Daily review 03/07/2020

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, July 3rd, 2020 - 41 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

41 comments on “Daily review 03/07/2020 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Sabine 1
    3 July 2020 at 5:44 pm

    200.000 unemployed people? Maybe the government could hire a few of those to be working at Winz processing benefits claims.

    • KJT 1.1
      3 July 2020 at 6:55 pm

      11.2 percent unemployed in 91. The result of daft Government policies, not Covid. But it shows we have had worse than now.

      • Sabine 1.1.1
        3 July 2020 at 8:28 pm

        well i guess they were lucky in 1991 that they could put the blame square on their inept government and did not have to deal with a serious and deadly viral disease.

        🙂

    • SPC 1.2
      3 July 2020 at 7:05 pm

      I'd rather they paid those under 25 UI payments and left them to find work as they can – gig/part-time/casual.

      Having to report other income and pay 90% abatement over $90 a week will suck the life out of them.

        • SPC 1.2.1.1
          3 July 2020 at 8:06 pm

          Well it's good they have taken the abatement rate down to 70%, I am fairly sure they intend/the exemption is to go to $90.

          • Sabine 1.2.1.1.1
            3 July 2020 at 8:30 pm

            i am quite s serious.

            there are now 200.000 people on less then 300$ per week base rate, if they don't have a partner who is now solely responsible for feeding everyone.

            I'd rather the government creates some jobs for these newly and old unemployed people. If this number increases by another few tens of thousands suddenly you have issues.

            also yei, abatment rate at $90 is 10 bucks more then now. Party time!

            • SPC 1.2.1.1.1.1
              3 July 2020 at 10:00 pm

              The amount one could earn before the abatement was $80 back in 2001, it had remained the same for nearly 20 years.

              As for the low income, under the JSB regime its $250 (single) + $90 then any more and abatement at 70 cents in the dollar off that (as well as tax). This effectively caps income for 10-15 hours work at under $400 (and the time and effort of reporting extra income to W and I each week)

              With UI for those under 25 without FT employment, there is no abatement – 100% of extra income is kept. Get 10-15 hours work at $18.90 MW/$20 next year and this is near the $500 a week rate some laid off are getting for a few months.

          • weka 1.2.1.1.2
            3 July 2020 at 9:50 pm

            I hadn't realised there were different abatement rates for different benefits.

            • SPC 1.2.1.1.2.1
              3 July 2020 at 10:06 pm

              Those with partners and or children can earn a higher rate before abatement applies.

      • RedBaronCV 1.2.2
        3 July 2020 at 8:15 pm

        Under 25 I'd go for that maybe even a bit older – maybe tail it off. heck that should give a tax free fire zone for anyone under that age to keep equity. I'm attracted to the idea. Beats youth wages which only benefit employers.

        And sign them up to a union so they have somebody to represent them and stop anyone taking too much advantage of them

        • SPC 1.2.2.1
          3 July 2020 at 10:05 pm

          Re youth wages – for mine the best thing about UI for those under 25 is that it also allows people to intern for free (you cannot do this and get JSB as you have to be available for paid FT work). This does not mean exploitation as it is voluntary and people would only do it in return for training – and they could leave any time and use the training to get a paid job.

          Or intern part-time and top up it up with a part-time/gig/casual job income.

      • gsays 1.2.3
        4 July 2020 at 8:39 am

        In regards the 'gig economy job's, perhaps the laws get rejigged so that these foreign fast food chains have to employ their delivery drivers.

        I know of a couple of teens doing deliveries, and they are headed to a world of trouble.

        Not bothered with taxes, insurance etc. Just spending the money as they get it.

        Surely we can pay a little more for our pizza and have these people entering the job market a little better protected.

  2. RedBaronCV 2
    3 July 2020 at 6:20 pm

    Actually I wonder if the Right is really getting very worried.

    Yes we have to reallocate our labour force and that will take a little time but if we manage that, keep our exports up, run surpluses on our balance of payments, put the fewer people we have into the housing that exists ,increase wage bargaining ability, increase GDP per head then the whole country will be able to see that the Right wing policies are a load of rubbish that does not make them better off.

  3. Sacha 3
    3 July 2020 at 6:37 pm

    Covid challenge: How do we reinforce concepts like cooperation, caring and protection in our public discourse?

    The right will be pushing 'freedom' and business-as-usual; 'Opening up' to the world as a good plan rather than a reckless stunt; Getting back to a way of life that is right and ordained.

    Meanwhile, the plague is just getting started.. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12345158

    • SPC 3.1
      3 July 2020 at 6:53 pm

      Latest reports from the US indicate its getting more infectious than it was (higher viral loads). This would explain why it is spreading so well in the American summer.

      • Sacha 3.1.1
        3 July 2020 at 6:54 pm

        They are sooo screwed.

        • SPC 3.1.1.1
          3 July 2020 at 7:01 pm

          The study, titled Tracking changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: Evidence that D614G increases infectivity of the COVID-19 virus, was recently published in the journal Cell after a lengthy review process.

          The study found the dominant global strain of Covid-19 is now the a variant coined G614, which spread to the US from Europe. Previously, D614 was the dominant strain, according to the study. A mutation to the virus’ spike protein – its mechanism for attaching to cells – is what sets it apart from the previous variant. "It is now the dominant form infecting people," professor Erica Ollmann Saphire of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and the Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium, who worked on the study, told CNN. "This is now the virus."

          People with the G614 strain were found to have higher viral loads, with the virus situated more in the upper respiratory tract, making it easier to spread.

          https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/new-study-suggests-covid-19-mutation-makes-three-nine-times-more-infectious

  4. greywarshark 4
    3 July 2020 at 6:40 pm

    UK and travel.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/01/75-countries-exempted-quarantine-individual-air-bridge-plan/

    The list, to be published on Thursday or Friday, will lift the Foreign Office ban on non-essential travel to nearly all EU destinations, the British territories including Bermuda and Gibraltar, and Turkey, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand….

    It means that from Monday travellers to the 75 countries will no longer have to quarantine for 14 days on their return to the UK although some like Australia and New Zealand are expected to retain border controls and quarantine for as long as the rest of 2020….

    All part of Boris' Very Good Plans that he thinks up at breakfast meetings. Wishful that UK can skip a quarantine on return. If you didn't laugh you would cry.

    google keywords – Sweden covid19 figures

    Sweden is interesting they have a regular sharp peak and drop of new cases, which on 24 June was 1697 then 477 on 28 June, then on 30 June 1445, yet 250 on 2 July.

  5. greywarshark 5
    3 July 2020 at 6:43 pm

    .
    Victoria why the rise?
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53259356 Jul.3/20

    Coronavirus: Why has Melbourne's outbreak worsened?
    So how did the virus spread? Allegations of blame have been levelled at private security firms contracted to operate the state's quarantine. Neighbouring New South Wales took a different approach – using the police force.

    Victoria has faced accusations of systemic failures such as guards being improperly trained or not given enough PPE.

    Mr Andrews [Premier Daniel Andrews] has also described cases of illegal socialising between staff, listing examples of workers sharing a cigarette lighter or car-pooling. Local media also reported claims of sex between guards and quarantined travellers.

    The government has ordered a judicial inquiry into their quarantine operation and fired the contractors…

    In early May – during Australia's lockdown – authorities expressed concern about a virus cluster among workers at an abbatoir in Melbourne's west.
    About 111 cases were eventually linked to the site, which had been the subject of a rapid trace-and-track response from authorities…
    But experts believe that secondary cases from that cluster – and possibly others – were still festering undetected in the community.
    "It seeded the population… and there were enough cases out there when the precautions relaxed," Prof John Matthews from the University of Melbourne tells the BBC…
    .

    Officials were still exhorting social distancing, but group limits were expanded. Large family groups reconnected and some cases stemmed from people with mild symptoms attending those gatherings, authorities said.
    "Once the feeling got around that it was over – when it really wasn't – Victoria copped it," says Prof Matthews…
    .

    …communication of public health orders was insufficient for non-English speakers, ..
    Given Melbourne's significantly multicultural make-up – a language other than English is spoken in almost 35% of households – this was a notable oversight, critics said…

    "If you can't stop the spread – you lose control – you get to the stage where you can't keep up with contract tracing… essentially what happened in Europe and North America."
    .

    For now, Australia remains in a far better position than most nations. Only 23 people with the virus are in hospital in Victoria, and testing is widespread and rigorous – over 2.5 million tests have been conducted in a national population of 25 million.

    "It's hard to say where we'll be in a month's time", says Prof Mathews. "We used to say Australia's response was one of the best in the world. And we can still say that, but with the qualification that we got caught."

    This could very well happen to us.

    • Ad 5.1
      3 July 2020 at 6:49 pm

      It will.

      Its the New Normal, even for the 100% Purists.

      • SPC 5.1.1
        3 July 2020 at 7:03 pm

        Back to TINA.

        There being no alternative to zombie neo-liberalism.

      • McFlock 5.1.2
        3 July 2020 at 9:40 pm

        Not so sure on that – feels like we've relaxed levels for several weeks now, no random cases appearing from undetected clusters.Whereas Victoria seems to have had errors in their eradication effor

        So the risk is a quarantine breach, and that would involve localised level increases and intense testing and tracing. t.

        • Ad 5.1.2.1
          3 July 2020 at 9:43 pm

          Check the rest of the world.

          Neither the world, nor ourselves within the world, are ever going back to "normal".

          • McFlock 5.1.2.1.1
            3 July 2020 at 9:59 pm

            That's an even more absurd than the flipside, that we'll be all good in a year or two.

            For the next 5-10 years, there will be a basic schism in the world: those countries that have managed to control or eradicate it, and those that basically surrendered to it and watched thousands or millions of people die.

            Best case for the latter group is that exposure gives long term immunity to survivors. Worst case is that it gives limited immunity and lots of long term health problems.

            Best case for the former group, the ones that effectively limited the disease within their borders, is that a vaccine is developed in a year or two and the WHO coordinates a global eradication program. Worst case is that no effective vaccine is developed and only moderately effective treatments are developed, and NZ and other countries basically have to treat the surrendermonkeys like they have super-rabies for the next century, always worried that some "plan B" arsehole will try to smuggle it in like a farmer with RCD.

          • SPC 5.1.2.1.2
            3 July 2020 at 10:12 pm

            The coronavirus is not forever.

          • francesca 5.1.2.1.3
            4 July 2020 at 8:41 am

            Which means chaos and the inability to plan for anything with all the economic downside that produces

            Sorry , I'd rather find solutions for survival within NZ than open up and surrender to a chaotic maelstrom

    • Sacha 5.2
      3 July 2020 at 6:51 pm

      …communication of public health orders was insufficient for non-English speakers, ..
      Given Melbourne's significantly multicultural make-up – a language other than English is spoken in almost 35% of households – this was a notable oversight, critics said…

      Racism costs.

    • RedBaronCV 5.3
      3 July 2020 at 7:10 pm

      "Fired the contractors" This should go down as a prime example of a case study for "how contracting out to acquire private sector efficiencies" is a complete load of rubbish. How much is this new lock down costing the local economy and the people in it.

      We have been warned – don't be cheap and outsource such a vital service. Failure costs are huge.

    • Gabby 5.4
      3 July 2020 at 7:20 pm

      I guess that's David Clark's fault too.

      • I Feel Love 5.4.1
        3 July 2020 at 7:47 pm

        lols Gabby. The Brit Govt have privatised testing and tracing etc, should be interesting to see how that goes, with BJ in charge, sheesh.

  6. weston 6
    3 July 2020 at 7:31 pm

    All day long radio repetition aka rnz has been telling us of the arrest of epsteins former girlfriend and the witchhunt continues .Hes constently refered to as a pedophile because he had a thing about underage girls apparently and because it sounds much more salacious to the media and underpins the negative framing necesary for the legions of parasites getting ready to feast on his estate .However odious you might think epstein was he paid the ultimate price for his deeds by being murdered in his jail cell .So now the vultures are after the girlfriend the suposedly evil whatever her name is maxwell ?perhaps and today we here some damn yank prosecutor extolling how evil she is living in luxury etc etc hand on heart as if her morality was non existant and the great american people absolute .Makes me sick thinking of all the war criminals living happy filthy rich lives in the good old US of A .That country doesnt have a morality it can spout about if it had one it disappeared a long time ago .Its not about morality imo its about money filthy lucre for the hundreds of lawyers for the prosecutors for the prison for profit corporations for the media and for the so called victims waiting for their multi million payouts .There got that off my chest think i,ll stoke up the fire an have a nice cup of tea !

    • I Feel Love 6.1
      3 July 2020 at 7:50 pm

      "So called victims", a seedy old man taking advantage of girls under 16, makes them victims, so fuck off mate.

      • The Al1en 6.1.1
        3 July 2020 at 8:30 pm

        Hopefully not before we get to hear about how the lizard people's 5g towers give everyone cat aids.

      • francesca 6.1.2
        4 July 2020 at 8:49 am

        After decades of "empowering" young girls what the hell has gone wrong.

        I think we went the wrong way by presenting prostitution as a perfectly ok profession, that young women could be "empowered" by this career choice.

        Weren't these Epstein victims teenage prostitutes, at any rate lured into becoming prostitutes .I argue that most prostitutes arrive at that career choice by a combination of poverty, lack of education, drug addiction and dysfunction.

        That plus a total inundation of the culture with porn, showing women supposedly enjoying bondage and other painful practices

        We can excoriate Epstein and Maxwell but we need to look at our exploitative culture as well

    • anker 6.2
      3 July 2020 at 10:11 pm

      Your comments aren't welcome here Weston

  7. ScottGN 7
    3 July 2020 at 7:40 pm

    Queensland has imposed user-charges on interstate quarantine so of course an underground railway has sprung up to smuggle Victorians across the NSW-QLD state line.

    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/border-inspections-for-smuggled-travellers-amid-difficult-days-ahead-20200703-p558rb.html

  8. Ad 8
    3 July 2020 at 8:45 pm

    This one goes out to all who are cold and alone in the deep of winter.

    So Now? by Charles Bukowski

    the words have come and gone,
    I sit ill.
    the phone rings, the cats sleep.
    Linda vacuums.
    I am waiting to live,
    waiting to die.
    I wish I could ring in some bravery.
    it's a lousy fix
    but the tree outside doesn't know:
    I watch it moving with the wind
    in the late afternoon sun.
    there's nothing to declare here,
    just a waiting.
    each faces it alone.
    Oh, I was once young,
    Oh, I was once unbelievably
    young!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S9HNM31XUQ

    • Dennis Frank 8.1
      4 July 2020 at 5:26 am

      "Bukowski was shy and socially withdrawn, a condition exacerbated during his teen years by an extreme case of acne. Neighborhood children ridiculed his German accent and the clothing his parents made him wear. In Bukowski: Born Into This, a 2003 film, Bukowski states that his father beat him with a razor strop three times a week from the ages of six to 11 years."

      Compared to mine, his father was relatively kind. But the regime of inexorable continual excessive thrashing likewise made me "shy and socially withdrawn". I actually stopped talking to anyone else unless it was necessary when I noticed they were all incapable of intelligent responses when I was a young child.

      Bukowski published "over 60 books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column Notes of a Dirty Old Man in the LA underground newspaper Open City." I read a biography of him around 30 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski

      Bukowski on style:

      I have seen dogs with more style than men,
      although not many dogs have style.
      Cats have it with abundance.

      When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,
      that was style.
      Or sometimes people give you style
      Joan of Arc had style
      John the Baptist
      Jesus
      Socrates
      Caesar
      García Lorca.

      I have met men in jail with style.
      I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
      Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
      Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
      or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.”