Daily review 08/07/2020

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, July 8th, 2020 - 67 comments
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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 …

67 comments on “Daily review 08/07/2020 ”

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  1. observer 1
    8 July 2020 at 5:38 pm

    Today, Todd Muller finally became relatable:

    He refused a radio interview because "he's having a cup of tea and a lie-down".

    Two things I enjoy whenever I can. Vote Nats for Naps!

    • Fireblade 1.1
      8 July 2020 at 6:27 pm

      RNZ Checkpoint asked for interviews with Todd Muller, Michelle Boag, Hamish Walker, Peter Goodfellow and the Helicopter Trust chairman, but they all declined.

      Not very open or transparent. Maybe the entire National Party is having a cuppa (or a stiff drink) and a lie-down.

      • Gabby 1.1.1
        8 July 2020 at 6:33 pm

        They may have broken out the Chinese meth.

      • Anne 1.1.2
        8 July 2020 at 6:37 pm

        Anyone who believes Hamish Walker was the only person in receipt of the Boag list is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. I'll bet a bridge she sent it out to several people at the least and left it up to them to sort out how they would use it to discredit the government.

        That way, if something went wrong she could plausibly deny having been a party to whatever went wrong. Nice one Michelle dear.

        • anker 1.1.2.1
          8 July 2020 at 8:30 pm

          I agree Anne. As Nash said manyNat finger prints over this.

          • Anne 1.1.2.1.1
            8 July 2020 at 8:45 pm

            I'm afraid Michelle B brings out the cat in me. A bully and a loud mouth who cannot cope with being wrong about anything. Her apologies are Clayton's apologies because she genuinely believes she knows best. She doesn't know what the word humility means.

    • I Feel Love 1.2
      8 July 2020 at 7:43 pm

      & he wants to lead the country?

  2. Dennis Frank 2
    8 July 2020 at 5:44 pm

    Woke lynch-mobs on social media have been bullying celebs, and now the celebs are organising a fight-back: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53330105

    Some 150 writers, academics and activists – including authors JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood – have signed an open letter denouncing so-called cancel culture. They say they applaud a recent "needed reckoning" on racial justice, but argue it has fuelled stifling of open debate.

    The letter denounces "a vogue for public shaming and ostracism" and "a blinding moral certainty". Cancel culture refers to online shaming of individuals who cause offence.

    "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted," says the letter.

    US intellectual Noam Chomsky, eminent feminist Gloria Steinem, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and author Malcolm Gladwell also put their names to the letter, which was published on Tuesday in Harper's Magazine. The appearance of Harry Potter author Rowling's name among signatories comes after she recently found herself under attack online for comments that offended transgender people. Her fellow British writer, Martin Amis, also signed the letter.

    Perhaps the woke are attempting a re-run of McCarthyism??

    Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.

    I doubt the woke really do see themselves as a privileged caste. I suspect their collective narcissism is totally unconscious. Like the National Party rabid faction, the woke are just trying to see what they can get away with…

    • Drowsy M. Kram 2.1
      8 July 2020 at 6:15 pm

      "I suspect their collective narcissism is totally unconscious." – I suspect you're right – "just trying to see what they can get away with…"

      You may have backed a winner Dennis; ‘totally unconcious narcissism‘ is trending now.

      “You may be an Unconscious Narcissist or you may know one.”
      http://wendykeller.com/unconscious-narcissism/

      • Incognito 2.1.1
        8 July 2020 at 6:33 pm

        I had to check it out 😉

        • Anne 2.1.1.1
          8 July 2020 at 7:25 pm

          Yeah well and good but everyone has off days when you just want to grumble about everything. I tend to keep to myself on such days and grumble to myself. At least myself is the only one who gets bored.

    • joe90 2.2
      8 July 2020 at 6:40 pm

      Yup, had me right up to ..signed by New York Times op-ed contributors David Brooks and Bari Weiss..fucking whinging petals….

      • I Feel Love 2.2.1
        8 July 2020 at 7:34 pm

        Yep, Joe90, absolutely. "Cancel Culture", up there with "antifa" made up boogiemen. BS.

      • Morrissey 2.2.2
        8 July 2020 at 8:31 pm

        Oh God, it gets worse. I noticed only the names of those third-rate scribblers J.K. Rowling and Martin Amis. Brooks and Weiss as well? nosadangry

        Brooks has long been nothing more than a joke; Weiss is his younger equivalent….

    • Morrissey 2.3
      8 July 2020 at 8:25 pm

      Amis and Rowling were both involved in the brutal and degrading campaign of vilification of Jeremy Corbyn. If anyone knows about cancel culture, it's those two despicable individuals.

    • millsy 2.4
      8 July 2020 at 10:28 pm

      Too bad JK Rowling wasn't that vocal about 'cancel culture' when Harry Potter books were being burned in the Bible Belt.

      Gloria Steinem — She must have amnesia given that the ERA she marched in favour of was 'cancelled' by the GOP at Phylis Schafely's insistence.

      Margaret Attwood — Really?

      They dont seem to realise that the true 'cancel culture', the true enemy, is not a few purple haired college students, it is Donald John Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban and their Christian Taliban,

    • swordfish 2.5
      9 July 2020 at 7:35 am

      I doubt the woke really do see themselves as a privileged caste.

      Oh they do … exclusivity's right at the heart of their enterprise. For all the performative talk of Oppressed Identities, it's an ideology of extreme privilege … disproportionately influential in the elite Universities of Britain & the US. First & foremost, an Elite White status-positioning activity (jockeying for status among one another) … with all the implied exclusivity (& desire for power) that you'd expect. Critical Theory is to the Intersectional Cult what L Ron Hubbard's ramblings are to Scientologists … exclusive "wisdom" that guarantees membership of a special little Priestly Caste. Archbishops Crenshaw, Butler, Hooks & Bishop Emeritus DiAngelo know best. Rote learning of Sacred Texts.

      Hillarious – the number of Woke Twitter accounts that have begun with Pinned Tweets saying: "I don't see why I should have to do all the emotional labour of explaining Theory to the ignorant" (or words to that effect) … Pure Unadulterated Exclusivity.

      And, of course, The Oppressed very much include ex-Boardingschool Girls from remarkably privileged backgrounds (apparently the raison d'être of the Left is to propel them into powerful & highly lucrative positions) … but apparently doesn't include Lower Income Whites (including women) … who (certainly in the NZ context) look set to become the unofficial Scapegoats for a Colonisation process that Woke elites disproportionately – and I mean massively – benefited from.

      So Elitist & Self-Interested in so many more ways than one.

      • Dennis Frank 2.5.1
        9 July 2020 at 8:15 am

        Could be the jungian shadow in their group collective psyche: overtly an oppressed minority (identity politics), covertly elitist (moral superiority in their subconscious).

        I mean they never actually come out and say "Social justice warriors are superior humans." Perhaps they'd earn more respect if they were that honest(?). 🙄

        "Animal Farm… tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon. According to Orwell, the fable reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm

        Orwell wrote the book between November 1943 and February 1944, when the United Kingdom was in its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and the British intelligentsia held Stalin in high esteem, a phenomenon Orwell hated.

        Time magazine chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels (1923 to 2005); it also featured at number 31 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels, and number 46 on the BBC's The Big Read poll. It won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 1996 and is included in the Great Books of the Western World selection.

        Unusual for a political allegory to achieve such long-term resonance & traction in the public mind, eh? Mass psychology at work! Ideals of equal rights come up against political psychology in real life. Some people are more equal than others! The woke are onto that! Collective narcissism driven by covert elitism is likely to make them as popular a sub-tribe as the communists…

        • Nic the NZer 2.5.1.1
          9 July 2020 at 8:32 am

          The problem is that the overarching research endeavour abandoned truth and logic (during the literary criticism phase). Once that is gone then there is no basis to the chronology of research except appeal to authority. So it becomes all about who is referenced and not the truth of what is written.

      • RedLogix 2.5.2
        9 July 2020 at 8:37 am

        guarantees membership of a special little Priestly Caste.

        Yes. It's striking how the secular mind seeks transcendence, even when it avows it isn't. This however is a cult that demands fear without love, and guilt with no possibility of redemption.

    • Graeme 3.1
      8 July 2020 at 6:01 pm

      Split the anti 1080 and 5G vote even finer. Can see it going really well once he's put under any scrutiny.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 3.2
      8 July 2020 at 6:32 pm

      NZ Pee Pee? Mind you, did have regard for some of the aims of the Progressive Party.

    • UncookedSelachimorpha 3.3
      8 July 2020 at 7:26 pm

      Jeebers. At a glance, anti-vax, anti-abortion, anti-fluoride, anti-1080, anti-5G. All in the one party.

      Not a rabbit for every pot, but more a rabbit hole for every rabbit.

      • riffer 3.3.1
        8 July 2020 at 8:19 pm

        Billy Te Kahika, aka Billy T K. Great guitarist. Interesting ideas…

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_TK

        • Cinny 3.3.1.1
          8 July 2020 at 9:36 pm

          Dang, no way? Same fella? Noooooo way. Hard case. I remember going to a jam and peace talk that he gave maybe three or four years ago. Brilliant musician.

          Edit….. facepalms…. he’s Billy TK Senior’s boy… ok… I was like wow a shave has taken years off him. But it’s his son that’s leading the party. Dang I’m a donut sometimes.

      • Graeme 3.3.2
        8 July 2020 at 8:50 pm

        Yep, turning the stoner vote into wasted votes.

    • millsy 3.4
      8 July 2020 at 10:33 pm

      Someone decided to go through all the rural NZ town's Facebook groups and collate it all into a party manifesto.

  4. Incognito 4
    8 July 2020 at 7:05 pm

    So, every time a National MP self-destructs their Leader promises to build a road 😀

    At the current rate, by 19 September they will have promised to tarseal the whole of NZ, four lanes wide, and three meters thick.

  5. RedBaronCV 5
    8 July 2020 at 7:27 pm

    I think National had better start praying their supporters only stay home on election day and not go and vote for the opposition.

  6. Morrissey 6
    8 July 2020 at 8:01 pm

    Three more victims of Covid-19 today

    One in the Bay of Plenty (shaken, embarrassed and bewildered but defiantly insisting he's still in charge), one in Southland (now in social isolation), and one on Waiheke Island (shunned by all decent citizens, shamed, still obviously toxic, and will never appear on RNZ's pisspoor light chat show The Panel ever, ever, ever again.)

    yes

  7. Just Is 7
    8 July 2020 at 8:15 pm

    More Cods Whalop from Muller, everyone knows he and his party are incompetent bumbling fools, you only need to look at the events of the last few weeks, Keystone Cops stuff

    https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/todd-muller-says-governments-everyday-glitches-putting-recovery-back-after-auckland-isolation-breaches

    • Muttonbird 7.1
      8 July 2020 at 8:28 pm

      This obsession with the quarantine means the Nats aren't focussed on the economic policy which they are supposed to be so good at.

      Another win for Labour.

      • In Vino 7.1.1
        8 July 2020 at 8:38 pm

        How can you think of the economy at a time like this when some minor event could possibly cause something ??! Now is not the time to be positive!

        • greywarshark 7.1.1.1
          8 July 2020 at 9:18 pm

          I think it is time for me to be a bit positive about Muller and his Band (The Wailers?). It is important that National keep on keeping on as we need them so we can have an election and win. There would be no fun in winning by default.

  8. observer 8
    8 July 2020 at 8:52 pm

    One silver lining: it's now easy for the gov't to send the Covid returners to Queenstown for their isolation.

    If the locals aren't happy, they can always complain to their local MP. cheeky

  9. ianmac 9
    8 July 2020 at 9:02 pm

    Oh oh. Michelle Boag reckons she was sent the data by email routinely.

    National Party stalwart Michelle Boag has said the Ministry of Health regularly sent her personal email address details regarding Covid-19 patients.

    She believed all emergency services, including police, would have received the same…..

    …"I've said I am not going to discuss my motivations [for sending the information to Walker] because that is for the inquiry, but it is a statement of fact that at the beginning they started sending out this data by spreadsheet," Boag said.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12346635

  10. In Vino 10
    8 July 2020 at 9:06 pm

    So now Boag is saying that the MoH sent her the material because she was chair of Rescue Helicopiter thing…

    Why would MoH do that? Who in the MoH would have sneaked her onto the list?

    I hope they unravel this, but it may be difficult.

    The good thing is that Boag is now mud regardless.

    Edit – Quicker than me, Ianmac. It will be interesting to find out if she is right – every Tom, Dick and Harry was being sent this privileged info. ??

    • observer 10.1
      8 July 2020 at 9:12 pm

      I doubt there was any "sneaking". Cock-ups usually explain better than conspiracies.

      Somebody's job was to send out the daily updates. Many organisations would be on the mailing list. When Boag was asked for an e-mail address, she provided her private one. Alarm bells didn't ring at the MoH (probably should have but she was an acting CEO of a vital emergency service, supposedly respectable and reliable).

      An honourable person would have e-mailed back saying "Should you be sending me this stuff?". But it was Boag, so … no.

      • Gabby 10.1.1
        8 July 2020 at 9:27 pm

        That could very well be the story they cook up.

        • observer 10.1.1.1
          8 July 2020 at 9:53 pm

          I'd suggest it's very probably what happened.

          Politics junkies get excited about the prospect of moles and leaks. Routine office work, not so much.

          • Anker 10.1.1.1.1
            8 July 2020 at 10:04 pm

            I am not so sure Observer. It would be very easy for a mole to add Boag to the list.

            i think it highly unlikely clinical details sent to a CEO. They would need to go to the clinical lead.

            anyway Boag is surely done for. Reputation tarnish

            [Fixed error in e-mail address]

      • McFlock 10.1.2
        8 July 2020 at 10:00 pm

        Having done one or two email lists around wee corners of the health sector (NEVER with patient data, though), that sounds pretty reasonable. Many folk are wearing three hats, and some "organisations" are umbrella MOUs without actual concrete addresses or sometimes staff. Emails can be random compared to orgs, and

        So this was a covidian exigent circumstances practise, and Boag accepted her personal email as valid for ARHT by forwarding the messages repeatedly and not correcting the senders. And she was CEO of the organisation, and in that role she got the information to the intended recipient groups.

        I suspect there's a lot of employment court case law about conducting work on personal emails.

        But this also goes to Lprent's recent article about why business people are shite at politics: most people who genuinely deal with confidential information know when to say "I shouldn't have this access". The thought of refusing it, referring them to the correct email, asking the proper recipients to sort the issue… none of it seems to have crossed her mind.

        Business people often think the boss should be able to know everything as a matter of routine. That is an enemy to information security.

    • Pat 10.2
      8 July 2020 at 9:32 pm

      with an extensive history in the upper circles of National she will not be allowed to face the full consequences of her actions….ce la vie

  11. weka 11
    8 July 2020 at 9:06 pm

    Lol the DR photo, good choice. Maybe tomorrow will be chickens coming home to roost.

  12. greywarshark 12
    8 July 2020 at 10:03 pm

    The guy with covid-19 who went out of isolation and then went shopping – to add insult to injury took selfies while in the supermarket.

  13. McFlock 13
    8 July 2020 at 10:07 pm

    What passes as mitigation in the minds of the entitled tory:

    Boag told Stuff she received information of Covid-19 patients throughout the pandemic response from the Ministry of Health – in an “unsolicited” email to her personal email address – but only once decided to leak to her National Party colleagues.

    Oh, that's alright then. Your honour, I murdered one person, but I could have killed so many more, that counts for something, right?

    The first 18 covid emails were forwarded without leaking, but covid-19 went south…

    • ianmac 13.1
      8 July 2020 at 10:36 pm

      Do you think that multiple people were sent spreadsheets like the ones Boag received? Surely by now there would have been people popping up all over saying. "Me too."

      Or was she singled out by a MOH leaker spreading mischief?

      • McFlock 13.1.1
        9 July 2020 at 1:42 am

        It probably wouldn't have been just for ARHT – especially given the covid cases in southern dhb. We have choppers too.

        Probably other orgs, as well. I'm not sure Boag had the right end of the stick on why it was distributed – if there are covid cases in a community, there's no need for names. But if they get called to Jim Jimmies' address because he had a heart attack, that's when "currently covid positive" might be very useful information to have beforehand.

        I'm sure there are nat voters in the Ministry of Health, but I'm not sure that they'd risk the career-ending prison time they'd get for spraying patient records all over the place. MoH and StatsNZ tend to take that stuff hyper-seriously. MSD… well, they do them, I guess.

        As for people saying "I also got that information", why would they? They're not after the headlines, they maybe needed it to do their jobs, and some nat might have fucked this up for all of them.

        • mpledger 13.1.1.1
          9 July 2020 at 8:43 am

          All people with covid-19 are in quarantine except for the two women in Lower Hutt who are no longer active cases anyway – noone else has been allowed out since then. Once people are out of isolation or quarantine, I assume, there are no restrictions on where they live or where they go in NZ. If so, a list of where these people are is of no use to emergency services because people may no longer be there anyway. All they need is a list of the isolation/quarantine hotels and they should be treating every person there as infectious anyway – no matter what their last known status was.

          • McFlock 13.1.1.1.1
            9 July 2020 at 3:23 pm

            I suspect it was started at or before L4 was imposed, when community transmission was evident and was expected for the long term (meaning you could be called to any address and if might have positive cases there) – and it didn't have clear "off" criteria.

            It might even have been automated.

            But it was going to the relevant services as part of infectious disease management – the "leak" began with Boag.

    • weka 13.2
      9 July 2020 at 12:15 am

      jfc, what a mess. So the MoH was regularly sending spreadsheets with the names and other details of the people in quarantine to Boag's personal email address, and then Boag was giving that to the ARHT as needed?

      ARHT were a bit sly with their statement then. Obviously they just wanted to formalise that they didn't pass information to Boag and that their systems were secure, but I have to wonder if they knew that Boag was going to clear things up today.

      • McFlock 13.2.1
        9 July 2020 at 1:23 am

        It's quite possible that the trustees had no knowledge of the covid email when they made the statement, if the CEO was forwarding operational info to the people who actually needed to know it. As far as they're concerned, she had no access to their patient management system or any of that stuff. It's possible that none of the people on the list were people they had treated, i.e. had ever even been patients of the ARHT.

        This isn't an IT compromise.

        It's not even a particularly catastrophic screw up with the email addresses, as long as whoever manages her email is reasonably competent. And if that was the email address supplied by Boag or the ARHT to MoH as a high-level contact email, that's on whomever supplied the address.

        Sure, there are "learnings" (as managers like to say at these times), but it's not gobsmackingly terrible – the emails went to the CEO of the organisation, and the CEO forwarded it to the people who needed to know. It wasn't posted online by accident, or went to some analyst's softball league team list, or accessible via a web kiosk at reception. I'd even go so far as to say it barely rates a news report.

        Assuming that she didn't reply to each and every email with "this is a personal email address and completely inappropriate for patient information, please send it to [relevant address]", the real fuckup is employing someone that corrupt in the health sector.

  14. Anker 14
    8 July 2020 at 11:40 pm

    Who would get this info? Police? GPS ? Hospital EDs? Ambulance……

    The helicopter people have distanced themselves from her, so it may be news to them she was getting this information.

    is it possible Boag herself requested to be on the list