Greenie hypocrites overcharge taxpayer for minister's houses

[jono035]

fuck helen

Billboard Helen or real-life Helen?

To be honest though I think caring about what a prime-minister looks like is a good way to end up with the current US affliction of having elected someone who has good oratorical skills and gives the voters the ability to play the wonderfully oxymoronic 'I'm not racist, I voted for the black guy' card.

Edit: One of my issues with the greens is that by taking on a lot of nutbar social causes, they have denied the ability for me to place a vote for environmental preservation without tacitly supporting an activist-left-wing social agenda. I am a left-leaning person for the most part, but not THAT left leaning. That said, a lot of their environmental policies display some nice 'head in the sand' style thinking, too. Maybe I'm just bitter about them sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'lalalalala' whenever nuclear power is mentioned.

[Skyryder]

Billboard Helen or real-life Helen?

To be honest though I think caring about what a prime-minister looks like is a good way to end up with the current US affliction of having elected someone who has good oratorical skills and gives the voters the ability to play the wonderfully oxymoronic 'I'm not racist, I voted for the black guy' card.

Edit: One of my issues with the greens is that by taking on a lot of nutbar social causes, they have denied the ability for me to place a vote for environmental preservation without tacitly supporting an activist-left-wing social agenda. I am a left-leaning person for the most part, but not THAT left leaning. That said, a lot of their environmental policies display some nice 'head in the sand' style thinking, too. Maybe I'm just bitter about them sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting 'lalalalala' whenever nuclear power is mentioned.

I'd be a bit more sympathetic to the Greens if they had a decent foreign policy agenda. Bradford got most of the stick but the real danger to NZ is not some smacking issue but Keith Lock's utterances and actions. He's the real looney.

As for the nuclear issue this was kicked off by the Values Party which later morphised into the Greens via Rod Donald etc. Kirk picked it up and the rest is history.

Skyryder

[jono035]

I'd be a bit more sympathetic to the Greens if they had a decent foreign policy agenda. Bradford got most of the stick but the real danger to NZ is not some smacking issue but Keith Lock's utterances and actions. He's the real looney.

As for the nuclear issue this was kicked off by the Values Party which later morphised into the Greens via Rod Donald etc. Kirk picked it up and the rest is history.

Skyryder

Don't know much of the background to it all but I've been in a couple of lectures where different Greenies have come along to have their say about energy generation from renewable resources. In front of a room full of Electrical Engineering students the explanation was pretty much 'hydro and wind power are great because they give us free power with no downsides' and then when asked about what kind of situation New Zealand would have to be in to reconsider our nuclear free stance got told something similar to 'we would never do that because nuclear is non-renewable, dirty evil power that results in 3 eyed fish and you've all seen what godzilla did to japan...' (I'm paraphrasing). No comments about hydro damaging rivers, no comments about the visual and audible impacts of wind power (let alone the grid stability issues) etc.

I like the idea of generating more of our power from wind and hydro, just don't try to tell me that there aren't downsides or alternatives, that is just plain old disingenuous.

I fear I may be wandering off topic slightly however

[rainman]

It would be helpful if people made the effort to distinguish policies from politicians...

Excellent comments, particularly re lightbulbs and growth-as-usual. Unfortunately NZ's low political maturity seems to preclude rational discussion on these sorts of issues.

By way of example, I give you.... Mr Pixie:

Go live in a cave and concentrate on composting your own shit

Real grown up. What are you, like, 4?

There's a difference between mining under some standard greenish coloured bit of land on the edge of a National Park and sticking a drilling rig next to Mitre Peak...

Possibly. But do I trust Brownlee to a) understand this, and b) tell us the truth about his plans? Not so much.

I'd be a bit more sympathetic to the Greens if they had a decent foreign policy agenda.

Yeah, but they are a small party, who will never (realistically) govern, other than in coalition. And many people already hit them with the "stick to the environment" message. So having a foreign policy agenda that is heavy on the environmental message isn't a bad idea.

Do you have links to the red and blue equivalents? Their websites are a bit less comprehensive on policy issues than I am used to...

[Flatcap]

Excellent comments, particularly re lightbulbs and growth-as-usual. Unfortunately NZ's low political maturity seems to preclude rational discussion on these sorts of issues.
..

Hard to stay rational when the window-licking loon's policies have a clear and present negative impact on your wealth and daily life

[rainman]

Hard to stay rational when the window-licking loon's policies have a clear and present negative impact on your wealth and daily life

I'd suggest the Green New Deal would have a positive impact, but that is open to debate, no doubt. What policy do you see as a big threat to your economic well being?

Besides, capitalism as she is currently practised (TBTF, bailout capitalism, corporate socialism, whatever) has both a negative impact on your wealth and the planet - unless you're a banker, of course.

[MisterD]

Possibly. But do I trust Brownlee to a) understand this, and b) tell us the truth about his plans? Not so much.

Well at least we've found the point at which our views differ.

[Ixion]

.. The Greens are an easy target because they are a varied group of individuals loosely united by a commitment to environmental protection but ..

But are they? I'm very far from convinced. In fact I'd suggest that the Greens have by and large lost interest in environmental issues and are much more interested in chasing social engineering objectives.

I'm no tree hugging sandal wearing yakaznik , but even I can see a whole lot of environmental bastardries that piss me off. I don't believe that "protect the environment" should be overarching , at the expense of "maintaining a decent standard of living". But there are a lot of things that could be done that would achieve both. I don't see the Greens pushing them. Oh, sure, token murmurs of "oh yes, certainly". But their hearts aren't in it.

Packaging, f'instance. I get uber-pissed off when I go do the shopping. Why is everything loaded up with a crap load of plastic and paper packing that I don't want and that I have to get rid of. We have some token gestures about recycling which misses the point. Get rid of the crap in the first place. I put on a new shirt this morning. After extracting it from its packing I had 9 bits of plastic and 4 pieces of cardboard (and a bit of paper, and six pins). None of them served any purpose whatsoever as far as I'm concerned. I'd have been happy with just a shirt in a recyclable brown paper bag.

Why don't we have refundable deposits on drink containers as they do in Souf Oz (and we used to here)

Why do almost all businesses have lights blazing all night long in empty office buildings.

Why do all office buildings have huge ventilation and air conditioning systems, instead of a few windows that open?

Why do we have street lights blazing all night long when there's no traffic (motor or pedestrian) ?

Why are we using up vast amounts of resources sealing gravel roads , when research shows that it does not reduce accident rates, and the traffic over the roads is mainly limited to the local farmers. And sealed roads are a crap load worse for the environment than gravel, because of the run off. ?

Why are farmers dumping (literal) truck loads of artificial nitrogenous fertiliser into the waterways ?

I could go on for pages and pages. And if an unrepentant Gaea rapist like me is aware of these things , then the general population is no don't even more so

I don't see or hear the Greens making any noise about such things. Sure, no doubt it's all in their mission statement or policy statement or such. But, manifestly, they don't really give a stuff.

If the Greens actually focused on the Environment instead of telling people how to bring up their kids, or blindly importing overseas ideas that aren't relevant to NZ (making people shower in a dribble of water made sense in Oz - they have a perpetual draught. In NZ we're more at risk of drowning!), I'd be a lot more impressed with them.

I think that the original environmentally focused Green party has been hijacked by a bunch of people with other agendas to push. Like Sue Bradford, working out the demons of her childhood, and the maori radical wing using the party as a platform for apartheid. Because, being a small party , it's relatively easy for a small dedicated cadre to hijack.

[StoneY]

So, the house that generations of the family has owned for many years, which is on English Rd, has nothing to do with having to move to Wellytown? Perhaps taking the taxpayer-paid-for dwelling in Welly would have been better but he is a family man and wants to be with wife and kids in a "normal" family situation. Good on him.

YOU miss the point dude- not the rest of us

I agree with 'good on him' living in HIS family home- which BTW is FREEHOLD and owned by the 'family trust' not Bill himself (if you swallow that dodge)
However the ISSUE is WE, the humble TAXPAYER were PAYING him the MAXIMUM allowance to live in HIS house on which there is NO MORTGAGE or RENT to be PAID at all

Fuckin CRIMINAL in context if not the letter of the stupid legislation, especially with more Kiwi's out of work than in any other period of the last decade (maybe Labour wasnt such a bad option after all)

[Flatcap]

I'd suggest the Green New Deal would have a positive impact, but that is open to debate, no doubt. What policy do you see as a big threat to your economic well being?
.

Sorry, did I say policies? I meant drug-addled jabberings

[Swoop]

Packaging, f'instance. I get uber-pissed off when I go do the shopping. Why is everything loaded up with a crap load of plastic and paper packing that I don't want and that I have to get rid of. We have some token gestures about recycling which misses the point. Get rid of the crap in the first place.

Totally agree Ix. I believe that the petroleum products that are used in the packaging process are of the best quality. They "cannot" use recycled stuff for this. Another waste of resources.

YOU miss the point dude- not the rest of us

Have to disagree and see both sides of the issue.
The "ancestral home" or "marae" if you like, is in a location different from his current abode. A small issue.
The rorting of the system to get the salary package as large as possible, is a bad look. I have said before in other threads, that an MP's salary should be linked to the average wage in NZ. That would give them incentive to raise the level of wages here and also (hopefully) mean that they are in the job for the right reasons. The parasites that we attract to parliament, come for the wrong reasons at times. Professional retards who have never worked in their life (school, then university, then politics...) for example.

[Pixie]

Don't know much of the background to it all but I've been in a couple of lectures where different Greenies have come along to have their say about energy generation from renewable resources. In front of a room full of Electrical Engineering students the explanation was pretty much 'hydro and wind power are great because they give us free power with no downsides' and then when asked about what kind of situation New Zealand would have to be in to reconsider our nuclear free stance got told something similar to 'we would never do that because nuclear is non-renewable, dirty evil power that results in 3 eyed fish and you've all seen what godzilla did to japan...' (I'm paraphrasing). No comments about hydro damaging rivers, no comments about the visual and audible impacts of wind power (let alone the grid stability issues) etc.

I like the idea of generating more of our power from wind and hydro, just don't try to tell me that there aren't downsides or alternatives, that is just plain old disingenuous.

I fear I may be wandering off topic slightly however

And that's why I hate NZ Greenies .-They have made their anti-science dogma into a religion.
Greenies in European Parliaments are different-some have even supported the building of new nuclear power stations.
Our Stupid Hippies believe in an iron age fairy land that never really existed.

The fact that they fell for the Dihydrogen Monoxide scam says it all:

"LARRY BALDOCK: In the role of Minister of Health is the Minister of the opinion that parabens cause more or less of a concern for public health than dihydrogen monoxide, a potentially deadly substance used in nuclear reactors that the member for the Greens also tried to have banned until discovering that its more common name was water?"

http://www.dhmo.org/

[MisterD]

And that's why I hate NZ Greenies .-They have made their anti-science dogma into a religion.

But...but...the world is warming, the science is settled...

[Skyryder]

Don't know much of the background to it all but I've been in a couple of lectures where different Greenies have come along to have their say about energy generation from renewable resources. In front of a room full of Electrical Engineering students the explanation was pretty much 'hydro and wind power are great because they give us free power with no downsides' and then when asked about what kind of situation New Zealand would have to be in to reconsider our nuclear free stance got told something similar to 'we would never do that because nuclear is non-renewable, dirty evil power that results in 3 eyed fish and you've all seen what godzilla did to japan...' (I'm paraphrasing). No comments about hydro damaging rivers, no comments about the visual and audible impacts of wind power (let alone the grid stability issues) etc.

I like the idea of generating more of our power from wind and hydro, just don't try to tell me that there aren't downsides or alternatives, that is just plain old disingenuous.

I fear I may be wandering off topic slightly however

As a fisherman and a avid anti nuclear proponent I asked myself one question.

Would I sooner lose all the rivers to Hydro or suffer the consuences of a meltdown. To me that was the choice. I tend to look at complex issues rather simplisticly. That way you get rid of chaff and eventually come down to two solutions. For or against. Basicly that's how I make up my mind. It's not something that comes instantly but I eventually arrive at a 'position.'

Many have argued that the chances of a meltdown are remote. That I accept. But the chances are even more remote if there is no nuclear station.

I could go much deeper into this but as you say this is not the thread for it but one issue that if this could be 'sorted' in a safer manner than at present is the spent fuel rods. One can put as many safety systems in place but the by-product is one that has never been solved in a manner where I would consider a rethink for myself on this issue.

Still the river issues are high on my list but if comes down to losing the rivers and a nuclear station I'd go for the river loss. And I have not come to this position lightly.

Skyryder

[jono035]

Still the river issues are high on my list but if comes down to losing the rivers and a nuclear station I'd go for the river loss.

I agree that this is the wrong place to debate this and I genuinely enjoy talking to other people with their own viewpoints on these things, but having researched the major nuclear incidents that have occurred and the results of them it is surprising just how many things have to be wrong from the start, how many systems be un-maintained, improperly used and simply turned off to allow the human errors that caused the disasters. There are also far worse things that have happened as a result of these kinds of situations in non-nuclear industries that are real risks here in NZ...

This is compared to technology currently being developed that make reactors practically immune to this type of cock-up.

What do we do when we have no more rivers to turn into hydro? There are only a limited subset of them that are even vaguely suited...