Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Grant McDougall,
Andrew Little said on RNZ Nat yesterday that Goff has been relieved of that and it’s been given to, er, someone else.
Thank you, Grant. I expect some tech gnome will update the Labour Party website presently. :)
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And the “secret” thing has been dialled down
It shouldn't be "dialed down", it should be retracted and apologized for because it's just a lie. Sorry for being a broken record, but this is a tiresome habit with The Herald and Orsman in particular and it's just not good enough. No local government ever sends individual notifications to everyone who might conceivably be affected by every decision it makes, and trying to frame that as some vast conspiracy on behalf of property developers is flat out dishonest.
The council “has to” prevent the future building of townhouses and studios?
Careful not to dig yourself a hole, Phil.
And while he's still a Member of Parliament (and, as far as I'm aware, still his party's "spokesman for Auckland issues"), he might want to think very carefully about whether it's wise to start laying down the law.
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to Kumara Republic,
I’ve asked this question before, but if a Manhattan-style apartment was planned for Epsom, would David Seymour use the RMA that he wants watered down to block it?
I know David Seymour and Epsom is the cheap shot that never stops giving around here, but what does he actually have to do with Auckland City zoning or resource consent issues?
We’re already mixed housing suburban like most of the neighbourhood. Should I be hyperventilating with fear?
Yes, then again you’re smart enough to be a tad skeptical about anything on this topic from someone with a track record of running claims under his byline that turn out to be… somewhat economical with the easily checked fact.
I know it would take real political courage, but Goff would do everyone a solid if he started calling out the Herald (and the rest of the media) on flat out lies that are damaging a grown-up debate Auckland can’t keep dodging.
And here’s a modest proposal: Perhaps more people would know the intricacies of the of the Unitary Plan if the only local government issue The Herald has really cared about for years is slut-shaming Len Brown?
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Hard News: The Message, in reply to George Darroch,
I’m not sure how far Goff’s call for efficient spending is a matter of policy, or simply useful rhetoric.
Someone better be asking Goff that if he doesn’t know himself, because today’s “useful rhetoric” has a most unfortunate tendency to come back and bite you in the arse. I sure don’t remember Len Brown (or anyone else) campaigning on cutting library hours before the last election, but it happened and could have been a LOT worse. The next time it might be.
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And going by his quotes to the Herald after Goff’s announcement, the Prime Minister is okay with that. I don’t think the Right will try to put up a sensible candidate against Goff.
Well, I rather wish “they” (whoever they are) would, because coronations tend to lead to more platitudes than serious policy subject to equally serious scrutiny. Then again, that would rather depend on Auckland’s media – particularly the New Zealand Herald – stepping up and actually doing their bloody jobs. That ship’s long since sailed and hit an iceberg, based on previous form.
But a good start would be asking Goff to stop being so bloody foggy and say what this actually means:
We need to put our own house in order and make Auckland New Zealand’s best performing city. When we do that, we are in a stronger position to leverage Government resources to meet the needs created by rapid growth …
Perhaps I’m way too cynical for my own good, but that sounds an awful lot like a low-level dog whistle to people who retire to the fainting couch at the idea that their rates are not excessive by any rational metric, and Auckland isn’t actually choking in debt.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Russell Brown,
This US map from Tucker FitzGerald makes a very salient point. Not that that paranoid half of American politics will grasp it.
The double down irony burn is that Governors have no legal power to "refuse" anyone legally in the United States shit. It's empty posturing, though I can't help but note a fair number of those governors are facing some combination of gubernatorial elections next year, the ever-present threat of primary challenges from the right or tough state house and senate elections for their parties.
To them, a red state is a good state…
With all due respect, nzlemming, let's not forget the Mayor of Roanoke who excreted this shameful turd is not only a Democrat, but mayor of a city Obama carried by 23.4 points in 2008.
I'm reminded that President Franklin D Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and it appears that threat of harm to America from [IS] now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.
Sadly, nobody bothered to remind Mr Bowers not only were over 60% of Japanese internees in 1942 American citizens, but the overwhelming majority of those who weren't were issei, first generation immigrants who were forbidden by law from American citizenship no matter how long they'd lived in the United States.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Russell Brown,
Iyad El-Baghdadi tweeted about how the “cut off the funding” thing doesn’t apply so much any more. Isis is largely self-funding – and two thirds of its money comes from extortion.
Also, “cut off Saudi Arabia” is a rather naive and simplistic answer when we take a look at who the world’s biggest arms exporters actually are and little will, or even ability, there is to check where they end up. Hint: Saudi Arabia isn’t one of them.
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ICYMI, enormous good sense coming from a frontbench minister across the ditch:
Commentators should stop issuing “pejorative demands” to Muslim leaders to condemn terrorism each time it occurs, the government frontbencher Christopher Pyne said during a Q&A program dominated by discussion of the Paris attacks.
Pyne was responding to a question from a young Australian Muslim and former Iraqi refugee, Mohammad Al-Khafaji, who said that every time there was an attack he and his community were called upon to condemn it and explain themselves.
The industry minister and leader of the house told the ABC program that Muslim communities condemned such acts but “they shouldn’t be called on to do so because it suggests that they didn’t want to do it”.
“I’ve never known one of these things to happen where Muslim leaders in Australia didn’t come out and condemn them, but by the very act of demanding they come out you suggest that they didn’t want to, and that is something that we must stop happening in Australia.”
“Whoever is doing that must stop it, because it is pejorative demand. I don’t know any Muslims in my community who would think that the acts in Paris or in Lebanon or anywhere else were reasonable, and their leadership should react exactly the same way as everyone else’s leadership, which is to be horrified and aghast by it.”
There's plenty of stuff to give the Australian Government stick over, but at least on this I'm thankful Turnbull is setting the tone not Tony Abbott.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
The found passport bothers me too. If you were going to go and carry out an attack like this, why would you have your passport with you?
Well, yes – when we were in Europe three years back, I always (securely) carried my passport because it’s the only internationally recognized form of photo ID I have. Given that the attacks were in places full of foreign nationals, it makes perfect sense to me that a lot of people would be carrying their passports.
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Hard News: Ten Thousand Maniacs, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think it’s appropriate to be wary about that. Some reports suggest that the passport may in fact have belong to an audience member – the other named attackers are older and French-born. Also, it is apparently very easy to obtain false Syrian passports.
Yes it is, and here’s a good piece from The Guardian’s “Migration correspondent” Patrick Kingsley explaining exactly why.
Not least this statement of the bleeding obvious:
Investigators still need to verify the Syrian passport was carried by an attacker rather than a dead bystander (one Egyptian passport-holder initially believed to be an assailant turned out to be an injured victim). They will then need to be certain that the passport’s carrier was the same as the passport’s legitimate owner.
Has New Zealand so quickly forgotten this? Identity theft is an growth industry.