Open Mike 01/10/25
Open Mike 01/10/25
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6:00 am, October 1st, 2025 - 20 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
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Today's Posts (updated through the day):
Luxon’s bad faith stunt
Simeon Brown Cagey On Privatisation Meeting with Serco
As US Defense Secretary Pete Hesgeth ranted…they sat in silence. IMO the pictures in the article say quite a lot….and I am sure the Generals/Admirals et al, had their own thoughts….
Pete fox news Hesgeth on fitness….IMO just coded for the reality behind the trump regime…
Hegseth's need for Men in uniform to be buff and tight and smooth and commanding means he's outed as a Bottom.
Definitely not a Top.
Don't see many beards or grossly overweight people in that picture ….
Sometimes, when you go looking for a problem, you’ll have to use your imagination and then, voilà!, you’ll even see fat bearded guys in uniform flying through the sky in sleighs with bells on.
Now here’s an idea whose time might be nigh.
https://theconversation.com/price-check-how-a-public-grocery-chain-would-disrupt-nzs-supermarket-duopoly-265844?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Zealand%20Weekly%20-%203533836024&utm_content=New%20Zealand%20Weekly%20-%203533836024+CID_df98b5c35c4b9e91b19a4d3c8e9cf698&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Price%20check%20how%20a%20public%20grocery%20chain%20would%20disrupt%20NZs%20supermarket%20duopoly
”One solution that might work, however, is a publicly owned grocery chain, tasked explicitly with stimulating genuine competition. For the sake of argument let’s call it a “community provisioning enterprise”.
This could be designed as a conglomerate of wholesale centres, distribution networks and retail outlets. By leveraging state-of-the-art logistics and retail technologies, it could achieve significant efficiency gains.”
Especially if it concentrated on the staples.
Cab you please be a bit more specific about your idea? Are you suggesting using taxpayers funds to provide subsidised goods to a specific segment of the market?
If taxpayers are on the hook and the shop is in Auckland, how does a consumer benefit in say, Christchurch?
Can anyone shop there or do you need to be an "approved" permitted shopper?
Finally, are you seriously suggesting that the government (any government) can do a better job of running a supermarket than supermarket operators? If so, how?
"Finally, are you seriously suggesting that the government (any government) can do a better job of running a supermarket than supermarket operators? If so, how?"
To answer your question, what do you mean by better?
Better as in a large return on investment to shareholders?
Better as in more draconian contracts with suppliers?
Better as in more land Bank ng and other anti competitive behavior?
Or better as in acknowledge the social license that is held and supply basics to people without obscene profiteering?
Better prices.
There you go.
If the purpose of the government supermarket is to provide cheap food, presumably you'd want extremely draconian contracts with the suppliers.
There's no need for draconian contracts when one cooperates.
Things like a supplier being able to sell at other outlets locally eg farm gate, farmers markets.
That fresh produce can sell from start of season till end of season. Not the fixed timeframe that suits the duopoly.
Fruit that isn't quite 'perfect' can be supplied.
The main New York Mayoral candidate has already proposed this.
It's basically an MSD shop for food.
Typical comparison is Chemist Warehouse or Warehouse Stationery.
Apparently Uncle Sam does.
https://www.militaryonesource.mil/benefits/commissaries-and-exchanges/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Commissary_Agency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_%26_Air_Force_Exchange_Service
Not a large step for WINZ to go into partnership with The Warehouse and dedicate a Community-Card+SuperGold only shop for supermarket basics.
RedSheds are in all major towns still.
Like a more dignified food bank.
Kash Patel FBI. Another trump selection. On his secretive NZ visit. What was he thinking?
I lol…..
More on…Patel. IMO again the theme trump/lunatics/asylum
We're working with a couple of mobs from Oztralia, sending possum pelts so they can revitalise their cloak making practices: (Re)storying the Possum – Pelts with Purpose
All donations thankfully received (a few of you took up our Whale Song t-shirt campaign; as an aside but related to that research, we're suing TPU and The Platform but I digress).
Otherwise, I'm done with this site. It's far from the worst, and it was just one little comment I hadn't even noticed except by chance a moment ago. Straw/camel. People say shit they'd never say to my face, but such is modern life. I just don't care for it anymore.
simbit IMO that would be not so good. Possibly there was some wrong attribution in that comment you refer to ?
IMO more Conservation/Environment/Sustainability people needed for balance, not less.
Still however you feel, take care, and keep the good fight going.
This possum mahi is awesome!
Very excited to see this happening, thanks.
I agree. I think the whole abuse as part of robust debate thing has run its course, and that particular comment was stupid and mean, I would have moderated if I had seen it.
The world is a harder place now, and we need to find ways of talking about politics that don't push people away or make people feel like shit. I've found your comments on TS a good contribution not least because they take us out of the world view cul de sac we sometimes get into. I hope you will check in from time to time to see if it's a better place to talk.
Eisenhower and co will be rolling.
https://x.com/traecrowder/status/1973134731861696831
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s convocation of hundreds of generals and admirals today turned out to be, in the main, a nothingburger. Hegseth strutted and paced and lectured and hectored, warning the officers that he was tired of seeing fat people in the halls of the Pentagon and promising to take the men who have medical or religious exemptions from shaving—read: mostly Black men—and kick them out of the military. He assured them that the “woke” Department of Defense was now a robust and manly Department of War, and that they would no longer have to worry about people “smearing” them as “toxic” leaders. (Hegseth went on a tirade about the word toxic itself, noting that if a commitment to high standards made him “toxic,” then “so be it.”)
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/09/trump-hegseth-speech-incoherent/684421/?gift=otEsSHbRYKNfFYMngVFweCz_9ZNOoVpuHoIiYCzJItE&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share