Open Mike 24/08/25
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6:00 am, August 24th, 2025 - 24 comments
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Today's Posts (updated through the day):
Well, unlike trump he hasnt got any Alligators (yet?), so….
And not forgetting this is Ol Winnie Peters buddy..
Farage whistling up the attack dogs..with his personal supply of fuel
IMO this is the perfect response to fascist farage….
For those who maybe aren't already aware of ActionStation..here are some Positive and, IMO easy, straight up ways,to Fight Back against NACT1 !
The rules of good debate are the same everywhere but how they’re applied can be very different; Parliament is almost an oddity but it does [still] matter.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/570879/lies-damn-lies-and-parliamentary-debate
This is almost axiomatic but funnily enough it’s not treated as such.
Yeah, very hard to tell, isn’t it?
That is a tough read, harder when you are rolling yr eyes while doing so.
What with Collins lying about teachers wages, let alone lying internationally about torture. The idea that their accountability occurs every
fourthree years really sticks in the craw.https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/562855/former-justice-minister-judith-collins-refuses-to-apologise-to-lake-alice-survivor
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/08/20/abuse-in-care-people-need-to-step-down-or-be-removed/
Makes a mockery of the notion that faith in institutions and democracy is being undermined because of US right wing propaganda or Russian Troll Farms.
Agreed 100%. We need to look within. So-called interference in our democracy can only be countered by stronger morality and standards within our own institutions.
The latest piece by Aaron Smale deserves a wider read. Warning, it is upsetting.
One of the people puling the strings of the
investigationcover-up, Rajesh Chhana, is to be chief executive of the Crown Response Unit. Despite the RCOI recommending that the response be independent of those that were responsible.https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/08/20/abuse-in-care-people-need-to-step-down-or-be-removed/
"Sorry means you don't do it again."
" I’ve compared some of the numbers and New Zealand took more indigenous children from a smaller population in a shorter space of time than either Canada or Australia. The story of the Stolen Generations and Residential Schools in North America are a history that is globally known. But New Zealand’s parallel history of this kind of abuse has been silenced. We have silenced the victims. "
This is a festering societal sore. In an appeal to those that have had an empathy bypass it is fiscally important that this wound is healed, properly.
Ok, some high ranking people on both sides of the house may have to 'go'.
This is something Labour must think long and hard about. They started the mahi with the Royal Commission of Inquiry now two more things need to happen.
Fund and facilitate the survivor's High Level Design for Redress.
Hold what ever is needed RCOI? Coronial Inquiry?, to name and make accountable all those senior public servants and politicians that enabled the horror then obstructed survivors in their quest for justice.
This includes Corrections, Police, Health, Mental Health, Criminal Justice, MSD and Education sectors.
This is akin to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Tribunal.
It’s the “system” looking out for itself. At my state high school, late 70’s early’80’s, a couple of dodgy/creepy teachers, had a habit of feeling up boys bottoms. Nobody said or did anything, mostly out of fear of being labelled as a homosexual and the repercussions. I was in the 6th from at the time, I didn’t want to jeopardise my chances of getting accredited UE. I had a really great teacher as a mentor, he pretty much put it into context, society assumes that abusers are working class white, or Maori, not middle class white teachers. His advice was to just kept quiet, as the “system” will back the abuser. He along with some other teachers tried to do something about it, however they themselves were pushed out.
These characters can sometimes be dealt with by resort to anonymous drastic action, although too often it leaves them free to continue in their path. Back in the 60s at my (UK) secondary school, we had a languages teacher who occasionally did some mildly questionable things in the form-room. It went on for some years without anything much being said or done about it that I recall. Then one day there appeared on the main building a graffito, in letters nearly a foot high, naming the fellow and his alleged orientation. The perpetrator was never identified. The gentleman in question was gone from the school by term's end. We heard nothing of his subsequent history apart from the general area he'd relocated to.
Depressing read about Local Water Done Well.
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https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360799217/mayor-confronts-ungodly-price-three-waters-reform
That is excellent reporting on the water reforms.
Whichever form of government occurs in 2026, they will need to accelerate actual local government amalgamation.
The two NZ cities that survived the 1990s with many of their civic assets intact – Christchurch and Dunedin – have resolutely gone alone.
At least in the South Island it's not hard to imagine Southland becoming a single council with even the regional council joining in to form a full region-wide unitary council.
And not hard to see that in the Canterbury region as well – even to the extent of abolishing ECAN and merging that in as well.
About 38% of New Zealand have dealt with a fully unitary council in the form of Auckland for over 15 years. While there's no doubt it makes democratic power weaker, it's the only way to achieve region-wide quality planning in utility systems.
Also brave of Mayor Cadogan to essentially admit that all that ultra-conservative fiscal approach over an entire political career was for absolutely nothing and has actually made it worse.
If only his beloved National Party could see they are doing exactly the same to New Zealand.
I still can't understand why water treatment and provision has always been left to local authorities. Surely water is a national (small 'n') asset, an essential of life, and should be nationally managed.
That would be true if there were a nation-wide water system. Something like Transpower for water.
The most expansive proposal was the actual Three Waters one which had it amalgamated down to (from memory) 7 regions.
What we are really missing now is a single national water price regulator.
Wait for the regional differentials in pricing to become stark, and howls of outrage.
Price regulation with water will be tricky.
Some supplies need little capital outlay to provide water of an adequate standard, and then dispose of the resulting sewerage within environmental and cultural expectations. They'll be pretty easy to price within consumer tolerance, because that's how they are priced now.
The fun will start with supplies that need considerable work to bring them up to standard (most small rural centres), or run into major problems in the future, nitrates anywhere.
What happens then, the costs in both would be considerable, current rates hikes would be nothing so it's likely to challenge the ability of communities to survive. Will there be tolerance in currently adequate communities to subsidise communities that haven't been keeping their infrastructure up to standard, or have very expensive natural constraints? Or will we as country /society let those communities flounder and maybe die?
It gets a lot more complex than what Commerce Commission does with lines companies, nature doesn't intrude as much with power lines as it does with water supply and sewerage disposal, and the deferred capital goes into another league
Taking water away from TAs, like pretty much all roading, is a good idea. How the resulting water service entities are structured geographically is really the only contention. Labour probably had it close with the final 3 Waters proposal. Waiting for National to force something fairly similar, which will be entertaining but they will be able to drive it through.
The AI bubble may be about to burst. Hold on to your hats:
"A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology report revealed that 95% of companies investing in generative AI have yet to see any financial returns. This revelation came after Sam Altman, the boss of the ChatGPT owner OpenAI, warned that some company valuations were “insane”."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/23/is-the-ai-bubble-about-to-burst-and-send-the-stock-market-into-freefall
Peter Thiel’s Palantir has a P/E ratio of over 500 which is madness.
There’s no shortage on AI hype.
https://theconversation.com/the-ai-hype-is-just-like-the-blockchain-frenzy-heres-what-happens-when-the-hype-dies-258071
Unfortunately, the Coalition acts like one of those companies and their ill-informed over-confident but under-competent leaders.
QFT
Dunning Kruger effect:
Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain.
https://www.britannica.com/science/Dunning-Kruger-effect
It’s likely a self-selecting trait among our politicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect#Practical_implications
Always when there's some giant shift in the market or economic situation, or the appearance of some revolutionary technology, you get a rush of ill-informed idiots with little or no understanding, falling over each other in their efforts to be in on it, trying to make a quick buck. The South Sea Bubble of 1720 and the Railway Mania of the 1840s were two notorious historical examples, and the pattern has continued to be followed right up to the present.
This is really not to the point. The problem is that AI technology is being shaped while this is going on, the main point businesses see to it is, to replace workers with AI tech lowering costs. In many cases however AI is not up to the job, it can't actually replace a work force but ends up turning multiple more manual jobs into fewer supervision jobs (to double check or correct what the AI made somewhat at random).
Thing is these uses are shaping how the technology is implemented so attempting to turn it primarily to reap this kind of cost saving will shape the technology which becomes available whether or not it's up to the job in any sense.
The intellectual property theft and environmental costs of operating the technology are also a significant cost of letting AI tech be developed in this way, rather than a more democratic way which is able to address goals shared by more of humanity.
I think that's an incredibly important point. You're right: in many cases AI simply isn't up to the job of fully replacing a workforce.
What it can do, though, is displace lower-value tasks and push humans further up the value-add and decision-making chain. Companies that can recognise that and manage the transition while respecting their employee's dignity and experience will fare well. Those that don't will face an enormous uphill battle.
It's a bit like how production line automation transformed factory roles: workers moved from low-skilled manual labour into higher-paid positions maintaining and supervising increasingly complex machines.
For example, as a data engineer, I use Cursor quite a lot to speed up the boring bits: generating documentation, boilerplate code, and unit tests (ugh).
But I still need to set clear boundaries for the AI agent and double-check everything it produces to make sure it’s scalable, secure, and actually correct. Even then, it frees up an hour or two a day that I can spend on the work that genuinely requires human judgment and experience.
That said, I don’t feel like AI is going to threaten my job any time soon. But I recognise that’s partly a reflection of my privileged position. I’m one of the people helping build these tools rather than just being subjected to them.
At the very least, embracing AI now gives me the chance to use my experience and expertise to help shape how it evolves. Hopefully, for the better.
Tl;dr – don't do populism.
So I want to consider the populist moment we are in. I’ll look at what history tells us about economic growth under populism, and what countries not yet under its thumb must focus on to stem the rising tide.
Because the tide is rising. According to a comprehensive accounting of populist government leaders dating back to 1900, around one-quarter of countries (out of a stable sample of 60) are now led by either right-wing or left-wing populists.
https://archive.li/Vbipe (ft)
It should come as no surprise that once this was enshrined in law then the restrictions would be loosened.
This from the crowd that 'saved' the budget by denying thousands an opportunity to acquire pay equity.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/570934/act-mp-seeks-support-for-bill-changing-end-of-life-choice-act
The list of Ministry recommendations is concerning considering the dire state of health particularly staffing and senior staff.
Contrast what is proposed by the money over life party with this tragic story of under funding.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019001311/mum-battles-red-tape-to-get-help-for-child-with-ocd