lot more worthwhile info?
    
    5 0
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    November 13, 2024 12:36pm
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Yes, and you can comment.
      
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      November 14, 2024 9:44am
  - imalwaysright
    
    I’ve tried his online radio show. Wasn’t impressed, lots of music and breaks. May have improved.
    He was great on Magic talk until they screwed him.
    
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    November 13, 2024 1:20pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      I think he’s on Reality Check Radio as well (well he was anyway). Always speaks sense from what I’ve heard.
      
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      November 13, 2024 8:25pm
In Vino Veritas

Oprah Winfrey “I wasn’t paid a dime to campaign for Harris. My production company, Harpo was used for the location, lighting, setup, sound etc. and of course staff had to be paid”.
Just like she was never paid “a dime” for her talk show. Which was produced by Harpo. And staff had to be paid.
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November 13, 2024 8:16am
- JackRabbit
  
  Either the $1M Winfrey was paid was a “donation”, or Kamala didn’t stump up the $1M as agreed.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:01am
  - Matt Long
    
    The money was paid to Harpo, not Oprah, so she didn’t receive a cent, that’s how very wealthy people don’t pay tax.
    
    14 0
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    November 13, 2024 10:42am
    - JackRabbit
      
      A mute point as we both know…
      
      On that basis, the driver of a car involved in a “hit and run” is innocent because the car hit the pedestrian, not the driver.
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:09pm
      - rangitoto
        
        Moot
        
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        November 13, 2024 5:17pm
    - In Vino Veritas
      
      Lol Matt, if only. They have to live on something, even wealthy people don’t live on fresh air (unlike the greenies!). Most distributions to owners are taxed. For instance, a salary or dividends from the company.
      So Winfrey saying SHE wasn’t paid is correct, but the company she probably owns 100% got paid (covered Harpo’s costs and likely gave Harpo a fat margin). And that is what I was alluding to.
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:37pm
      - lifesgood
        
        Harpo is just Oprah spelt backwards anyway.
        
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        November 13, 2024 1:51pm
- mogg
  
  MSM election coverage in US has been measured at 75% positive for Kamala Harris, 85% negative for Trump.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:08am
  - Jethrod
    
    What do those figures actually mean?
    It is mathematical figure soup.
    Is there actually any mathematical basis for those figures?
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:03am
    - mogg
      
      Are you really having trouble with the figures or is
      it English language comprehension that is your problem.
      
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      November 13, 2024 4:27pm
- imalwaysright
  
  Harpo charged $1,000,000.
  Saw the invoice on Megyn Kelly show.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:28am
  - Bridgenag
    
    she is amazing
    
    3 2
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    November 13, 2024 1:00pm
    - imalwaysright
      
      Ooh yeah….
      
      3 1
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      November 13, 2024 1:21pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

US Border. Democrat Governors to step aside or face action.
“Thomas Homan, recently appointed by President-elect Donald Trump as the “border czar,” has issued a stern warning to Democratic governors who are against the administration’s planned deportation operations.”

https://crystalclearnews.com/trumps-new-border-czar-challenges-democratic-governors-to-step-aside-or-face-action/
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November 13, 2024 8:23am
- Mark Hanley
  
  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a clever no nonsense mp like Tom Homan in NZ.
  
  Seymour does come close but Seymour doesn’t have the clout Homan has.
  
  I said many times on ths blog that Trump will bring in great people….
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:31am
  - jon
    
    Homan has certainly got the mongrel and thats what is needed to repel what is an invasion across the Southern Border. Will finally get sorted, despite the protests from the Left.
    
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    November 13, 2024 2:01pm
- rouppe
  
  I’d initially ignore the Democrat states. Does two things:
  1. Allows him to get on with the job in places where he has full support. That way tactics can be refined.
  2. Drives the worst illegals into the “sanctuary states”, making them easier to collect later
  
  I do think that in conjunction with this, there ought to be a fast normalisation of documentation for those that have lived, worked and stayed out of trouble for years.
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:34am
- MCōs
  
  What ‘action’ is is Mr Homan intending to take against Democratic governors?
  In the article Massachusetts is mentioned, which is far away from the southern border and is solidly Democratic and is never going to impeach the governor. There’s no other way of removing the governor.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:08am
  - cmm
    
    “which is far away from the southern border”
    
    No it isn’t. They fly in by plane or bus in from the Canadian border. Nothing is far away anymore.
    
    15 0
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    November 13, 2024 9:14am
  - Don Beckett
    
    The border is a Federal responsibility. I think Homan has the authority to over-rule the state governors, the main ones being California & New Mexico. It’ll be an interesting watch.
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:09am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    I doubt the Dem Governors would be against removing illegal rapists and murderers.
    They would co-operate with Homan and ICE.
    
    4 2
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    November 13, 2024 12:19pm
  - In Vino Veritas
    
    I think you will find State Governors can be arrested for breaking Federal law. Check out Rod Blagojevich. He was arrested, faced trial and was convicted. Impeachment is political, not criminal.
    
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    November 13, 2024 1:46pm
  - Tom Hunter
    
    The DOJ threatened Texas Governor Abbott with a lawsuit for his actions putting up a fence on the Rio Grande plus a floating barrier. It was made quite clear that it was a Federal matter and States had nothing to do with it.
    
    So Homan is going to make Democrat Governors play by the same rules when it comes to “sanctuary” status.
    
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    November 13, 2024 3:03pm
- Inandout
  
  SO, I loved when Homan was asked about splitting families being sent packing. He replied that the whole family goes, father, mother and children.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:38am
Cassandra

The de facto leader of Al-Qaeda, Salem Al-Sharif: Muslims should not take civilians as prisoners, as Hamas did on October 7. “Islam tells us killing takes precedence over taking prisoners.” In other words, they should not bother to kidnap hostages but simply kill them.
The recently assassinated leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar: “We will tear down the border and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies [and] eat their livers.” Trump might stop the war in Ukraine but he won’t stop the one in Gaza. Well, let’s hope not anyway – these monsters need to be stopped. Proposed Secretary of State Rubio described them as “animals” which is accurate, if unfair to animals.
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November 13, 2024 8:25am
- cmm
  
  Israel learned a long time ago that you cannot stop this sort of terrorism. All you can do is try to keep it at low levels – low enough that society can thrive and function.
  
  This lead to the development of a policy they call “mowing the lawn”.
  
  That all worked reasonably well until the lefties let the grass start growing in 2020 or so…
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:59am
  - leoj
    
    I am picking that Hamas will go rather quiet now. No Obama to keep them going.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:21pm
NeverMindTheBollocks

Shell Lane (The Terrace) bike rack report:

At 8.35am, zero bikes.

A calm, warm, still morning in the Capital, ideal for cycling.
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November 13, 2024 8:35am
- alex Masterley
  
  Keep up the good work.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:32am
- imalwaysright
  
  Cost/Benefit ratio is approaching infinity.
  Tory will think that’s brilliant.
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:30am
- zulumonster
  
  I’m just wondering if you are reporting too early? It is possible the type of people who cycle to work and the jobs they do won’t require a presence in the office until 9am or later?
  
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  November 13, 2024 1:24pm
Swifty

This woman, Josephine Varghese, sat alongside John Minto recently at a Christchurch Council meeting where both of them argued about Gaza issues and proposed that the Council make sure it had no dealings with Israeli organisations.

https://profiles.canterbury.ac.nz/Josephine-Varghese

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yb5JEqsjV0&pp=ygUmSm9obiBtaW50byBpc3JhZWwgY2hyaXN0Y2h1cmNoIGNvdW5jaWw%3D

She’s a self-proclaimed Marxist, yes that very ideology that has brought untold misery and death to millions and millions during the 20th Century, and all her studies and research appear to be about arguing for its continuation in modern times.

I wasn’t clever enough for university so I don’t know how all this stuff works. But isn’t the purpose of study and research to set out to find the truth, to set out to prove or disprove something – not have a conclusion already set, in this case that communism is the way forward, and then building a case for it and/or viewing everything through that lens.

I just don’t get it. She labels her work ‘political science’. But this isn’t science or legitimate research is it? Isn’t this just political advocacy?

If so, why are we funding this? How do these university positions get approved? How does New Zealand benefit? What else are we missing out on, educationally or otherwise, because our tax money is going to this woman and her activity? Isn’t this just a hobby that she could and should be doing in her own time and with her own cash?

Again, I just don’t get it. In the absence of strong counter-arguments, if I was in charge I’d be cleaning out this deadwood from our Universities to free up the cash to invest in education far more valuable to us as a nation.

Why we waste our hard-earned tax money on communist political advocacy astounds me.

Don’t get me wrong, Ms Varghese is free to study and research and talk about anything she chooses – but it’s a completely different matter when we’re talking about New Zealand families being forced to pay her for it.
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November 13, 2024 8:36am
- Jack5
  
  Skin colour is big in Varghese’s mind. For example, she thinks India’s film industry is too white – in skin colour.
  
  This is from a research report of hers listed at the University of Canterbury web site:
  
  During a dinner conversation on a winter evening in Christchurch shortly after I returned from my fieldwork in India, a Chinese colleague said, ‘As a child I thought Indians were White people until I met them in real life. Why is everyone in Bollywood so pale?’ As a child growing up in rural India, I had the same question. Why do only light-skinned people ‘make it big’ in our movies? This pattern, I now observe, applies to film industries beyond India ….
  
  Varghese is studying for a Ph.D. in anthropology at Canterbury University, according to the web site linked to below. The information ends with this:
  
  What do you plan on doing when you finish your degree?
  
  I’m keeping myself open. Unfortunately, many universities in India still don’t have the same sort of resources and exposure as UC, so I feel like my opportunities here are much wider. I’d like to contribute to the NGO sector, specifically in the area of women’s issues.
  
  Looks like NZ’s stuck with her.
  
  Universities’ sale of residency thus continues.
  
  https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/about-uc/why-uc/our-students/student-stories/josephine-varghese
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:28am
  - Jack5
    
    Re my Varghese is studying for a Ph.D. in anthropology …
    
    Elsewhere, the university web site says Varghese was appointed a lecturer in Language, Social and Political Sciences in June 2023, and it gives her the honorific “Dr”.
    
    The web page includes:
    
    My current research focus is on labour policies and institutional violence against Pasifika migrant workers in New Zealand, as well as analysis of New Zealand foreign policy.
    
    I am a publicly spirited academic with interests in geopolitical analyses using postcolonial and Marxist theories. My areas of expertise include Indian society, imperialism, migration, structural violence, postcolonial theory.
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:20am
  - PurplePen
    
    There are a lot of Indians that are what we would say are white looking or very fair skinned, even European looking. The reason Bollywood likes them will be because it sells. Simple. As soon as brown sells she’ll find that Bollywood will be full of less pale actors. Doesn’t take a degree to figure that one out.
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:34am
  - Gussy Fink-Nottle
    
    If Bollywood is too white, it’s a regional thing.
    The people from the North are often outwardly prejudice against their southern counterparts, considering them lazy and stupid.
    This has FA to do with colonialism.
    India is a deeply prejudiced society. And with the exception of Kerala, has never embraced Marxism.
    A fertile ground for academic activists to direct their altruistic efforts. But no, they’ve got to come here, and ‘fix’ us.
    
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    November 13, 2024 12:54pm
    - NothingLeft
      
      Prejudice always finds root when times are hard and competition for resources is fierce. It’s humans finding pretexts and rationalizations for the tribal stances they need to take to survive. Generosity and consideration go out the window.
      
      So as the policies of the big state left drive economic decline, so do they drive an inevitable decline in trust and rising prejudice.
      
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      November 13, 2024 4:08pm
- In Vino Veritas
  
  When I went to University all those years ago, I had a Communist as an Economics lecturer. The difference then, is that if you had a counter argument to the Communist economic system, it didn’t negatively impact your results. Heck, the lecturer used to welcome debates on economic systems!!
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:32am
  - grumpy
    
    Me too! Sounds like Canterbury with the great Wolfgang Rosenberg! A true commie with true convictions. When he retired as Reader in Economics, he did a law degree and turned up at the Christchurch courts to defend the poor at his own cost.
    The political debates we wonderful, especially as the Professor was the equally great Alf Brownlee……..
    
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    November 13, 2024 12:45pm
    - Jack5
      
      Many of us older Kiwiblog posters sat through Rosenberg’s Economic History course.
      
      He was likeable and the course was interesting, but did he ever fail a student at exam time?
      
      That would surely have clashed with his philosophy as a decent, thinking Leftist.
      
      Is my memory right that he rode one of those moped bikes, and often could be seen in central Christchurch, with only one of his hands on the handle bars?
      
      His was a socialist bike at the bottom of the prestige ladder compared with present battery-powered bikes.
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:22pm
- cmm
  
  ‘political science’ is not science at all.
  
  As I understand it, the origins of this are from the Communist (or maybe Stalinist) concept of having “scientific politics” – a form of politics where pesky concepts like human emotions etc don’t matter and, instead, society is driven from a rational, scientific footing.
  
  In such a society there is no need for personal choice or democracy and other messy human interference. Leave everything up to the professionals and they will do what is best.
  
  This lead to the concept of making a flavour of science that would be used to drive social control and politics.
  
  Of course this is nothing like real science. The people drawn to political science are not truth seekers – they are typically power hungry autocrats.
  
  Political science has many sub-disciplines such as climate science which
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:50am
  - Taieri
    
    the origins of this are from the Communist (or maybe Stalinist) concept of having “scientific politics”
    ————–
    
    It predates Stalin and Stalinism. The study of the broad aspects of politics such as political theory, institutions, systems, parties and so on became a separate social science discipline in the second half of the 19th century. The American Academy of Political Science was established in 1880 at the Columbia University.
    
    Unfortunately, like many other branches of social science, it became disconnected from the legitimate study of its subject.
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:18am
- Burtland
  
  Josephine Varghese has a PhD from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Canterbury.
  
  Her areas of interest include imperialism, structural violence and inequalities. Her PhD thesis employed postcolonial theory and feminist poststructuralism to understand how young women negotiate competing discourses on womanhood in neoliberal India.
  
  this is the cancer that inhabits the social sciences- filling kiwi kids heads with crap
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:52am
  - Jack5
    
    Regardless of Varghese’s case, this seems to suggest that study of political crap like this can get you into NZ permanently on the student residency rort.
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:50am
  - cmm
    
    Putting someone through a PhD costs the taxpayers somewhere around $250k.
    Then we end up employing her to spout her garbage in either a university or government department for the cost of another $150-200k per year.
    
    But I am sure this must be money well spent. That has no doubt been scientifically proven by political scientists. You can’t argue with science.
    
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    November 13, 2024 12:44pm
    - imalwaysright
      
      I know of someone who got a PhD at a “wananga”.
      It was a PhD in the “verbal handing down of maori recipes”.
      I shit you not.
      This person now has a PhD in Anthropology!
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:27pm
    - Burtland
      
      this is a pretty vile case
      
      completes a marxism PhD at the NZ tax payer expense
      then picks up a lecturing role again at the tax payers expense
      her supervisors and employers will all be neomarxists
      polutes impressionable kiwi minds with neomarxism
      then pours Palestine bile into the city council
      
      she is exactly what NZ needs – another marxist parasite
      the system is rotten
      
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      November 13, 2024 10:40pm
- rouppe
  
  Josephine is a very white name. Surprised she’s not changed it yet.
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:23am
  - MCōs
    
    It’s a derivative of Joseph, a Hebrew name Yosef (Hebrew: יוֹסֵף)
    
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    November 13, 2024 4:34pm
- Sparrow
  
  Swifty, Please don’t say you were not clever enough to go to Uni. You were sensible probably like me went out to work at 16. I am sick and tired of hearing about Uni’s. I have a solution for them and save hard earned tax payers money. Either shut them down and house the homeless in them. The academics can become the cooks and cleaners. Oh f… no they will stuff that up. Or a better solution simply blow them up turn the rubble into adventure playgrounds. Just like growing up after WW2 in London amongst the bomb sites. Please no safety rules etc.
  
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  November 13, 2024 1:33pm
  - NeverMindTheBollocks
    
    Very Cambodia Year Zero of you, Sparrow
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:49pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  Back in the day I granted Minto that his opposition to apartheid was genuine.
  
  Now I think he was just doing the usual communist thing of using South African Blacks as a transactional leverage to attack a Western capitalist nation, because he hasn’t given a shit about them since Mandela told him the country wasn’t going communist.
  
  Similarly here; Israel is viewed by commies as the next weakest link in the chain of Western, capitalist democracies and must be destroyed by any means necessary. If that means commies hooking up with religious fanatics, so be it.
  
  I call it the Okhrana-Cheka move. Lenin stopped caring about freedom of the press and the horrors of the Okhrana as soon as he and his fellow communists got their hands on power and could create a press and a secret police they controlled, the Cheka, who would go on to exceed the crimes and cruelties of the Czar by several orders of magnitude.
  
  Minto’s the same, which is why he hangs out with a piece of shit like Varghese.
  
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  November 13, 2024 3:16pm
  - NothingLeft
    
    Yeah he was just another detestable sociopathic Socialist Unity Party member hitching his Marxist bullshit onto any cause that could be used to foment glorious revolution. His breed never care about the murder of millions if it assists them in being elevated to aristocratic status.
    
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    November 13, 2024 4:13pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

College Campuses Introduce ‘Safe Spaces’ Post-Election.

“In the aftermath of President Trump’s recent election victory, several universities have implemented measures to support students grappling with the results. Institutions like the University of Oregon have provided therapy animals, coloring books, and LEGO stations to help students manage their emotions.”
“Critics argue that such initiatives may coddle students, potentially hindering their resilience in facing real-world challenges. Supporters, however, contend that these resources offer essential mental health support during tumultuous times. This trend raises questions about the role of higher education in preparing students for societal complexities.”

Stop the World, I want to get off. What is happening?
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November 13, 2024 8:44am
- I remember when
  
  ‘therapy animals’?
  Or, should it be ‘Safe Spaces’ for students and animals to manage their emotions.
  Don’t Universities realise that animal have ‘feelings’ too.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:02am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  What is happening?
  
  Universities are kindergartens/playcentres in drag.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:09am
- cmm
  
  Otago: Hold my warm milk and cookies…
  The same is happening here too – maybe just a few years behind.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:16am
- imalwaysright
  
  Infantilism.
  Most people under 30 are physically and mentally weak.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:23am
  - G152
    
    No. Most service people are under 30
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:23am
    - imalwaysright
      
      G,
      Most people under 30 aren’t service people. Pay attention.
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:30pm
- John Loveridge
  
  For real? Poor, poor little snowflakes. How are they to cope with adult issues when they eventually have to face them? You know, paying bills, putting food on the table… getting up in the morning to go to work… just getting up in the morning…
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:19am
- NeverMindTheBollocks
  
  I wonder how Lego execs feel about their product being dragged into the swamp
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:51pm
- Burtland
  
  womins spaces were here in the universities in the 70’s
  – the hairy armpit brigade (aunt helen) created them
  they scared themselves shitless with “all men are rapists”
  the obsequious type-b male also made an appearance (uncle helen)
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:56pm
Gussy Fink-Nottle

Bob Jones (nopunchespulled.com) seems to have a real hard-on for Donald Trump.
Apparently , the world outside the US is ‘utterly bewildered’ that Trump can gain anyone’s support.
Jones – a self-confessed news-hound and avid reader – appears to have completely missed the significant post-election analysis on why the Dems lost.

The two men have much in common, including a level of ‘crassness’ and exaggeration (consider Bob’s comments on women, and the fact he built the tallest timber structure in the southern hemisphere – most of which is made of steel and concrete).

Perhaps it’s a degree of projection.
Or a crafty feint to appeal to the many civil servants that tenant his buildings (‘fat girls’, as he calls them). The latter doesn’t entirely stack up though, as he was quite happy to get stuck into Ardern, and the growth of ‘Māori wonderfulness’.

I quite like Sir Bob, and enjoy his regular musings. However, his characterisation of American politics seems suspiciously naïve.
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November 13, 2024 8:52am
- kowtow
  
  Rob MacCulluch on BBH does an excellent piece on Jones . Worth a read.
  
  Jones has a certain turn of phrase and can be amusing but his anti Trump stuff actually comes across as unhinged , a true case of TDS. ( which people tell us is nonsense but it ain’t, it’s a condition , or as the name says syndrome)
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:11am
  - lifesgood
    
    Jones has been a long time supporter of public servants, they rent his many buildings. I agree, he is unhinged over Trump. I wonder why. I have enjoyed reading his blog in the past but his TDS is getting tiresome.
    
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    November 13, 2024 2:00pm
- Tom Hunter
  
  You might like the piece I penned a couple of weeks ago about one of his silly TDS outbursts, Bob Jones and The Art of Hate Fetishism.
  
  An ageing, White, billionaire property owner who is larger than life, entertaining, plugged into the political, business and cultural networks, who has always run his mouth, has a huge ego, has many kids by many women, and has often been attacked as a racist and a sexist by the many people who hate his guts.
  
  The Trump of New Zealand.
  
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  November 13, 2024 3:21pm
- NZer In Exile
  
  Um, if I may be so crude, I don’t think he has a “hard-on” for Trump. More like a limp uncooked sausage. He hates Trump doesn’t he?
  
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  November 13, 2024 8:30pm
I remember when

Why do we ever have apologies from the Government for past misdemeanors?
They are only ever demanded as a step on the way to a future goal.
It allows the affected to vent their spleen on whoever makes the apology and the media a source of news.
The fact that those apologising are seldom the people responsible for the problem is ignored.
It’s funny the things that are meant to make people feel better.
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November 13, 2024 8:56am
- MCōs
  
  Our leaders have no qualms about standing in the reflected glory of great new Zealanders who have achieved good things for the country.
  There’s another side to that coin . . .
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:04am
- Nigel Kearney
  
  There will be an expectation that taypayers pay ‘compensation’ to all of these people. Not necessarily just those who were actually in state custody. If CYFS removed a kid from a drug addict mother and placed them with an auntie and uncle who then abused them, that person will have their hand out now as well. Compensation should be for negligence by the state, not where the state acted reasonably but a private actor did something bad.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:07am
  - Maggy Wassilieff
    
    But the State had a duty of care to monitor the child in the “care” of the abusive Auntie & Uncle.
    
    I have no problem with babes/children being removed from abusive or negligent parents, but I do have a problem with State Servants who repeatedly fail to carry out their most basic duties.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:37am
    - Countrygirl
      
      While I accept there has been a failure by the state in its care of these children, I feel that if the useless parents had looked after their own kids in the first place we wouldn’t be in this position of having to apologise. And also, even with the awful stuff that went on, maybe it was still better than being in the care of whanau.
      
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      November 13, 2024 1:08pm
  - imalwaysright
    
    Instead of compensation, maybe track down the offenders and arrest and prosecute them.
    
    I was expecting overflowing courts, especially as the offending reported was as recent as 2019 and probably is still occurring.
    
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    November 13, 2024 10:40am
    - Don Beckett
      
      The lawyers will be rubbing their hands with glee. They can see another huge payday coming. Leeches.
      
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      November 13, 2024 11:17am
  - Burtland
    
    compensation will produce a further avalanche of abuse complaints – how will they deal with “ITS NOT FAIR”
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:10am
- lifesgood
  
  I am totally opposed to these public apologies. They are an utter nonsense. Why should anyone not responsible apologise for things they haven’t done? Yes, maybe make a statement that these things were terrible and must not be allowed to happen again but don’t apologise. That’s just silly.
  
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  November 13, 2024 2:02pm
Damocles11

The Breakfast show on taxpayer funded TVNZ was a hagiography of the idiotic racial separatist agitators this morning, a fawning laugh-fest of boundless joy with J May and the reporters / protestors (the lines were so blurred I couldn’t tell which was which). The racial separatists were the undoubted heroes of the story. the hideously evil (for wanting equal rights for all) David Seymour was the pantomime villain.
You suckers are paying for it all too, through our weak woke Luxon ‘lead’ (read: constrained, hamstrung) Labour-Lite government.
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November 13, 2024 9:29am
- John Loveridge
  
  Has Jenny May learned nothing from her slathering the other day?
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:19am
  - Burtland
    
    jenny may only knows how to dribble a ball
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:04pm
- RoboRob
  
  The government needs to sell TVNZ asap (while we might get some money for it) and gift RNZ to whoever will take it.
  
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  November 13, 2024 12:06pm
Damocles11

“Fellow A Listers get to grandstand on the bridge, and we just need you C List plebs to get to work, get your heads down and get on with it, and grow the economy so we can pay the koha (extortion money) that will enable us to keep burying our heads in the sand. They are Tangata Whenua and you must show respect, according to my mentor.”
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November 13, 2024 9:53am
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Let’s buy a Christmas Tree.
From RNZ item “Auckland Council’s portion was coming from a rate paid by city centre property owners, businesses and residents, not from general rates.”
Why do I smell a rat?

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-council-criticised-over-million-dollar-christmas-tree-for-lower-queen-st/JHVC4IW6EVFLBNWJVP3TY2AXNA/

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/533428/in-defence-of-auckland-s-1-point-2m-christmas-tree
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November 13, 2024 9:59am
- John Loveridge
  
  And rightly you should. Councils spending other-people’s-money on bullshit: it just never stops.
  
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  November 13, 2024 2:41pm
Bridgenag

German Economics Minister renews calls for widespread internet censorship, claims that an “axis of autocrats” is using domestic “populists” to poison democratic discourse via social media algorithms
As they continue to lose elections and influence, our political elite will just get crazier and more dangerous.

“These people grew up believing that they were the future and that progressivism would just keep progressing down the same path indefinitely. With every passing year, things would get more gay, more transgendered, more Green, more interconnected, more international and more left. They really seem to have believed all of their own bullshit. By opening the borders they thought they could atone for Germany’s historical sins and found a new proposition nation of immigrants in the heart of Europe. Trump’s first term especially became an opportunity to one-up the United States with environmental virtue-signalling like the Green Deal. They had all the answers and they were on the right side of history.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/eugyppius/p/german-economics-minister-renews?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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November 13, 2024 10:01am
- peterwn
  
  David Farrar an autocrat? Now pull the other one.
  
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  November 13, 2024 10:28am
Bridgenag

They Think We Are Fools
It’s up to us whether or not they are right

“Consider this sample of what we have been told on a daily basis by self-serving elites, about a variety of nationally important topics:”

https://open.substack.com/pub/criticallythinking/p/they-think-we-are-fools?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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November 13, 2024 10:02am
Jack5

“Bringing back” manufacturing to the US, especially semiconductor making, has been a plank of the Trump campaign.

A pioneer of the move from America to Asia was Charles Sporck, who died recently at 96.

In late 1959, Sporck was an executive at Fairchild Semiconductor in America. The Wall Street Journal, in an obituary, says that a Fairchild Semiconductor director, Robert Noyce, had privately invested in a Hong Kong factory making transistor radios and suggested Sporck explore the potential of the then British colony. (Noyce, the co-inventor of integrated circuits, later co-founded Intel).

Sporck found Hong Kong women could assemble semiconductors faster than Americans, for a tenth of the pay, and there were no union problems.

Fairchild opened its Hong Kong plant in 1963. Chip design remained in the U.S., but assembly and testing of many chips shifted to Asia. Other semiconductor makers followed.
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November 13, 2024 12:41pm
- NothingLeft
  
  Taiwan’s TMSC (dominant semiconductor maker in world, who make chips for all leading companies like Nvidia etc) are not going to put their leading edge chip processes into fabrication facilities outside of Taiwan. Sensible way to keep USA ensuring their security. They will only put processes a few years behind their state of the art into US Fabs.
  
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  November 13, 2024 6:15pm
Bridgenag

Really good post except for the brain washed

New Data Exposes the Corruption Behind the COVID Response
It’s time for COVID accountability so this can never happen again

https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/new-data-exposes-the-corruption-behind?r=1aj1bv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
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November 13, 2024 1:04pm
Ghost

missing the first day he will still have a better attendance record than the mayor…..

The Crown Observer appointed to keep an eye on Wellington City Council was not physically there at today’s WCC meeting – on his first official day in the role.

Article
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November 13, 2024 1:52pm
- greybeard
  
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360485455/crown-observer-unable-make-it-wellington-council-meeting-first-day-job
  
  I think some questions need asking:
  – he is paid $1000 / day. Is that for the two days a week when he commutes from Nelson for WCC business, or is that for 5 days a week, or is that for 7 days a week?
  If he commutes two days a week , does he stay in Wellington for other days’ business?
  If he stays in Wellington does he pay for his accommodation ?
  Does he pay for his airfares?
  
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  November 13, 2024 2:35pm
  - Burtland
    
    a car mechanic is billed out at over 900/day
    
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    November 13, 2024 11:15pm
Biscuit

Was just reading the local giveaway ragsheet ‘Hutt News’.

Am still laughing.

Page 2 of the current issue has an article in which, I shit you not, Paddy Gower is described as ‘the country’s favourite ‘every-Kiwi’ journalist’.

The paeons of praise continue with Stuff Brand Connections Managing Director Matt Headland – no, me neither – saying that ‘Gower’s enormous appeal across young, diverse, middle-aged and middle New Zealand was a unique opportunity for commercial partners to connect with audiences, from the news avoidant to news junkies’…

Headland goes on – boy, does he go on – with Paddy being described as ‘deeply trusted, huge on social media and as loved by teenagers as he is by the nation’s grandparents. That kind of talent only comes along once in a generation.’

Ye Gods…
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November 13, 2024 2:13pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  Haven’t you got a Paddy Gower tattoo yet?
  
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360483556/southland-man-gets-paddy-gower-tattoo-gower-might-get-one-invercargill
  
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  November 13, 2024 3:09pm
  - Biscuit
    
    Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh [What’s that, mod? Enough ALREADY?]!
    
    [Mod – keep going]
    
    4 0
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    November 13, 2024 3:42pm
  - Don Beckett
    
    Ugly people might get one to prove they are not really THAT ugly.
    
    2 0
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    November 13, 2024 3:52pm
  - kevn
    
    Maggy… The tattooed one, IQ test = failed.
    
    3 0
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    November 13, 2024 4:25pm
    - NZer In Exile
      
      Yep I’m thinking western tattooed people are pretty much desperate posers. But hey, that’s just me. OK a small discreet “one” I can accept.
      
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      November 13, 2024 8:40pm
greybeard

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360485348/home-detention-replaces-jail-man-who-killed-stranger-christchurch-park

And in a nutshell we have the reason why there is so much crime in this country: there is absolutely no appropriate punishment for committing any sort of offence.
Take a man’s LIFE, but get home detention.
That is SICK.
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November 13, 2024 2:43pm
- Scooter
  
  Come on the Judge was just doing what Una Jagose suggested in her prosecution guidelines, to keep the “special” people out of jail. Now instead of jail he’s given an 11 month holiday at home, probably being paid for it (aka the dole) as well. The system is well and truly phucked!
  
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  November 13, 2024 7:04pm
  - Ghost
    
    Nothing to do with her. That was police prosecution guidelines that were withdrawn. Want to place blame somewhere try the greens, nz first, and labour who voted down the cowards punch bill in 2020
    
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    November 13, 2024 7:47pm
- Scooter
  
  I’d also say this may turn out to be highly embarrassing for the govt as the victim was an Indian citizen and had only been in NZ for 4 months to visit family. Not a good look if we want to improve NZ India trade etc.
  
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  November 13, 2024 7:13pm
- AitchW
  
  Apparently he was mentally unwell. Then lock the prick up for life in a giggle academy.
  This was not his first unprovoked attack and will not be his last.
  
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  November 13, 2024 7:49pm
Swifty

Under a year home detention for the coward-pinching and killing of an entirely innocent stranger who was in fact doing a good deed:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360485348/home-detention-replaces-jail-man-who-killed-stranger-christchurch-park

I am at a loss for words.
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November 13, 2024 2:58pm
- Ghost
  
  What, the piece of shit got home dentition. This is the bad parent whose child didn’t want to go home from the park. He left the child in the park by himself. A worried, kind Indian man was trying to help the child when he killed him. He deserves to rot in jail
  
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  November 13, 2024 3:16pm
  - Swifty
    
    And I’d add that this was no ‘accident’ that led to this man’s death, like falling off a worksite roof or hit by a cricket ball etc.
    
    It was deliberate violent assault committed by a young, fit bloke against a skinny, elderly man and with no provocation.
    
    (Coward – I guarantee he wouldn’t have had a go at a 6 foot 5, 18 stone Tongan.)
    
    What sort of message does this send to the community about our rage and disgust against ongoing random street thuggery?
    
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    November 13, 2024 4:48pm
- Burtland
  
  The Court of Appeal judges Justices Francis Cooke, Sally Fitzgerald and Pheroze Jagose who let him loose
  
  theres that name again
  
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  November 13, 2024 11:29pm
  - Scooter
    
    Like father? like daughter
    
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    November 14, 2024 2:03am
Ghost

New hearing tomorrow before congress with some interesting people

Expert witnesses plan to testify before Congress about a ‘constitutional crisis’ posed by government secrecy on UFOs — and even ‘threats’ to scientists investigating these mysterious phenomena.

One, Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, will also speak about secret ‘satellite imagery’ from a 2017 UFO case that has been illegally hidden from congressional oversight.

Another witness, former NASA legal advisor Mike Gold, plans to speak on behalf of scientists, pilots and others who have faced ‘negative consequences to their career’ for openly pursuing answers to these enigmatic and unusual incidents.

‘It’s disconcerting when members of the academic community are vilified for even having the temerity to attempt to study UAP,’ Gold wrote in his own testimony.

Rear Adm. Gallaudet, who also served as deputy administrator to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), offered to help Congress obtain the wrongfully withheld UFO satellite data in a classified briefing.

‘I would be happy in a closed setting to provide the dates involved if that would help the committee to formulate a specific request for access,’ he stated in his testimony.

Article
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November 13, 2024 3:13pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Jim Jordan sent Jack Smith a letter.
“Biden – and then Kamala Harris – were counting on Smith to do in the courtroom what they couldn’t do at the ballot box, and that was defeat Donald Trump.
That’s all over now.”
“With President Trump’s decisive victory this week, we are concerned that the Office of Special Counsel may attempt to purge relevant records, communications, and documents responsive to our numerous requests for information,” Jordan’s letter read.
This is like telling Hillary not to delete emails!

https://247politics.net/jim-jordan-sent-jack-smith-one-letter-that-struck-terror-in-his-heart/?#gf_847
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November 13, 2024 4:12pm
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Hooters has to defend itself in front of kangaroo court !
They called a transistor a ‘him!’

https://247politics.net/hooters-has-the-woke-outrage-mob-in-an-uproar-after-it-was-hit-with-an-awful-lawsuit/?
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November 13, 2024 4:37pm
- kevn
  
  SteveO… ‘It’ might be the best go to term?
  
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  November 13, 2024 5:42pm
NothingLeft

Incredibly agile Deep Robotics (China) Puma wheeled quadruped moving through forest. Add weapons and this will be the end of infantry as we knew it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EoSLyw84o

Skynet here we come.
3 1
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November 13, 2024 5:26pm
Swifty

Labour abolished all sorts of measures when they became government, health targets etc being a prime example:

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/533669/labour-claims-cover-up-as-weekly-reporting-on-benefit-numbers-cancelled

But now they winge and moan because National want to tidy some up, not abolish them, but just tidy them up.

I’ve got to say too that weekly is far too frequent. Monthly sounds right, quarterly too infrequent.

Labour thing we are stupid. They continue to treat us like idiots.
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November 13, 2024 5:26pm
kevn

Swifty… Looks as though Trump has the same type of fiscal mess to tidy up.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/they-just-got-handed-fraudulent-books-ed-dowd-warns-trump-inheriting-turd-economy
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November 13, 2024 5:41pm
Jack5

On TVNZ tonight – the TVNZ hikoi dominated coverage.

No pretence of objective reporting. All pro-hikoi, all from a hikoi-ist angle.

The hikoi mob couldn’t have got more favourable coverage if they’d bought the whole 6pm news slot as an advertisement.

National will pay for not following up on the news media reforms that Melissa Lee outlined in an article for this blog a year or three ago.

Luxon replaced her as Media and Communications Minister with Paul Goldsmith.

He is busy. Goldsmith has about five portfolios to manage.

Tasks include “maximising the impact” of the Government’s annual $450 million spend on arts and culture.
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November 13, 2024 6:25pm
- than
  
  Two days in a row now it’s been the leading story! How many days are they going to keep this up?
  
  Seven Blunt also was leading with it too.
  
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  November 13, 2024 7:21pm
- Damocles11
  
  $450 million?!!!!!! WTF!!!!!!!
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:51pm
- OlderChas
  
  Neither channel mentioned that that no permission was given for the protesters to walk over the bridge. The NZTA was not even involved. So the Police allowed a few thousand to just break the law “in the interests of safety”. No mention of the thousands of people inconvenienced, late for work , and – personally- my wife’s surgical procedure delayed because the surgeon was held up getting to work because of the closure of the 5 – yes 5!- southbound lanes even though the protesters only walked on two.
  
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  November 14, 2024 9:02am
kevn

Jack… That’s a whole lot of ‘taking days off WORK’ people walking about for the cameras.
How can the employers cope?
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November 13, 2024 7:35pm
- Keith White
  
  Those people are not employed, just bludging benefits.
  
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  November 13, 2024 9:24pm
  - Ghost
    
    Seems the person that has organised it has a cushy job
    
    https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/eru-kapa-kingi
    
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    November 13, 2024 9:37pm
    - Keith White
      
      “Money for nothing and hikois for free.”
      
      3 0
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      November 13, 2024 9:48pm

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