New Zealand

[Karearea]

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national ... d=msedgdhp

Can it be that the Covid lockdowns are alone responsible for these appalling results?'Incredibly sad': "Assessment of literacy and numeracy competency in NZ schools paints grim picture"

If it's 14- and 15-year-olds being referred to in the article, it seems to me that the problem goes further back than the past two years and lockdowns.

[John Hill]

Can it be that the Covid lockdowns are alone responsible for these appalling results?'Incredibly sad': "Assessment of literacy and numeracy competency in NZ schools paints grim picture"

Yea, whatever the problem, real or imagined you can blame it on Jacinda and her Covid lockdowns.

[ExSp33db1rd]

"Assessment of literacy and numeracy competency in NZ schools paints grim picture"

First of all ban all personal Online "devices" in school, and ensure that "approved " computers and the like are fixed to prohibit access to Social Media.
( can this be done ? ) Has any survey assessed the level of competency in Text Messaging or uploading photo's to Instagram ? I bet they'd get 100 % passmarks there !

It is now proposed that all schools must teach the Maori language, so even less time now for the 3 R's. ( Reading, Riting, Rithmatic )

[EA01]

It is now proposed that all schools must teach the Maori language

Whatever the f**k for Sir?

[Boac]

I believe it might be the national language?

[G-CPTN]

When we first moved to Denmark, I was somewhat shocked to hear young Danish children, using the F-word freely until I discovered that Danish swearing is based on religious concepts (God, the Devil. Satan, Hell etc) and 'our' sexual swearwords are merely bodily functions which they use freely and without shame.

Think Northern Irish religious communities who consider blasphemy unpalatable.

[FD2]

Spring is in the air! Sadly we cannot assume the electorate will vote the same way next year in the General Election but I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed. There were several stories in the local press about how local election voters were scared to vote unless they accidentally voted for one or more of the loony VFF council candidates. Some of them are genuine nutters but the majority of the VFF people are simply fed up with the conduct of the present government and wish to disrupt government policies at a council level. The major farmers' demonstrations around the country are a case in point - they want the government to formulate proper 'pollution' policies instead of just taxing them up the ying yang to tackle the around 0.5% of emissions that New Zealand (not the newly invented name 'Aotearoa') emits into the World's atmosphere. As the New Zealand press has shown they are largely supine in the face of politicians and big business and when they dare to ask an awkward question they don't get straight answers and never follow them up to see if the actions promised by the politicians have been carried out. Covid revealed, for instance, an acute shortage of ICU beds in our hospitals. New ones are being put together said the Health Minister but I wonder how many have been by now. Emergency Departments are critically short of staff but Immigration still dithers over lengthy time to achieve residency for immigrant A&E staff.

Ardern learned her craft well in her time working for that nice Tony Blair chap and his chums in England. Just watch her in action when she really is asked an awkward question by a daring reporter mouse. Sadly, IMO, the continual agenda for unwelcome change that her government has been pushing tends to frustrate people to such a point that there is a very worrying rise in the bellicose real far right and that's not the ACT/National coalition which is really only slightly right of centre. There is a section of society here which venerates the actions of the Christchurch shooter and biker gangs, ram raids and feral youngsters are on the rampage under Ardern's leadership. The problem won't be solved by being nice and smiling sweetly and continually asking why they are behaving that way and kicking the problem into the long grass. It actually needs action to clamp down on it and really address the awful poverty and inequality that a large part of New Zealand society has to endure.

Wayne Brown knows very well that he has to work with, rather than against, the PM as mayor of New Zealand's largest city but it seems a little like Aslan has arrived in Narnia.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ ... ty-ballot/


Jacinda Ardern feels the heat as frustrated voters punish her party at the ballot box

Right-wing alternatives surge ahead in New Zealand local elections following growing social inequality and draconian Covid rules
By Roger Maynard 22 October 2022 • 4:43pm


New Zealand voters have aired their frustration with Jacinda Ardern’s government at the ballot box, as Right-wing parties surged ahead in local elections.

Conservative candidates in Auckland, Christchurch, Invercargill and Rotorua all elected conservative mayors.

Only Wellington voted otherwise, electing the Greens’ candidate - but Labour’s candidate in the election came in fourth place. Dunedin opted for an independent.

The council elections, which are held during September and October, confirmed the results of a recent opinion poll, which found the Right-wing National-ACT NZ coalition had increased its lead over the Labour-Greens coalition by the largest margin since May.

The Roy Morgan survey put the two conservative parties 6.5 per cent ahead of the coalition government.

However, the turnout in the recent vote was just 36 per cent, four points lower than in 2019.
Jacinda Ardern tries to play down results

Even so, it is a wake-up call for the prime minister - whose government has presided over a period of growing social inequality, record levels of homelessness and draconian restrictions imposed during the early days of the pandemic, which isolated the country from the rest of the world.

The prime minister has moved to play down the council elections, insisting they were not a “simple straight reflection” of opposition towards her government.

She told TVNZ that it may have more to do with low voter turnout, driven by a reluctance to use postal votes.

Curiously, Ms Ardern’s poor performance has not created a gulf with the biggest winner in the local elections - Wayne Brown, a property developer who was elected mayor of Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city.

The two were pictured shaking hands in newspapers, after agreeing to work together in the interests of the country.

Mr Brown’s demeanour was in sharp contrast to his earlier insistence that the role of Wellington was to listen to the priorities of Aucklanders and fund them.

If the prime minister is feeling the political heat at the moment, she will welcome a visit to Antarctica planned for next week.

Ms Ardern is due to fly there on Tuesday for two days on the ice to mark 65 years of Scott Base.

“Antarctica is part of New Zealand’s heritage and future and we’re committed to its protection as a natural reserve for peace, science and cooperation,” she said.

[G-CPTN]

really address the awful poverty that a large part of New Zealand society has to endure.

Is this mainly affecting the indigenous population - or the main society?

[TheGreenAnger]

I am not going to get involved with NZ politics, but I salute Ms. Adern's commitment to the Antarctic, a continent where the New Zealander heritage is strong, and where the Kiwi has shown a leadership role, not evident in some countries further north that should know better.

[G-CPTN]

We don't use No 8 wire in the UK (AFAIK), but agricultural workers make prolific use of 'baler twine' - was sisal, now synthetic.
Used for everything from tying around your waist, holding anything in place to repairing machinery.

Known colloquially as 'Charlie Turner'.

[FD2]

G-CPTN - Some people think it's the indigenous population but it's not. There are many 'pakeha' at the bottom of the heap too. There's never enough money to go round as there's also a huge investment needed in the country's infrastructure. #8 wire will sort all the problems!

[FD2]

A response to the PM's actions from the Spectator:


Jacinda & Ursula

What are these authoritarians up to?
Amy Brooke


Looking at the problematic behaviour of both the President of the European Union and New Zealand’s Prime Minister, I’m struck by the comparison between two autocratic women determined to get their own way. To Ursula von der Leyen, a right-wing government in Italy is unacceptable. Apparently she is also not particularly enamoured of Hungary and Poland, largely Christian countries whose governments reject, partly or totally, the EU and its bureaucrats for disregarding the sovereignty of EU member states.

Her menacing threat – that the EU has certain ‘tools’ if the Italians chose to go in a different direction – brings home to us how the bogeyman of the far right is now constantly invoked to justify the increasingly familiar politics of oppression.

This is the voice of tyranny speaking. And regardless of all the propaganda so obligingly endorsed by our mainstream media, the worldwide attack on democracies is from the left of the political spectrum – such as New Zealand’s Labour coalition – not from the centre-right. Our old enemy, communism, reinventing itself as cultural Marxism, has finally come to fruition, dominating all our institutions. But so long and successfully has the teaching of history been removed from our schools’ curricula that many are supremely ignorant about the very real danger – in reality the basic evil of communism, dedicated not only to subvert and overthrow democracies and individual freedoms, but to target Christianity and the values it represents.

However did we progress from democratic governments being voted in to carry out the wishes of the electorate to where people are now told what they are, or are not, permitted to do or say? Ridiculous new laws against ‘hate speech’ include comments which a determinedly aggrieved person can claim to be hurtful, or to be offended by. Yet freedom of speech is the heart of democratic freedom and it is up to the public, not to governments, to challenge speech which may be genuinely offensive.

An autocracy is well on the way, particularly when, as in New Zealand, the perceivably inadequate leader of the main opposition party seems to be caught up in the politics of self-esteem and focusing exclusively on financial issues. Christopher Luxon is apparently unaware of the need to come to grips with the radicalisation fracturing this country– the deliberate promotion of racial divisiveness. He also subscribes to the non-existent, climate change emergency scenario – which the seemingly obsessed Ardern now brandishes as a political weapon. However, Ardern’s near-hysterical raising of the prospect of imminent doom is underpinning a subversive agenda, and the fact that National party is too intellectually dimwitted to challenge her nonsense is unforgivable.

Our self-willed leader is now calling for censorship, saying nations must fight disinformation and combat falsehoods. Why? Because she says so? And what is disinformation – something with which she personally disagrees? Ominously, she is targeting people who do not believe in the global-warming catastrophising which top scientists are challenging: she wants their findings suppressed. Yet the best way to arrive at the truth of issues is never by restricting free speech, but by open debate.

However, our heavily bribed mainstream media already refuse to publish any article, no matter how well-informed, challenging the computer-generated findings of many with no real right to call themselves scientists. For example, Karl Popper’s well-known invoking of falsifiability calls for evaluation of scientific theory – not the drawing of unverifiable conclusions by feeding selective data into a computer to produce foregone conclusions.

We need to ask why this is the very last thing that she wants to occur. Why is she so determined to back this cargo cult? She wants no debate about nor questioning of the ‘climate change emergency’: it is to be suppressed as disinformation – simply outlawed. Yet she must well know other countries are abandoning ill-thought net-zero targets. Given the current energy and food shortages, the use of coal worldwide is hugely increasing, with fossil fuels gaining renewed respect – while she remains committed to penalising New Zealanders – eventually even to be forbidden to drive other than electric cars with their own drawbacks.

But who has given Ardern the right to make these arbitrary decisions? Her government has not only presided over the closing down of our hugely important Marsden Point oil refinery, but over the sale of many thousands of hectares of land (taken out of food production) to overseas interests profiting from planting it in pine trees and gaining the ridiculous, but lucrative, carbon credits. Only now is concern being raised about how much highly productive land has been lost in growing these forests as part of the pointless war against carbon dioxide.

We all know full well that even if New Zealand achieved the impossible net-zero carbon emissions it would make no difference at all to global warming – little though it is, and in fact valuable. Moreover, what eminent scientists like Australian Ian Plimer point out is what Jacinda Ardern would apparently like censored, banned as misinformation: ‘Forget carbon dioxide: water vapour accounts for at least 80 per cent of the planet’s greenhouse warming. Water vapour is the third-most abundant gas in the atmosphere, whereas carbon dioxide is a trace gas with unremarkable properties.’

Her real agenda is made plain in her recent scare-mongering address to the United Nations, about the ‘crisis of climate change’, stating elsewhere that ‘in many ways the lessons of the pandemic were the lessons of climate change’. Really?

We begin to understand her illogical comparisons when we understand she supports the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda and is backing an international effort to ‘develop a new global health legal instrument, strengthen international health regulations, and a strong and empowered World Health Organisation.’ The clues are there – ‘legal… strong… regulations…empowered…’ – to surrender what’s left of our national independence. The common theme is top-down ruling by left-wing governments using the excuse of ostensibly having no choice, legally bound to do so – having signed up to the domination of these anti-democratic, supranational organisations.

Arden’s comparison of the action needed on climate change to that ‘needed’ on the pandemic should give us warning. What’s ahead – climate change lockdowns to limit CO2 emissions? Even more of her government as ‘the single source of truth’? As Jane Fonda said, ‘Covid was God’s gift to the Left.’
--
https://www.amybrooke.co.nz/about-amy-brooke/

[FD2]

Not wanted here:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300717 ... disturbing

[TheGreenAnger]

Not wanted here:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300717 ... disturbing

NZ has so much more to be proud about than those idiots...

TGA

[TheGreenAnger]

[ExSp33db1rd]

FD2 #252 Well said.

It is now proposed that all schools must teach the Maori language

Whatever the f**k for Sir?

I believe it might be the national language?

Correct. English, Maori, and Sign Language (!) are the three "Official" Languages in New Zealand. God forbid that I have to learn Sign Language, but TV News readers now preface their opening and closing remarks with something that they speak in Maori, before repeating it in English, not the other way around. During a recent "Maori Language Week" one current affairs daily programme announced that they would pesent their Friday evening edition totally in Maori-speak. At least I got warning and didn't bother tuning in. TV stations giving sub-titles for place names relating to the current subject, only use Maori for local place names, i.e. use something I can neither remember or spell when advising that the clip relates to something that happened in Auckland, or Wellington, or any place in New Zealand. Some Maori word that I can neither pronounce or spell preceeds every reference to New Zealand now, both Nationally and Internationaly, Aotowotsit or something, and I really am afraid that a legal name change will soon take place.

Before being granted Residency nearly 30 years ago now, my wife and I had to complete an English Language spoken and written test, despite being clearly of British and American descent and appearing in person at the relevant Embassy and making our initial request speaking English ! Will future wanna-be immigrants have to take a Maori language test, or a Sign Language test !

Obviously I have no objection to Maori, or any other nationality, speaking their own languages amongst themselves, but as they are approximately only just around 20% of the population ( I think ? ) to force non-Maori children of all denominations to learn it at school, when there is an apparent problem with children having time to learn the stuff that they are supposed to be going to school for anyway, is ridiculous, but what hope is there for commonsense anymore ?

Maorification of New Zealand ? In view of the situation I'd seriously consider moving on, but at our age ...... ? and where to go, the whole World Has Gone Mad.

[TheGreenAnger]

FD2 #252 Well said.

It is now proposed that all schools must teach the Maori language

Whatever the f**k for Sir?

I believe it might be the national language?

Correct. English, Maori, and Sign Language (!) are the three Official Languages in New Zealand.

In SA, we had in my day 15 different languages... of whom, each man and woman were worthy of being saluted.

Look at this... even the Canuks get the basis...

[TheGreenAnger]

May Britain recover.

[ExSp33db1rd]

May Britain recover.

The TV nonsense "The Crown" won't help.

The Economy, Brexit, and the loss of HMQ ain't helping.

[TheGreenAnger]

May Britain recover.

The TV nonsense "The Crown" won't help.

The Economy, Brexit, and the loss of HMQ ain't helping.

You are right sir.

We need to go back to first principles!

The British still have them but have momentarily forgotten them.