Todd Muller on Morning Report just now, trying to stick it to the government for not revealing the location of the quarantine facilities for the 501s. Hopeless hardly seems adequate to describe how useless this man is. In the end I gave up and wandered off to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
I had the misfortune to sit through what passes for a current affairs show last night.
Sunday had a segment on Auckland's water woes. It was nothing more than a pressure piece for 'Give us more water from the Waikato'.
Not a mention of the, wait for it, 50 million litres a day leaking from Watercare's infrastructure, nobody suggested future-proofing with water storage built into all new dwellings and buildings, water conservation, re-using grey water…
Part of the problem, in our 'market-driven' world, is the $2,100 a day paid to the CEO of Watercare. This culture of entitlement trickles down through the organisation.
Auckland takes 1% of the flow of the Waikato, which is the only big water source in the region. It is the only logical source, irrespective of whether the CEO was paid $1 or $1 million.
I am sure some of the leakages could be fixed, but some leakage is inherent in any water reticulation system.
The government has clearly recognised the seriousness of the situation by calling in the consent process.
If Auckland has serious water rationing problems for several years, because of a refusal to use Waikato water, there would a serious political backlash against whoever is in power both in local and central government.
I am sure some of the leakages could be fixed, but some leakage is inherent in any water reticulation system.
True, but from a PR PoV it’s a bad look when the leakages equal 25% of the average total daily water consumption across Auckland. In addition, burst water pipes spout up all the time and people washing their precious pricey car with a bucket of water may be fined. The least the CEO could do is manage an effective PR campaign. From my perspective, he’s been sitting on his hands.
There are international benchmarks for acceptable levels of waste in urban water systems. Where are the journalists asking how Watercare stacks up on those?
Ok, so there's a bit over half a million houses in Auckland. For the sake of putting together a hand-wavy argument, lets say the number of commercial and industrial water connections makes up for the number of multiple dwellings fed from one connection, so Watercare has half a million connections.
That would mean Watercare is responsible for half a million connection, so they are losing 100 litres per day per connection. Their minimum pressure standard from memory is 2.9 bar (29m of head) at the connection, but most are well above that. The international benchmark at 5 bar (50m head) of pressure is less than 125 litres per day leakage per connection is considered excellent with no action required.
I also vaguely recall reading somewhere that Watercare's leakage proportion was very low compared to other cities in New Zealand. Having trouble finding it, tho.
A quick search showed up very interesting documents in relation to Watercare. I don’t have the time to dig into it though. From what I gleaned, Watercare doesn’t meet three of its SOI measures and leakage is one of these.
So.. because there is still 99% of the Waikato left to 'take' there is no issues around the lack of imagination shown by the PTB?
Bill McKay on RNZ this morning talked about solving water issues, in particular Auckland.
This last century thinking; pay someone more than $ 3/4 M to tell folk to conserve water and stop a handful of house cleaners, meanwhile letting the infrastructure dilapidate, has to stop.
Wayne is way overstating the proportion of the Waikato's flow taken. At the moment, Watercare can take about 125 million litres per day at Tuakau, which works out to 1.4 cubic metres per second. The average flow at Tuakau is 340 cu metres/ second, and the minimum is governed by a minimum of 80 cu m/s discharged at Karapiro plus what flows in between Karapiro and Tuakau for a likely minimum around 120 cu m/ sec. So Watercare currently takes less than 0.5% of the average flow, and just over 1% of the minimum flow.
It's also worth noting that the Tongariro Power Scheme in the 80's increased the Waikato's flow by an average of 29 cu m/sec year-round from diverting the headquarters of streams and rivers that used to flow into the Rangitikei, Whangaehu and Whanganui rivers.
Watercare's maximum desired take of 350 million litres/day works out to 4.05 cu m/sec, just over 1% of the Waikato's average flow and about 15% of the diverted flow that was robbed from those other rivers. Note that Watercare's proposal is to only take their maximum allowable at times of higher flow and they propose to reduce their take when Waikato river levels are low. So their proposed take really is of less than minor impact on the river.
I am opposed to all the ideas about roof water and grey water. Go down that path and water borne diseases will increase. Children playing in water, drinking it, etc. Way too big a risk.
Having said that, in an old established suburb, I do have a 15,000 litre tank collecting rain water for garden use, and grew up on a farm with roof rainwater.
Nevertheless, I do think a huge amount of care is necessary around potable water. The public health issues are way too important.
Especially when Watercare can readily process Waikato water to potable water quality.
'Moreover', while I use my 15,000 litre tank to water the lillies, I wouldn't be at all comfortable with the average Joe doing the same sort of thing. OR indeed having the nouse to distinguish the potable from the piss.
No, no, Mrs Wayne and I were thinking about it just this past-noon as she was running up my latest leisure suit on the Singer. FAR too risky she said! Wayne! – we really do need to educate these people! Do you think we could start a charity? I know Father – do you think Michelle might help?
Do you want Wayne to stop posting here? I don't. Somebody with a contrary view to yours is not your enemy, they are a reason to engage. But you're not, you're just doing an average job of slagging the guy.
Thanks for being here Wayne, I like to put what you have to say into my blender.
I've been putting what Wayne says into my blender for years. Not just on TS, but during his time in Parliament and subsequent media gigs.
And no, I love reading Wayne's comments. They're often valuable historical gems and a way of understanding how the hell we all got here.
It'd be nice if he had a word with the current crop of dirty politicians (which he is not). I'm pretty bloody sure that anything I say is not going to prevent Wayne, or any other politician (even some from the new batshit crazy political fundy parties) from expressing themselves.
Peace, love and goodwill to all mankind. And to the Goose and the Gander and all God's creatures.
It is not just about Wayne commenting here. It’s not even about ex-politicians commenting here. The vitriol here is so toxic at times that I cannot bear to breathe.
I understand Cogs and agree. Fully maate, fully. I'm tired of it all really especially as life is running out and expiration nears – which is why I'm more inclined to push back. It's probably better I resume my former perversion which is to just watch and wonder, rather than have to watch whether or not I've put something in the David Mac blender, or on the Geoarge Foreman grill.
I was an ultrasensitive child, so it was obviously necessary for my dad to thrash that out of me. To him. 🙃
Consequently I grew a tough skin around my ego. But it didn't cancel the inner child. Just gave me more of a range of emotional responses to injustice. But I didn't start expressing my feelings in written words until middle age.
What I notice more nowadays is the emotional content of blog commentary, and how few participants seem to be able to sense that accurately. I think the medium is the message here: it emasculates communication. Talking has a body-language component that goes missing here. Eyes are particularly relevant senders of signals! Facial expressions. Gestures.
Could be some of us have a natural tendency to subjectify written opinions too, so as to cause us inappropriate emotional reactions. Inasmuch as the writer had no intent to trigger such. What can we do about it? Nothing much. Just try to consider any knee-jerk reaction & ascertain if it really is appropriate to the cause.
Biological signalling is a large part of herding, eh? Social media wildfires are the consequence…
I had just returned from an overnight stay in Auckland and while there had debated with family members their idea that Aucklanders should be allowed to dip into the great Waikato river . I pointed out that there was no water tank catching their rainwater – water to use for cleaning cars , watering gardens , filling the swimming pool and spa and showering. All sections large enough to have a small garden should have a water tank storing the water off their roofs. Catching this water will also prevent another problem now prevalent in places like Switzerland. So much of the land is now covered in hard surfaces that every thing rapidly flash floods after heavy rainfall. Every Aucklander must start thinking about what they can do towards a more sustainable Auckland.
Rain water tanks in Auckland required a consent fee and or building consent till June this year. The resource consent fee, that ranges from $600 to $5000 depending on complexity has been waived – but the consent is still required.
"Residents interested in installing a tank will still need to comply with resource, building and health and safety codes, and use licensed installation professionals where required."
Is it any wonder that very few tanks have been installed?
While I was reading your comment I was considering how feasible it'd be to tank my roof.
I'm in an apartment block that has 3 levels each of 20 one bedroom apartments on strata titles. Just thinking about the legal complexities is sufficient to realise that it is probably impossible.
There would have to be a hell of a water tank somewhere in the two parking levels, a large set of pumps and a lot of power to pump it up back up about 20 metres vertically to the top level toilets and showers.
And this is one of the medium apartment blocks in the densest population areas in Auckland – the central suburbs. But you find these kinds of apartment blocks all over Auckland these days. Sure some older suburbs could put in a lot of roof catchment grey water. But it'd probably largely be a waste of effort.
Most of the new housing is quite high density and doesn't really have the ground area to put in tanks.
For the more regular house, there are narrow rectangular rain tanks which don't have much of a footprint and can be fitted adjacent to a building but I'm not sure I've ever seen them in NZ.
The biggest hurdle will be the dangers of cross-connection to the mains water supply (bringing the risk of backflow, etc. and the contamination of the public water supply) – which is why, of course, they would need a consent and to be installed by a licensed plumber.
The opposition is clearly clutching at any straw now ; expect more as the weeks progress. Should we be amazed that the combined talents of Janet Wilson and Mathew Hooten have produced such a fiasco ? One Sunday paper article had Muller stating "in my perspective" 5 times ; then Nikky Kaye used the same words on a Jack Tame interview yesterday.
They're still getting it easy from their media mates IMO. Rimmer contradicted himself on taxes and was not put to the sword on that huge gaff by Jack Tame yesterday.
Muller's being allowed to spin with Kaye/Adams doubling down. A half decent media would eviserate them every time they fronted as the BS is palpable and everyone knows it.
If you seek a path away from DP why hire the hoots man Toddy ? Their course appears set now, wonder how many swing voters tag along.
I've been watching carefully for credible stories of people getting COVID twice. Here's the second one I've come across.
This one scares me more because the patient apparently suffered much worse the second time around than the first – a feature shared with a few other nasties like dengue. It also may have implications for vaccine development and administration. Nobody wants a repeat of one of the very few recent examples of a vaccine screw-up* like Dengvaxia in the Philippines.
Not to mention this also points to the possibility this disease will become something we will have to learn how to live with and manage rather than something we may be able to eliminate worldwide.
*Dengue is often much worse the second time than the first. Dengvaxia appeared to be very successful in preventing a second infection among those that had already had it once – but when administered to someone that hadn't already had one bout of dengue it appeared to make it more likely they would suffer really badly if they went on to actually get dengue. The mistake made was to administer the vaccine to everyone without checking to see if they had already had dengue or not.
*Dengue is often much worse the second time than the first. Dengvaxia appeared to be very successful in preventing a second infection among those that had already had it once – but when administered to someone that hadn't already had one bout of dengue it appeared to make it more likely they would suffer really badly if they went on to actually get dengue. The mistake made was to administer the vaccine to everyone without checking to see if they had already had dengue or not.
But, but, Andre…surely all vaccines brought to market 'safe and effective'???
Be careful mate…merely bringing this example of the surprising number of vaccine whoopsie incidents to the fore will earn you an anti-vaxxer/pro- plague label.
Rosemary, some of the reasons you come across as an anti-vaxxer include the way you consistently misrepresent situations by grossly inflating any negative aspect and remove the remainder of the big picture, present off-the-cuff anecdotes and feels and reckons from distressed individuals as established medical fact (when they really are the opposite of established fact), don't acknowledge when off-the-cuff reckons are disproven by careful study of large datasets, make gross misrepresentations of positions taken by other people and organisations etc etc.
(BTW, nobody with any credibility claims all vaccines are absolutely 100% safe and 100% effective from the moment they are launched – it is well acknowledged that effectivity is less than 100%, sometimes a lot less for vaccines that are nonetheless still worthwhile, and that there are people for whom specific vaccines may be contraindicated)
Rosemary, some of the reasons you come across as an anti-vaxxer include the way you consistently misrepresent situations by grossly inflating any negative aspect and remove the remainder of the big picture, present off-the-cuff anecdotes and feels and reckons from distressed individuals as established medical fact (when they really are the opposite of established fact), don't acknowledge when off-the-cuff reckons are disproven by careful study of large datasets, make gross misrepresentations of positions taken by other people and organisations etc etc.
You need to link to where I have committed all of these crimes.
I always provide links to research or media articles. The fact that they are not from sources you reckon are credible (like, I assume, the BMJ? https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11-06-2020/#comment-1719452) is immaterial. You might want to consider widening your reading horizon?
And just because you have failed to engage with anyone in this community on any meaningful level, you have no right whatsoever to dismiss the accounts I have (with some trepidation) shared here of families of significantly neurologically impaired children who have very good reason to believe a reaction to a routine vaccine caused this damage.
There are precious few mainstream outlets for these 'feels and reckons' because of folks like yourself…blind adherents at the Altar of the Omnipotent Pharma.
And not a single hint of any shred of grief from you for the children dead due to the dodgy Dengue vaccine.
Next time you're swimming around in the 'large datasets' Andre, confident they more accurately represent the safety and efficacy of vaccines, you might want to pause for a nanosecond or two and consider that the number consist of individual cases. These individuals are fellow human beings. With feelings. And opinions.
Andre Your use of the term anti-vaxxer illuminates you as a person who would rather win by bullying. It does not say anything at all about the person attempting dialogue with you
Carers dismayed by new disability funders is a title on RNZ news an hour ago.
You might be interested.
I am having to calm down about how ACC do not follow a review decision and think that they can use a branch medical advisor, so useless and 2 months wasted on more mismanagement.
Carers dismayed by new disability funders is a title on RNZ news an hour ago.
Thanks Treetop. Heard that this morning and am a tad confused. Not a very good piece of reporting at all. The 'reforms' actually went ahead in April….and I am pleased to say that in our case the 'transition' was almost seamless. Bureaucratic and clumsy, largely because of Lockdown, but prompt. Some of the ease for us is probably due to the fact that we were transitioning from nothing in the way of funded suport to something. The people on Natrad this morning were already being paid but under the iniquitous and hideous Funded Family Care…which discriminated against carers like myself.
Pleased to hear that this is progress for your situation. I can see some debate occurring for a lot of families who already have enough on their plate.
Story seems clear enough that its angle is driven by people with impaired thinking being required to take on the responsibilities of employers – one of the problems many families complained about with FFC. That whole part of the Ministry seems to need flushing.
Sacha, IF has been used to fund supports for people with impaired thinking for yonks now. Often a parent acts as an agent and manages the funding on behalf of their impaired child. Only difference is that now the IF can be used to pay a family carer. Tbh, I have often struggled to grasp the issue some of these parents have with their children being their employer. In most cases these individuals are perfectly capable of making the choice of having that particular person provide their funded supports and the hands on administrative stuff is handled by the Host agency. This is how IF works, and how payng family carers through a contraced provider works. Safeguards are (theoretically) in place.
The problem is the actual original Funded Family Care (a curse on it and it's midwives at the Misery)…I understand some folk were desperate enough to sign up to it (an lets be honest here…barely 1/4 of the potential 1600 actually hopped on board) but it was obvious it was designed to create exactly that level of conflict and tension. It is a shit of a scheme devised by malevolent arseholes.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — To slow the spread of the coronavirus, governments issued lockdowns to keep people at home. They curtailed activities that affected services like trash collection. They tried to shield hospitals from a surge of patients.
But the cascading effects of these restrictions also are hampering efforts to cope with seasonal outbreaks of dengue, an incurable, mosquito-borne disease that is also known as “breakbone fever" for its severely painful symptoms.
Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Indonesia have dealt with concurrent outbreaks of dengue and coronavirus this year. In Brazil, where there are over 1.6 million COVID-19 infections, at least 1.1 million cases of dengue have been reported, with nearly 400 deaths, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
Dengue cases are likely to rise soon with the start of seasonal rains in Latin American countries like Cuba, Chile and Costa Rica, as well as the South Asian countries of India and Pakistan.
For a place that's feasible to operate as a closed environment, like New Zealand, yes it's true that elimination is possible as long as people are not infectious after recovery.
But for the world as a whole eradication simply isn't feasible if people can be re-infected. Hell, we haven't yet eradicated measles or polio, even though both those diseases have cheap, high effectiveness vaccines, re-infection doesn't occur, and neither have the sneaky habit of asymptomatic/presymptomatic infectiousness. Because breakouts happen so easily and quickly from any small pockets of disease.
But a vaccine isn't the only option. Antiviral medications for treatment and/or prophylaxis are also possibilities that are being extensively worked on.
We should probably also consider getting used to the idea that maybe the best we'll do is something that reduces the impact of COVID down to say a nasty flu – something we routinely accept. It seems every ten or fifteen years I get laid up for a couple weeks or so with a flu, despite getting vaccinated. If a vaccine or reasonably priced medication were developed that reduced the impact of COVID down to a similar level, then I'd be of the view that that is good enough to open back up.
saw an American Dr say about 30-50% of those that get better after being in hospital with the covid suffer neurological damage, breathing issues, memory loss etc, and these are just issues they know about in the last few months. She also said the 30-50% could be on the low side. She had to say again, "this is not a hoax".
For sure there's a lot of widespread long-term damage. From the stuff I'm seeing in the science sites I follow and from rellies that got it and are involved in treating patients, I'm kinda coming to the impression that SARS-CoV-2's favourite target is blood vessels. Which is why it can have such widespread effects.
If that's what is actually happening, then it shows up first in the respiratory system because that's how it transmits and it's where the virus first touches down. The lucky ones are those whose immune systems are able to stop it there before it goes further and gets to its preferred tissues in the body.
Over the past few days, an excellent article has been bubbling away below the surface on the Standard and other left leaning websites in the country. Glen Johnson, a New Zealander ‘who has worked as a foreign correspondent in the MENA region for more than a decade’, penned this opinion piece on Al Jazeera.
His observations on the behaviour of the National Party has been gone over before. In this analysis, I want to look at an aspect of his article that may have been missed. Under the section ‘Omission and the economy’, Glen Johnson makes the following important observation on two key omissions in our corporate media’s coverage of the story:
“The opposition, business elements and an instinctively conformist media moved quickly to set the agenda, artificially narrowing the parameters of public discourse.
There were, for example, no deep-dive stories into the state of the health system, eviscerated by aggressive neo-liberalism since the late 1980s, yielding the country acutely vulnerable to COVID-19.
Little was said about our hyper-globalised societies' increasingly fraught relationship with nature, of which COVID-19 is a symptom.”
The Standard needs to shine a light on a different narrative to the one we are given by the mainstream press. We should be focusing on the 2 stories Glen Johnson mentions.
1. The state of New Zealand’s health system. This excellent report by Branko Marcetic describes how The Key government ‘slashed health funding’.
2. “Our hyper-globalised societies' increasingly fraught relationship with nature”.
George Monbiot wrote an article in the Guardian in March headed 'Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation.' To summarise, his conclusion is that ‘we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet.’ George is not alone; UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stated that the COVID-19 pandemic is an ‘unprecedented wake-up call’ for all inhabitants of Mother Earth. Jonathan Safran Foer have explained why 'factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics.'
Caitlin Johnston is an excellent independent journalist who writes prolifically on a variety of issues. A key focus of her writing is that we are drip fed a daily narrative to shape our thinking. Most recently she has written a fine passage entitled ‘As Long As Mass Media Propaganda Exists, Democracy Is A Sham.'
The recent collusion between the New Zealand media and the Dirty Politics brigade of the National Party shows how our own democracy is under threat as well.
I am for a Covid-19 minister who has the right clinical background to make sure there is a ready health system and to remind the population that history does repeat regardless of what is known scientifically in the present.
Looks like 8 billion on the planet is not sustainable.
Campbell interviews Nicky Hager this morning. Interesting context put forward re Dirty Tricks.
"What was actually going on was that they were looking for political ammunition. The reason why they wanted people's personal Covid patient information is because maybe there were more of those women driving down the island, maybe there was more stuff like that. and that had been the one thing that had dented the Labour Party's polls, their unbeatable polls."
Hager also suggested National members would still be doing it if it wasn't for Ms Boag sending the information to Mr Walker who "did something very unexpected" in sending it to media.
And Josie Pagani later on Breakfast, what's with her "Not Dirty Politics" and "Labour does it too" rhetoric. She's been in the anti-Labour pro National Camp for ages now and should be marketed accordingly.
Josie Pagani was dumped by the Labour Party because of her constant attacks back in the DP days. She also had an unhealthy association with the DP operators at the time including Cameron Slater.
And Nicky Kaye fronts up on Q&A, but not Muller!! Was she credible? Not really (am I biased?) and Jack was quite excited by what he called the "hypocrisy" of Woodward.
Didnt watch much of it, but seeing kaye whine "that's not fair jack " was priceless . I've waited years for the nat scum to get caught red handed and am loving every second .
Kaye on and Muller hiding because he's a poor liar. I don't think telling straight porkies on camera is in his DNA, although he's ok with the general half-truths and selective quoting required in day-to-day wool pulling.
I hate to give the bastards any advice but Munters Slack-Jawed-Yokel impressions anytime he is asked a question on TV only tends to heighten the feeling that his thinking is at best slow or at the very least a few synapses short of a circuit.
Cleetus he may be, but it's more likely the same thing that afflicted the woeful David Shearer, in that he has to think of what to say before answering so it won't drop him in it further down the track.
Woodward = one of the key celebrity-endorsers of the British Labour Party at the 1970 General Election … he was so popular from Callan that they actually built some of their campaign material directly around him … though by the early 80s his sympathies had moved on to the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
Usually hard to tell who's pulling the strings, eh? Like how Mossad jumps onto an Arab conspiracy & drives it onto a trajectory that is in Israel's national interests. The important thing is to fuel the thing, get the conspirators high on their own collective sense of destiny & machismo, then play them to win the meta-game while they believe they are winning their own game.
Since the average intelligence of Nat MPs is always low (similar to Labour) anyone who's a cut above learns to herd them. Then it's just a question of competing with the other sheep-dogs to get the sheep through the right gate…
Dennis, is the average intelligence of National and Labour party MPs "always low"?
Maybe I’ve misunderstood, but if that's what you’re claiming, then roughly how low do you reckon? "Low" implies 'below average' to me, but maybe you’re indulging in provocative hyperbole – you know, the sort of thing Nat MPs were indulging in with their Covid-baiting, before they came a cropper.
For a chap of at least average intelligence, you don't half write some nonsense, IMHO.
No problem whatsoever to plead guilty to that! Well, usually, but on this occasion it was an oblique reference to how representative democracy works when driven by identity politics: MPs get voted in when sufficient voters identify with them. So the systems selects average intelligence outputs.
That said, I take the point that perception prevails over reality most of the time nowadays, so the performance of parliamentarians typically produces a widely-held view that MPs are thicker than most folks. So anyone who comments on politics and the nonsense it produces will inevitably write nonsense if they try to be accurate in their descriptions. We could call it the Frank/Kram paradox…
In a representative democracy, should the average intelligence of parliamentarians reflect society's average? Maybe Ardern and Bridges/Muller cancel each other out.
I've been wondering this too. Not so much about Collins but what the long term strategy is. If MH is as smart as he appears to be, I doubt he is trying to win this year's election. They will be looking at the longer term plan to rebuild National and how to regain power.
Maybe Hooton has fucked up here, but I think it's really unwise for the left to assume he is stupid or not good at what he does.
The Media Watch RNZ thing was good, Brent Edwards giving the media a bit of a warning, to not let National use them for politicking, RNZ dispute this, but good on them for allowing the other point of view. They really should ask their sources, where they got their source. If a polly offers them confidential information, maybe try and find out where it came from, or be journalistic and find a source to back up the evidence. It just seems to me they took Walker at his word, and his word alone "this wasn't password protected and was available to anyone", which was quite simply, a lie, which they reported.
Clark takes his kids to the beach, days and days of screaming headlines, Nats & acolyte (s) potentially break laws, dodgy creepy ethics, and nothing, even though some journalists are writing very good, factual pieces, it seems it's the editors letting the Nats off.
In absence of a link, you can mention the source and point people in the right direction but I think it is highly unusual to have no link at all.
An error in a link can be picked up and corrected by another commenter and/or a Moderator.
It comes down to showing consideration for other readers here and some commitment towards sharing your source so that they can check it out for themselves and possibly do further reading if they wish.
Hi Sacha, Not sure Rocket Surgery is a thing, but for some of us copying and pasting clips might as well be Rocket Science. There don't appear to be clips of the Breakfast show interview with Josie Pagani that I mentioned earlier (without going to Facebook, no thank you). I tried copying and pasting, unsuccessfully, the whole show (Pagani is 1:15:00 in) but couldn't do it, so my apologies if I am one of the people who have ground your gears this morning.
New CBS News/YouGov polls show President Donald Trump is in trouble in three states he won in 2016. He's tied with former Vice President Joe Biden in Arizona (46% to 46%), a state he won by four points in 2016. Trump's down 48% to 42% in Florida, a state he took by a point in 2016.
But it's the third state, Texas, where the eye popping result comes from. It's Trump 46% to Biden's 45%, a result well within any margin of error. It's pretty clear looking at the data that Texas is a swing state in the 2020 election. The 2020 campaign could be the first time Democrats captured the Lone Star State in a presidential election since 1976.
The CBS News/YouGov poll is not an outlier over the last month. There have been eight polls released publicly since the beginning of June. The result is that Biden and Trump are basically tied, with Biden up by a mere 0.3 points in Texas.
Four years ago, Hillary Clinton lost Texas by nine points. She was the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the state by only single digits since the 1990s. If you look nationally, you see Biden is up about 10 points compared to Clinton's two point popular vote win.
The government's chosen not to disclose the location of the hotel used for the deportees coming from Aus. Concerned about privacy, vigilantes, fearmongers.
Fine in theory. But in practice … it will leak sooner or later. Hard to keep that quiet.
Will backfire if Minister or even PM is asked "can you confirm …?" by a reporter who knows the answer already.
There is a really obvious reason to keep the location secret, so no it will not be a problem for govt representatives sticking to that line with media. Unlike weaselling from Nats trying to keep their stories straight.
At Dr Ashley Bloomfield's 1pm media stand-up today, he was asked why the Helicopter Trust would receive Covid-19 patient details.
Bloomfield said that all emergency helicopter services have received Covid patient information from day one of the outbreak. He said it is a well established process to protect emergency services staff. He also said patient details are confidential and are sent to secure email addresses by the Ministry. He wouldn't answer any further questions due to the inquiry.
In 2010 the Law Commission’s Issues Paper Alcohol in Our Lives found that harmful drinking had become a source of serious social problems in New Zealand.
The Issues Paper described the range of problems associated with harmful alcohol consumption in New Zealand and set out some of the measures that should have been used to help curb those problems and concludes with some preliminary ideas on law reform. There were 5 key recommendations:
1. raise alcohol prices.
2. raise the purchase age.
3. reduce alcohol accessibility.
4. reduce alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
5. increase drink-driving countermeasures.
Governments since have ignored the recommendations. New Zealand’s governments are beholden to the liquor industry.
Doug Sellman, Jennie Connor, Geoff Robinson, Sam McBride and Tony Farrell wrote this report describing the failure of the 2008 to 2017 government.
Clearly the South African government is not beholden to the liquor industry.
Ramaphosa re-imposed a night-time curfew and also a ban on alcohol sales barely six weeks after buying booze had become legal again.
“As we head towards the peak of infections, it is vital that we do not burden our clinics and hospitals with alcohol-related injuries,” Ramaphosa said.
Each passing day in the last two months vindicates more strongly the health advice given to our government, the actions taken, the quality of leadership (excepting National) and the community response from our people. Those noisey few who constantly took cheapshots are getting pretty quiet now as it becomes obvious how tricky it is to balance health and economy. New South Wales has a big fight now to avoid joining Victoria in a return to strong restrictions. I wish them the best and want to give a shout out to everyone working hard for us at our borders.
On World rising virus infections it occurred to me that the USA has high numbers and yet it is in high summer. Didn't they forecast that the winter would be worse? Hell!
wowser Seymour and the ACT wowser party wants to stop you enjoying a beer or a glass of wine. Beneficiaries are going to get a payment card under their policy released today. So the wowsers plan to create an extra layer of bureaucracy and dump the costs on to the hard working NZ taxpayer. No doubt Wowsermour will be looking to contract out the administration of the scheme to the private sector where some company can clip the ticket and take some more money out of tax payers pockets. Simon BridgesTodd MullersChris Luxon Todd Mullers 'Bonfire on Bureaucracy' can start with this costly bureaucratic wowserism.
Timing? Very strange, since the investigation into the National Funding was announced nearly a year ago but excluded the Party and named JamieLee and the donors instead. (That started today.)
This investigation gives no clue of the cause and times it just before an Election.
Will Julie outline just what the issue is? And this one's process will not be getting under way until after the Election.
South Florida going crazy ape balls, numbers through the roof, hospitals full, and that's not even accounting the lag, spike in infection, then week or 2 later hospital.
She beggars belief. Either completely intellectually absent from her ARHT role, or completely intellectually absent in her macchiavellian plans to frame the government for "leaks".
What an absolute fucking tool.
"The team had explicitly sought from all the organisations who were receiving that information for a very particular purpose in a well established process…what the appropriate email address was to send the information to," Bloomfield said.
RNZ has been told the email address Boag had provided officials was the email address linked to her PR and political consultancy company, Boag Allan SvG.
So she regards her company address as her personal email address? FFS.
edit: oh:
The process to notify emergency services where the country’s Covid-19 cases were located – with the aim of safeguarding emergency workers – had been established months ago, Dr Bloomfield said.
“In case they had to visit a premise where there might be someone who had infection and they could protect their staff and take appropriate measures,” he said.
Nice to know my speculation wasn’t completely off-base 🙂
That always gets my goat – to call probabilistic linkage "Chinese sounding names" is a gross mischaracterisation. It's actually how the government currently links individuals' information between departments.
Turning data into information is a dark art. The Alchemists have tried and failed and became modern day scientists. Data, facts, and information are not for the fainthearted. For us mere mortals all that matters is perception, eh?
It's not all that dark, until you get into finance – they like to keep that as dark as possible so the regulators aren't entirely sure what anyone's up to.
As long as the assumptions (and therefore sources of error) are open, and probability is not mistaken for certainty.
Labour's most risky assumption was actually that their leaked data source was representative of the entire Auckland market. Barely got mentioned, because the opponents' objectives were to misrepresent the work, not embark on a good faith exploration of the problem.
Conversely, the IDI isn't so bad for sociological research (and might identify some intersectional items of interest, particularly across generations), but apparently one department was initially fixin' to confuse correlation with causation and start targeting algorythm-"identified" kids as "at risk". Fucking nightmare scenario: "computer says your child needs to go into care".
That stuff had to be stamped on hard, and I suspect it helped justify such stringent controls.
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
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The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
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New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders met on Wednesday as the national cabinet to discuss a crisis gripping Australia – the horrific number of women murdered this year. The killings have shocked ...
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The PSA is warning the Government that the sensitive information of New Zealanders held by various agencies will fall into the wrong hands if the latest round of proposed cuts goes ahead. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark A Gregory, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, RMIT University The telecommunications industry faces a major shakeup following the release of the post-incident report on last November’s 12-hour Optus outage. Telecommunications companies will have to share more information with customers during future ...
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Todd Muller on Morning Report just now, trying to stick it to the government for not revealing the location of the quarantine facilities for the 501s. Hopeless hardly seems adequate to describe how useless this man is. In the end I gave up and wandered off to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
They'll be fine they're coming from Australia. That wasn't on the Walker Queenstown list so send them there.
Perfect 🙂
You mean it hasn't been leaked to him yet?
I had the misfortune to sit through what passes for a current affairs show last night.
Sunday had a segment on Auckland's water woes. It was nothing more than a pressure piece for 'Give us more water from the Waikato'.
Not a mention of the, wait for it, 50 million litres a day leaking from Watercare's infrastructure, nobody suggested future-proofing with water storage built into all new dwellings and buildings, water conservation, re-using grey water…
Part of the problem, in our 'market-driven' world, is the $2,100 a day paid to the CEO of Watercare. This culture of entitlement trickles down through the organisation.
Linkies: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/420455/auckland-s-leaky-pipes-lose-more-water-than-the-city-saves
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/121216639/cashstrapped-lobbyists-spend-12000-publishing-council-rich-list
Auckland takes 1% of the flow of the Waikato, which is the only big water source in the region. It is the only logical source, irrespective of whether the CEO was paid $1 or $1 million.
I am sure some of the leakages could be fixed, but some leakage is inherent in any water reticulation system.
The government has clearly recognised the seriousness of the situation by calling in the consent process.
If Auckland has serious water rationing problems for several years, because of a refusal to use Waikato water, there would a serious political backlash against whoever is in power both in local and central government.
True, but from a PR PoV it’s a bad look when the leakages equal 25% of the average total daily water consumption across Auckland. In addition, burst water pipes spout up all the time and people washing their precious pricey car with a bucket of water may be fined. The least the CEO could do is manage an effective PR campaign. From my perspective, he’s been sitting on his hands.
There are international benchmarks for acceptable levels of waste in urban water systems. Where are the journalists asking how Watercare stacks up on those?
Ta. Didn’t know that. I’d make for a lousy journalist 🙁
Hi Incognito
Webpage as below, table 2 is the one I think that has the interesting data.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242515900_International_Benchmarking_of_Leakage_from_Water_Reticulation_Systems
Ok, so there's a bit over half a million houses in Auckland. For the sake of putting together a hand-wavy argument, lets say the number of commercial and industrial water connections makes up for the number of multiple dwellings fed from one connection, so Watercare has half a million connections.
That would mean Watercare is responsible for half a million connection, so they are losing 100 litres per day per connection. Their minimum pressure standard from memory is 2.9 bar (29m of head) at the connection, but most are well above that. The international benchmark at 5 bar (50m head) of pressure is less than 125 litres per day leakage per connection is considered excellent with no action required.
I also vaguely recall reading somewhere that Watercare's leakage proportion was very low compared to other cities in New Zealand. Having trouble finding it, tho.
Ta
A quick search showed up very interesting documents in relation to Watercare. I don’t have the time to dig into it though. From what I gleaned, Watercare doesn’t meet three of its SOI measures and leakage is one of these.
So.. because there is still 99% of the Waikato left to 'take' there is no issues around the lack of imagination shown by the PTB?
Bill McKay on RNZ this morning talked about solving water issues, in particular Auckland.
This last century thinking; pay someone more than $ 3/4 M to tell folk to conserve water and stop a handful of house cleaners, meanwhile letting the infrastructure dilapidate, has to stop.
Wayne is way overstating the proportion of the Waikato's flow taken. At the moment, Watercare can take about 125 million litres per day at Tuakau, which works out to 1.4 cubic metres per second. The average flow at Tuakau is 340 cu metres/ second, and the minimum is governed by a minimum of 80 cu m/s discharged at Karapiro plus what flows in between Karapiro and Tuakau for a likely minimum around 120 cu m/ sec. So Watercare currently takes less than 0.5% of the average flow, and just over 1% of the minimum flow.
It's also worth noting that the Tongariro Power Scheme in the 80's increased the Waikato's flow by an average of 29 cu m/sec year-round from diverting the headquarters of streams and rivers that used to flow into the Rangitikei, Whangaehu and Whanganui rivers.
Watercare's maximum desired take of 350 million litres/day works out to 4.05 cu m/sec, just over 1% of the Waikato's average flow and about 15% of the diverted flow that was robbed from those other rivers. Note that Watercare's proposal is to only take their maximum allowable at times of higher flow and they propose to reduce their take when Waikato river levels are low. So their proposed take really is of less than minor impact on the river.
I am opposed to all the ideas about roof water and grey water. Go down that path and water borne diseases will increase. Children playing in water, drinking it, etc. Way too big a risk.
Having said that, in an old established suburb, I do have a 15,000 litre tank collecting rain water for garden use, and grew up on a farm with roof rainwater.
Nevertheless, I do think a huge amount of care is necessary around potable water. The public health issues are way too important.
Especially when Watercare can readily process Waikato water to potable water quality.
'Moreover', while I use my 15,000 litre tank to water the lillies, I wouldn't be at all comfortable with the average Joe doing the same sort of thing. OR indeed having the nouse to distinguish the potable from the piss.
No, no, Mrs Wayne and I were thinking about it just this past-noon as she was running up my latest leisure suit on the Singer. FAR too risky she said! Wayne! – we really do need to educate these people! Do you think we could start a charity? I know Father – do you think Michelle might help?
Do you want Wayne to stop posting here? I don't. Somebody with a contrary view to yours is not your enemy, they are a reason to engage. But you're not, you're just doing an average job of slagging the guy.
Thanks for being here Wayne, I like to put what you have to say into my blender.
I've been putting what Wayne says into my blender for years. Not just on TS, but during his time in Parliament and subsequent media gigs.
And no, I love reading Wayne's comments. They're often valuable historical gems and a way of understanding how the hell we all got here.
It'd be nice if he had a word with the current crop of dirty politicians (which he is not). I'm pretty bloody sure that anything I say is not going to prevent Wayne, or any other politician (even some from the new batshit crazy political fundy parties) from expressing themselves.
Peace, love and goodwill to all mankind. And to the Goose and the Gander and all God's creatures.
Amen
It is not just about Wayne commenting here. It’s not even about ex-politicians commenting here. The vitriol here is so toxic at times that I cannot bear to breathe.
I understand Cogs and agree. Fully maate, fully. I'm tired of it all really especially as life is running out and expiration nears – which is why I'm more inclined to push back. It's probably better I resume my former perversion which is to just watch and wonder, rather than have to watch whether or not I've put something in the David Mac blender, or on the Geoarge Foreman grill.
vitriol here is so toxic at times
I was an ultrasensitive child, so it was obviously necessary for my dad to thrash that out of me. To him. 🙃
Consequently I grew a tough skin around my ego. But it didn't cancel the inner child. Just gave me more of a range of emotional responses to injustice. But I didn't start expressing my feelings in written words until middle age.
What I notice more nowadays is the emotional content of blog commentary, and how few participants seem to be able to sense that accurately. I think the medium is the message here: it emasculates communication. Talking has a body-language component that goes missing here. Eyes are particularly relevant senders of signals! Facial expressions. Gestures.
Could be some of us have a natural tendency to subjectify written opinions too, so as to cause us inappropriate emotional reactions. Inasmuch as the writer had no intent to trigger such. What can we do about it? Nothing much. Just try to consider any knee-jerk reaction & ascertain if it really is appropriate to the cause.
Biological signalling is a large part of herding, eh? Social media wildfires are the consequence…
I had just returned from an overnight stay in Auckland and while there had debated with family members their idea that Aucklanders should be allowed to dip into the great Waikato river . I pointed out that there was no water tank catching their rainwater – water to use for cleaning cars , watering gardens , filling the swimming pool and spa and showering. All sections large enough to have a small garden should have a water tank storing the water off their roofs. Catching this water will also prevent another problem now prevalent in places like Switzerland. So much of the land is now covered in hard surfaces that every thing rapidly flash floods after heavy rainfall. Every Aucklander must start thinking about what they can do towards a more sustainable Auckland.
Rain water tanks in Auckland required a consent fee and or building consent till June this year. The resource consent fee, that ranges from $600 to $5000 depending on complexity has been waived – but the consent is still required.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300041582/auckland-drought-rainwater-tank-fee-slashed-to-encourage-water-collection
"Residents interested in installing a tank will still need to comply with resource, building and health and safety codes, and use licensed installation professionals where required."
Is it any wonder that very few tanks have been installed?
While I was reading your comment I was considering how feasible it'd be to tank my roof.
I'm in an apartment block that has 3 levels each of 20 one bedroom apartments on strata titles. Just thinking about the legal complexities is sufficient to realise that it is probably impossible.
There would have to be a hell of a water tank somewhere in the two parking levels, a large set of pumps and a lot of power to pump it up back up about 20 metres vertically to the top level toilets and showers.
And this is one of the medium apartment blocks in the densest population areas in Auckland – the central suburbs. But you find these kinds of apartment blocks all over Auckland these days. Sure some older suburbs could put in a lot of roof catchment grey water. But it'd probably largely be a waste of effort.
Most of the new housing is quite high density and doesn't really have the ground area to put in tanks.
For the more regular house, there are narrow rectangular rain tanks which don't have much of a footprint and can be fitted adjacent to a building but I'm not sure I've ever seen them in NZ.
The biggest hurdle will be the dangers of cross-connection to the mains water supply (bringing the risk of backflow, etc. and the contamination of the public water supply) – which is why, of course, they would need a consent and to be installed by a licensed plumber.
My brother installed two 5000L bladders under his house. Somehow, he neglected to tell anyone.
I agree, plenty of imagination and creativity needed. Not renowned in these $ 3/4 M men.
The opposition is clearly clutching at any straw now ; expect more as the weeks progress. Should we be amazed that the combined talents of Janet Wilson and Mathew Hooten have produced such a fiasco ? One Sunday paper article had Muller stating "in my perspective" 5 times ; then Nikky Kaye used the same words on a Jack Tame interview yesterday.
They're still getting it easy from their media mates IMO. Rimmer contradicted himself on taxes and was not put to the sword on that huge gaff by Jack Tame yesterday.
Muller's being allowed to spin with Kaye/Adams doubling down. A half decent media would eviserate them every time they fronted as the BS is palpable and everyone knows it.
If you seek a path away from DP why hire the hoots man Toddy ? Their course appears set now, wonder how many swing voters tag along.
“Muller’s being allowed to spin”
Evidence to the contrary is all over the media. Here is a verbatim transcript: a TVNZ reporter does his job, and the Herald prints it.
One Sunday paper article had Muller stating "in my perspective" 5 times…
It's worse than that. Muller actually says "Look, from my perspective…"
The poor bloke is channeling the Dipton Double Dipper.
Michael Woodhouse nowhere to be seen…….
Is he in isolation?
Nope, just having a lie down and a cuppa, which is standard for Nat MPs under pressure. John Key euphemistically called it planking.
I've been watching carefully for credible stories of people getting COVID twice. Here's the second one I've come across.
This one scares me more because the patient apparently suffered much worse the second time around than the first – a feature shared with a few other nasties like dengue. It also may have implications for vaccine development and administration. Nobody wants a repeat of one of the very few recent examples of a vaccine screw-up* like Dengvaxia in the Philippines.
Not to mention this also points to the possibility this disease will become something we will have to learn how to live with and manage rather than something we may be able to eliminate worldwide.
https://www.vox.com/2020/7/12/21321653/getting-covid-19-twice-reinfection-antibody-herd-immunity
*Dengue is often much worse the second time than the first. Dengvaxia appeared to be very successful in preventing a second infection among those that had already had it once – but when administered to someone that hadn't already had one bout of dengue it appeared to make it more likely they would suffer really badly if they went on to actually get dengue. The mistake made was to administer the vaccine to everyone without checking to see if they had already had dengue or not.
*Dengue is often much worse the second time than the first. Dengvaxia appeared to be very successful in preventing a second infection among those that had already had it once – but when administered to someone that hadn't already had one bout of dengue it appeared to make it more likely they would suffer really badly if they went on to actually get dengue. The mistake made was to administer the vaccine to everyone without checking to see if they had already had dengue or not.
(And such a shame that it was mostly children who died…https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3006712/philippines-suspicion-dengue-vaccine-linked)
But, but, Andre…surely all vaccines brought to market 'safe and effective'???
Be careful mate…merely bringing this example of the surprising number of vaccine whoopsie incidents to the fore will earn you an anti-vaxxer/pro- plague label.
Rosemary, some of the reasons you come across as an anti-vaxxer include the way you consistently misrepresent situations by grossly inflating any negative aspect and remove the remainder of the big picture, present off-the-cuff anecdotes and feels and reckons from distressed individuals as established medical fact (when they really are the opposite of established fact), don't acknowledge when off-the-cuff reckons are disproven by careful study of large datasets, make gross misrepresentations of positions taken by other people and organisations etc etc.
(BTW, nobody with any credibility claims all vaccines are absolutely 100% safe and 100% effective from the moment they are launched – it is well acknowledged that effectivity is less than 100%, sometimes a lot less for vaccines that are nonetheless still worthwhile, and that there are people for whom specific vaccines may be contraindicated)
Rosemary, some of the reasons you come across as an anti-vaxxer include the way you consistently misrepresent situations by grossly inflating any negative aspect and remove the remainder of the big picture, present off-the-cuff anecdotes and feels and reckons from distressed individuals as established medical fact (when they really are the opposite of established fact), don't acknowledge when off-the-cuff reckons are disproven by careful study of large datasets, make gross misrepresentations of positions taken by other people and organisations etc etc.
You need to link to where I have committed all of these crimes.
I always provide links to research or media articles. The fact that they are not from sources you reckon are credible (like, I assume, the BMJ? https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11-06-2020/#comment-1719452) is immaterial. You might want to consider widening your reading horizon?
And just because you have failed to engage with anyone in this community on any meaningful level, you have no right whatsoever to dismiss the accounts I have (with some trepidation) shared here of families of significantly neurologically impaired children who have very good reason to believe a reaction to a routine vaccine caused this damage.
There are precious few mainstream outlets for these 'feels and reckons' because of folks like yourself…blind adherents at the Altar of the Omnipotent Pharma.
And not a single hint of any shred of grief from you for the children dead due to the dodgy Dengue vaccine.
Next time you're swimming around in the 'large datasets' Andre, confident they more accurately represent the safety and efficacy of vaccines, you might want to pause for a nanosecond or two and consider that the number consist of individual cases. These individuals are fellow human beings. With feelings. And opinions.
Andre Your use of the term anti-vaxxer illuminates you as a person who would rather win by bullying. It does not say anything at all about the person attempting dialogue with you
Bumping into the same issue with Andre because I commended Pilger's film about China.
The emotive language employed so far includes :
'truly loathsome totalitarian dictator thugs'
'blinded by their hatred'
'peculiar echo-chamber'.
Evidence to support the vitriol used.
None.
Xan….you will see Rosemary used the term anti-vaxxer first…Andre was just replying to it.
I see no problem at all using this description….the (usually nutters) who oppose vaccination have done countless harm.
Carers dismayed by new disability funders is a title on RNZ news an hour ago.
You might be interested.
I am having to calm down about how ACC do not follow a review decision and think that they can use a branch medical advisor, so useless and 2 months wasted on more mismanagement.
Carers dismayed by new disability funders is a title on RNZ news an hour ago.
Thanks Treetop. Heard that this morning and am a tad confused. Not a very good piece of reporting at all. The 'reforms' actually went ahead in April….and I am pleased to say that in our case the 'transition' was almost seamless. Bureaucratic and clumsy, largely because of Lockdown, but prompt. Some of the ease for us is probably due to the fact that we were transitioning from nothing in the way of funded suport to something. The people on Natrad this morning were already being paid but under the iniquitous and hideous Funded Family Care…which discriminated against carers like myself.
Natrad should have done better.
Correction with the title I used.
Carers dismayed by new disability funding model.
Pleased to hear that this is progress for your situation. I can see some debate occurring for a lot of families who already have enough on their plate.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/421077/carers-dismayed-by-new-disability-funding-model
Story seems clear enough that its angle is driven by people with impaired thinking being required to take on the responsibilities of employers – one of the problems many families complained about with FFC. That whole part of the Ministry seems to need flushing.
Sacha, IF has been used to fund supports for people with impaired thinking for yonks now. Often a parent acts as an agent and manages the funding on behalf of their impaired child. Only difference is that now the IF can be used to pay a family carer. Tbh, I have often struggled to grasp the issue some of these parents have with their children being their employer. In most cases these individuals are perfectly capable of making the choice of having that particular person provide their funded supports and the hands on administrative stuff is handled by the Host agency. This is how IF works, and how payng family carers through a contraced provider works. Safeguards are (theoretically) in place.
The problem is the actual original Funded Family Care (a curse on it and it's midwives at the Misery)…I understand some folk were desperate enough to sign up to it (an lets be honest here…barely 1/4 of the potential 1600 actually hopped on board) but it was obvious it was designed to create exactly that level of conflict and tension. It is a shit of a scheme devised by malevolent arseholes.
Not only an issue with children being an employer, children need to have a guardian/agent and intellectually disabled as well.
Not sure if MSD is still the Guardian when children are removed.
Thank you for your comment to Sacha, you know the issue well.
That's a grim read, thanks Rosemary.
Corporate greed, dodgy politicians, 'creative' data and all those deaths.
I got dengue in Cambodia a couple of years ago. Fortunately I was back home before it came on.
A horrible time and it seems to have taken a bit of capacity, in terms of energy.
When it rains, it pours.
JAKARTA, Indonesia — To slow the spread of the coronavirus, governments issued lockdowns to keep people at home. They curtailed activities that affected services like trash collection. They tried to shield hospitals from a surge of patients.
But the cascading effects of these restrictions also are hampering efforts to cope with seasonal outbreaks of dengue, an incurable, mosquito-borne disease that is also known as “breakbone fever" for its severely painful symptoms.
Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Indonesia have dealt with concurrent outbreaks of dengue and coronavirus this year. In Brazil, where there are over 1.6 million COVID-19 infections, at least 1.1 million cases of dengue have been reported, with nearly 400 deaths, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
Dengue cases are likely to rise soon with the start of seasonal rains in Latin American countries like Cuba, Chile and Costa Rica, as well as the South Asian countries of India and Pakistan.
http://archive.li/yRrLR (nyt)
From an elimination pov, isn't the crucial thing whether people stay infectious after recovery? If not, isolation will still eliminate it.
For a place that's feasible to operate as a closed environment, like New Zealand, yes it's true that elimination is possible as long as people are not infectious after recovery.
But for the world as a whole eradication simply isn't feasible if people can be re-infected. Hell, we haven't yet eradicated measles or polio, even though both those diseases have cheap, high effectiveness vaccines, re-infection doesn't occur, and neither have the sneaky habit of asymptomatic/presymptomatic infectiousness. Because breakouts happen so easily and quickly from any small pockets of disease.
also animal reservoirs can be an issue for many diseases, e.g. Tb or ebola in many wild mammals. That also limits the possibilities for eradication.
So we'd have to maintain a selective travel policy, border checks and isolation.
That's the worst case, yes.
But a vaccine isn't the only option. Antiviral medications for treatment and/or prophylaxis are also possibilities that are being extensively worked on.
We should probably also consider getting used to the idea that maybe the best we'll do is something that reduces the impact of COVID down to say a nasty flu – something we routinely accept. It seems every ten or fifteen years I get laid up for a couple weeks or so with a flu, despite getting vaccinated. If a vaccine or reasonably priced medication were developed that reduced the impact of COVID down to a similar level, then I'd be of the view that that is good enough to open back up.
saw an American Dr say about 30-50% of those that get better after being in hospital with the covid suffer neurological damage, breathing issues, memory loss etc, and these are just issues they know about in the last few months. She also said the 30-50% could be on the low side. She had to say again, "this is not a hoax".
For sure there's a lot of widespread long-term damage. From the stuff I'm seeing in the science sites I follow and from rellies that got it and are involved in treating patients, I'm kinda coming to the impression that SARS-CoV-2's favourite target is blood vessels. Which is why it can have such widespread effects.
If that's what is actually happening, then it shows up first in the respiratory system because that's how it transmits and it's where the virus first touches down. The lucky ones are those whose immune systems are able to stop it there before it goes further and gets to its preferred tissues in the body.
So the worst case might be the best we can do.
A different narrative for COVID 19 in Aotearoa
Over the past few days, an excellent article has been bubbling away below the surface on the Standard and other left leaning websites in the country. Glen Johnson, a New Zealander ‘who has worked as a foreign correspondent in the MENA region for more than a decade’, penned this opinion piece on Al Jazeera.
His observations on the behaviour of the National Party has been gone over before. In this analysis, I want to look at an aspect of his article that may have been missed. Under the section ‘Omission and the economy’, Glen Johnson makes the following important observation on two key omissions in our corporate media’s coverage of the story:
“The opposition, business elements and an instinctively conformist media moved quickly to set the agenda, artificially narrowing the parameters of public discourse.
There were, for example, no deep-dive stories into the state of the health system, eviscerated by aggressive neo-liberalism since the late 1980s, yielding the country acutely vulnerable to COVID-19.
Little was said about our hyper-globalised societies' increasingly fraught relationship with nature, of which COVID-19 is a symptom.”
The Standard needs to shine a light on a different narrative to the one we are given by the mainstream press. We should be focusing on the 2 stories Glen Johnson mentions.
1. The state of New Zealand’s health system. This excellent report by Branko Marcetic describes how The Key government ‘slashed health funding’.
2. “Our hyper-globalised societies' increasingly fraught relationship with nature”.
George Monbiot wrote an article in the Guardian in March headed 'Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation.' To summarise, his conclusion is that ‘we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet.’ George is not alone; UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stated that the COVID-19 pandemic is an ‘unprecedented wake-up call’ for all inhabitants of Mother Earth. Jonathan Safran Foer have explained why 'factory farms are breeding grounds for pandemics.'
Caitlin Johnston is an excellent independent journalist who writes prolifically on a variety of issues. A key focus of her writing is that we are drip fed a daily narrative to shape our thinking. Most recently she has written a fine passage entitled ‘As Long As Mass Media Propaganda Exists, Democracy Is A Sham.'
The recent collusion between the New Zealand media and the Dirty Politics brigade of the National Party shows how our own democracy is under threat as well.
We need to change the conversation.
I am for a Covid-19 minister who has the right clinical background to make sure there is a ready health system and to remind the population that history does repeat regardless of what is known scientifically in the present.
Looks like 8 billion on the planet is not sustainable.
1. Adopting a socialist policy towards health would solve the problem.
2. Several things are unsustainable.
a. Capitalism.
b. Consumerism.
c. Animal Agriculture
Campbell interviews Nicky Hager this morning. Interesting context put forward re Dirty Tricks.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/covid-patient-info-scandal-reeks-organised-campaign-national-author-nicky-hager-argues?auto=6171093733001
I hope the media do not let Woodhouse off the hook.
And Josie Pagani later on Breakfast, what's with her "Not Dirty Politics" and "Labour does it too" rhetoric. She's been in the anti-Labour pro National Camp for ages now and should be marketed accordingly.
Josie Pagani – Hard core Blairite, and just like the UK only wanted her team to win if it's the 'right' team
Josie Pagani's husband is John Pagani.
John Pagani is New Zealand Oil and Gas's corporate services general manager.
I am predicting she did not make that Declaration of interest on Breakfast.
Josie Pagani was dumped by the Labour Party because of her constant attacks back in the DP days. She also had an unhealthy association with the DP operators at the time including Cameron Slater.
She's acting out of revenge.
Maybe she's lining up to take over where the Boagy woman left off.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/q-and-a/episodes/s2020-e21
And Nicky Kaye fronts up on Q&A, but not Muller!! Was she credible? Not really (am I biased?) and Jack was quite excited by what he called the "hypocrisy" of Woodward.
And the Panel on Q&A interesting as well.
Didnt watch much of it, but seeing kaye whine "that's not fair jack " was priceless . I've waited years for the nat scum to get caught red handed and am loving every second .
Kaye on and Muller hiding because he's a poor liar. I don't think telling straight porkies on camera is in his DNA, although he's ok with the general half-truths and selective quoting required in day-to-day wool pulling.
I hate to give the bastards any advice but Munters Slack-Jawed-Yokel impressions anytime he is asked a question on TV only tends to heighten the feeling that his thinking is at best slow or at the very least a few synapses short of a circuit.
Cleetus he may be, but it's more likely the same thing that afflicted the woeful David Shearer, in that he has to think of what to say before answering so it won't drop him in it further down the track.
It looks awful and fools no one in TV land.
Woodhouse. Woodward was the good guy . . .
Ahhh, Callan … Classic Series.
Underappreciated today.
Woodward = one of the key celebrity-endorsers of the British Labour Party at the 1970 General Election … he was so popular from Callan that they actually built some of their campaign material directly around him … though by the early 80s his sympathies had moved on to the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
The creepiest guy in that show was the "doctor" – so wonderfully grey.
And Antony Valentine was the best villain ever.
OOps. Sorry Michael Woodhouse.
https://twitter.com/Dean_Nimbly/status/1282457457457954817
Usually hard to tell who's pulling the strings, eh? Like how Mossad jumps onto an Arab conspiracy & drives it onto a trajectory that is in Israel's national interests. The important thing is to fuel the thing, get the conspirators high on their own collective sense of destiny & machismo, then play them to win the meta-game while they believe they are winning their own game.
Since the average intelligence of Nat MPs is always low (similar to Labour) anyone who's a cut above learns to herd them. Then it's just a question of competing with the other sheep-dogs to get the sheep through the right gate…
Dennis, is the average intelligence of National and Labour party MPs "always low"?
Maybe I’ve misunderstood, but if that's what you’re claiming, then roughly how low do you reckon? "Low" implies 'below average' to me, but maybe you’re indulging in provocative hyperbole – you know, the sort of thing Nat MPs were indulging in with their Covid-baiting, before they came a cropper.
For a chap of at least average intelligence, you don't half write some nonsense, IMHO.
provocative hyperbole
No problem whatsoever to plead guilty to that! Well, usually, but on this occasion it was an oblique reference to how representative democracy works when driven by identity politics: MPs get voted in when sufficient voters identify with them. So the systems selects average intelligence outputs.
That said, I take the point that perception prevails over reality most of the time nowadays, so the performance of parliamentarians typically produces a widely-held view that MPs are thicker than most folks. So anyone who comments on politics and the nonsense it produces will inevitably write nonsense if they try to be accurate in their descriptions. We could call it the Frank/Kram paradox…
In a representative democracy, should the average intelligence of parliamentarians reflect society's average? Maybe Ardern and Bridges/Muller cancel each other out.
I've been wondering this too. Not so much about Collins but what the long term strategy is. If MH is as smart as he appears to be, I doubt he is trying to win this year's election. They will be looking at the longer term plan to rebuild National and how to regain power.
Maybe Hooton has fucked up here, but I think it's really unwise for the left to assume he is stupid or not good at what he does.
Must be some big tussles going on behind the scenes. Hoots is just the hired help in that context. But hired by whom is a great question.
The Media Watch RNZ thing was good, Brent Edwards giving the media a bit of a warning, to not let National use them for politicking, RNZ dispute this, but good on them for allowing the other point of view. They really should ask their sources, where they got their source. If a polly offers them confidential information, maybe try and find out where it came from, or be journalistic and find a source to back up the evidence. It just seems to me they took Walker at his word, and his word alone "this wasn't password protected and was available to anyone", which was quite simply, a lie, which they reported.
Clark takes his kids to the beach, days and days of screaming headlines, Nats & acolyte (s) potentially break laws, dodgy creepy ethics, and nothing, even though some journalists are writing very good, factual pieces, it seems it's the editors letting the Nats off.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018754242/walkergate-revives-dirty-politics-vibes
Thank you.
If there is no link posted is there an alternative?
If there is an error in the link it is as bad as there being no link.
In absence of a link, you can mention the source and point people in the right direction but I think it is highly unusual to have no link at all.
An error in a link can be picked up and corrected by another commenter and/or a Moderator.
It comes down to showing consideration for other readers here and some commitment towards sharing your source so that they can check it out for themselves and possibly do further reading if they wish.
FFS, can people please add a link when you are discussing or quoting from a media story. Not rocket surgery.
Indeed, particularly odious. I believe there was a discussion about this kind of behaviour on RNZ National over the weekend…
Hi Sacha, Not sure Rocket Surgery is a thing, but for some of us copying and pasting clips might as well be Rocket Science. There don't appear to be clips of the Breakfast show interview with Josie Pagani that I mentioned earlier (without going to Facebook, no thank you). I tried copying and pasting, unsuccessfully, the whole show (Pagani is 1:15:00 in) but couldn't do it, so my apologies if I am one of the people who have ground your gears this morning.
Not at all. #11 did it after a rash of them lately.
Still looking good for Biden: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/12/politics/texas-swing-state-2020-election-polls/index.html
The government's chosen not to disclose the location of the hotel used for the deportees coming from Aus. Concerned about privacy, vigilantes, fearmongers.
Fine in theory. But in practice … it will leak sooner or later. Hard to keep that quiet.
Will backfire if Minister or even PM is asked "can you confirm …?" by a reporter who knows the answer already.
There is a really obvious reason to keep the location secret, so no it will not be a problem for govt representatives sticking to that line with media. Unlike weaselling from Nats trying to keep their stories straight.
Should be down Queenstown way I reckon. Very welcoming folk down there.
At Dr Ashley Bloomfield's 1pm media stand-up today, he was asked why the Helicopter Trust would receive Covid-19 patient details.
Bloomfield said that all emergency helicopter services have received Covid patient information from day one of the outbreak. He said it is a well established process to protect emergency services staff. He also said patient details are confidential and are sent to secure email addresses by the Ministry. He wouldn't answer any further questions due to the inquiry.
Michelle Boag provided private email to receive patients' details – Bloomfield.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/michelle-boag-provided-private-email-receive-patients-details-bloomfield
Steve Braunias on the feelings in West Auckland.
Apprehensive seems to sum it up.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12346626
No I shan't subscribe, but thanks for asking.
In 2010 the Law Commission’s Issues Paper Alcohol in Our Lives found that harmful drinking had become a source of serious social problems in New Zealand.
The Issues Paper described the range of problems associated with harmful alcohol consumption in New Zealand and set out some of the measures that should have been used to help curb those problems and concludes with some preliminary ideas on law reform. There were 5 key recommendations:
1. raise alcohol prices.
2. raise the purchase age.
3. reduce alcohol accessibility.
4. reduce alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
5. increase drink-driving countermeasures.
Governments since have ignored the recommendations. New Zealand’s governments are beholden to the liquor industry.
Doug Sellman, Jennie Connor, Geoff Robinson, Sam McBride and Tony Farrell wrote this report describing the failure of the 2008 to 2017 government.
Clearly the South African government is not beholden to the liquor industry.
Ramaphosa re-imposed a night-time curfew and also a ban on alcohol sales barely six weeks after buying booze had become legal again.
“As we head towards the peak of infections, it is vital that we do not burden our clinics and hospitals with alcohol-related injuries,” Ramaphosa said.
Each passing day in the last two months vindicates more strongly the health advice given to our government, the actions taken, the quality of leadership (excepting National) and the community response from our people. Those noisey few who constantly took cheapshots are getting pretty quiet now as it becomes obvious how tricky it is to balance health and economy. New South Wales has a big fight now to avoid joining Victoria in a return to strong restrictions. I wish them the best and want to give a shout out to everyone working hard for us at our borders.
On World rising virus infections it occurred to me that the USA has high numbers and yet it is in high summer. Didn't they forecast that the winter would be worse? Hell!
Ben Thomas, right wing spin doctor and friend of Hooton on the Panel.
Bet you Wallace Chapman does nothing to challenge his spin.
Which is Wallace Chapman shilling for the ACT Party?
Susan St.John destroys the ACT Party's economic policies.
Wallace sounds like a card carrying member of the party and a close mate of Seymour's.
wowser Seymour and the ACT wowser party wants to stop you enjoying a beer or a glass of wine. Beneficiaries are going to get a payment card under their policy released today. So the wowsers plan to create an extra layer of bureaucracy and dump the costs on to the hard working NZ taxpayer. No doubt Wowsermour will be looking to contract out the administration of the scheme to the private sector where some company can clip the ticket and take some more money out of tax payers pockets.
Simon BridgesTodd MullersChris LuxonTodd Mullers 'Bonfire on Bureaucracy' can start with this costly bureaucratic wowserism.[Fixed the same error in user name]
Fixed the same error in user name.
Wallace just said on the Panel that the SFO is opening an investigation into the Labour Party funding. Bluddy hell!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/421114/serious-fraud-office-to-investigate-2017-labour-party-donations
Stunningly helpful timing.
Timing? Very strange, since the investigation into the National Funding was announced nearly a year ago but excluded the Party and named JamieLee and the donors instead. (That started today.)
This investigation gives no clue of the cause and times it just before an Election.
Will Julie outline just what the issue is? And this one's process will not be getting under way until after the Election.
Who is in charge of the SFO?
Julie Reid.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11123047
What interesting timing………….
On the Herald now
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12347726
and Stuff
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122119207/serious-fraud-office-investigation-into-donations-made-to-labour-party-in-2017
and Radio New Zealand
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/421114/serious-fraud-office-to-investigate-2017-labour-party-donations
These folk have a 59% chance of someone in their group being infected with Covid19.
https://twitter.com/charlesjaco1/status/1282407667525464070
https://twitter.com/AnthonyMKreis/status/1282433905010913280
Wasn't the Queenstown cluster just before the lockdown a cattle industry conference? Sheesh.
South Florida going crazy ape balls, numbers through the roof, hospitals full, and that's not even accounting the lag, spike in infection, then week or 2 later hospital.
Excuse my cynicism but can’t help but wonder if this isn’t to do with national
I agree.
RNZ reporting that Boag supplied her private email address when explicitly asked where MoH should send the patient details.
"Unsolicited". Lol.
She beggars belief. Either completely intellectually absent from her ARHT role, or completely intellectually absent in her macchiavellian plans to frame the government for "leaks".
What an absolute fucking tool.
So she regards her company address as her personal email address? FFS.
edit: oh:
Nice to know my speculation wasn’t completely off-base 🙂
The stupid never ends.
Can the nat caucus stop announcing each others' ethnicities without checking with them first?
This can't be blamed on Muller or Boag – the nats are overdosing on incompetence. Have they been huffing leaded petrol for old-times' sake?
It sounded pretty Chinese and close enough though. That’s the problem with those surnames, as we all know.
That always gets my goat – to call probabilistic linkage "Chinese sounding names" is a gross mischaracterisation. It's actually how the government currently links individuals' information between departments.
Speaking of which, your name does have a slightly suspicious ring to it…
Ah, but how many "McFlock"s are there in NZ from which to make the inference? 🙂
Sheer laziness.
If that's all the data manages, that's all the data manages. No amount of work will create data out of thin air.
Turning data into information is a dark art. The Alchemists have tried and failed and became modern day scientists. Data, facts, and information are not for the fainthearted. For us mere mortals all that matters is perception, eh?
It's not all that dark, until you get into finance – they like to keep that as dark as possible so the regulators aren't entirely sure what anyone's up to.
As long as the assumptions (and therefore sources of error) are open, and probability is not mistaken for certainty.
Labour's most risky assumption was actually that their leaked data source was representative of the entire Auckland market. Barely got mentioned, because the opponents' objectives were to misrepresent the work, not embark on a good faith exploration of the problem.
Conversely, the IDI isn't so bad for sociological research (and might identify some intersectional items of interest, particularly across generations), but apparently one department was initially fixin' to confuse correlation with causation and start targeting algorythm-"identified" kids as "at risk". Fucking nightmare scenario: "computer says your child needs to go into care".
That stuff had to be stamped on hard, and I suspect it helped justify such stringent controls.
This left/right thing. It's time we started utilising the energy it creates in our favour.
We need to find a new reason to dislike 50% of the population. Lets do it with surnames A=M versus N-Z. (see what I did there…already a bias!)
A-N versus O-Z…oh not bloody Oz. Ok, we're going to form sides via our letterboxes. Odds vs Evens.
If the left right thing is put to bed and harmony sought everyone can win.
The right can build streets of family homes and cash in.
Families in motels can decide on a floor plan that suits.
We found billions to confront covid, what's holding us back from getting things really sorted?
fear of the unknown?
Kia Ora
The Am Show.
That would be good a travel bubble with Rarotonga.
The Internet is a great way to promote musical Stars
Yes we do need to protect the Earth biodiversity at the moment many creatures are going extinct.
Ka kite Ano
are we all ready for Lockdown, part 2?
Kia Ora
Newshub.
No comment
Its great to see Kiwis enjoying winter sports.
Cool that wealth people are advocateing for a higher rate of taxes for wealthiest.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
Te Ao Maori Marama.
Te muller fuller
It would be good to see More Maori hired in government mahi.
It is good to see people helping Wahine keep their tamariki in their mothers care.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
The Am Show.
Find the positive in most situations.
I figured that out.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
Newshub
Its good to see people being held accountable for slandering Maori.
That's great increaseing dump fees to make people recycle more rubbish.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
Te Ao Maori News.
Ka pai I would like a lawyer like yours.
To much rain in Rotorua the septic system cannothhandle it they should have had plans for that so they don't have to spill crap in the lake.
Ka kite Ano.
Kia Ora
The Am Show.
Formula E racing is the way of the future.
The Salvation Army new comunity housing is great they are a awesome charity.
Ka kite Ano