Radio National Nights Interviews

You can access and download my interviews on various topics by using this link:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/search/results?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Brian+Roper

The interview on the Pike River Mining Disaster is at:

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ngts/ngts-20121119-2045-thinkers_politically_left-048.mp3

Key Sources of Information on the Pike River Mining Disaster

The following are some links to key sources of information on the Pike River mining disaster. I'll be building this up over the next few days. 

The first and most important place to start is the Royal Commission report:
http://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/Volume-One---Overview

And for the full report including Volume 2:
http://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/Final-Report

Very useful articles include:

http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2012/11/06/gordon-campbell-on-the-royal-commission-pike-river-report/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/chris-trotter/7924949/Labour-shares-Pike-River-guilt

Bryce Edwards provides a useful set of links to material in his NZ Politics Daily, November 6th, 2012. This is reproduced in the NBR:

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/nz-politics-daily-death-neoliberalism-ck-131940

He also has a useful collection of images, cartoons, and so forth at:

http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2012/11/the-politics-of-the-pike-river-tragedy-in-images-and-cartoons.html

For his criticism of Labour and the EPMU see:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10846245


There is some useful background on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_River_Mine 

You can watch John Key's response to the report at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qWTnPPokM&noredirect=1


Pike families' lawyer, Nick Davidson QC, and spokesman Bernie Monk emerged from the Greymouth report release and commented briefly on TV3:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/multimedia/tv/national/72640.html 

The Tragedy at Pike River

Check out this article on Pike River. It isn't critical enough of the failure of the Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union to organise its members to take industrial action over safety concerns at the mine, but it is still provides a powerful critique of the other key factors that led to the tragedy: a business that put profit ahead of its workers' safety, neoliberal deregulation by successive neoliberal Labour and National governments, which among other things meant that the Department of Labour was insufficiently resourced to inspect mining operations and operated on the basis of the assumption that business can be trusted to largely regulate itself with respect to health and safety. 

http://iso.org.nz/2012/11/06/the-tragedy-at-pike-river-an-indictment-of-capitalism/#more-818/ 

Knowing Victims: Feminism and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

This important book will be essential reading for everyone who is interested in feminism and critical of neoliberalism. Written by the wonderful, brilliant, word smith- Rebecca Stringer.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415643337/