Considering that rather a lot of them are about to lose their jobs I think they can be excused for being concerned.  I'm not keen on people being kicked when they're down, & while I agreed with his end of life bill, its becoming extremely difficult to find anything admirable about David Seymour these days


https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/3502039...ournalists


"ACT leader David Seymour said journalists have been ÔÇÿcelebrating and dancing at every slipÔÇÖ a politician makes.

• He made the comments when asked about hundreds of people set to lose jobs at TVNZ and TV3.
  
• He told┬áStuff┬áthere had been ÔÇ£enormous self pityÔÇØ from the media sector.
  

Telephone problems
In my infinite wisdom, I decided to replace my Slingshot Modem and Netcomm Cloud Mesh with new ones bought through TradeMe (both brand new) I hate paying for something I could own. I had them both installed by a local technician from a computer shop. Every thing went fine for several days. Then yesterday evening the phone stopped working, giving off a sad disconnected tone. The modem is the same model as previously used. A Netcomm NF18 mesh and a Cloudmesh NS-01 being the Mesh. The old settings were transferred from the old modem to the new via a USB, with a few password changes. I rang Slingshot and was told that because it was not a Slingshot modem they could not access it to see what the problem might be. I was told the best they could do was make an alteration inside the connection box to route it differently to make it work. Is this correct and does it take several days to do this. My wife thinks I'm mad to wish to save $12 per month.

Royally screwed. The computer company said that if nothing had been altered by me, then they can't help. So I am stuck with a phone that does not work until someone at Slingshot, throws a switch. Is this true ?

Proof labour lied.

As you have said Lilith7:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-ri...ckle-down/

France has become the world's first country to guarantee the right to abortion to all women. Macron is of course hoping that women will now vote for his right wing party; its to be hoped that most will have more sense.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68471568

"France has become the first country in the world to explicitly include the right to abortion in its constitution.
Parliamentarians voted to revise the country's 1958 constitution to enshrine women's "guaranteed freedom" to abort.

The overwhelming 780-72 vote saw a standing ovation in the parliament in Versailles when the result was announced.
President Emmanuel Macron described the move as "French pride" that had sent a "universal message".
However anti-abortion groups have strongly criticised the change, as has the Vatican.

Abortion has been legal in France since 1975, but polls show around 85% of the public supported amending the constitution to protect the right to end a pregnancy.

And while several other countries include reproductive rights in their constitutions - France is the first to explicitly state that an abortion will be guaranteed.

It becomes the 25th amendment to modern France's founding document, and the first since 2008.

Following the vote, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was lit up in celebration, with the message: "My Body My Choice".
Before the vote, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told parliament that the right to abortion remained "in danger" and "at the mercy of decision makers".
"We're sending a message to all women: your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you," he added.

The move to enshrine abortion in the French constitution has been welcomed by many.
"This right (to abortion) has retreated in the United States. And so nothing authorised us to think that France was exempt from this risk," said Laura Slimani, from the Fondation des Femmes rights group".

But apparently Trump was the bad guy for preventing this.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...ility.html

https://twitter.com/_BlakeHabyan/status/...0478464084

This is nuts!

I could have said this decades ago.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/5098...ort-author

Claims public health professor.
I say it doesn't go far enough, tobacco makes both pakeha and maori sick.
If the govt really has maori health interests at heart, they would make tobacco sales illegal to sell to maori.
If colonials introduced tobacco, then it's only fair that colonials suffer its health consequences, right?

 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/public-health-professor-marewa-glover-claims-tobacco-tax-rise-racist-towards-maoris/66QKELSL5HYKFS24NKTTQVXYRQ/

Most of our generation will have known women forced to give up their babies because they were unmarried. And it wasn't only here but in most UK countries & Oz.



https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/35018159...ogy-we-die


"National WomenÔÇÖs Hospital, Auckland, March 1972.
Unmarried 27-year-old Barbara Docherty gives birth to a healthy 9lb 9oz (4.3 kg) baby boy she names Jason. As the nurse takes him away, Barbara glimpses the top of his head, his dark hair. She asks the nurse to hand him to her: the nurse refuses.
That night, with only a few staff on duty, Barbara makes her way to the nursery, planning to pick up her son, feed him, see the colour of his eyes, his skin. Anything.
Again, a nurse refuses. ÔÇ£YouÔÇÖve given him up for adoption.ÔÇØ


And in the section marked ÔÇ£Reasons for desiring adoption,ÔÇØ in bold capitals, ÔÇ£NO DESIRE.ÔÇØ
ThatÔÇÖs because, as Barbara Docherty explains, there was never any such conversation. When the social worker briefly visited, contractions had already begun. ÔÇ£We didnÔÇÖt discuss adoption at any point. I wanted to take my baby home.ÔÇØ
No matter. The report (contradictorily) records, ÔÇ£wants baby to have benefits of [indecipherable] home with two parentsÔÇØ.

Barbara Docherty is given pills ÔÇö vitamins, sheÔÇÖs told ÔÇö and discharged the next day, sent home with more pills to take.


Jason goes to his new family, with a new birth certificate and a new name.
Barbara doesnÔÇÖt even get to say goodbye.

New Zealand wasnÔÇÖt alone in this cruel practice: From the late 1940s until the early 1970s forced adoptions were widespread here and overseas.
Nobody knows the numbers affected in Aotearoa; there is no official record nor count.

But judging by figures in other countries, Barbara Docherty estimates as many as 100,000 families were impacted here: children stolen from their mothers under a state-knows-best policy that assumed they would be better off in the homes of married couples unable to conceive.


Elsewhere, governments have investigated and delivered apologies acknowledging how wrong it was.
ÔÇ£You know the sorrow and suffering of forced adoption,ÔÇØ then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard told affected Australian families in 2013, after an inquiry had found as many as 250,000 mothers had their babies taken.
ÔÇ£You were forced to endure the coercion and brutality of practices that were unethical, dishonest and in many cases illegal.ÔÇØ

In 2023, Wales and Scotland also apologised.

But international pressure for a separate, related inquiry remains: Those pills Barbara and other unmarried mothers were prescribed the world over were not vitamins at all.
It was DES (diethylstilboestrol, known as stilboestrol in New Zealand), a synthetic oestrogen given to birth mothers to suppress their lactation ÔÇö dry up their milk ÔÇö when their babies were snatched away.
In the decades since, DES has been linked to cancers and life-changing conditions not only in the mothers, but their children too: breast and vaginal cancers, gynaecological abnormalities and infertility for three generations, so far.
For New Zealand women given DES without consent, the issue is complicated by secrecy: birth mothersÔÇÖ medical records ÔÇ£disappeared,ÔÇØ so they struggle to prove they were prescribed stilboestrol.There has been no systematic effort to establish exposure levels.

ÔÇ£Complicit in the cruel forced adoptions experiment were not just the government and churches, but also the medical and nursing professions,ÔÇØ says Barbara Docherty (herself a nurse who went on to have a long career in the health profession).


In 1996, the Commerce Committee (considering an Adoption Amendment Bill) strongly recommended an urgent inquiry be undertaken into practices over the previous 50 years. None happened.

In 2016, Maggie Wilkinson, whose daughter was taken from her against her will in 1964, petitioned Parliament for an inquiry. None happened.

Instead, the ultimate invalidation of an historical human rights violation: ÔÇ£Although we do not agree with many adoption practices from the 1950s to the 1980s, we note that these practices reflected the social values and attitudes of the time.ÔÇØ