Setting aside all the other stuff.

Are claiming that Russia was not the aggressor in this current war? If so, what’s your argument, that it was a response to provocation? If so, what was such a provocation that justified invading another sovereign nation (again)?

https://archive.ph/WSjFp

I was trying to figure out the same thing, Ford Utes? But they might actually be made somewhere in SEA for all I know given they’re right-hand drive models. Teslas will be coming from there and it would be a good energy move to put tarrifs on electric vehicles imported from USA just to spite space karen. I’m sure there’s plenty of other mundane stuff we just don’t think about.

I don’t think its just bigotry, there’s a load of tradition and history that ties particularly Pakeha New Zealand to the west. And without devolving into bothsidesism (although, obviously it is) some people do have questions about aligning with regimes accused of human rights abuses and what not.

I think NZ does need to start having the discussion though; the old assumptions and alliances are bending and its foolish not to ask where our future alignment is best placed.

There are not many countries in the world where that would be true. And in many of the countries where that is true the arrests are often not on the judicial merits but more arbitrary wings of power blocks flexing their muscles.

One of the differences here is that in NZ we tend to find out about this sort of “light” corruption.

On another note, What will likely happen - along with most of the things our dairy lobby pushes, is that as trading partners like the US become unreliable and market realities change we will need to meet the standards we’ve just rejected anyway.

Its the same story as the eggs thing a couple years ago. The weakened voluntary standards didn’t meet the demand of the market and those that hadn’t opted to invest in what the market wanted were left behind. Same thing will happen to our agriculture if they want to continue to sell into Europe and China will just flex whatever they want so like it or not the increased standards will be coming down the line anyway.

I don’t think there’s a particularly right or wrong answer in response to the tariffs, but we should be seriously considering our security posture which ties us so heavily to the USA.

There has always been an unspoken risk by being tied so closely to the US; but as their interest in & ability to defend their allies wanes those risks move from the unlikely to likely.

Some will argue we can’t take an independent position as we’ll just get pulled in the orbit of some bloc against our will anyway. Its difficult to have a good answer on where we should align ourselves.

They also never talk about why the public services under Labour led governments tend to hire more.

1. Because National governments get rid of so many the Ministries struggle to get the work they were asked to do done so hire consultants & contractors
2. Because Labour led governments typically want the Ministries to do more things to fill the gaps in need that the private sector leaves
3. Because Labour led governments typically see a need to have a public service overseeing compliance from the private sector, whereas National led governments typically think its fine for private sector to regulate & monitor itself.

etc, etc, etc.

Talking about a number of people is a useful tool for propagandists like Bridge, but it dumbs down the discussion when we lose all the context about why we might, or might not, need certain numbers of people working in the public sector.

Also, his arguments (like most from the neo-liberal right) assume the magic of the private sector, as if there’s not vast amounts of waste happening in corps all the fricking time as well.

That’s what im saying; the old plain white racists are dying off, so he’s pivoting to outrage amongst young males instead.

That’s the only thing that’ll potentially save us - just how bad they are at running the economy. But you have to keep an eye on polling which still shows the majority of our voters trust National on the economy more than Labour.

Plus Act & National have a huge amount of money from the real estate & landlord grifters who are going to dump it in yet again to fight against CGT which Labour will have to go with some form of to keep their own voters on side.

There’s some fairly large amount of NZers that interact on the daily (some on the hourly) with Facebook. I dip in from time to time to read what people are saying just to try to keep some perspective on why it seems so many of my fellow citizens have such strange ideas.

For the most part replies and discussion on just about any topic are full of false assumptions, minimal facts, naked and unquestioned bias (x is always bad no matter what, y always good etc) and then the usual racism, misogyny and nastiness. This sort of crap from Winston appeals to that sort of folk, really he’s just targetting a little lower and more broadly than his usual tactic of talking to the 70+ old white racists.

Ah! That’s what it was, as soon as I took English out, I can right-alt and do the ā.

Some suggesting is that its only a $300m break fee if we agree to buy the 2 smaller ferries from Hyundai, otherwise we have to pay the full amount.

So we’ll probably end up spending $800m+ on 2 smaller ferries that aren’t future proofed and will still probably need some sort of landside infrastructure changes which were the overwhelming majority of the increase in cost due to upgraded seismic requirements.

Oh, and those new ferries might not make it until the end of the decade instead of next year.

right-alt as the alternative character key must be the default as I had it too, but at least replying here (in Zen) it doesn’t seem to do anything. So I added another input source to have English & Maori, but still doesn’t seem to do anything, nor does toggling the compose key.

I guess there’s a chance Zen just doesn’t respect those settings / implement them.

Yeah, IIRC the science on that & the dosage required isn’t quite as settled as the WHO warning suggests. But in any case, you can always cure your own using just salt! I think mostly the nitrate is there to keep it pink.

I’m Pakeha*, middle-class, male and (getting) old(er). I’m already over-represented.

Also, there’s a difference between moaning about the public servants that are employed to do the will of the government, versus elected representatives who try to impose their will. I think its fine to complain about the latter if they’re doing stuff you disagree with. Though the majority of complaints about local government are horrendously uninformed and wrong. But that’s the world we live in.

*can anybody point me to how to access special characters in gnome?

Maybe taste wise, but texture wise Vegemite is closer to NZ Marmite. UK Marmite is very syrupy.

Apparently for those with distinguished palates Promite is the best of the bunch. I wouldn’t know i’m not that big of a fan of it.

Yeah the food safety aspect of packed lunches is really another reason why providing them at the place of learning is better for everybody.

Having said that, I sometimes feel that western food safety standards are overly broad most likely due to litigation in the former leader of the free world. Take rice for example, its a huge no-no in the west to even contemplate letting rice sit around warm after its cooked, and there are some reasons for why, but I’ve talked to plenty of people who grew up in south-east asia where that was common.

Probably the best home-school-lunch-makers answer to food safety & variety from protein etc is cured meats :) Get your kids a prosciutto sandwich everyone!

What he means is parents should make that sandwich so the unit cost of individual househoulds making one off marmite sandwiches is about as expensive as it could possibly get.

And yes, its better than no lunch but the whole point of the lunch program was (before Seymour enshittified it) to provide one guaranteed healthy & hearty meal a day because we know (and have known for decades) that it improves education & life outcomes.

I think that’s a reasonable take given John Key actually put his cards on the table pre-election saying he supported Trump because he would be better for business.

Which is a pretty willfully stupid take to be honest, unless when he meant oligarchs when he said what he said.

Just jumping in to add, lots of people think this is a Public Sector problem with IT procurement. But coming up to 20 year experience in IT for corps, its pretty much the same thing.

Lots of moaning about bespoke, or multiple systems interacting together, so instead lets buy an “off-the-shelf” solution because we did an 80/20 and we won’t need to customise anything.

Oh whoops, turns out the 20 was the critical stuff and we now need some convoluted “fix” by our hugely expensive consultants’ favoured implementation shop (oh weird, they share the same parent company?!) that gets 3/4 of the way through before budget is pulled and some stuff just never works. If you’re lucky its left in the old system, sometimes you just lose features.