Replacing on-line Office Suites

France and I hear Germany have banned Google & Microsoft on-line office suites from schools, admittedly over privacy concerns but there are other reasons to move away from them  which raises the question of what will replace them?

There are open source office alternatives, more on them below but first a bit of history.

Required But Not Sufficient: Banning Semi-automatic Firearms

Following the Christchurch Mosque shootings politicians are calling for banning private ownership of semi-automatic weapons.

I agree that they should be banned but believe we need much much more. Simply banning semi-automatics without ending the underlying causes of the shootings is just saying "It's OK to murder 25 Muslims but not 50"

Why the Auckland Pride Festival's Board should be retained.

Here’s why I will be voting to retain the existing Auckland Pride board at the SGM called to pass a motion of no confidence in it.

The surface background is that the police have been banned  from marching as a group in uniform at the 2019 Pride parade. Problems with the involvement of Corrections, the Police, and those corporates who just want the pink dollar but don’t really support us were raised at the AGM. The board then held a series of hui about what Pride is, who should be involved, etc. There were a general hui, an online hui & specialist hui primarily to discuss Māori & Pacifika  issues. The marching in uniform by Police & Corrections were an issue at the hui I attended & apparently at the others so the board called a special hui to discuss their attendance. I attended that hui.

When I left the hui I thought the choice was between two options a total  ban and total acceptance. I felt the case against Corrections was pretty solid but the police not clear-cut. My feeling was that I was glad I didn’t have to make that decision but that I could live with either one. The board attempted to fix things by making a compromise decision that ended up pleasing very few, but they tried.

To be completely clear, I don’t agree with the decision, but I respect the process that the board followed to make it. That’s why we have boards, to make these tough decisions. They consulted widely and they listened to us. I gather the board was split and it only passed by one vote. Two board members have since resigned.

Following this being announced a vociferous group, largely (but not entirely) composed of white cisgender gay males started opposing the decision so a second hui was called.  Around 250 people arrived and those opposed to the boards decision demanded a vote before listening to any discussion. The facilitator started to take this vote before been shouted down by other attendees. At this point and after an interchange with the board chair, a 100 or so got up and left the hui. This group wasn’t 100% male and  wasn’t 100% white  but close enough to make little difference. Also at this hui a notice requiring a special  general meeting to replace the board was received. Unfortunately the facilitator permitted the PAP group to talk at length about things that weren’t directly related to the rainbow community. At the earlier hui they were far more focussed on the mistreatment of transgender people which was a valid point.

The people calling for the board to be replaced are largely (but not entirely) composed of financially stable white cisgender gay males who keep talking about “the community” and I feel that to them “the community” means members of their group. This is excluding the poor and the brown LGBTIQqAa+ people who experience discrimination on a regular basis, this is excluding the transgender people who do not feel safe walking down the street, and it excludes a lot of lesbians. At the Pride festival AGM at least one lesbian speaker said that under earlier boards they had felt discriminated against. Several Māori & Pasifika stood up and said that they felt that their communities were not properly represented by Pride. The Māori in particular mentioned that tikanga Māori needed more than lip service. We now have a more representative board and it has listened to Māori and Pasifika.

If the motion passes at the SGM these people will be gone. Who will the financially stable white cisgender gay males appoint as the new board? I wonder what odds I can get from the TAB that the new board will have very few brown faces, very few lesbians, probably no transgender people.

I understand that businesses have been extensively lobbied by some of those against the board decision to withdraw sponsorship.  Yes, this does place the ability to run the parade at risk, but do we need to run a parade that exists to pinkwash corporates that want the LGBTIQqAa+ dollar but otherwise do nothing for us? Frankly the same goes for political parties, a 2012 study found that among adolescents in New Zealand, those identifying as transgender made serious suicide attempts at 5 times the the rate of those identifying as non-transgender. I don’t know what the relevant rates for adults and cis-gay people are but based on personal observation I’m picking it’s a lot higher than in the cis-heterosexual community. If our openly cis-heterosexual prime minister wants her photo op she should be challenged to do something about the mental health issues that are killing us.

People have been saying that the Pride parade should be open to everyone. Really??? Should we let Hobson’s Pledge march? Should we let TERFFs march? Destiny Church?  New Zealand National Front?

Pride may be a celebration of LGBTIQqAa+ but at its core it is and always has been political. It exists to work for the liberation and support of the LGBTIQqAa+ communities within our society.

That’s why I shall vote to retain the existing board.

None of this is new to me. I signed up as an ordinary member of Auckland Pride because I was angry of what I saw as trans erasure at previous parades.

It’s unfortunate that 2019 will be the 50th anniversary of Stonewall and that the second hui came in the middle of Transgender Awareness Week. My personal journey with regards to the issues raised really begins at the “Gay Rights” march in 1979. Afterwards one of the speakers in Albert Park noted that this was the 10th anniversary of Stonewall and said that it was to our shame as a movement that we did not know the names of the people who started the Stonewall riots. I later found out that we do know the names. The first punch was probably thrown by Stormé DeLarverie, a POC described as "a dyke-stone butch" & many people have said that the first brick was thrown by another POC Marsha P. Johnson who sometimes described herself as a drag queen and in today’s terminology would probably have been described as “gender non-conforming”. Whoever the people that started things were, they were either poor or  POC or both; not the “right image”.

Stonewall was not a venue for anyone who could afford to get into the more salubrious cis gay venues and the people who did go there did not fit the middle class white cis gay narrative and they were simply written out of popular history. In 1973 the New York “Gay Liberation March” banned drag queens from participating so Marsha P. Johnson and fellow Gay Liberation Front founder Sylvia Rivera defied the ban and walked in front of the official march with others.

We’ve been written out of history, sometimes made to feel unwelcome, or outright banned ever since. We’ve been accepted and welcomed into a lot of places too but you never know in advance what kind of welcome you’ll receive.

Who is killing New Zealand’s transgender people?

This is the script for the talk I gave at the Transgender Day of Remembrance service at St Matthews-in-the-city tonight. It's not exactly what I delivered but is pretty close.

---

Hi. I’m Julia Clement and I’m a transgender woman.

Before starting, I’d like to acknowledge Zena C[5], a 21 year old transgender woman from Wellington who was strangled in February, allegedly by her boyfriend. She has the dubious honour of being the only known transgender person murdered in New Zealand in the past year [1]. I didn't even know she existed until I read about her yesterday while researching this talk.

Banning Police From Auckland Pride

The Auckland Pride Festival Parade has banned the Police and Corrections department marching in uniform in the 2019 parade.

The problem raised with the NZ police marching in Auckland in 2019 is not what happened at Stonewall 50 years ago or even the raid on the Wellington gay sauna 35 year ago but that while the top level of NZ police are currently making all the right noises, this is not happening at the operational level.

Are our computers spying on us?

Bloomberg has reported that secret "spy chips" have been detected on Chinese made server motherboards. Naturally the affected server manufacturer have issued denials that you can accept or think "Of course they would say that" as you like.

 Remember a few years back when the Americans were frothing at the mouth about Chinese routers? I was cynically thinking that it was because they wanted American tapping of the backbone, or even kill switches when the revelations about PRISM & other massive American spying on the Internet came out and it was even worse than I imagined.

Sundials and quills in primary school

Once again I've seen people complaining that children aren't being taught to read analogue clocks. The technology is largely obsolete. Go to K-mart and have a look at the clocks on display. Digital is cheap and reliable. Nobody has a sundial except as a decorative measure. Sundials worked straight off the sun and as the length of the day changes from season to season needs a mental adjustment to use & I'm sure that less than 1 in a 1000 people would have the slightest clue how to adjust the value showing on the dial to match the local time.

Save us from the crazies & our friends

80 years ago Fascists & Anti-fascists were fighting on the streets of Europe. Here's a take on it from an independent socialist of the day.

"We have reached a stage when the very word 'Socialism' calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of Russia. Unless you can remove that smell, and very rapidly, Fascism may win. "

George Orwell "The Road to Wigan Pier" (1937)

Today we are seeing it again. On one side are socialists, liberals, feminists, the various LGBTIQqAa+ communities, some Christians and even many conservatives. On the other are the so called "Alt-right", a ragtag bunch of Neo Nazis, other White supremacists, anti-feminists, Islamophobes,  TERFFs(*),  right wing (especially evangelical) Christians with a considerable overlap with a mixed bunch of: Flat-Earthers, Anti-vaxxers, Climate change deniers, creationists, homophobes, transphobes and other nutters.  At first sight it looks like the inverse of the situation described by Orwell but I feel it is not so clear cut. Firstly the news coverage of the alt-right tends to focus on on neo Nazis for video shock with hate pieces by the Christian right & TERFFs published by right leaning newspapers creating the impression that they are united by more than hate. I can only assume that someone is hoping to pull them together into a united front.

Transgender youth brain scans show differences

There's been some interesting research reported providing additional evidence that the brains of transgender adolescents are more like the gender they identify with than their birth gender.

Question LGBTIQqAa+ Authority Too

"Question Authority" Timothy Leary, possibly after Socrates. Wikipedia says "It is intended to encourage people to avoid fallacious appeals to authority"

The popular media seems to like finding people who they then claim are somehow spokespeople for the groups that they identify as being part of.

Trans erasure and LGBTIQqAa+ politics

Middle class white male gays & lesbians are celebrating a victory in Australia's postal survey on same sex marriage, but what does it mean for the rest of us?

The Election Result

Labour, NZ First & The Green Party have reached agreements that will give them a majority in parliament for the current parliamentary term. This means that Jacinda Arden will be the prime minister of New Zealand.

We all need to accept, whichever way we voted, that the electoral system is set up the way it is. There was a free and fair election and between them (Left to Right) Greens-Labour-NZF received more votes than National-Act so they are the ones forming the new government.

Caught by fake Facebook account

I got caught out by a "friend" with a fake Facebook account the other day. Normally I avoid this because I look at friend requests to decide if the person seems believable.

• Does the information seem consistent? Someone from Australia who went to a Pakistani university and lives as an Iraqi goat herder raises questions
• Do they have a history? A lot of fake accounts only go back a few days
• Why should they know me? Although they mostly fail the history test I've had a few friend requests from US soldiers in Afghanistan.
• Why should I believe a new account for an old friend is genuine?Some possibilities
  • A new photo that wasn't on the old account is good.
  • Has the old account continued posting?
  • Failing which a private message to the old account can be enlightening.

In this case I couldn't even remember accepting a "friend" request from this person, but suddenly a private message quickly followed by a photo of their manhood. This was my first on Facebook and it took me a to realise what I was looking at. Instantly unfriended and blocked, but ????

Did P addiction cause Australian murder?

A high profile Aussie rules coach has been killed, apparently by his son. Local papers are suggesting that the son was a methamphetamine addict, and this may have caused the murder.

Less invested social commentators such as Stephen Lord "Lordy" on Google+ have asked:

"Why is it that illegal drugs are an excuse for a crime?

...

Before blaming the drug, try blaming the incredible arrogance or ignorance of the person who used a drug that has a history of turning users violent _anyone recall a story about a homeless guy getting his face eaten off?

How does blaming one illegal act excuse another?"

Source

My answer to him is that western society has invested so much in the view of the drug user as "Victim" and the supplier as villain that its official disinformation channels find it difficult to find any different narrative.

Auckland council officials face corruption charges

Three men with links to Auckland Transport and Rodney District Council have been charged in relation to allegations of bribery and corruption worth more than $1 million between 2005 and 2013.



The SFO said it believed George and an associate, while in
various engineering and management roles either at Auckland Transport or
Rodney District Council, received undisclosed payments or gratuities
from Borlase.



 The payments often came in the form of cash, travel, accommodation and entertainment, the SFO said.



The
SFO said a culture was created within the road maintenance division
where the acceptance of gratuities was part and parcel of the working
environment.

Stuff.co.nz

Another Stuff up, late reporting of Pascall changing Milk Bottles recipe

Another stuff up,  several months after it was announced, Stuff.co.nz reports that Pascall have changed the formula of one of their sweets:

Prepare for another Creme Eggs furore - because Milk Bottle lollies have a new taste, and no-one seems to like it.

Rather ironically, given the name of the product, Pascall have changed the recipe to milk-free ingredients.

"As milk is an allergen, and Pascall Milk Bottles were the only product in our Jelly Candy factory which used this ingredient, we took the decision to remove the allergen from the factory in order to be in line with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)," the brand said in a statement last October.

Stuff.co.nz

I can't remember eating these sweets since I was a child, so I'm not worried either way, but Stuff's piece has attracted the usual bunch of complaints.

I doubt that any of the complainers are going to take it any further and I'm sure that Pascalls will worry about their bottom line and not a few words on Stuff's  page.

I think that if big media wants to be taken seriously it needs to get involved earlier and not wait until 6 months later to complain.

The commercialisation of ANZAC Day

With the centenary of the landings at the start of the Gallipoli campaign in just a few days time it seems everyone is leaping on the bandwagon.



Big media is as always attempting to make as large an audience boost as possible from its "coverage" of set-piece events while the RSA is doing its best to stop the worst commercial exploitation. It seems that the RSA is allowing some limited use, e.g. allowing milk tankers to display poppies



In an Article on Stuff.co.nz we read

University of Auckland senior marketing lecturer Michael Lee said the RSA needed to be careful not to have too many commercial partners.



"You don't want to cheapen it and turn it into Valentine's Day, or even Christmas [which] has become very commercialised," Lee said.

"Anzac Day could risk going that way if it's just seen as another hook for marketers to put a spin on things."

It was not just the corporates that put Anzac Day at risk of commercialisation, Lee said.

"Some of those tours to Gallipoli are more likely to be cashing in on this sort of thing," he said..

"If you're not an official tour guide, or company associated with the RSA or anything, and you're just trying to cash in on all the Australians and New Zealanders going to Gallipoli, then that is an even more cynical viewpoint [than the corporations]."

Full article

I'm sure that whatever the reasons New Zealanders and Australians fought, making money for corporations and big media weren't among them.

Zimbabwe's Sex Workers Switch to Mobile Phone Payment Systems

We're getting TV adverts extolling the benefits of using our phones to pay for baby sitters or lawn mowing services.



In Zimbabwe, they seem to have haven it to the next level.

 Sex workers in Harare are now demanding that clients pay for services through mobile platforms to avoid being duped with most now moving around with at least two mobile phones to facilitate transactions.

Full Article: allAfrica.com

Zimbabwe, of course, has a collapsed economy & has abandonned having its own currency, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable for them to have done this.

Mobility scooter rider murdered on pedestrian crossing by truckie

¿Que? knows New Zealand has an arrogance problem by road users and while cyclists(*) and young children are notorious for making risky turns, or darting onto pedestrian crossings this one really takes the biscuit.

An 88 year old elderly man injured when a light truck struck a mobility scooter in Otago has died. he was struck by a truck while using a pedestrian crossing on his mobility scooter. More on Stuff.co.nz.

88 year olds might still be risk takers but mobility scooters travel at a slow walking pace and if he was on the pedestrian crossing this is nothing less than gross negligence by the truck driver.

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(*)The owner of this article on ¿Que? is a cyclist.

Butts in the gutters of Newmarket

I work in Newmarket. I often walk up Alma St, alongside the Maori TV building. It really disgusts me how they come out the side entrance, smoke in this small street and then just throw their butts in the gutter. Even at my worst as a smoker I would try to find somewhere better. There are usually a huge number of butts on display. You'd think as a principle sponsor of Quit-line that they would at least supply their staff / performers / contractors with outside ash trays so they'd leave the surrounds looking better.

I often have lunch in memorial park.  Recently as I walked back to work I passed the front door to Maori TV. I noticed for the first time that they had a sign up but pointing inwards asking people to smoke in the park opposite and not outside their building.

I suppose we should be grateful that there isn't a kindergarden or primary school opposite for them to send their people to smoke in but for the first time since I gave up smoking I was regretting it as that sign so offended me that I would have loved to have had a smoke and stubbed it out on their precious front steps.