Sunday reflections

When climate change denial becomes extreme weather denial
Seemorerocks

There were at least two things that caught my attention yesterday.

Yesterday, Media Watch on Radio New Zealand carried an item about reporting the weather in New Zealand.

The essence of the item featuring Radio NZ's weather ambassador was that media is prone to exagerrating reports of extreme weather and following information from tweeters, people 'on the street', the conclusion being 'wait for the advice from the experts'

I have no criticism for the Met Service, but this is verging on being 'climate chaos denial'.

Those of us who follow this can see that if there is a pattern then it is that ther e is no pattern, and we are seeing extreme weather constantly around the world.

Whatever the truth of media sensationalising the weather, we kinow that the dots are never linked. These are portrayed as distinct, individual events that have no link.

I am well aware that some of the biggest climate change deniers are meteorologists – the dreadful Augie Auer, for those that remember him, comes to mind.

The arguments here will be very to educated liberals who are doubtful and have to have things proved to them (hopefully in a reasonable, BBC accent), but don't themselves take the trouble to scan the world media to enable them to see for themselves the extent of climate chaos (and yes, I am aware of the difference between 'climate' and 'weather')

Listen from 20'30"

Government owed $80 million to Mainzeal

The second, and more significant was a discussion with a friend who has been down in Christchurch doing some construction work on the rebuild.

He had some very pertinent remarks about the failure of Mainzeal, the country's third largest construction company.

What we are being fed was that it failed because of a downturn in construction.  But there is a little more to it than that.

Apparently Mainzeal, which has been involved in contracts related to leaky buildings, but also in reconstruction of (I think) the parliamentary library was owed $80 million by the government.

Mainzeal had taken legal action to get paid, but when the Chinese owner realised that this wasn''t going to happen he  wound up the company and the rest is history, with the downstream effects on the construction industry and subcontractors.

There is more than a whiff of corruption and something very dark going on.  We will probably never know the truth  of this, but where is Fletchers (apparently the government's preferred partner in the 'rebuild') and where is the prime minister? There seems little doubt that John Key has benefitted from all of this through his blind trusts.

As in the Alan Hubbard case, the government is deliberately stripping the country of private and public wealth for his masters on Wall Street.

As another friend said in response to this: 

"This country is not only rotten to the core, it is in the process of being systematically raped, while the people carry on sleep walking"

Attacks on natural medicine

On the front page of the Sunday Star Times there was a report that following complaints from senior doctors the Whanganui Health Board closed a program of natural health over concerns over 'witchcraft'.

And today, NZ First leader Winston Peters has complained about the expenditure of $1.9 million on traditional Maori medicine.

The Wanganui program was to deliver a service to staff (and not patients) - one would presume that they are qualified to distinguish between something that it is benefitting them and 'waitchcraft'

Again we are seeing the growth of intolerance and fascist methods to stop people from exercising their own freedom of choice.

My bet is that the nurses at Wanganui hospital would benefit from the 'witchcraft'.  It might make them feel better and assist them to help the doctors practice the real witchcraft that they dispense.