Author Archive

BluffGeld

Written By: - Date published: 3:41 pm, January 14th, 2021 - 46 comments

The way that the smelter operates is the exact equivalent of some thuggish barbarians with big swords extracting tribute for not burning, raping and pillaging. In other words Danegeld or any other form of protection racket exactly as No Right Turn points out.  I’ll repeat his succinct post here. Meantime how can I encourage the wasteful fools at Meridian (and Contact) to start thinking about their paying customers rather than barbarian freeloaders

Covid-19 lessons from a plagued flight

Written By: - Date published: 10:43 pm, January 11th, 2021 - 22 comments

In September there was a 18 hour flight Dubai that ended in Auckland. A relatively close group on that plane showed infection after arrival, and a genetically similar version. The evidence of in-flight infection is very strong and points to the on-going issues with shipping virus hosts around the world. This has some pretty strong implications for long-haul flights in particular. But also to the risks of having travel ‘bubbles’ without enforced quarantine.

The Republican ostrich effect

Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, January 11th, 2021 - 21 comments

Reading the effect of the Wednesday riot at the US Congress has been interesting. The Trump position has as usual been as infantile and self-adsorbed as all of his disaster of a presidency has been. The Republican politicians have been been more nuanced. But it looks to me like they would like to not rely on cheeseburgers to stop Donald Trump running again in 2024.

Prison conditions

Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, January 4th, 2021 - 27 comments

Statements by the Minister for Corrections and Corrections themselves asserting that there had been no complaints about prison conditions at Waikeria, in the face of the Ombudsman’s report, just look to me to be pure sophistry and bullshit. The report on conditions in the high security make grim reading. Even ignoring the inmates protest – I want to protest about the waste of my taxes in providing such a unproductive, inhumane and outright evil environment.

Chris Bishop goes woof woof on variant ‘B.1.1.7’

Written By: - Date published: 1:26 pm, December 28th, 2020 - 43 comments

I realise that this would normally be our silly season, but it seems a bit macabre with the northern winter death toll. But nothing really excuses Chris Bishop for being a complete dickhead in barking for immediate offshore testing for travellers from the UK. It is pointless. The government are a bit more sensible. They’re instituting an extra test at our border.

Beefing up the border – expensive and essential

Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, December 21st, 2020 - 30 comments

From a few days ago (it seems like an eternity), RNZ reported “Govt to pump almost $3 billion into its Covid-19 response after report identified failings”. There were several points I’d make about the border controls and generally with our border and the long slow years in constraining this pandemic. But the Sydney outbreak and the UK Xmas Grinch appear to be making them for me already.

A joy to read

Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, December 10th, 2020 - 18 comments

There are the odd occasions when you find a political opinion that is a joy to read and quite revealing. An analysis piece by the Bagehot columnist that refers to the Conservatives as the dysmorphic Tory party completes its transition from the natural party of government into a British version of the Taliban…

The human Pangaea

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, December 9th, 2020 - 16 comments

Humans have created the most recent virtual super-continent. At least as far as species movement has been concerned world wide. We’ve picked up species from around the world and transplanted them almost everywhere else – including microbiological. Pandemics will be the inevitable result. Could be amphibians dying off. It could be us. Perhaps it is time to have an intelligent discussion about the risks.

Colin James looking forward

Written By: - Date published: 5:00 pm, December 4th, 2020 - 38 comments

There is a public meeting in Wellington on Monday evening from the Fabians – which is also conveniently being streamed via Youtube and accessible by Zoom. Colin James doing a crystal ball gazing. While I’ve liked Colin James analysis for nearly 40 years, I’m also excited that the Fabians are starting to stream these nowdays so I don’t have to do the meat thing and actually attend.

Power across the Tasman

Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, November 30th, 2020 - 25 comments

Australia is likely to have less of an issue with raging bush fires this year. La Niña is likely to give a break to the droughts with a wetter East Coast. Doesn’t stop record heatwaves as is happening at present. Climate change in action. What is also happening is equally predictable – the power systems get affected as well. Interesting to consider for similar climate issues here hitting our power. 

A tsunami of wing clipped kiwi?

Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, November 9th, 2020 - 45 comments

The rush back home has definitely been happening and appears to mainly be constrained at present by the limits on quarantine facilities. It has already helped to mitigate the drops in immigration and probably will in the future. Nowhere near as economically important and productive as our exports. But useful for reducing unemployment for those not exposed to the export economy.

President Biden and Vice President Harris.

Written By: - Date published: 6:54 am, November 8th, 2020 - 92 comments

At last. All of the main US media organisations have now called the election for for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with Pennsylvania. The eventual electoral college vote looks to be over 300 – well above the 270 required as Arizona and Nevada are called. It looks like Georgia will wind up the same way.

Rerun reeferendum

Written By: - Date published: 3:46 pm, November 6th, 2020 - 33 comments

One of the other results from the final results on was the reeferendum. The loss was minuscule in the final results. If I was the yes campaign, I’d be considering pushing this to another referendum soon. It was so close, that the result was mainly due to being run with Covid-19 in the background of the campaign, a unreadable proposed bill, and a surprisingly well funded No campaign.

Less buzz and more cooperative governing

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, November 1st, 2020 - 49 comments

I liked the process for the Greens and Labour agreement. From Labour’s side after this election it was logically completely unnecessary, except maybe under some weird scenarios. But it is cooperative and that is clearly something that voters reward these days. Politics isn’t about buzz. It is about effective governance.

Its all just manure – mix it in and avoid the river.

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, October 30th, 2020 - 39 comments

There has been a rather patronising meme running in recent weeks that voters who previously voted National did so because they wanted to make sure Labour didn’t want the Greens to be in government. Just complete bullshit. As far as I can see most voters and their MPs vote for our collective future like I do and expect the political mixing to provide good outcomes for us all.

Trump Hacked.

Written By: - Date published: 7:54 pm, October 28th, 2020 - 8 comments

Had to laugh, albeit with a resigned anger, when I saw this in my emails today. This afternoon, the official Trump campaign website was hacked and defaced.

Election day rules 2020

Written By: - Date published: 11:59 pm, October 16th, 2020 - 50 comments

There are some rules around Election day material on a website like ours. These are mandated by the legislation. We will allow comments here during election day. But they will be limited and we expect you to comment lawfully, and moderation will be on our interpretation of the Act. Please read this post before commenting between midnight and 7pm on saturday.

SFO exonerates NZ First

Written By: - Date published: 5:51 pm, September 29th, 2020 - 56 comments

The SFO has put out a press release a few days before overseas voting starts. They have not laid charges against NZ First or anyone in it. They have laid charges against two other people. What I find appalling is that they waited so close to the election before making it clear that whatever NZF did was lawful. To me that smacks of political malfeasance. And the complainants probably should be brought up on charges themselves for wasting police and SFO time. 

The background traffic is loud.

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, September 2nd, 2020 - 16 comments

Along with the grey weather, the weather around our local net is downright annoying at present. There are a massive increase in attempts to break into this site via backend systems and brute force front-end logins, a surge in scans from the search engine spider bots, and a lot of requests for putting up paid content. All of which have been ignored or dealt with. Good thing that we aren’t a target like the NZX, banks, mainstream media and the MetService are. 

Greenland ice sheet is disintegrating

Written By: - Date published: 4:48 pm, August 28th, 2020 - 34 comments

For the last 30 years, earth scientists have been warning that Greenland was nearing a tipping point into complete disintegration. Now authors of a new study published in Nature has claimed that, even if the climate now reverted to the levels where it was stable a few decades ago, that would still happen. It is now clear that the IPCC worst case for Greenland is what is now being observed.

Blogs and election fatigue

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, August 18th, 2020 - 28 comments

One of the characteristics of a political blog in New Zealand is the way that our operations reflect the political cycle. Coming into an election after mid-year, we have a steadily increasing level of traffic, posts, and comments. Moderators, commenters and even authors start showing a more cranky disposition. Now we have a extra month of the campaign. Be kind. Because there tends to be a problem when the system operator gets cranky.

Let them have gardening leave…

Written By: - Date published: 6:59 pm, August 17th, 2020 - 25 comments

“A bunch of retired MPs will now have to come back to work as well, which they will no doubt hate. But at least with current border restrictions, they are unlikely to have fled the country.”. Uh – why exactly? They are almost a sixth of the current parliament. They’re out the door, and there is no substantive work for them to do. I’m sure that puritans of thought will think otherwise – but I think gardening leave is appropiate.

Extend advance voting

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, August 17th, 2020 - 11 comments

One thing that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern should look at asking the Electoral Commission to do would be to extend the period of Advance voting. This was more than a third of the votes in 2017, and is ideal for pandemic voting. It allows to the pressure on polling places to reduce to something similar to queuing for the supermarket.

Covid-19 vs 1918 influenza

Written By: - Date published: 5:29 pm, August 15th, 2020 - 67 comments

Reading a number of articles in the NZ Herald in recent days calling for change in how we handle outbreaks of covid-19 in NZ. The implied precept is the damage covid-19 poses to the population of NZ over time is less than the immediate economic damage. That covid-19 is like the flu and results in herd immunity. However it is far worse than the influenza pandemic of 1918, much longer lasting and we probably won’t reach herd immunity naturally for generations. 

Well that is a bit shit. Auckland level 3. Rest of NZ level 2

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 pm, August 11th, 2020 - 48 comments

Four cases of community transmission from the same family – presumably without an obvious cause. Lock down for 3 days in the Auckland super city area at level 3 starting noon Wednesday. Level 2 for everywhere else outside of Auckland. Allows time for contact tracing and a later decision once facts are known. Good response.

Mea culpa

Written By: - Date published: 12:48 pm, August 2nd, 2020 - 33 comments

Back in 2017 I was upset, we had a leadership vote only in caucus – just before the election. I didn’t realise at the time that Andrew Little was actually stepping down in favour of Jacinda Ardern. She’d had the potential, but I hadn’t realised that Little thought she was up for the task. I’m delighted with the result. Thank you Andrew.

Quarantine costs – critics fruitlessly whine

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, July 30th, 2020 - 28 comments

I’m reasonably happy with where the coalition wound up on the quarantine cost recovery. It sends a clear economic signal to businesses and the fools who want to travel during a global pandemic. It will discourage some of the stupidity of the travel addicted. It also balances the legal position. Something that most of the critics clearly aren’t thinking through and cause them to whine without realistic alternatives

Pandemic: a flourishing enterprise. Business needs to get real.

Written By: - Date published: 9:49 am, July 28th, 2020 - 40 comments

A few weeks ago we were at 14 million cumulative confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide. A million more cases in just 4 days. Now a few weeks later, we are at 16 million confirmed cases worldwide. The lobbyists and business groups affected by our blocked borders need to get real. We won’t be opening our borders until we get a widely used vaccine later next year (at the earliest). It is too expensive to do so.

COVID-19: A human adapted virus

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, July 24th, 2020 - 23 comments

It has been obvious about COVID-19 that it is very well adapted to humans. It has evolved a good entry system to the humans, often has mild symptoms, long pre-symptomatic infectious period, and doesn’t kill many of its hosts. What has been less obvious is where it came from. It looks more like South East Asia rather than China.

Authorised by me

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 23rd, 2020 - Comments Off on Authorised by me

I finally perused the June 2020 Third Party handbook put out by the Electoral Commission. This morning I activated my authorisation notice. Activists should consider what adverts or promotional material that they’d like me to put up in the right column on the site. It must be directly related to the election day for parliament or for the referendums. And conform to the handbook.

National needs a safe pair of hands: Amy Adams

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, July 14th, 2020 - 98 comments

I realise that National probably won’t appreciate my advice. However I actually would like to have a viable competent opposition. I don’t even want an election to be as much of a pushover as this one is likely to be. If I was a stalwart National supporter or a member of their caucus, I’d be pushing for Amy Adams.

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