Chief Stipe

So NZSTI finds that the track is stuffed. No money to build a new one or do a proper renovation so goodbye Trentham.

Short term mechanical fix that medium to long term makes the problem worse. Of course you don't understand that.

Really Reefton?! The best you can come up with getting an old West Coast dairy farmer to put a plough thorough. None of the renovations have been done properly nor have they addressed the underlying problem - the soil structure. It goes rock hard when dry, had a small rain shower it turns into an ice rink and a decent period of rain and it turns to mud.

Just got an email from my child's school that any child not fully vaccinated cannot compete in School Sport Events. Duh! How many fit young children have died from Covid-19 in NZ? ZERO! How many fat kids compete or even turn up to watch? ZERO!

Where's @Gammalite? That's right he can't travel.

Are they racing?

I agree nearly 100% with your post @Freda! Probably a first! What's more from what I've seen in the past with many such schemes the majority of the money taken from the struggling industry stakeholders (the payers) goes on marketing and administration. It doesn't actually go towards whatever the perceived problem is. If I read you correctly there isn't really an existing problem other than an imaginary one that is being played upon by a small group that are totally anti-racing. Yes - I come from a farming background so have a practical view point based on the fact that in my mind a horse is a stock animal. The industry cannot afford to rehome every animal or care for them from the cradle to their natural grave. It isn't as if we are mass producing animals and then selectively culling at birth or within the first two years. It is just too expensive to do that and the industry is focused on producing horses that can perform. Sorry dogs but you have some shyte to sort out! I agree with the humane culling aspect but after recent experience with a dry stock farm the rules and regulations in NZ seem to be far beyond what we have seen in the controversial hidden cameras from Australia. I see some irony in the way the industry is run and horses that in the past could have had a long and productive life are being forced out e.g. the aged durable gelding and the slow mudder with incredible stamina. We no longer even see the Stallion stars of yesteryear that competitively race on to six or seven years of age. Seems we have more and more mares doing that though!

Why do "we need SOMETHING"? Did we really need ANYTHING in the past? Or is it being driven by a loud minority (are they actually that loud or are they imagined?) who dont really care a sod about racing?

I know a few - they are mainly just technically challenged. That said some of them don't like the mandates at all but are also feebly compliant. Once the 15th of December arrives and the Auckland contagion is released that will be when we see some interesting statistics - case numbers will surge (assuming the vaccinated deem it worthwhile to get tested!). Although I bet case numbers will cease to be published. Don't be surprised if the entire country is under the Red traffic light by Christmas. Case number statistics will be skewed towards the unvaccinated not because of increased vulnerability by because they are the ones more likely to get tested. Afterall the vaccinated have been told they have nothing to fear!!!!

She said something different.

I believe some of the trainers that won't be at the races are Danny Champion, ......., and up north, Daniel Miller.

Who will pay for racing welfare body? The Thoroughbred Aftercare Welfare Working Group has spent more than a year researching the best way for Australian racing to look after racehorses once their careers on the track are over. By Brad Waters 03:20am • 30 November 2021 26 Comments A levy on punters’ betting accounts was suggested as one way in which to fund the proposed Thoroughbred Welfare Australia body. The Thoroughbred Welfare Australia proposal is a key part of more than 43 recommendations made by the Thoroughbred Aftercare Welfare Working Group, which was convened to investigate the best way for racing to support horses once they leave racetracks. Four vets, including the former Victorian Premier Dr Denis Napthine, headed the Thoroughbred Aftercare Welfare Working Group (TAWWG), which was supported by racing and breeding identities such as champion trainer Chris Waller and Godolphin Australia boss Vin Cox. After working through 180 written submissions, including from top racing participants such as Ciaron Maher and Tony Gollan, and more than 50 meetings the TAWWG compiled a 141-page report on the management of horse post-racing. The report noted a national approach to thoroughbred welfare is vital as is all stakeholders lobbying state and federal governments for a national traceability register of thoroughbreds ensuring their locations are known throughout their lives. The TAWWG estimated the cost of setting up TWA and implementing the rest of its key recommendations to be in the vicinity of $10 million. The panel suggested some of that money come from bookmakers with breeders and owners also contributing. Under the plan, breeders would pay $300 soon after a foal is born while owners would pay another $300 when their horses, including imports, are registered to race in Australia. Jockeys, trainers and betting companies could be asked to contribute a small portion of their earnings towards thoroughbred welfare. “The TAWWG recommends the industry should establish an efficient funding mechanism for TWA,’ the report read. “This could include a small levy on breeders, trainers, owners, jockeys, and contributions from Racing Australia, sponsors and charitable donations. “ The TAWWG plan called for bookmakers to set aside a percentage of turnover for horse welfare or to pay a charge based on the number of account holders betting on racing. “Another potential revenue source is from bookmakers … this could come from a very small percentage of turnover on thoroughbred racing, or a contribution based on the number of account holders that bet on the sport,” the report read. “With $29 billion bet on horse racing in Australia last racing season, setting aside a very small percentage of turnover for welfare could easily make a significant funding contribution.” “Another mechanism worth exploring is seeking an annual payment from bookmakers for every active account that bets on racing. “With an estimated 4 million active wagering accounts in Australia, a contribution of 50 cents per active account would provide $2 million to fund welfare activities.” The TAWWG report also called on jockeys and trainers to pay one per cent of their earnings via prizemoney into a thoroughbred welfare fund.

Yes but horse welfare needs demand that all hands are on board after raceday and that takes precedence. <sarcasm font>

Do you support that policy? Why? Do you support the fining of children as well? Do you also support the jailing of people who don't get vaccinated? Including children?

HerThontribuBriPsay How fear fuels the vaccine wars Covid has been a revelation and an accelerant Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and essayist. November 30, 2021 Perhaps it’s my age, or perhaps it’s just blind prejudice, but when I wake to the news that the Austrian government has interned an entire third of its national population as a danger to public health, a chill runs down my spine. I look at the news photos of armed, masked, black-clad police stopping people in the streets to ask for their digital papers, and I read stories of others arrested for leaving their own house more than the permitted once a day, and I hear Austrian politicians intoning that those who refuse to accede to the injection are to be shunned and scapegoated until they acquiesce. Then I watch interviews with “ordinary people”, and they say that the “unvaxxed” had it coming. Some of them say that they should all be jailed, these enemies of the people. At best, the “anti-vaxxers” are paranoid and misinformed. At worst they are malicious, and should be punished. Then I look across the border at Germany. I see that in Germany, politicians are also considering interning the “vaccine hesitant”, and are also discussing enforcing vaccination upon every citizen. By the end of the winter, says Germany’s refreshingly honest health minister, Germans will be “vaccinated, cured or dead”. There is apparently no fourth option. They have been busy in Germany. Recently they put up fences in the streets in Hamburg, to separate the Bad Unvaxxed from the Good Vaxxed at the Christmas markets. Outdoors. Perhaps they will also provide the Good people with rocks to throw across those fences. The mood certainly seems ripe. A cartoon recently published in the mainstream, high-circulation newspaper Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung featured a man sitting on his sofa playing a first-person shooter game in which the targets were unvaccinated people. The caption described it as “a big hit under the Christmas tree.” Not that Germans or Austrians have any monopoly on the current march towards authoritarianism in the name of public health. It is entirely globalised. The opinion recently expressed by Pulitzer Prize-winning American art critic Jerry Saltz to his half a million Twitter followers was typical of a new form of class hatred that is somehow acceptable in the age of cancellations and hyper-sensitivity. “My latest Covid thought is ‘Let her rip:’”, he wrote. “Meaning, we who are lucky enough to be triple & double vaxed are pretty protected. Let the rest die. I know they pose a danger to us all. But we are more than 97% protected from them. If they want to die, I say let them die. Freedom.” Across Europe and the wider world, the picture is the same. Internment. Mandatory medication. Segregation of whole sections of society. Mass sackings. A drumbeat media consensus. The systematic censoring of dissent. The deliberate creation of a climate of fear and suspicion. The deepening demonisation of the “unvaxxed”. Something terrible is rising around us, and we are only just waking up to it. I am watching all this from Ireland, the country which has the highest adult vaccination rate in Western Europe, at over 94% of the population. Here, cases are accelerating so fast that we were all told recently to work from home, and another lockdown is widely feared. New restrictions for children, who are least at risk from Covid, are being proposed, and a midnight curfew has recently been imposed on pubs and nightclubs. This is odd, as only vaccinated people have been allowed into them since the summer, with the scan of a smartphone-enabled QR code being the only way to access much of society. In an honest society, all of this would have been subject to robust public debate. We would have seen scientists of all opinions openly debating on TV and radio and in the press; views of all kinds aired on social media without fear of censorship; journalists properly investigating reports of both vaccine successes and vaccine dangers; serious explorations of alternative treatments; public debates about the balance between civil liberties and public health, and what “public health” even means. But we have not seen this and we will not see it, for debate, like dissent, is out of fashion. The media here has not asked a critical question of anyone in authority for at least 18 months. Google’s algorithms are busy burying inconvenient data, while the social media channels from which most people receive their worldview are removing or suppressing critical opinions, even if they come from virologists or editors of the British Medical Journal. What could possibly justify this? One answer might be: the combination of a terrible pandemic which killed or maimed large percentages of those it infected, and the existence of a safe and reliable medicine which was proven to prevent its spread. This, of course, is what we are said to be living through. This is the Narrative. But it is clear enough by now that the Narrative is not true. Covid-19 is certainly a nasty illness which should be taken seriously, especially by those who are especially vulnerable to it. For the elderly and infirm especially, it can be a serious risk. But it is not dangerous enough — if anything could be — to justify the frightening atmosphere which is rising across the world. The authoritarian response to the virus has become the go-to solution for governments everywhere, and the climate of fear in society as a whole has often meant enthusiastic support for such a response. As the vaccines fail to end the pandemic, new variants continue to arise and every promise of “unlocking” ends with the reimposition of restrictions, so the calls grow for more clampdowns, more segregation, more isolation and internment. With each call, a new roughness comes over the culture. This roughness is what leads to the persecution, abuse and scapegoating of anyone foolish enough to stick their head above the parapet and question the Narrative, and that in turn leads to more people walking away from those who promote it. The solidarity of the pandemic’s early days already feels like a century ago. Day by day, the combination of breakdown and clampdown eats like acid through the social fabric of a society already riven by a “culture war” that seeks enemies first and understanding very much later. All of this has descended like a flock of birds on one single technology — “the vaccine” — on which all hopes and fears converge. But the divisions that have opened up in society about the Covid vaccines are not really about the vaccines at all: they are about what they symbolise. What it means to be “vaxxed” or “unvaxxed”, safe or dangerous, clean or dirty, sensible or irresponsible, compliant or independent: these are questions about what it means to be a good member of society, and what society even is, and they are detonating like depth charges beneath the surface of the culture. In his fascinating Substack newsletter The Stoa, academic Peter Limberg proposes an analysis of the ongoing Covid wars. He identifies two positions on the virus and the reaction to it. Both are generalisations — plenty of people will cleave fully to neither — but broadly speaking, which you identify with will inform your view of who the Other is. Limberg describes the first position — the Thesis — like this: Lockdowns are needed to contain the virus, masks work and need to be mandated, vaccines are safe, people should take the vaccine to protect themselves and others, and vaccine passports will help open things up quicker and encourage those who are hesitant to get vaccinated. The Thesis is the establishment position. It is held, in Limberg’s words, by “legacy media … NGOs, Universities, Western governments, and memetic tribes on the political Left.” In contrast, the opposing view — the Antithesis — is held by a ragtag of political dissidents of all stripes, from rightwingers to anarchists, motivated to cluster for different reasons around an alternative story: Lockdowns are not needed, masks do not work, the safety and efficacy of the vaccines are being oversold, vaccine passports will not only fail but further segregate society, and in the near future we can expect Giradian scapegoating of the unvaccinated. In other words, we are positioned on the precipice of a slippery slope that leads towards increasingly draconian biopolitical control measures, the grip of which is unlikely to release even once the pandemic is over. What we see around us now, as the Thesis visibly fails, is more and more people looking around for explanations and landing on versions of the Antithesis. As that happens, more of those who support the Thesis feel threatened and angry. The people questioning the Thesis, to them, are not thinking human beings wondering what is going on and not getting satisfactory answers. They are “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-vaxxers” and “far-Right actors”, whose views will lead to mass death. In response to this intolerance, the more extreme elements of the Antithesis position dig in deeper, offering up intolerance of their own, condemning the “sheeple” who still cleave to the Narrative, and proposing alternative stories which range from convincing right up to frightening. Some of the worst home straight in on old enemies: ‘the Jews’, as ever, are a popular target. This in turn allows proponents of the Thesis to conveniently represent any opposition to their line as dangerous and worthy of censorship. Fear and suspicion reign. Neither tribe is talking to the other, and each assumes the worst of their opponents. Take these two positions, electrify them, pour them through the sieve of misery that is “social” media, and you have the current vaccine wars. The rage that swirls around the attitude to the Covid jab is a substitute for something else. Underneath the arguments about whether or not to take a vaccine glides something older, deeper, slower: something with all the time in the world. Some great spirit whose work is to use these fractured times to reveal to us all what we need to see: things hidden since the foundation of the modern world. Covid is a revelation. It has lain bare splits in the social fabric that were always there but could be ignored in better times. It has revealed the compliance of the mainstream media, and the power of Silicon Valley to curate and control the public conversation. It has confirmed the sly dishonesty of political leaders, and their ultimate obeisance to corporate power. It has shown how ideology, on all sides, can mask itself with the pretend neutrality of “science”. Most of all, it has revealed the authoritarian streak that lies beneath so many people, and which always emerges in fearful times. In the last month alone, I have watched media commentators calling for censorship of their political opponents, philosophy professors justifying mass internment, and human rights lobby groups remaining silent about “vaccine passports”. I have watched much of the political Left transition openly into the authoritarian movement it probably always was, and countless “liberals” campaigning against liberty. As freedom after freedom has been taken away, I have watched intellectual after intellectual justify it all. I have learnt more about human nature in the past two years than in my preceding 47. I have learnt some things about myself too, and I don’t especially like them either. I have noticed my ongoing temptation to become a partisan: to judge and condemn those on the other side of the question, to find a tribe I can join. I have noticed my tendency to seek out only sources of information which confirm my beliefs. Most of all, though, what the Covid apocalypse has revealed to me is that when people are frightened, they can be very easily controlled. Of all the stories we are watching play out right now, this is the biggest one: the manipulation of public fear to impose unprecedented levels of control on populations. The ongoing nature of the Covid threat — the endless boosters, the endless variants — means there is no end in sight to this “new normal”. Like the War on Terror before it, the control and monitoring of citizens in the name of “public health”, the segregation of the virtuous vaxxed (or, any day now, boosted) from the antisocial unvaxxed, the internet-wide censorship of whatever Silicon Valley labels “disinformation”, and the widespread obedience of the once-mainstream press to an agreed story towards which they clumsily try to nudge their readers — none of this has any sell-by date. SUGGESTED READING The American Right's civil war BY MARY HARRINGTON This is the story of the times. Across the world we are seeing an unprecedented claim to control staked by the forces of the state, in alliance with the forces of corporate capital, over your life and mine. All of it converges on the revealed symbol of our age: the smartphone-enabled QR code that has, with frightening speed and in near-silence, become the new passport to a full human life. As ever, our tools have turned on us. The Covid vaccines, whatever their other virtues, have not prevented transmission of the virus, as governments have now publicly acknowledged. If they had, we would not be where we are. For this reason alone, there can be no justification for systems as divisive and anti-democratic as vaccine passports or lockdowns of the unvaccinated. If we were operating, as we pretend to be, from the ground of reason — if we really were “following the science” — then we would be dismantling these systems at this point. Instead we are moving deeper into them. We are being herded into a future in which scanning a code to prove you are a safe and obedient member of society may become a permanent feature of life, as unquestioned as credit cards and driver’s licences. We are moving towards enforced mandatory vaccination of entire populations — including children — with potential prison sentences for those who refuse. The Thesis, if left unchecked, leads straight to tyranny. But the danger of cleaving entirely to the Antithesis is a potential descent into paranoia. Both positions thrive on fear of the filthy Other, who must be destroyed with a barrage of claim and counter-claim, backed up by links to studies about ivermectin or vaccine side-effects. Limberg puts his hope in the possibility of forging a Synthesis of the two positions. But in order to get there, he says, both sides must discover and inhabit the fears of the other: something which looks less likely by the day. As someone who began this pandemic journey cautiously cleaving to the Thesis, but who has tipped towards Antithesis as the Narrative has unspooled and the dishonesty of its proponents has become clear, I can explain my own fears easily enough. In a short but momentous two years, we in the West, who have spent decades, if not centuries, lecturing the rest of the world about “freedom”, and sometimes trying to bomb them into accepting it, have abandoned ours without so much as a murmur, and begun enthusiastically scapegoating those who question this path. We who invented this thing called “liberalism” are now burying it, and building on the bare soil some technocratic state-corporate hybrid; a China-style social credit society, centralised, monitored, powered by algorithms, emphatically unnatural and unfree. We are in a revolutionary moment. Societies are being transformed, with no public discussion and no consent, into a version of a Silicon Valley nerd’s wet dreams. Unless we can reach some form of synthesis soon — unless the sheeple can address the fears of the covidiots, and vice versa — then we risk being blinded to where the real power lies, and what is being constructed around us as we bicker and insult and pontificate. Covid has been both revelation and accelerant. Now the direction of travel is increasingly clear. Unless we actively refuse it, our future looks like a QR code flickering across a human face forever.

It's bollocks Aquaman. FFS the Pzifer vaccine isn't very effective at doing anything. That and the fact that Covid is only a serious illness for a very small subset of the population. Stick to mainstream facts rather than this off the grid conspiracy shyte.

The brain control chemical is bat shit crazy stuff. There is enough wrong without spouting that hogwash and all you are doing is distracting from legitimate arguments.

Her departure won't raise the average competency though. One less rider in a diminishing stock.

Of course there will be many vaccinated supporters of these people who will show their support by not attending the meeting.

Great @Brodie what positive action do you have scheduled this week to stand up against the tyrant? You've already stopped betting on the NZ TAB so you can't do that!

Ok there goes another Topic. I guess it is reflective of the actual interest in NZ Racing.

The Graphene Oxide theory is a nonsense. The nano particles are cationic charged lipids NOT graphene oxide.

Yeah well some are baiting the Brodster!

@Thomass wouldn't have got on until he twigged that the price had been hammered i.e. when it was all over bar the shouting!

The Topic is about the TAB providing Head to Head betting NOT To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate.