I hope there are going to be further assistance announcements shortly.
I'm pretty concerned about consumer debt, there are thousands of people with credit cards, car finance and the like that they are not going to be able to service. These are the people that will get absolutely buried in fees, penalties, repossessions etc in short order and credit histories destroyed.
Really hoping this will be addressed.
On a positive note a friends landlord has said that given the mortgage holiday they will cut the rent over the shutdown to just enough cover rates insurances etc. Hope all landlords are acting this way.
Banker here. Standard practise- what you would pay in interest is put onto your loan balance each month/fortnight/week. You then end up paying interest on your interest.
Great for short term cashflow. Horrible things for anything longer than 3-6 months.
We have been told to approve without any credit assessment for anyone asking for help due to the Covid situation.
It would be similar for businesses – government may front (interest free from the QE) loans for them to pay rent (for a month, 3 or 6 etc). But the businesses (those that survive) pay it back later.
For residential rents, it's more complicated.
There is income support to those who lose jobs (but not enough to cover their rent). Maybe all those who go onto income support should be able to evidence their circumstance to both
1. qualify the landlord for banker relief
2. reduce their rent payment to 50%. (with capacity to have this paid by government where even this caused hardship – outright or via interest free loan).
latest statement I saw had interest holiday as well…so no accumulated interest but banks will contact customers direct in next couyple of days with details
So we going to suspend capitalist economics from Wednesday , how about we just change the economy instead of reviving this corporate capitalist mess after this is over.
Well, no, that's not what your links say at all. Certainly no quotes to that effect.
And if I were in a conspiracist frame of mind, rather than saying it was bullshit I'd suggest that dolt45's AG has merely protected people who played a significant part in getting the fool elected.
Yup. I saw the charges against the Internet Research Agency were dropped like hot potatoes when they said they'd turn up to court. Pity. It would have been fun to hear prosecution arguments on how Jesus Masturbation memes on fb turned people to vote Trump….or Buff Bernie memes turned people off Clinton ..or, seeing as how the bulk of money spent by the IRA was spent after the election, how those ads managed to act backwards through space and time 🙂
Watched an interesting youtube commentary that leaned on info compiled by COVID Act Now that was created by a team of data scientists, engineers, and designers in partnership with epidemiologists, public health officials, and political leaders to help understand how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect their region.
Make of it what you will, but it strikes me as level headed. I
Its focus is the USA, but a bit that pertains to here is on containment strategies. Essentially (or apparently), unless there is a Wuhan type containment strategy or a "Shelter in Place" strategy – which is kind of what NZ is doing (though you might say we're tilting a more towards Wuhan type containment) , then infection rates are reckoned to be over 70%. (That's for doing nothing and basic social distancing)
The modeling covers 8 weeks Wuhan type containment and 12 weeks Shelter in Place.
Wuhan R0 assumptions: 1.3 for 1 week, 0.3 for 5 weeks, 0.2 for 1 week, 0.035 for 1 week.
Shelter in Place R0 assumptions: 1.3 for 4 weeks, 1.1 for 4 weeks, 0.8 for 4 weeks.
If the modeling is reasonable, then there's no way level 4 containment is going to be lifted after 4 weeks (though I guess it might be lifted in places and re-imposed etc)
Like I say, it’s an interesting read for those with a head for it. Recommended.
I'm guessing 12 weeks if everyone sticks to the game plan. I don't expect everyone to stick to the game plan though.
And I wish the foresight was there to shut supermarkets to the public where possible. Let local dairies use them as warehouse supply nodes.
That way, any outbreak is much more likely to be very local – eg, limited to people who had gone to the local dairy as opposed to the far wider geographical and populous area of those who had hit the supermarket.
from what i understand that if you get it mildly two – three weeks, but even after that you might still shed the virus.
if you get it hard case you might need treatment up to six weeks, with a long recovery period at home and a chance of long lasting lung damage.
So take the current situation, if we were all to stay the f at home as we supposed to, within ten to fourteen days we would know where all the sick people and carriers are.
they then need another two to twelve weeks to get back on their feet.
so twelve weeks. Goes hand in hand with what China experienced, and in saying that one of the Parliament Critters from Taiwan announced a 'second' wave coming as people are not 'social distancing'.
It matters little if you go to the supermarket, the dairy, the market or if you partner is an essential services. Its an aggressive virus, it transmits easily, and the question for all of us not IF we get it but rather When.
The best they can do is limit the numbers of people in shops according to shop size, have people cover their hair, wear a mask, gloves, and goggles if need be. do their shopping, pay at the self check out and all the shop staff does is wipe everything down with high grade cleaning products.
Our best hope is really that they will get quick tests in fast for all, and then keep testing people daily / weekly what ever until they find a. treatment, b. vaccine.
the question for all of us not IF we get it but rather When.
That had been my basic understanding – ie, about 70% of us would get hit over time, and the concern was to avoid everyone getting it in a short period of time and tanking health services and undertakers (basically).
However. (And, I mean, this just leads me to say "dunno") According to what I'm taking as a level headed take on stuff from this link (randomly landed on figures for Kansas – which seems appropriate 🙂 ), the measures NZ has in place can result in a hit rate of as low as 3%.
Germany 88 million people and a transit country. I.e. people from the rest of europe driving through, stopping gassing up, eating, shopping etc etc etc. Massive issue.
NZ. 4.5 million, close the airports, only open to repatriate tourists, and to let kiwis come back. Quarantine set up at the Airport, set up by the Army manned with Army doctors/nurses etc, plus the country on look down. And you pretty much only have 4.5 million to worry about.
We are in a remarkably good position to weather this with a low death toll, if people can stay at home. And that means no evictions, no foreclosures, etc etc etc and frankly i have yet to see the government really do something to make sure that ALL of Kiwis get to keep their house, not only the richest one.
Well, as a renter, I thought it jolly spiffing that mortgage holders got a six month holiday (or some such). Not so jolly spiffing for the mum and her 7 year old who got evicted this morning. (Normality persists for some)
And as a Sick Ben (fucked if I know the 'new' label they applied to folk like me a few years back), I appreciate the opportunity for exercise being afforded me by not receiving any extra monies before this Wednesday.
So happy to not have a problem of making space in my tiny kitchen for extra food items. And thrilled that I get to pay internet and electricity and rent just like before.
Yup. Thankfully, I get to hang on to poor "normal" while the unfortunate, home 'owning' middle classes are no doubt going to be traumatized by the relief measures heading their way 🙂
again, its businesses that have an anual turnover of 250.000 and 80million that can apply. You know. Not all mortgage owner are equal either. Me and my micro business certainly don't apply, nor the dude that has a 70.000 or less income and a wife and three kids. WE so far got fuck all.
And the really small businesses are told to go to the bank for a loan. But to be fair when the local Labour Wanabe gonna come collect 'donations and votes' for their elections, i will tell them exactly that…..go to the bank for a loan.:)
Ahh, well i can't wait to cast my vote for a third party. 🙂
But yes we are lucky, and yes, the main focus of support has been on employment directly or indirectly because that is how about 90% of the country makes its living.
So far I have yet to see you describe how you'd have done it differently.
If I understand the deal with the 'retail' banks, they are now targeting SME's with support provided they can show that they were solvent prior to December 31st.
In the meantime, I'm going to concentrate more on those who aren't likely to lose their house but are more likely to actually go homeless in an environment where there are no new jobs.
I have actually said very early on, some 6 – 8 weeks ago thatwe need a
mortgage / lease/ rent/ bill holiday for the duration of the shut down, for all. small and large businesses. By governmental degree. I have linked to several articles of countries that are doing this, Italy being one of the first todo so.
The main issue is that we need to keep people at home. We can't do that if they have bills to pay and can't keep up paying without money. Anyone who has will try to be essential services, it does not matter what hey do. And thus the disease will spread.
It is quite nice for the government to pay wage subsidies to companies large enough that hey can ride out the storm. However for businesses taht are not that big, don't have the big money behind them and need actual cashflow for monthly bills and overheads it means nothing. It would have been easier for the government to allow small businesses to let go of its staff early on and offer unemployement for the workers, coupled with heating assistance, food assistance, accom benefit to make up to the 80% of min wage as it does via the wage subsidy. As we will hire our staff back once we can work. As it is, my staff will get some money for twelve weeks and then she will go on the unemployment benefit as there are chances that i will have to default on lease and overhead payments.
Personally i am with bill, the easiest way wold have been to instruct IRD to send every adult of NZ a check of say 800 – 1000 per week. This would be enough in most cases to at least cover rent/food/utilites. No applying simply send out the check. The IRD should be set up for it as they already do that for tax refunds.
Next they could have cancelled the end of year/GST returns until say August. Non of that we will wave late payment fees. AS if any of us have the mind to do a stock take and fill out forms, specially when we are in lock down. And again, non of us make money so we don't have money even with the higher thresholds. So cancel provisional tax completly and let businesses keep that money.
Next they could have offered Goverment loans – this could have been done via WINZ – call them 'hardship' loans to businesses like mine. I don't mind taking out a loan, but i mind taking out a loan at standard interest rate because the government is not negotiating with the bank for us and thus even a small loan will be very expensive and hard if not impossible to repay. So a government loan with no repayments for say 4 – 6 month (depending on how long we may not be able to work) and then set the repayment rates according to business turn over.
So far we have paid subsidies to some of the biggest companies in nz, many whom are very actively avoiding paying taxes in the first place. now we are offering companies a mortgage holiday – but only if they are over 250.000 anual turn over or more. Instead we should have made it illegal for any evictions for the next 5 month.
We should have made it illegal for companies to cut of utilities.
My partner is the only income we now have – and he is a standard income waged worker, and he is essential service – so will be out and about fixing computers in banks and super market check outs and the likes and if he falls ill or worse dies, i will be homeless. Because i will have no way to generate an income. And there are many like me. a few tens of thousands. But its ok. I am just whinging.
We seem to have no issue asking for solidarity from those that have everything to lose yet we ask nothing from those that hoard money, houses, boats and the likes.
We woke up 2 x lump sum wage subsidy in our account this morning, for a couple who run a tourist retail gallery. One of our artists got a payment in his account too.
Apply, you'll get it.
If you've got a recent lease on an ADLS form there's a clause that covers this situation as a result of the Christchurch earthquake debacle. Look up 27.5 and 27.6, No Access in Emergency. Essentially rent ceases to be payable if a competent authority deems you cannot occupy the premises. If the lease is older than 2012 this may not apply and I gather this is what government is moving on in coming days.
In an earthquake or other damage scenarios the landlord would be able to claim on their insurance to recover the rent, but in the current situation the will most likely be an exclusion for pandemics. Hence Robertson said the other day that something was coming up regarding commercial leases, not doing something is going to get messy, and it'll be all the way up the chain to the big corporate retailers and others that have to close.
I'm eagerly awaiting details of the mortgage / loan repayment holiday too, that will be handy for cashflow, even if it's just kicking the can down the road.
Evidently some of the larger landlords around Queenstown are offering their tenants rent holidays, so they may have knowledge that they will get it back from somewhere.
we have applied, we have so far received nothing. mind winz will be over run with applications.
i am eagerly awaiting anything the government has to offer. And i know quite a few people here in Rotorua that are also worried witless.
Mostly i am worried for my partner. He will be out there working and we are in a two bedroom unit and its gonna be hell to quarantine either of us if we have/get the flu.
i am however over with the bail outs for the very rich. At the very least there should be some strings attached to the aid the receive, like paying taxes.
My tenants (while I was making sure that they weren’t going to have issues) said that their mate, a self-employed tradie, just got $12k in his bank account, meant to help cover 12 weeks of corona revenue drop (presumably in the past). I didn’t go into it further than that.
Some question why Italy was caught off guard when the virus outbreak was revealed on Feb. 21.
Remuzzi says he is now hearing information about it from general practitioners. "They remember having seen very strange pneumonia, very severe, particularly in old people in December and even November," he says. "This means that the virus was circulating, at least in [the northern region of] Lombardy and before we were aware of this outbreak occurring in China."
He says it was impossible to combat something you didn't know existed.
a lot of my friends in the US also complained about the weirdest flu ever, hard hacking cough, no energy, fever every now and then, feeling weak and tired etc – which if you don't get the oxygen you need is what you would be feeling like. The only difference between the US and Italy, In Italy if you are ill you go to the doctor, in the US you take a pill.
It wouldn’t surprise me that there are bugs circulating. When they go retrospectively go through the biopsies and autopsy data at a genetic level then the origin will probably become pretty apparent.
However the basic issue is that history shows that the over-inflated human population has to be pretty damn careful of animal contacts. There has been a pretty clear species jump showing in origin morphology of all of the major pandemics of the last 2000 years where we have some reasonable histories. Often this is morphed into the human reservoir issue where a population get immune to a disease but acts as a carrier to another population.
It isn’t like we have the other major human reservoirs to uncap.
What we have left are animal population reservoirs and the unproven (but possible) ancient disease reservoirs (ie ones that show up in ice, but are not evident in any current population).
What I’m arguing is the we really need start focusing more closely at the sources of outbreaks. From HIV to Ebola to recent corona viruses we’re now routinely seeing cross-species infections.
how many of violent sadistic state house tenants are there in NZ? i did not read any further. Also i don’t like the picture of the dog. Its a good doggo and his images is used to show a violent sadistic state house tenant?
how many of violent sadistic state house tenants are there in NZ?
More than a few if my Parents' area is anything to go by. Some really violent, anti-social, out-of-control people moving in (over last 4 or 5 years) to what was always a wonderful, peaceful, socially-mixed & community-minded street. Corollary of the move towards almost exclusively allocating to the severely problematic end of the Underclass.
Pompous affluent Luvvies, of course, get to ostentatiously virtue-signal & paternalistically romanticise in order to enhance their own social prestige & assuage their own guilt without ever doing one friggin iota of the suffering. It's a great little con trick.
An interesting blend of covert sadism, sheer cowardice & rank hypocrisy parading as some sort of moral righteousness.
Long-term residents – the socially-minded poor & middle-class (the vast majority Labour & Green supporters, incidentally) – get to be the unofficial scapegoats who are apparently expected to do all the penance on the Luvvies behalf.
Also i don’t like the picture of the dog. Its a good doggo and his images is used to show a violent sadistic state house tenant?
Title of Post: Thrown to the Wolves
Illustrated by: A picture of an angry Wolf
Try not to be quite so silly. (or do I mean desperate ?)
Oh fuck … so it's still going on. I read your post all the way through and could visualise it all. Unacceptable at every turn.
My only useful advice is to start recording what it going on using a time stamped security camera; they’re not expensive these days. You never know when hard evidence will prove useful.
One way or another … I'll resolve this predicament. And then I might start telling some Home Truths to a few people with highly romanticised (& highly paternalistic) ideas about the Underclass.
Absolutely; our own similar experience pretty smartly slapped the delusions from us too.
This 'no eviction' policy is why landlords are so unhappy about the end of the 90 day 'no cause' termination notice. In this country the Police and Courts are of little assistance in dealing with anti-social tenants and effectively dump the problem onto the landlord.
Here in Australia we had a problem neighbour and when we talked to the property manager about it, we were promptly re-directed to the Police who very efficiently handled it. They made it clear to us that this sort of shite behaviour is either 'mad or bad'. What they told us to do was put a security camera pointing into the common area and if the behaviour changed then it meant the person had understanding that what they were doing was bad, and should then be held accountable and have consequences.
It turned out our case was 'bad', and eventually the consequence was a Court ordered eviction.
NZ has a long standing problem with violence, and until we can have an honest conversation around it's root causes, leaving out the self-serving yelling about racism and colonisation, we're pretty much stuck with it. There are many complex threads that feed into it, but the hard truth the left is very resistant to, is that you cannot help someone who will not take responsibility for themselves.
Cheers, Red. Thanks very much for your support on this over the last year or so.
I'm familiar with your problem tenants & the serious trouble they've caused (been following your vigorous on-going debate with McFlock on the matter almost religously over recent weeks).
I'll have quite a bit more to say about my Parents' situation & the tacit No Eviction policy on my blog over the next few Months (but don't want to labour the point too much here … when people start going on about their private problems relentlessly on social media then it can get pretty tedious pretty quickly for everyone else. So probably just 3 or 4 posts on Sub-Zero outlining the problem, expressing my anger & frustration (hopefully without descending into a full-scale rant) & then exploring the broader political implications in a more sober way.
I was told by my daughter today her landlord in Edinburgh has had his curling rink commandeered for use as a temporary morgue….think that may be a pretty good incentive for us to do a better job of handling this than has been the case overseas
Well…if that info I read around the impact of a successful "Shelter in Place" strategy is correct…
Am I the only one who has (perhaps mistakenly) laboured under the assumption that "flattening the curve" was only about spreading out the same number of infections over time?
I've been doing a bit of scattered reading the past few hours over a number of publications and noticing that the possible actual effects of isolation strategies aren't being explicitly stated – that the notion of "everyone" inevitably contracting the virus is the kinda accepted "truth" in more or less everything I'm reading. The containment info is sometimes in there (implied), but basically skipped over.
Assuming the "hit rate" can be brought down to single percentage numbers with good containment strategies in place, then…why isn't that message being pushed hard and repeatedly?
The reason why is because there are zero treatments apart from keeping severe cases alive through the worst. That requires ventilators to help people breathe and near constant monitoring to save them if they're going under.
Flattening the curve (which you clearly grasped) is about making sure that there are ventilators and the treatments available for the severe cases. Thereby reducing the death rate.
Otherwise there is the secondary option of a hopefully brief visit to the curling rink.
Roll on a vaccine of an effective anti-viral. Because we really can't afford the (calculates) the potential 200-300k at about a 5% fatality rate who could die in NZ if our health system gets swamped. Which appears to be about the 'natural' cull rate of covid-19 in an unsuspecting populace given the usual 4-5 waves before herd immunity is acheived.
We lost 9k with a much simpler and easy to survive disease in 1918/19 effectively without any kind of useful care. That was between ~0.7% (european) and ~15% (maori) death rates of the populations with what was for the time close to the best available care. 45% deaths in Samoa because the dimwitted NZ occupation forces were too pig-ignorant to institute decent quarantines.
FFS: Doesn't anyone here ever read history? Or are they too interested in wanking about their own problems?
Flattening the curve (which you clearly grasped) is about making sure that there are ventilators and the treatments available for the severe cases. Thereby reducing the death rate.
No.
Different strategies flatten the curve differently. Shelter in Place can mean a total infection rate in the single digits. Social Distancing on the other hand, means widespread infection (up to herd immunity levels) spread over a longer time span.
from what i understand that if you get it mildly two – three weeks, but even after that you might still shed the virus
For 37 days after infection to get close to 100% clear (ie something like a 99.5% certainty of clearance) of sheding according to the research I've been reading. Which is why they're using 14 days quarantine to prove clearance andafter you're 'cleared'.
That is why this virus is way way worse than the 1918/19 influenza pandemic. It has a much long tail and a much more likely later waves. Which is why 4 weeks is the minimum.
just read somehwere today that it can 'live' in feces for up to five weeks.
Yep, i am having no issues with the 4 weeks of isolation. Its gonna bankrupt a lot of us smaller ones but at least we hopefully get to walk out of it alive.
I would expect waves for about 2 years…until either we have decent testing – and fast testing, and a vaccine or people build up some immunity.
However what is going to be a killer if it lasts that long is the damage to the lung by the virus, specially if one can catch it more then once. essentially then it is a recurring illness that will lead to death in a very short time. And that is my guess why everyone on this planet is currently tanking their economy. It is re-occuring and it is a killer.
There has been a lot of aborted research on the various corona viruses over the last decade or two. SARS and MERS – but they've burnt themselves out too fast to finish the research. This one SARS-CoV-2 aka covid-19 looks like it will last long enough to get multiple disruption techniques finished.
Personally I not really interested in 30k base pair biological program defeating us this time. Because they're only going to get worse and we need to prevent the next outbreak.
Be nice to actually identify the human vector from the animal kingdom to this as well. A pogrom against whoever is rubbing up with the animal kingdom the wrong way and allowing these viruses to transfer so often is starting to look way more interesting than living with them.
I suspect that the Chinese government will have a good look at that.
But in NZ, we should look at our pig-farming and chicken-farming practices. And remove antibiotics from the hands of all farmers – vet only and they should be rationed.
Animal farming through much of the US and EU needs a severe curtailment.
Essentially we need to go back to ethical animal husbandry and ethical farming.
I hope for a decent test that is fast and reliable. Something like a blood sugar test, that can be done at home with a simle prick, daily if need be. Shows negative go to work, show positive of into self isolation you go for the next 12 weeks until at least two consecutive tests come back negative. What China did.
Then a treatment.
then a vaccines. Her is hoping that it will happen.
From what I understand, there appears to be too wide a range from known infection to testable results and to symptoms. The symptoms of whatever level show from 1 day to 12 days with the median at about 5 days.
Testing from what I have seen discussed is from 1 day to about 7-8 days for virus RNA or for antibodies. Which is what they’re testing for. The range of that means that testing simply is not that useful. Probably that is because most of the current testing is currently mostly based on swabs looking for RNA from the lungs.
If you want grrrr.. for covid-19 read the section “Target: new infections”
The final step in the virus’ life cycle is infecting a new cell. Typically, what is taught here is a “lie of simplification,” which goes: the virus latches on to a protein on the cell’s surface, then uses that protein to gain entry into the cell. This is true as far as it goes, but for most viruses, things are considerably more complicated. Coronaviruses definitely fall into the “more complicated” category in this regard.
SARS-CoV-2 does latch on to a protein on the surface of cells in the respiratory tract; we’ve already confirmed that it’s the same protein as the one used by the original SARS-CoV. But that doesn’t immediately result in viral contents entering the cell. Instead, the complex of virus and receptors stays on the outside of the cell membrane. That membrane, however, gets pulled into the cell and “pinched off” from the cell’s surface, creating a sac within the cell that now contains “outside” material.
Once this occurs, the virus is technically inside the cell, but it’s still on the wrong side of a membrane from everything it needs to reproduce.
The cell takes over this compartment, lowering its pH and adding enzymes to break down its contents. Corona and other viruses actually take advantage of these changes to enable their infection. In the case of coronavirus, a protease made by the host cell cuts the viral spike protein. Once cut, the spike protein triggers a merger between the membrane in the virus’ coat and the membrane of the compartment it is trapped in. This finally places the virus’ genome inside the cell, where it can proceed with the infection.
That is complex, slow, and much of it is unlikely to trigger fast anti-bodies in the bloodstream (the virus targets the longs) or enough of an immediate expansion of viral RNA in the lungs immediately after infection. They are pretty much testing if someone is currently infectious rather than if they are infected.
A better way of testing would be useful because currently a single point in time for a test or at a single location is likely to miss the early infection.
The 2020 Democratic primary looks more and more like a zombie election where dead ideas (and comatose people) are taking over. Compare Sanders being pilloried for some obvious and non-controversial comments on the Cuban heakth system with this – Cuban medical team arrives in Milan.
The state of the national economy doesn't mean anything when (as happened to me many years ago) you come to realise that your breathing is not giving you enough oxygen, and if you don't get help in the next few breaths you will not have the strength to call out for assistance, and you will die soon thereafter.
I have sat by a relative as they died of lung cancer, going from chatty to dead in a seriously short period of time as they pass that same threshold of getting enough oxygen to sustain life, to not getting enough.
Sexton, Walsh, Kelly, Blanktein and Trump have no clue what they are talking about when they balance life against money.
In extremis, triage based on medical condition and prognosis, I can understand. Triage based on a banker's and a politician's fiscal survival instinct I do not agree with.
If you want to speculate how Siomun and the Natz would have handled the Covid-19 pandemic – just look at how well Trump, Johnson and Morrison are doing – all right wing fwts.
I thought it was very hopeful from a NZ perspective. Like I'm saying in other comments, I'm beginning to think I completely misunderstood the possible effect of a good containment strategy – ie, it's not about spreading an inevitable 'x' number of infections over a longer time period, but about drastically reducing the overall number of infections.
slow down the cases of newly infection by denying the virus new bodies, and at the same time managing the cases arriving at the hospital. Not all people who have the virus will need the hospital. Many can simply stay at home and get better. Well if they can self quarantine at home without infecting the other people living at the house – something that China had an issue with initially.
While I thought we moved too soon – no real evidence of local spread. It's not clearly wrong, given
1. we lacked the testing capacity for such reassurance (the price we pay for not being better prepared)
2. the higher rates of returning Kiwis coming back infected and spreading to their self isolation others (each new one increased the risk of subsequent community spread).
Aided by airlines no longer operating and the arrival of testing kits from Singapore, we will come out of this month (includes the scheduled 2 weeks school holidays) better placed.
1. hopefully reassurance of no (or successfully suppressed) community spread (via community sample testing)
2. more secure arrangements for returning Kiwis – individual placement in the city they arrive at (apartments within hotels or home stays rented by government?) in place
3. the future risk is then Kiwis in Oz losing jobs and being denied income support (so if necessary we QE the dole to them and exploit the subsequent lower Kiwi dollar to the Oz one in trade)
4. air b n b homes no longer being used for tourists ease our housing supply issues
5. at some point we will have to determine on resumption of tourism – there will be antibody testing and vaccination (both depending on whether new strains emerge that can reinfect people).
What will inform us, is how China deals with multiple point reinfection through returning students (back from North America and Europe).
The only known at this point is that QEing our way our of a pandemic is going to scare the capitalist centres no end – how will they react, and when (and will we see it coming).
PDF must have started to lose some contracts because after week of ranting about how slow we were to react he's now flip-flopped and is saying we should weigh up the costs and benefits of our actions.
Nothing like losing your job to hone one’ s analysis of the decisions under which you lost that job, eh Dave.
Question. As stores are starting to no longer accept cash and the country is about to go in lockdown, what am I supposed to do if I've recently lost my wallet and can't find my birth certificate 😭 in the meantime while I wait for replacement id which is going to take absolutely forever due to this shut down,but I need id so my useless bank can issue me a card. I'm waiting on a new debit card but I'll need id to pin that card.
On a side note there are many people I know who are on welfare who have never had photo id because for some it's too expensive, for others seems too complicated etc what are old people and beneficiaries who rely on cash going to do if more stores demand pay wave or card only. This could be really, really, really bad for some people.
Not under current laws in reality – you have to look at the differences between legal tender and refusing payment. See the arguments here (related to the 2006 change in currency).
The answer has greater theoretical than practical relevance.
While the seller (‘creditor‘ at this point) is not required to
accept the payment, the fact that a valid tender has been
made means that in refusing to accept it, the seller is barred
from recovering the debt in court. Therefore, in practical
terms, the creditor has little choice but to accept the legal
tender payment.
Of course if you’re paying in cash, usually the amounts are too small to go an argue this in court (basically lawyers are way more expensive).
On the other hand, the practical limitations of legal tender
should be acknowledged. It is always subject to the intention
of the parties, who may contract to receive payment in other
than legal tender. For larger transactions, the courts would be
likely to presume that the parties did not contemplate legal
tender. And where disputes arise over payment, members of
the public are likely to rely on pragmatic solutions, while the
formal rules underlying legal tender would rarely have any
bearing on the outcome.
While I haven’t bothered to look at your discussion or why this query was raised, but generally not accepting legal tender as payment leaves the refuser in an invidious position if there is a substantial stake involved. Used wisely, it would probably bolster any case where legal tender was proffered and refused because it would speak directly to the motivations of the refuser.
Not under current laws in reality – you have to look at the differences between legal tender and refusing payment. See the arguments here (related to the 2006 change in currency).
The answer has greater theoretical than practical relevance.
While the seller (‘creditor‘ at this point) is not required to
accept the payment, the fact that a valid tender has been
made means that in refusing to accept it, the seller is barred
from recovering the debt in court. Therefore, in practical
terms, the creditor has little choice but to accept the legal
tender payment.
Of course if you’re paying in cash, usually the amounts are too small to go an argue this in court (basically lawyers are way more expensive).
On the other hand, the practical limitations of legal tender
should be acknowledged. It is always subject to the intention
of the parties, who may contract to receive payment in other
than legal tender. For larger transactions, the courts would be
likely to presume that the parties did not contemplate legal
tender. And where disputes arise over payment, members of
the public are likely to rely on pragmatic solutions, while the
formal rules underlying legal tender would rarely have any
bearing on the outcome.
While I haven’t bothered to look at your discussion or why this query was raised. Generally not accepting legal tender as payment leaves the refuser in an invidious position if there is a substantial stake involved. Used wisely, it would probably bolster any case where legal tender was proffered and refused because it would speak directly to the motivations of the refuser. For instance and this has happened in cases of racial or sexual discrimination.
The old card cancelled after losing the wallet I presume.
Get what ID you can. Your IRD number would be good – better with a print out of your last years income off their site. That and historic statements of the account linked to the old card. Even a facebook page with your mug on it would help.
You have a better chance now than normally of them being helpful.
Thank you this is a good idea. I'll print out my old transactions. I'll also go in with my online banking logged in, proof of my address com services card a library card and ird
I was telling a UK pal about Aderns "keep faithful" line & my pal said Boris used the same term, I figured our Govts are talking and getting advice from eachother but that did make me chuckle. Also I figure places like Warehouse and retail are closing just because they're places where the public congregate, they said the same thing about playgrounds, so trade centres and mechanics (on skeleton crews) are ok, for now. I do hope this works.
I'm in an OK situation, the company I work for allowed me to take annual leave (I had a lot owing) for the lockdown, so I'm taking some good chill out time. I had the option of working from home, but wasn't really keen, thought it would be a big hassle.
We will get through this. I'm just worried about what is going to happen afterwards, and what services that Finance Minister Paul Goldsmith will cut next year if National wins the election.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation today about the decline in daylight New Zealand has been experiencing over the previous few months. She said “As many of you will notice, our attempts to stem the dwindling of the daylight over the last few months have been completely ...
Redline received this article from the KOE a Marxist party in Greece Our friends in the KOE describe here the mounting crisis in Greece and tensions on the Turkish border. As desperate people flee from their homelands which have been ruined after decades of imperialist wars and interventions the people ...
As the first week of Level Four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was (and was not) allowed under its “rules”. Partly these were driven by some apparently contradictory messagesfrom different authority figures and explanations carried in the media. Partly they reflected a somewhat sketchy legal basis ...
. . April 3: Day 9 of living in lock-down… Another late-start to my work day. Everything is temporarily upended as clients are shuffled around so we can minimise our “bubble” by reducing the number of people we help. One of my colleagues has been removed from his clients; his ...
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of a pretty flower, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a cute animal video. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 2: Day eight of living in lock-down… Today, my work day starts late. Our rosters and clients have been dramatically changed, lessening (theoretically) the number of people in our work “bubble”. If just one of us catches covid19 the impact could be considerable as Grey Base Hospital ...
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Lenin Don’t we all know that feeling now.
Prospect Magazine alerted me to this particularly apt quote. It is a much more evocative quote than Hemingway’s “gradually then suddenly” which is also doing ...
Yesterday was the day the consequences of the lockdown suddenly got very real for many. Firms have been closing and laying people off since the outset of the quarantine but this has mostly been happening out of the public eye. The mass closure of a number of iconic New Zealand ...
Brian Williamson1, Prof Nick Wilson2 (1Economic consultant, UK; 2University of Otago Wellington)In this blog, we outline how a win-win social contract could be forged to address the major dimensions of response to the COVID-19 pandemic when using a mitigation strategy: the particular need to protect older people from high ...
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...
No Free Society Without A Free And Functioning News Media: If we are to surrender our civil rights to the broader cause of defeating Covid-19, then foreign corporations must, likewise, surrender their right to inflict immense economic and cultural harm on New Zealanders simply because it improves their bottom line.I’M ...
by Daphna Whitmore A third of the world is under lockdown and a clear assessment of this measure to curb the spread of COVID-19 is urgently needed. With any high-stakes decisions it has to be asked what are we dealing with here? Are the measures warranted? Will they achieve their ...
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...
The swan politicians may be gliding on the water, occasionally snapping at one another. Meanwhile, as the Covid19 crisis illustrates, the officials are desperately paddling below providing the real locomotion. One of the most fatuous recent grandstanding comments (of about a week ago), adding to the public’s anxieties, was ...
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...
Today has felt surreal. I was all set to touch base online with my science communication students when a colleague shared the news that Bauer Media would be shutting down its publications immediately. The first link I saw implied it was Woman’s Weekly affected, and even that shocked me. But ...
Bogeymen, Real And Imagined: Is the number of psychopathic and sociopathic individuals in any given society truly as vanishingly small as we like to tell ourselves? Isn’t it more likely that the mass-shooters and serial-killers filling the headlines represent only the tip of a much, much larger iceberg of frightfulness? ...
Outgoing Police Commissioner Mike Bush appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee today, who asked him for the rules police are using to enforce the lockdown. He refused:Police Commissioner Mike Bush has admitted the advice given to Kiwis about what they're able to do during the lockdown hasn't been clear enough. ...
For those folk who find my other Lock-Down Diary versions too “negative” or otherwise unpalatable… Here’s a photo of my cat, . . Better? Tomorrow’s Sanitised Version: a pretty flower. . . . =fs= ...
. . April 1: Day seven of living in lock-down… This morning I had a brief chat with one of my neighbours, “D” (social distance between us, a good three or four metres). I learned he had resigned from his previous job and had been hired by another company – ...
Funnily enough, my thought as I start this post is whether it will be well written enough. Or should that be well enough written? Because so much of what I know about good writing came from my two stints at The Listener, which this morning was shut down due to ...
With normal democratic procedures in abeyance, there were two ways to go. First, it was open for the government to dissolve itself and invite the National Party to join a ministry of national salvation. That would have lessened the democratic deficit of the times by having a team of rivals without ...
Dr Kirsty Ross Children and young people can respond differently in times of distress. This also varies by age and developmental stage, with younger children having more magical and imaginative thinking, and older children having more awareness and knowledge of the issues our communities are facing (which brings up ...
Hungary has been a virtual dictatorship for a decade now, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gradually eroded its democracy. But now, its official, with the passage of an indefinite emergency law allowing rule by decree:Hungary’s parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that includes jail terms for ...
While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in. They're planning a lot of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, and have asked for proposals which can start the moment ...
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
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This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world".Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...
The domestic travel ban has been lifted for stranded foreign tourists trying to get to international airports to fly home, after the Coalition Government announced a plan to help the tens of thousands of foreigners stranded here. Foreign Minister Rt. Hon. Winston Peters spoke with RNZ's Susie Ferguson said foreign ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters believes the country is rediscovering its resilience and self-reliance through its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.He says he is heartened that the mass majority of New Zealanders are following lockdown rules and that the government looking at the future, including paying to keep much ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
We know people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...
The Government’s plan to cushion the blow of COVID-19 by supporting incomes, jobs and businesses, and position the economy to recover has been backed by another international report. International credit rating agency Moody’s today reaffirmed its highest Aaa credit rating on New Zealand, saying the economy is expected to remain ...
National sports organisations have been given certainty of funding to ensure they can remain viable through the COVID-19 pandemic, Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson announced today. “The global spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on sport and recreation in New Zealand, including the cancellation or postponement of ...
Changes have been made to allow butchers to process pork, only for supply to supermarkets or other processors or retailers that are open, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has announced. “We carefully weighed the risk of allowing butchers to open their shops for retail customers, but the risk of spreading COVID-19 ...
Essential workers who take leave from work to comply with public health guidance are being supported with a leave scheme to ensure they will continue to receive income, say the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Iain Lees-Galloway and Minister for Social Development, Carmel Sepuloni. A number of essential businesses ...
A Government WhatsApp channel has been launched to help make information more easily accessible and shareable in the fight against COVID-19. Govt.NZ, which is free to use on any mobile device, will carry information and news for the public, businesses, healthcare providers, not for profits and local government. It can ...
The Government has announced a plan to enable the safe, orderly exit of tens of thousands of stranded foreign nationals from New Zealand during the current COVID-19 Alert Level 4 restrictions, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters has said. “When we moved into lockdown a week ago, the ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says the Government is delivering on its commitment to support general practice doctors and nurses, and pharmacies on the front-line of our fight against COVID-19. "For us to overcome COVID-19, we need community health services such as general practice and community pharmacy to step up ...
Justice Susan Thomas has been appointed Chief High Court Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. She replaces Justice Geoffrey Venning who has resigned from the position. David Parker paid tribute to Justice Venning, who he said had stewarded the High Court very capably over the last five years. “On behalf ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
The Government is ensuring supermarkets can open on Easter Sunday so we can buy groceries, but stay closed on Good Friday allowing workers to take a break. This provides a balanced approach and ensures we avoid large queues that two days closure may cause. “Supermarkets will be able to open ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes.Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks.When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY:By David Robie A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation. In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle ...
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...
Alex Casey speaks to a dream expert about why so many people are suddenly remembering their vivid and often horrible dreams. As the days begin to blur together and the only thing we get between sleeps is unimaginably horrible news and an embarrassing tootle around the block, it’s no surprise ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...
Medical centres across the country are condensing services, moving online, and ushering in pandemic plans. Josie Adams assesses what it’s like to access and provide essential medical care under alert level four.On Monday, Sandra Russell woke up before dawn and drove to Milford to get her blood tested. She has ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, writer and doctor Glenn Colquhoun, with the second of his Letters to Hone Tūwhare and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions. ...
ANALYSIS:By Haiqing Yu of RMIT University and Michael Keane of Curtin University China has gradually emerged out of its shadow of despair as the epicentre where the coronavirus pandemic started. Now, there is face saving required – as well as agenda-setting in the global power play. China played ...
Tech giant Google has released a giant global data set which shows how different countries are locking down, and which NZ regions are most compliant with its lockdown.A giant set of reports released by Google, created using its anonymised cellphone location data reveals the scale of human behaviour change the ...
Comedian Penny Ashton writes on the necessity of the arts, especially during lockdown.On March 22, everyone’s favourite fiscal bloodhounds, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, sent out a tweet in response to Creative New Zealand’s announcement that it will dedicate an emergency response package to helping New Zealand’s artists, in the ...
Wellington writer Philippa Swan’s new novel TheNight of All Souls is an homage to Pulitzer-winning and all-round fabulous American writer Edith Wharton. Wharton died in 1937 but, Swan writes, she’s very much of the moment. Nobody does social distancing like Wharton did. While Wharton was still comparatively young, she created the ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford.I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...
How do you hold a funeral service with the country in lockdown? Where there’s a will – and a tech-savvy uncle – there’s a way, Erin Kavanagh-Hall discovered.I was floating somewhere in the Cook Strait when I heard my grandfather’s funeral had been cancelled.I should elaborate. It was a Monday, ...
‘Stay in your bubble’ didn’t exist 100 years ago, but our ancestors would want us to know how essential it is to do so, says Jai Breitnauer.It was a warm but slightly grey January day in 2019 when I pulled the car over to the side of SH1, just south ...
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...
Every day at 1pm New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announces precise figures on the number of confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in the country. He is working on the best information available, and during this week the level of community transmission was put at around ...
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Deery, Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, University of Melbourne “Stupid coronavirus!” I heard my six-year-old mumble while talking in her sleep. Earlier that day her swimming and basketball lessons were cancelled, a birthday party postponed, and she had to race with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University “Zoombombing” in case you haven’t heard, is the unsavoury practice of posting distressing comments, pictures or videos after gatecrashing virtual meetings hosted by the videoconferencing app Zoom. With hundreds of millions ...
Analysis - A leading epidemiologist says health authorities 'really have no idea' of the extent of community spread, Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee gets its teeth into what's going on during the lockdown and the horrendous economic imp ...
The fifth in our new series of charts, graphics and data visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 ...
The Finance Minister says struggling companies will be able to put some debt into hibernation, under new legislation unveiled today. Watch the latest government update here. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lund, Commissioning Editor, The Conversation Editor’s note: The following is current as at April 3, 2020. Things are changing quickly so best to keep an eye on the latest information from WA Health, as well as the federal government.This article ...
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sunanda Creagh, Head of Digital Storytelling What does the COVID-19 pandemic sound like? For this episode, Dallas Rogers – a senior lecturer in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney – asked academic colleagues from all over ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Gallasch, Lecturer in Law, Swinburne University of Technology “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion,” wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (published in 1776), “but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the ...
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Spain and Switzerland top cases, countries converging. Chart by Keith Rankin.Of the larger European countries, Italy is now in third place for known cases per person in the population. Spain has overtaken Switzerland for ...
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...
Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Ruanui and Te Kaahui o Rauru are celebrating the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South Taranaki Bight. The Court of Appeal found that there ...
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...
Political commentators from the left and right sides of the political divide are questioning the powers being exercised by police during the nation-wide “lockdown”. The Asian Invasion 2019 blog draws attention to the warning sounded by former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption when he challenged Covid-19 actions by British ...
Pacific Media Watch The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) has strongly condemned the shoot-to-kill order by President Rodrigo Duterte this week as a ‘dangerous’ opening to target and kill anyone in a public space. “We are raising the alarm in the international community on President ...
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...
Four PhD students engaged a clinical psychologist to help them navigate an uncertain time in their studies. They share their findings here.As four PhD students from Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research we, like many others, can’t stop reading and talking about the unfolding events that have gripped our ...
The SpinoffBy Ashleigh Rushton, Lisa McLaren, Marion Tan & Sara Harrison
Covid-19 testing of the wider population is on the cards as World Health Organisation research shows people are most contagious within their first few days of being infected Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says Covid-19 carriers are highly infectious when they show few signs of carrying the virus. People were ...
Z Energy is the latest company to cut its dividend payout and start talking to its banks about strengthening its finances. Chief executive Mike Bennetts said the company, the largest fuel retailer in the country, had been battered by a range of issues over the past 18 months, and was ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney Young people in Australia are among the fastest-growing group to contract COVID19. According to the Department of Health, there are now more cases in Australia among people aged 20 – 29 years than any ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pattinson, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Getting a good night’s sleep can be difficult at the best of times. But it can be even harder when you’re anxious or have something on your mind – a global pandemic, for example. ...
Journalist and Great Barrier Island resident Lindsay Wright reflects on outer gulf pandemic preparedness. Hardy locals can tough it out but Auckland bach owners and boaties should keep their distance. Aotea Great Barrier, the easternmost island in the Hauraki Gulf, are undergoing a Covid-19-inspired population flood. Great Barrier has scenery that makes ...
The Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand is delighted that the government has moved quickly to provide an initial financial support package for pharmacy. The $15 million package was paid this week to pharmacy contract holders. Pharmaceutical Society president ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening.The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference and are "as of 9am" of the day. There were 71 new cases of Covid-19 in ...
A new poem by Wellington poet and bookseller Ash Davida Jane. washed up! it gets tiring pushing the fire alarm every nightbut things keep catching on fireor sometimes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Foster, Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney Our earliest vertebrate (animals with backbones) ancestors laid eggs, but over millions of years of evolution, some species began to give birth to live young. There is a traditional dichotomy in vertebrate reproduction: species ...
Welcome to the second edition of our lockdown Top 10s. A reminder that this chart has nothing to do with sales or launches or the publishing cycle; these are just books the Unity team love – and this week it’s westerns, full of big skies and long rides and showdowns.AUCKLANDAll ...
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster’s plan to cover revenue shortfalls through borrowing without cutting low priority spending is immoral, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . “Businesses and households across the country are meeting financial challenges ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne “Katrina, I had in mind a prayer, but only this came,” Bruce Dawe wrote to his infant daughter, new-born, in intensive care, her life in the balance, declaring as poets must ...
The shock closure of Bauer NZ – and with it all of the country’s current affairs magazines – is a stark reminder of the fragile state of local media, writes Mel Bunce, the author of a book on the subject.It is a dark week for journalism in New Zealand, with ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāmere/FridayWe made it to the end of week one e te whānau. It wasn’t that hard! In fact it was… Māori made easy.To end our week of pronunciation practice we’re going to revisit everything we ...
India faces more challenges battling Covid-19 than any other country in the world. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, hundreds of different languages spoken, and an estimated 80% of the workforce daily wage earners currently without jobs, it could be a recipe for disaster.I’ve been living in India for more than three ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi of Pacific Media Watch The Vanuatu government is using the Covid-19 to impose draconian measures and authoritarian rule by end of last month. Wholesale censorship of all Covid-19 related content has been instituted. Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) took the extraordinary step to ...
People with lower credit scores increased their borrowing upon news of the lockdown, while those with higher scores dropped away. March data from the credit-reporting agency Centrix, which runs credit checks on behalf of banks, finance companies, online lenders, and buy now pay later schemes, showed credit inquiries dropped sharply ...
Small business owners say commercial rent relief is desperately needed if they are to survive past the Covid-19 disruptions. While the wage subsidy helped with staff costs, there is currently no government assistance for commercial rent - which typically accounts for 40 percent of a firm's fixed costs. Landlords and ...
SkyCity is making 200 staff redundant as part of cost cutting because of the Covid-19 virus. The casino operator said it had no choice but to cut the size of the workforce given that once business resumes it will be at much reduced level. Chief executive Graeme Stephens said it's ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out. In ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand. Today’s contentMedia Henry Cooke (Stuff): There’s no easy way for Government to save media drowning. But a fast fix is ...
Just after midday a cyclist was killed on a straight road on a clear day, after being hit by a van in North Canterbury. Lucinda Rees from NZ School Speeds is asking for the mandatory cyclist/vulnerable road user passing gap, which is in consultation, ...
By Indra Singh in Suva Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says that if Fijians continue to disregard the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic directives from authorities, a nationwide 24-hour curfew could be imposed. His comments come as Fiji yesterday recorded its two latest coronavirus cases, taking the total to seven. Bainimarama said ...
In our new series The Lockdown Letters, some of New Zealand’s best writers tell us what they’ve been up to in the days of Covid-19 alert level four. Today, Ōtaki author Renée.Yes, a few cyclists out and about. I remember my first bike bought from Farmers around 1942, five shillings a ...
Internal memos from NZ’s biggest magazine company, which announced its sudden closure yesterday, state they were lobbying to change a ban on publication. But the minister responsible, Kris Faafoi, has doubled down on rejecting that position, calling those internal communications ‘contradictory’ to what they said to him directly.Magazine publishing giant ...
Up to 100,000 foreigners could be seeking to leave the country in coming weeks, now the Government has relaxed domestic travel restrictions for them. ...
The loss of a loved one can be difficult in the best of times. But it’s even more painful when the planes are grounded.Late on Saturday night, three days into New Zealand’s level four lockdown, Harish got a call from his sister in India telling him that his father had ...
Health Minister David Clark has flouted the Government's advice to exercise locally after confirming he drove to a park to go mountain biking on Thursday. ...
Daily review 24/03/2020 
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed the nation today about the decline in daylight New Zealand has been experiencing over the previous few months. She said “As many of you will notice, our attempts to stem the dwindling of the daylight over the last few months have been completely ...4 hours ago
Redline received this article from the KOE a Marxist party in Greece Our friends in the KOE describe here the mounting crisis in Greece and tensions on the Turkish border. As desperate people flee from their homelands which have been ruined after decades of imperialist wars and interventions the people ...6 hours ago
As the first week of Level Four lockdown unfolded, mounting questions grew as to just what was (and was not) allowed under its “rules”. Partly these were driven by some apparently contradictory messages from different authority figures and explanations carried in the media. Partly they reflected a somewhat sketchy legal basis ...9 hours ago
. . April 3: Day 9 of living in lock-down… Another late-start to my work day. Everything is temporarily upended as clients are shuffled around so we can minimise our “bubble” by reducing the number of people we help. One of my colleagues has been removed from his clients; his ...12 hours ago
We must root out the traitors among us! ...1 day ago
In order to meet our 2050 carbon target and do our bit to avoid making the Earth uninhabitable, New Zealand needs to decarbonise our economy, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the energy, industrial and transport sectors. The good news is that it will mean cheaper power for all of ...1 day ago
As Aotearoa enters week two of lockdown, it’s clear we’re all still working out what our “bubbles” look like and how to stay in them to stop the spread of Covid-19. New to the government’s Covid-19 website is some good guidance for people living in apartment blocks. Recent decades have ...2 days ago
Resuming Normal Service: The Republican Party's nominee for in 1920, Warren Harding, promised the American people: “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration”. If she wishes to remain our prime minister, then Jacinda Ardern will offer New Zealanders the same.HOW EDUCATED AMERICA snickered when the ...2 days ago
I haven’t done a huge amount in the last few days. I’m reading The Poppy War and I’ve sort of poked at a couple of games – I started SOMA but I’m a wimp and I quit while in the first room after the brain scan. I might try it ...2 days ago
Much has been written about the importance of discretion in an emergency situation, and the concerns raised by the potential for it to be exercised arbitrarily. Given the quality of the discussion, there seemed little point in adding to it at any length. In particular, I point to the evidence ...2 days ago
46 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Global response of evapotranspiration ratio to climate conditions and watershed characteristics in a changing environment Greenhouse effect: the relative contributions of emission height and total absorption Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Climate change induced a ...3 days ago
Image credit: Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ... 4 days ago
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...4 days ago
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...4 days ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...6 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...1 week ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...1 week ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...1 week ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...1 week ago
Foreign Minister Winston Peters says getting New Zealanders back home and other travellers out of the country is "a nightmare for our embassies, consuls, and staff around the world". Speaking to NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking, the Foreign Minister said that he gave a clear message to people travelling overseas that they ...1 day ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...1 week ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...1 week ago
The Government will be introducing legislation to make changes to the Companies Act to help companies facing insolvency due to COVID-19 to remain viable and keep New Zealanders in jobs. The temporary changes include: Giving directors of companies facing significant liquidity problems because of COVID-19 a ‘safe harbour’ from insolvency ...1 day ago
Like countless New Zealanders stranded overseas, Wellingtonian Rosie O’Hagan will be braving authorities, airlines, airports and uncertainty to make it back from the other side of the world, writes Jim Kayes. Rosie O’Hagan hadn’t stepped outside for three weeks. When she finally did – around midnight on Friday ...7 hours ago
PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie A rather beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation. In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle ...8 hours ago
Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford, raises good questions about Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some of them seem germane to this country’s response. Wren-Lewis posted his critique on his Mainly Macro blog under the heading Following the Science or a ...9 hours ago
Alex Casey speaks to a dream expert about why so many people are suddenly remembering their vivid and often horrible dreams. As the days begin to blur together and the only thing we get between sleeps is unimaginably horrible news and an embarrassing tootle around the block, it’s no surprise ...10 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. The following charts are based on numbers shared at the daily press conference. These may vary from the full day's numbers released in the Ministry of Health's spreadsheet of ...11 hours ago
Normally heaving year-round, Queenstown has ground to an eerie halt as Covid-19 cases rise and tourism income plummets, reports Paul Taylor. On a hill behind Queenstown's coronavirus Covid-19 community testing centre, the resort's iconic Skyline gondola sits motionless. More than 17 million people are estimated to have ridden the gondola ...18 hours ago
Are we drinking more in the lockdown? Hard to know, writes David Slack, but we’re certainly having to get creative about it. Almost every phone call I’ve answered this week has begun the same way: “You still off the drink, then?” Fair question. What a time to be not drinking. ...18 hours ago
Kiwi clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson is stuck with her family in Spain and has written a guide in Nature: "Seven tips to manage your mental health and well-being during the Covid-19 outbreak." It’s Day 17 of the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain. In a small village on the Mediterranean coast, about ...19 hours ago
"Will our ills be cured? Will our feet carry us? For how long?": a short story set in Henderson by West Auckland writer Serie Barford. I learned to drive a tractor when I was a kid feeding out hay with my cousins on a dairy farm down the line. I ...19 hours ago
Without active testing in the community our Covid-19 picture isn’t complete, an epidemiologist says. David Williams reports. There are worse places to be self-isolating than Whakatāne, in the Bay of Plenty, says Bridget Robson, who lives on a two-acre block and keeps chickens. “We live in a beautiful part of ...19 hours ago
David Clark’s misadventure in mountain biking was a stupid, but ultimately forgivable offence. The bigger problem is the continued uncertainty around what is and isn’t appropriate activity in lockdown, as Sam Sachdeva writes. Given the pressure he and his Cabinet colleagues are under, it is little surprise Health Minister David ...19 hours ago
Assessing the economic impact of Covid-19 requires a new approach to a problem economists have not encountered in modern times, writes Dr Kirdan Lees Covid-19 has presented quite a problem for economists. Containment policies that seek to flatten the Covid-19 curve or eliminate the virus, restrict economic activity. All governments ...1 day ago
Most of New Zealand's MPs are in lockdown just like the rest of us, confined to their neighbourhoods and stuck in their bubbles. Checkpoint called a few to ask them what they're doing. ...1 day ago
During the challenges associated with lockdown, the Māori Party are congratulating Ngāti Ruanui and South Taranaki on the decision of the Court of Appeal, announced today, to stop Trans-Tasman Resources plans for risky seabed mining off the South ...1 day ago
Environment Minister David Parker has directed officials to find ways to fast-track consents for infrastructure and development projects. He says his goal is to help create a pipeline of projects so that some can start immediately once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted “so people can get back into work as fast ...1 day ago
Contact tracing is a crucial part of the Covid-19 puzzle and technology might prove essential to scaling up New Zealand's tracing capacity, Marc Daalder reports With the lockdown reducing physical contact between members of the public and testing ramping up, the only missing piece of the Covid-19 puzzle is contact tracing. ...1 day ago
Insolvency laws will be temporarily changed to allow troubled companies to trade while technically insolvent Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced changes to the Companies Act to allow companies to put their debts into "hibernation". Robertson said companies facing liquidity problems would have "safe harbour" from their normal insolvency duties ...1 day ago
Bernard Hickey talks to Kiwibank Chief Economist Jarrod Kerr about a massive spike in US jobless claims, and they talk about an inspiring Kiwi app to fight Covid-19 globally. Guest, Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor also joins them to talk about the massive market swings and hopes for recovery. Bernard zooms out ...1 day ago
The Reserve Bank looks set to start buying council bonds as well as Government bonds to unfreeze financial markets and allow councils to defer rates and jointly invest in infrastructure with the central Government, Dileepa Fonseka reports In what would be another unprecedented move to calm financial markets and help ...1 day ago
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I hope there are going to be further assistance announcements shortly.
I'm pretty concerned about consumer debt, there are thousands of people with credit cards, car finance and the like that they are not going to be able to service. These are the people that will get absolutely buried in fees, penalties, repossessions etc in short order and credit histories destroyed.
Really hoping this will be addressed.
On a positive note a friends landlord has said that given the mortgage holiday they will cut the rent over the shutdown to just enough cover rates insurances etc. Hope all landlords are acting this way.
how does the mortgage holiday work?
Banker here. Standard practise- what you would pay in interest is put onto your loan balance each month/fortnight/week. You then end up paying interest on your interest.
Great for short term cashflow. Horrible things for anything longer than 3-6 months.
We have been told to approve without any credit assessment for anyone asking for help due to the Covid situation.
Holiday is a bit of a misnomer then.
It does explain why amongst other reasons landlords won't want to ease up on rents, although those that can should.
It would be similar for businesses – government may front (interest free from the QE) loans for them to pay rent (for a month, 3 or 6 etc). But the businesses (those that survive) pay it back later.
For residential rents, it's more complicated.
There is income support to those who lose jobs (but not enough to cover their rent). Maybe all those who go onto income support should be able to evidence their circumstance to both
1. qualify the landlord for banker relief
2. reduce their rent payment to 50%. (with capacity to have this paid by government where even this caused hardship – outright or via interest free loan).
latest statement I saw had interest holiday as well…so no accumulated interest but banks will contact customers direct in next couyple of days with details
That's nice for those particular tenants but this is not a requirement so nearly no landlords will follow suit.
They are simply not built that way.
So we going to suspend capitalist economics from Wednesday , how about we just change the economy instead of reviving this corporate capitalist mess after this is over.
I'll second that. Crystal too.
So even Muller and the DOJ now agrees the whole Russians meddling in the election – was horse shit.
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61313
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/doj-moves-to-drop-charges-ira-russians-indicted-mueller-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
Well, no, that's not what your links say at all. Certainly no quotes to that effect.
And if I were in a conspiracist frame of mind, rather than saying it was bullshit I'd suggest that dolt45's AG has merely protected people who played a significant part in getting the fool elected.
Yup. I saw the charges against the Internet Research Agency were dropped like hot potatoes when they said they'd turn up to court. Pity. It would have been fun to hear prosecution arguments on how Jesus Masturbation memes on fb turned people to vote Trump….or Buff Bernie memes turned people off Clinton ..or, seeing as how the bulk of money spent by the IRA was spent after the election, how those ads managed to act backwards through space and time 🙂
The buff bernie memes are so bad, done by 2 year old nephew. I didn't even recognise it was bernie till someone pointed it out.
Watched an interesting youtube commentary that leaned on info compiled by COVID Act Now that was created by a team of data scientists, engineers, and designers in partnership with epidemiologists, public health officials, and political leaders to help understand how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect their region.
Make of it what you will, but it strikes me as level headed. I
Its focus is the USA, but a bit that pertains to here is on containment strategies. Essentially (or apparently), unless there is a Wuhan type containment strategy or a "Shelter in Place" strategy – which is kind of what NZ is doing (though you might say we're tilting a more towards Wuhan type containment) , then infection rates are reckoned to be over 70%. (That's for doing nothing and basic social distancing)
The modeling covers 8 weeks Wuhan type containment and 12 weeks Shelter in Place.
Here are the spread rates for the two scenarios.
Wuhan R0 assumptions: 1.3 for 1 week, 0.3 for 5 weeks, 0.2 for 1 week, 0.035 for 1 week.
Shelter in Place R0 assumptions: 1.3 for 4 weeks, 1.1 for 4 weeks, 0.8 for 4 weeks.
If the modeling is reasonable, then there's no way level 4 containment is going to be lifted after 4 weeks (though I guess it might be lifted in places and re-imposed etc)
Like I say, it’s an interesting read for those with a head for it. Recommended.
min of 12 weeks is my guess. it would make sense.
I'm guessing 12 weeks if everyone sticks to the game plan. I don't expect everyone to stick to the game plan though.
And I wish the foresight was there to shut supermarkets to the public where possible. Let local dairies use them as warehouse supply nodes.
That way, any outbreak is much more likely to be very local – eg, limited to people who had gone to the local dairy as opposed to the far wider geographical and populous area of those who had hit the supermarket.
from what i understand that if you get it mildly two – three weeks, but even after that you might still shed the virus.
if you get it hard case you might need treatment up to six weeks, with a long recovery period at home and a chance of long lasting lung damage.
So take the current situation, if we were all to stay the f at home as we supposed to, within ten to fourteen days we would know where all the sick people and carriers are.
they then need another two to twelve weeks to get back on their feet.
so twelve weeks. Goes hand in hand with what China experienced, and in saying that one of the Parliament Critters from Taiwan announced a 'second' wave coming as people are not 'social distancing'.
It matters little if you go to the supermarket, the dairy, the market or if you partner is an essential services. Its an aggressive virus, it transmits easily, and the question for all of us not IF we get it but rather When.
The best they can do is limit the numbers of people in shops according to shop size, have people cover their hair, wear a mask, gloves, and goggles if need be. do their shopping, pay at the self check out and all the shop staff does is wipe everything down with high grade cleaning products.
Our best hope is really that they will get quick tests in fast for all, and then keep testing people daily / weekly what ever until they find a. treatment, b. vaccine.
Its gonna be a long 2 years.
the question for all of us not IF we get it but rather When.
That had been my basic understanding – ie, about 70% of us would get hit over time, and the concern was to avoid everyone getting it in a short period of time and tanking health services and undertakers (basically).
However. (And, I mean, this just leads me to say "dunno") According to what I'm taking as a level headed take on stuff from this link (randomly landed on figures for Kansas – which seems appropriate 🙂 ), the measures NZ has in place can result in a hit rate of as low as 3%.
compare NZ to my home country Germany.
Germany 88 million people and a transit country. I.e. people from the rest of europe driving through, stopping gassing up, eating, shopping etc etc etc. Massive issue.
NZ. 4.5 million, close the airports, only open to repatriate tourists, and to let kiwis come back. Quarantine set up at the Airport, set up by the Army manned with Army doctors/nurses etc, plus the country on look down. And you pretty much only have 4.5 million to worry about.
We are in a remarkably good position to weather this with a low death toll, if people can stay at home. And that means no evictions, no foreclosures, etc etc etc and frankly i have yet to see the government really do something to make sure that ALL of Kiwis get to keep their house, not only the richest one.
But hey, i must be whinging.
But hey, i must be whinging.
lol
Well, as a renter, I thought it jolly spiffing that mortgage holders got a six month holiday (or some such). Not so jolly spiffing for the mum and her 7 year old who got evicted this morning. (Normality persists for some)
And as a Sick Ben (fucked if I know the 'new' label they applied to folk like me a few years back), I appreciate the opportunity for exercise being afforded me by not receiving any extra monies before this Wednesday.
So happy to not have a problem of making space in my tiny kitchen for extra food items. And thrilled that I get to pay internet and electricity and rent just like before.
Yup. Thankfully, I get to hang on to poor "normal" while the unfortunate, home 'owning' middle classes are no doubt going to be traumatized by the relief measures heading their way 🙂
again, its businesses that have an anual turnover of 250.000 and 80million that can apply. You know. Not all mortgage owner are equal either. Me and my micro business certainly don't apply, nor the dude that has a 70.000 or less income and a wife and three kids. WE so far got fuck all.
And the really small businesses are told to go to the bank for a loan. But to be fair when the local Labour Wanabe gonna come collect 'donations and votes' for their elections, i will tell them exactly that…..go to the bank for a loan.:)
Ahh, well i can't wait to cast my vote for a third party. 🙂
NZ. 4.5 million
At least 5 million counting our remaining residual transient tourists. Based on December 2019 being 4,951,500
But yes we are lucky, and yes, the main focus of support has been on employment directly or indirectly because that is how about 90% of the country makes its living.
So far I have yet to see you describe how you'd have done it differently.
If I understand the deal with the 'retail' banks, they are now targeting SME's with support provided they can show that they were solvent prior to December 31st.
In the meantime, I'm going to concentrate more on those who aren't likely to lose their house but are more likely to actually go homeless in an environment where there are no new jobs.
I have actually said very early on, some 6 – 8 weeks ago thatwe need a
mortgage / lease/ rent/ bill holiday for the duration of the shut down, for all. small and large businesses. By governmental degree. I have linked to several articles of countries that are doing this, Italy being one of the first todo so.
The main issue is that we need to keep people at home. We can't do that if they have bills to pay and can't keep up paying without money. Anyone who has will try to be essential services, it does not matter what hey do. And thus the disease will spread.
It is quite nice for the government to pay wage subsidies to companies large enough that hey can ride out the storm. However for businesses taht are not that big, don't have the big money behind them and need actual cashflow for monthly bills and overheads it means nothing. It would have been easier for the government to allow small businesses to let go of its staff early on and offer unemployement for the workers, coupled with heating assistance, food assistance, accom benefit to make up to the 80% of min wage as it does via the wage subsidy. As we will hire our staff back once we can work. As it is, my staff will get some money for twelve weeks and then she will go on the unemployment benefit as there are chances that i will have to default on lease and overhead payments.
Personally i am with bill, the easiest way wold have been to instruct IRD to send every adult of NZ a check of say 800 – 1000 per week. This would be enough in most cases to at least cover rent/food/utilites. No applying simply send out the check. The IRD should be set up for it as they already do that for tax refunds.
Next they could have cancelled the end of year/GST returns until say August. Non of that we will wave late payment fees. AS if any of us have the mind to do a stock take and fill out forms, specially when we are in lock down. And again, non of us make money so we don't have money even with the higher thresholds. So cancel provisional tax completly and let businesses keep that money.
Next they could have offered Goverment loans – this could have been done via WINZ – call them 'hardship' loans to businesses like mine. I don't mind taking out a loan, but i mind taking out a loan at standard interest rate because the government is not negotiating with the bank for us and thus even a small loan will be very expensive and hard if not impossible to repay. So a government loan with no repayments for say 4 – 6 month (depending on how long we may not be able to work) and then set the repayment rates according to business turn over.
So far we have paid subsidies to some of the biggest companies in nz, many whom are very actively avoiding paying taxes in the first place. now we are offering companies a mortgage holiday – but only if they are over 250.000 anual turn over or more. Instead we should have made it illegal for any evictions for the next 5 month.
We should have made it illegal for companies to cut of utilities.
My partner is the only income we now have – and he is a standard income waged worker, and he is essential service – so will be out and about fixing computers in banks and super market check outs and the likes and if he falls ill or worse dies, i will be homeless. Because i will have no way to generate an income. And there are many like me. a few tens of thousands. But its ok. I am just whinging.
We seem to have no issue asking for solidarity from those that have everything to lose yet we ask nothing from those that hoard money, houses, boats and the likes.
We woke up 2 x lump sum wage subsidy in our account this morning, for a couple who run a tourist retail gallery. One of our artists got a payment in his account too.
Apply, you'll get it.
If you've got a recent lease on an ADLS form there's a clause that covers this situation as a result of the Christchurch earthquake debacle. Look up 27.5 and 27.6, No Access in Emergency. Essentially rent ceases to be payable if a competent authority deems you cannot occupy the premises. If the lease is older than 2012 this may not apply and I gather this is what government is moving on in coming days.
In an earthquake or other damage scenarios the landlord would be able to claim on their insurance to recover the rent, but in the current situation the will most likely be an exclusion for pandemics. Hence Robertson said the other day that something was coming up regarding commercial leases, not doing something is going to get messy, and it'll be all the way up the chain to the big corporate retailers and others that have to close.
I'm eagerly awaiting details of the mortgage / loan repayment holiday too, that will be handy for cashflow, even if it's just kicking the can down the road.
Evidently some of the larger landlords around Queenstown are offering their tenants rent holidays, so they may have knowledge that they will get it back from somewhere.
we have applied, we have so far received nothing. mind winz will be over run with applications.
i am eagerly awaiting anything the government has to offer. And i know quite a few people here in Rotorua that are also worried witless.
Mostly i am worried for my partner. He will be out there working and we are in a two bedroom unit and its gonna be hell to quarantine either of us if we have/get the flu.
i am however over with the bail outs for the very rich. At the very least there should be some strings attached to the aid the receive, like paying taxes.
My tenants (while I was making sure that they weren’t going to have issues) said that their mate, a self-employed tradie, just got $12k in his bank account, meant to help cover 12 weeks of corona revenue drop (presumably in the past). I didn’t go into it further than that.
you might find this interesting.
https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/817974987/every-single-individual-must-stay-home-italy-s-coronavirus-deaths-pass-china-s
a lot of my friends in the US also complained about the weirdest flu ever, hard hacking cough, no energy, fever every now and then, feeling weak and tired etc – which if you don't get the oxygen you need is what you would be feeling like. The only difference between the US and Italy, In Italy if you are ill you go to the doctor, in the US you take a pill.
It wouldn’t surprise me that there are bugs circulating. When they go retrospectively go through the biopsies and autopsy data at a genetic level then the origin will probably become pretty apparent.
However the basic issue is that history shows that the over-inflated human population has to be pretty damn careful of animal contacts. There has been a pretty clear species jump showing in origin morphology of all of the major pandemics of the last 2000 years where we have some reasonable histories. Often this is morphed into the human reservoir issue where a population get immune to a disease but acts as a carrier to another population.
It isn’t like we have the other major human reservoirs to uncap.
What we have left are animal population reservoirs and the unproven (but possible) ancient disease reservoirs (ie ones that show up in ice, but are not evident in any current population).
What I’m arguing is the we really need start focusing more closely at the sources of outbreaks. From HIV to Ebola to recent corona viruses we’re now routinely seeing cross-species infections.
Sabine
Then again, maybe evictions sometimes happen for a reason.
Maybe they save lives.
https://subzpsubzp.blogspot.com/
how many of violent sadistic state house tenants are there in NZ? i did not read any further. Also i don’t like the picture of the dog. Its a good doggo and his images is used to show a violent sadistic state house tenant?
More than a few if my Parents' area is anything to go by. Some really violent, anti-social, out-of-control people moving in (over last 4 or 5 years) to what was always a wonderful, peaceful, socially-mixed & community-minded street. Corollary of the move towards almost exclusively allocating to the severely problematic end of the Underclass.
Pompous affluent Luvvies, of course, get to ostentatiously virtue-signal & paternalistically romanticise in order to enhance their own social prestige & assuage their own guilt without ever doing one friggin iota of the suffering. It's a great little con trick.
An interesting blend of covert sadism, sheer cowardice & rank hypocrisy parading as some sort of moral righteousness.
Long-term residents – the socially-minded poor & middle-class (the vast majority Labour & Green supporters, incidentally) – get to be the unofficial scapegoats who are apparently expected to do all the penance on the Luvvies behalf.
Title of Post: Thrown to the Wolves
Illustrated by: A picture of an angry Wolf
Try not to be quite so silly. (or do I mean desperate ?)
Oh fuck … so it's still going on. I read your post all the way through and could visualise it all. Unacceptable at every turn.
My only useful advice is to start recording what it going on using a time stamped security camera; they’re not expensive these days. You never know when hard evidence will prove useful.
One way or another … I'll resolve this predicament. And then I might start telling some Home Truths to a few people with highly romanticised (& highly paternalistic) ideas about the Underclass.
Absolutely; our own similar experience pretty smartly slapped the delusions from us too.
This 'no eviction' policy is why landlords are so unhappy about the end of the 90 day 'no cause' termination notice. In this country the Police and Courts are of little assistance in dealing with anti-social tenants and effectively dump the problem onto the landlord.
Here in Australia we had a problem neighbour and when we talked to the property manager about it, we were promptly re-directed to the Police who very efficiently handled it. They made it clear to us that this sort of shite behaviour is either 'mad or bad'. What they told us to do was put a security camera pointing into the common area and if the behaviour changed then it meant the person had understanding that what they were doing was bad, and should then be held accountable and have consequences.
It turned out our case was 'bad', and eventually the consequence was a Court ordered eviction.
NZ has a long standing problem with violence, and until we can have an honest conversation around it's root causes, leaving out the self-serving yelling about racism and colonisation, we're pretty much stuck with it. There are many complex threads that feed into it, but the hard truth the left is very resistant to, is that you cannot help someone who will not take responsibility for themselves.
Red
Cheers, Red. Thanks very much for your support on this over the last year or so.
I'm familiar with your problem tenants & the serious trouble they've caused (been following your vigorous on-going debate with McFlock on the matter almost religously over recent weeks).
I'll have quite a bit more to say about my Parents' situation & the tacit No Eviction policy on my blog over the next few Months (but don't want to labour the point too much here … when people start going on about their private problems relentlessly on social media then it can get pretty tedious pretty quickly for everyone else. So probably just 3 or 4 posts on Sub-Zero outlining the problem, expressing my anger & frustration (hopefully without descending into a full-scale rant) & then exploring the broader political implications in a more sober way.
I was told by my daughter today her landlord in Edinburgh has had his curling rink commandeered for use as a temporary morgue….think that may be a pretty good incentive for us to do a better job of handling this than has been the case overseas
They must be anticipating one fuck of a spike then. Total deaths in Scotland atm are 10.
edit Oops. 14
thats what I thought….a helluva spike
Well…if that info I read around the impact of a successful "Shelter in Place" strategy is correct…
Am I the only one who has (perhaps mistakenly) laboured under the assumption that "flattening the curve" was only about spreading out the same number of infections over time?
I've been doing a bit of scattered reading the past few hours over a number of publications and noticing that the possible actual effects of isolation strategies aren't being explicitly stated – that the notion of "everyone" inevitably contracting the virus is the kinda accepted "truth" in more or less everything I'm reading. The containment info is sometimes in there (implied), but basically skipped over.
Assuming the "hit rate" can be brought down to single percentage numbers with good containment strategies in place, then…why isn't that message being pushed hard and repeatedly?
That is exactly what flattening the curve means.
Not all of us at the same time, but spread out.
and that is why this bullshit about bailing some rich fucker out here and there while throwing a few crumbs to the masses is such bullshit.
if people can't pay their bills – on nothing or on 80% – they will go out and try to make a living. Even if it means dying.
Yep.
The reason why is because there are zero treatments apart from keeping severe cases alive through the worst. That requires ventilators to help people breathe and near constant monitoring to save them if they're going under.
Flattening the curve (which you clearly grasped) is about making sure that there are ventilators and the treatments available for the severe cases. Thereby reducing the death rate.
Otherwise there is the secondary option of a hopefully brief visit to the curling rink.
Roll on a vaccine of an effective anti-viral. Because we really can't afford the (calculates) the potential 200-300k at about a 5% fatality rate who could die in NZ if our health system gets swamped. Which appears to be about the 'natural' cull rate of covid-19 in an unsuspecting populace given the usual 4-5 waves before herd immunity is acheived.
We lost 9k with a much simpler and easy to survive disease in 1918/19 effectively without any kind of useful care. That was between ~0.7% (european) and ~15% (maori) death rates of the populations with what was for the time close to the best available care. 45% deaths in Samoa because the dimwitted NZ occupation forces were too pig-ignorant to institute decent quarantines.
FFS: Doesn't anyone here ever read history? Or are they too interested in wanking about their own problems?
Flattening the curve (which you clearly grasped) is about making sure that there are ventilators and the treatments available for the severe cases. Thereby reducing the death rate.
No.
Different strategies flatten the curve differently. Shelter in Place can mean a total infection rate in the single digits. Social Distancing on the other hand, means widespread infection (up to herd immunity levels) spread over a longer time span.
For 37 days after infection to get close to 100% clear (ie something like a 99.5% certainty of clearance) of sheding according to the research I've been reading. Which is why they're using 14 days quarantine to prove clearance and after you're 'cleared'.
That is why this virus is way way worse than the 1918/19 influenza pandemic. It has a much long tail and a much more likely later waves. Which is why 4 weeks is the minimum.
just read somehwere today that it can 'live' in feces for up to five weeks.
Yep, i am having no issues with the 4 weeks of isolation. Its gonna bankrupt a lot of us smaller ones but at least we hopefully get to walk out of it alive.
I would expect waves for about 2 years…until either we have decent testing – and fast testing, and a vaccine or people build up some immunity.
However what is going to be a killer if it lasts that long is the damage to the lung by the virus, specially if one can catch it more then once. essentially then it is a recurring illness that will lead to death in a very short time. And that is my guess why everyone on this planet is currently tanking their economy. It is re-occuring and it is a killer.
It is likely we'd get an anti-viral first.
There has been a lot of aborted research on the various corona viruses over the last decade or two. SARS and MERS – but they've burnt themselves out too fast to finish the research. This one SARS-CoV-2 aka covid-19 looks like it will last long enough to get multiple disruption techniques finished.
Personally I not really interested in 30k base pair biological program defeating us this time. Because they're only going to get worse and we need to prevent the next outbreak.
Be nice to actually identify the human vector from the animal kingdom to this as well. A pogrom against whoever is rubbing up with the animal kingdom the wrong way and allowing these viruses to transfer so often is starting to look way more interesting than living with them.
I suspect that the Chinese government will have a good look at that.
But in NZ, we should look at our pig-farming and chicken-farming practices. And remove antibiotics from the hands of all farmers – vet only and they should be rationed.
Animal farming through much of the US and EU needs a severe curtailment.
Essentially we need to go back to ethical animal husbandry and ethical farming.
I hope for a decent test that is fast and reliable. Something like a blood sugar test, that can be done at home with a simle prick, daily if need be. Shows negative go to work, show positive of into self isolation you go for the next 12 weeks until at least two consecutive tests come back negative. What China did.
Then a treatment.
then a vaccines. Her is hoping that it will happen.
From what I understand, there appears to be too wide a range from known infection to testable results and to symptoms. The symptoms of whatever level show from 1 day to 12 days with the median at about 5 days.
Testing from what I have seen discussed is from 1 day to about 7-8 days for virus RNA or for antibodies. Which is what they’re testing for. The range of that means that testing simply is not that useful. Probably that is because most of the current testing is currently mostly based on swabs looking for RNA from the lungs.
If you look at the mechanics of a corona virus these delays become clear…
If you want grrrr.. for covid-19 read the section “Target: new infections”
That is complex, slow, and much of it is unlikely to trigger fast anti-bodies in the bloodstream (the virus targets the longs) or enough of an immediate expansion of viral RNA in the lungs immediately after infection. They are pretty much testing if someone is currently infectious rather than if they are infected.
A better way of testing would be useful because currently a single point in time for a test or at a single location is likely to miss the early infection.
The 2020 Democratic primary looks more and more like a zombie election where dead ideas (and comatose people) are taking over. Compare Sanders being pilloried for some obvious and non-controversial comments on the Cuban heakth system with this – Cuban medical team arrives in Milan.
Sociopathic.
The state of the national economy doesn't mean anything when (as happened to me many years ago) you come to realise that your breathing is not giving you enough oxygen, and if you don't get help in the next few breaths you will not have the strength to call out for assistance, and you will die soon thereafter.
I have sat by a relative as they died of lung cancer, going from chatty to dead in a seriously short period of time as they pass that same threshold of getting enough oxygen to sustain life, to not getting enough.
Sexton, Walsh, Kelly, Blanktein and Trump have no clue what they are talking about when they balance life against money.
In extremis, triage based on medical condition and prognosis, I can understand. Triage based on a banker's and a politician's fiscal survival instinct I do not agree with.
Just a thought –
If you want to speculate how Siomun and the Natz would have handled the Covid-19 pandemic – just look at how well Trump, Johnson and Morrison are doing – all right wing fwts.
With a series of bizarre, disconnected rants.
I think he's right.
Too late now though, and ironically it was his call to shut the door from Europe which triggered the panic.
Still, this is the possible alternative which on any human level is horrific in the extreme.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120525145/bodies-found-in-spanish-care-homes-abandoned-over-coronavirus
The lack of leadership in AU UK and US just highlights how lucky we are.
That link from Bill up the thread is very scary
( https://covidactnow.org/ )
I thought it was very hopeful from a NZ perspective. Like I'm saying in other comments, I'm beginning to think I completely misunderstood the possible effect of a good containment strategy – ie, it's not about spreading an inevitable 'x' number of infections over a longer time period, but about drastically reducing the overall number of infections.
that would be the second reason.
slow down the cases of newly infection by denying the virus new bodies, and at the same time managing the cases arriving at the hospital. Not all people who have the virus will need the hospital. Many can simply stay at home and get better. Well if they can self quarantine at home without infecting the other people living at the house – something that China had an issue with initially.
While I thought we moved too soon – no real evidence of local spread. It's not clearly wrong, given
1. we lacked the testing capacity for such reassurance (the price we pay for not being better prepared)
2. the higher rates of returning Kiwis coming back infected and spreading to their self isolation others (each new one increased the risk of subsequent community spread).
Aided by airlines no longer operating and the arrival of testing kits from Singapore, we will come out of this month (includes the scheduled 2 weeks school holidays) better placed.
1. hopefully reassurance of no (or successfully suppressed) community spread (via community sample testing)
2. more secure arrangements for returning Kiwis – individual placement in the city they arrive at (apartments within hotels or home stays rented by government?) in place
3. the future risk is then Kiwis in Oz losing jobs and being denied income support (so if necessary we QE the dole to them and exploit the subsequent lower Kiwi dollar to the Oz one in trade)
4. air b n b homes no longer being used for tourists ease our housing supply issues
5. at some point we will have to determine on resumption of tourism – there will be antibody testing and vaccination (both depending on whether new strains emerge that can reinfect people).
What will inform us, is how China deals with multiple point reinfection through returning students (back from North America and Europe).
The only known at this point is that QEing our way our of a pandemic is going to scare the capitalist centres no end – how will they react, and when (and will we see it coming).
Yes for the USA I mean. I'm an optimist for NZ, except between 2-5am
Farrar watch:
PDF must have started to lose some contracts because after week of ranting about how slow we were to react he's now flip-flopped and is saying we should weigh up the costs and benefits of our actions.
Nothing like losing your job to hone one’ s analysis of the decisions under which you lost that job, eh Dave.
Question. As stores are starting to no longer accept cash and the country is about to go in lockdown, what am I supposed to do if I've recently lost my wallet and can't find my birth certificate 😭 in the meantime while I wait for replacement id which is going to take absolutely forever due to this shut down,but I need id so my useless bank can issue me a card. I'm waiting on a new debit card but I'll need id to pin that card.
On a side note there are many people I know who are on welfare who have never had photo id because for some it's too expensive, for others seems too complicated etc what are old people and beneficiaries who rely on cash going to do if more stores demand pay wave or card only. This could be really, really, really bad for some people.
Can a business legally decline cash as payment?
Ever tried to order on-line using cash …
Not under current laws in reality – you have to look at the differences between legal tender and refusing payment. See the arguments here (related to the 2006 change in currency).
Of course if you’re paying in cash, usually the amounts are too small to go an argue this in court (basically lawyers are way more expensive).
While I haven’t bothered to look at your discussion or why this query was raised, but generally not accepting legal tender as payment leaves the refuser in an invidious position if there is a substantial stake involved. Used wisely, it would probably bolster any case where legal tender was proffered and refused because it would speak directly to the motivations of the refuser.
Not under current laws in reality – you have to look at the differences between legal tender and refusing payment. See the arguments here (related to the 2006 change in currency).
Of course if you’re paying in cash, usually the amounts are too small to go an argue this in court (basically lawyers are way more expensive).
While I haven’t bothered to look at your discussion or why this query was raised. Generally not accepting legal tender as payment leaves the refuser in an invidious position if there is a substantial stake involved. Used wisely, it would probably bolster any case where legal tender was proffered and refused because it would speak directly to the motivations of the refuser. For instance and this has happened in cases of racial or sexual discrimination.
The old card cancelled after losing the wallet I presume.
Get what ID you can. Your IRD number would be good – better with a print out of your last years income off their site. That and historic statements of the account linked to the old card. Even a facebook page with your mug on it would help.
You have a better chance now than normally of them being helpful.
Thank you this is a good idea. I'll print out my old transactions. I'll also go in with my online banking logged in, proof of my address com services card a library card and ird
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120512184/coronavirus-what-stores-and-services-are-still-open-during-lockdown
thank you whomever cleaned up that link
Is it just me becoming a curmugen or are too many businesses taking the mickey? How is the warehouse an essential service? Mind boggling.
If we have any hope of damage limitation with this virus then everyone must do their bit including the warehouse, liquor stores, domino's etc.
This pretty crazy.
The Warehouse just thinks it's an essential service. They might be in for a shock.
Opps, while I'm typing, they're shut. Good
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120512184/coronavirus-what-stores-and-services-are-still-open-during-lockdown
I dont think high heeled shoes, duvet covers and crappy bluetooth speakers can be classed as 'essential items'.
You might be able to get away with cellphones and laptops though, given people need to get in tough with the world.
I was telling a UK pal about Aderns "keep faithful" line & my pal said Boris used the same term, I figured our Govts are talking and getting advice from eachother but that did make me chuckle. Also I figure places like Warehouse and retail are closing just because they're places where the public congregate, they said the same thing about playgrounds, so trade centres and mechanics (on skeleton crews) are ok, for now. I do hope this works.
Wow, that escalated quickly.
I'm in an OK situation, the company I work for allowed me to take annual leave (I had a lot owing) for the lockdown, so I'm taking some good chill out time. I had the option of working from home, but wasn't really keen, thought it would be a big hassle.
We will get through this. I'm just worried about what is going to happen afterwards, and what services that Finance Minister Paul Goldsmith will cut next year if National wins the election.