Carrying my reply to RL over as a starter and because I found it interesting to look at real numbers about an outbreak. Better and more disturbing than fatuous hyperbole about minor restrictions on ‘freedom’ related to a dumbarse virus that just treats such human conceits as a breeding opportunity.
Still I've not advocated for rushing to open the border to Omicron either, but how long until you consider we might be certain? And are we going to set an impossible standard to achieve that certainty?
Seeing what it does in Australia over the next 6-8 weeks would be sufficient to determine if poses a risk to our health systems to the point that it displaces normal loading to the point that people with other critical health issues die of lack of medical attention.
So far that isn't looking good.
The main operational issue is that medical staff with covid-19 (or any other infectious disease) can't attend vulnerable patients. That stresses the remaining staff
NSW is a similar enough state with a more extensive health system. It is also open enough to view the full effects with limited public health measures to see what is likely to happen here.
And that the number of reported cases from PCR testing have jumped from 3763 on Dec 22 to 18278 cases yesterday despite the various PCR testing blockages. It looks like it is still doubling the known community infection rate about every 4 days.
The key measures however are the hospitalisation rate and the staff overload. That isn't looking good at what is still the early surge phase of a variant epidemic.
Hospitalisations have risen to 1,066, up from 901 in the previous reporting period, with 83 patients in intensive care.
There are five times as many people being treated for COVID-19 in the state’s hospitals as there were in mid-December, although the number of people in intensive care has increased at a slower rate.
There isn't enough info to be sure in NSW, but it looks like about a 2 week period from to get from infection to hospitalisation based on the rates of increase. The number of hospitalisations for covid-19 in NSW has risen from 302 on Dec 22 to three times the number. They only had 166 on Dec 15 a week earlier. Can't be sure of the ICU
And here is the important thing.
HSU secretary Gerard Hayes said the increasing number of people being treated in hospital was "more concerning every day".
"I think the key issue here is that while the current variant is not as bad as Delta it will be a larger lot of numbers and the ratio of those numbers to hospitalisations will be potentially the concern."
Mr Hayes said the state's health system would likely reach a critical phase "anywhere within the next two or three months".
Tired and overworked healthcare workers in NSW were left with no choice but to support reducing the isolation rules for asymptomatic staff deemed close contacts of COVID-19 cases.
Under an exemption to the Public Health Order signed by Health Minister Brad Hazzard on Friday night, these staff can now be ordered back to work.
Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF) NSW president Tony Sara said hospitals were running out of staff and the pressure on the system was enormous.
"We're loading our hospitals with COVID-positive patients who need to be in hospital," Dr Sara said.
"We therefore had to reduce the ISO requirements, we don't agree with it but essentially if the health system is not to collapse then ourselves, the nurses and the HSU [Health Service Union] — we don't have a lot of choice but to agree."
If the rate of hospitalisations keeps rising by 2+ times every week in a nearly fully vaccinated state, you can see why they're worried.
It isn't an issue with how less damaging the omnicron outbreak is. That appears to be about 15-30% of the infection vs hospitalisation rate depending where you look world wide.
It is an issue with the rapid rate of infections rapidly driving up the health system into the ground with larger numbers at a lower rate of infection.
I don't think that vitamin D is going to do much in the short term even if it was efficacious. Not to mention that aussies in summer generate a lot of natural vitamin D along with their sunburn.
The evidence is mounting that Omicron causes less severe disease because it tends to multiply in the throat rather than the lungs. This also explains why it is more contagious. The other good news is that research suggests recovery from Omicron is much quicker.
I agree with you that a major concern is that the rapid spread of the disease means the availability of essential workers such as medical staff is a major concern, and could have a major impact on our health services.
On the positive side, Omicron does appear to peak very quickly with case numbers already dropping in London.
From our perspective, we have to accept that Omicron is going to arrive here, sooner or later.
I think we need to take this opportunity to plan how to mitigate the negative impact on our core services for the short time the virus is a problem. Perhaps steps such as ensuring all essential workers have booster jabs, and perhaps even putting medical staff on a preventative course of antivirals for the short time that Covid is a major issue when it arrives.
Omicron also appears to confer considerable protection against Delta so hopefully by some miracle humankind will be helped out its dreadful flailing incompetence by a chance mutation.
I suspect that we have a lot more waves of covid-19 in our near (ie ~5 year) future.
There is going to have to be some serious tradeoffs for the people dependent on overseas tourism, students, and cheap labour. As well as those expecting to fly anywhere anytime.
Good thing really. We have been getting at least one significiant zoonotic disease emerging in human populations about every 5 years for the two to three decades. Well more than double the emergence rate in the 20th century.
Sheer luck that the others didn't grow to pandemic levels.
I would expect that trend to keep increasing in velocity until late this century. We are a useful vector for species hopper viruses.
"Despite the less than optimal start to 2022, however, health experts both at home and abroad have suggested the new variant – and the next 12 months – could finally signal the end of the coronavirus pandemic's two-year reign."
And:
"Former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth couldn't have put it more plainly today, writing in an op-ed for The Sydney Morning Herald that "in 2022, the Covid-19 pandemic will end….. Covid-19, he added, "is now the most treatable respiratory virus known to man", and despite its transmissibility, Omicron will likely have a lower case-to-fatality ratio than the flu, "and not a particularly bad flu at that".
So, I think the signs are very positive for us escaping this pandemic and again enjoying the freedoms we once had prior to the pandemic.
In tourism we've had a couple of years of 'journalism' grasping onto the slightest positive event and presenting it as the end of the pandemic restrictions and return to open trade. Aussie bubble was supposed to be tens of thousands chafing at the bit to come to NZ for a holiday asap. Reality turned out to be virtually empty planes and what passengers there were, were visiting family. The breathless pronouncements of impending good times for business were closely followed by an intense campaign from the same media outlets trying to sell advertising.
They are selling hope as fact, and we're very willing marks.
I'm sceptical, and will wait and see what happens.
very good post graeme. the last one of these bullshit news(?) items was a couple of weeks ago when auckland was opened and two days later we had sobstories in msm about how dead queenstown was, and how scared aucklanders were to travel. its not news, its advertising dressed up with very small snippetts of clickbait in between.
Is there and immutable law of biology that says this virus will always mutate to a less severe form? Or that the less severe form will always become dominant?
We've had several 'chance' mutations in this variant that have made it more transmissible, and less severe. I'd presume the increased transmissibility would make it more dominant, but would also increase the probability of further mutation by enabling vastly more infections.
So what's the probability of an equally, or more transmissible, but more severe variant emerging?
There are examples of viruses that have become more deadly.
However, in the case of Covid, humans have the advantage of cumulative knowledge and the ability to adjust our responses so we can allow the spread of benign versions, and use strong countermeasures to limit the spread of the harmful ones.
In that way, we can facilitate the spread and dominance of the mild versions so that the world develops herd immunity to future mutations of Covid, and it eventually becomes background noise, similar to the common cold or flu.
However, in the case of Covid, humans have the advantage of cumulative knowledge and the ability to adjust our responses so we can allow the spread of benign versions, and use strong countermeasures to limit the spread of the harmful ones.
Theoretically. In reality, the large countries that didn't limit spread initially has meant more opportunity for variants to develop.
If/when such a variant does emerge, then (as with Delta and Omicron) NZ will likely have a window of a few months to prepare.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, imho – the state of Oregon (4.2 million) has done relatively well compared to other US states, with 'only' 0.13% of its people dead with COVID (cf. 0.001% in NZ). Let's be careful out there.
It's my understanding that while a super transmissible and lethal bug is always possible – they are very rare for at least three evolutionary reasons:
Both features require high degrees of specialisation that involve different aspects of the viral structure. The odds getting both in the one variant are even more astronomically rare – assuming natural only evolution.
There seems to be a molecular trade-off between transmissibility and lethality. As a virus loads more resource into one, it has less available to put into the other. There is no hard and fast rule on this – it's an observed heuristic.
And finally simple evolution always favours the variant that is the least likely to kill its host. Again this doesn't preclude a lot of death before a steady state is reached – but in the long run the logic of this will always prevail.
I would agree. The likely course of Covid is towards a more benign bug.
The common cold was probably once a deadly virus at some point in time.
As the article I linked to above pointed out, Omicron has evolved to be more transmissible by mutiplying in the throat rather than the lungs. But this change has resulted in a reduction in severity due to not multiplying so quickly in the lungs.
The best thing we could see in NZ, is for all the Covid measures in place to be immediately dropped. It's summer, the best time to deal with Omicron.
There are growing number of folks becoming non compliant, and that trend is only going to continue. For many it's a conscience thing, and if you remove people freedoms, soon they will feel they have nothing to lose. Segregation has no place in our society. And neither does heavy handed state coercion.
My comment above was in answer to a question about the general principles of viral evolution.
Even though I tend to agree with much of your sentiments on compliance and segregation, the specific case of Omicron and NZ needs to be dealt with on it's own merits. And while the data clearly shows it's less lethal – I still think there is good reason for us to be a 'slow follower' on opening up.
As weka put's it, there will be no stuffing this genie back into the bottle.
I recall a virologist on the tv when this virus first popped up saying that these viruses often follow a 2 year pattern of very dangerous to begin with and then mutating in to a less severe form then going away, .
Those promising Guardian studies are on mice and hamsters ie in the very early stages of clinical trials.
It's ironic that the Covid vaccine research studies are so much further advanced ie multiple RCT trials in humans, followed by rollout to millions and millions, ongoing safety and efficacy monitoring yet some (wrongly) still say it's experimental.
We could do all of that. But I suspect that a red listing, especially in the very medically understaffed and under vaccinated provincial areas is in our future. Only realistic way to drop the the rate of spread to a muted roar rather tsunami.
Good points lprent. In the UK there have been other spinoffs from the Omicron outbreak and that is the sheer numbers being infected and needing to isolate. Then other industries, particularly mass transit falls over and those who are ell enough to work cannot get to work. So a different set of impacts. May need a different set of mitigations with differing timings as the disease progresses. One of the benefits of the traffic light system allows for flexibility in switching while enabling as many businesses to keep open as sensible.
As far as VitD is concerned my Dr is not keen on supplementation and urged me to get at least 20mins of sun on my forehead ie without hat or sunscreen and for me earlyish in the morning every day. The same advice is good for combatting jet lag, to get outside in your destination in that mid morning time helps the body to switch time zones.
Shanreagh, I am outside quite a lot everyday, and when tested for Vitamin D levels after last summer (spent in the garden), I was in the severely deficient range. Three women friends of menopausal age, who have all been tested – and had results indicating severe deficiency in Vitamin. Two of them keen cyclists, one of whom cycles 30 – 50 km daily.
Apparently, women often lose the ability to metabolise Vitamin D from sunlight as they get older. The current recommendation from doctors to ensure you get a minimum of 20 minutes a day works if your metabolism is still functioning to convert that exposure to Vitamin D. For many, this is no longer the case, and you won't know if you are one of those for whom this is true.
You can consider this anecdotal, and of no importance, but Vitamin D does have a protective role to play in many aspects of good health. Ensuring you have a good level in the blood is a fairly inexpensive way of stacking your odds.
This is the simplest explanation I've seen on the amount of skin to expose to sunlight to get adequate vitamin D metabolised in the blood stream. Shanreagh, having just your forehead exposed is nowhere near enough but it's better than nothing.
I think this was a balancing between my family's sun sensitivity and the amount needed for good health. From an early age as children we were not allowed to go out into the sun without protection between 10-2.00pm.
My Dr thought being out in the sun without a hat/sunscreen around morning teatime 10-11am would do me fine……face, hands, sometimes arms exposed. He would have had a fit if I had been out in a swimsuit doing this let alone a bikini like the model in Matiri's reference.
One place I worked a fair skinned Goth colleague was the only other person doing this all year long except for when it was pelting down. He had been told the same thing and had the same fair type of skin.
Food has VitD.
Fatty fish, like tuna, mackerel, and salmon
Foods fortified with vitamin D, like some dairy products, orange juice, soy milk, and cereals
Beef liver
Cheese
Egg yolks
VitD photosynthesis is only created by UVB – not UVA. It is completely blocked by
sun lower than 45deg
any air pollution
any sun screen
glass
clothing
The simple rule is 'your shadow must be sharp and shorter than you are tall' in order for the sunshine route to be useful.
The other element that is hard to achieve is full body exposure. It takes on average 30 min of full body exposure in ideal conditions to achieve between 10 – 20,000 IU of VitD. In our pre-industrial state we typically fat stored somewhere between 1 – 2,000,000 IU of VitD over summer that we drew down on over winter. Most of us are going to find it hard to emulate that in our modern lives – unless naturism is your thing.
Modernity has brought many good things, but we're also starting to learn some of the downsides that we overlooked on the way – and social clothing norms and indoor living inadvertently broke that evolved cycle. Hence for most moderns supplementation is necessary to achieve something near to the 60 – 90 ng/ml levels required for good health. All the information you need is out there, but suffice to say it's critical to understand not just the role of VitD but it's partner VitK2 and the role co-factors such as magnesium, zinc and boron play.
All this is relatively new information many GP's will not have had the time nor inclination to discover – but some have. We're lucky to have stumbled across one here in Brisbane, and if you seek out the Functional Medicine types they're typically all over this.
Since my work trip to the Canadian Arctic in 2017 I've been gradually becoming more informed on the VitD story – it's been a fascinating and for both of us an increasingly rewarding journey in all sorts of unexpected ways. I hope you have as much fun with this as we have
Yes Potassium is important and often overlooked. Bananas are high sources of potassium. (And the skins are good cut up and placed around rose bushes!).
All of the elements/vitamins/s exercise/sunshine work together and reinforce the need for exercise and good eating habits. Incidentally my Dr is also a sports medicine Dr and has a large practice of post menopausal women and he is also not keen on OTT eating regimes that strip the body of fat.
Having been tested a couple of years ago and then having a period of time on IV feeding in hospital I know that my Potassium levels are prone to dipping. As I am on on High cholesterol drugs for Familial hypercholesterolemia ('a genetic disorder caused by a defect on chromosome 19. The defect makes the body unable to remove low density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad) cholesterol from the blood. This results in a high level of LDL in the blood') I also have to supplement with VitB as the drugs strip out VitB.
It is fascinating …how our bodies have so many perfectly balanced and intricate systems and processes.
Thanks – I'll checkout the potassium aspect. Any good links?
I've tried to steer a middlish path through the COVID controversies, but if it brings a wider awareness of what real 'public health' might mean – it will turn out a silver lining to what's been a very dark cloud.
Do you know what the evidence base for this is? I've seen it said a fair bit, but it's unclear to me. Presumable there's a curve of decline as the sun lowers in the sky (each day and over the year) rather than a sharp cut off at 45deg.
One of the implications is that the Vit D people at lower latitudes make during the summer and autumn has to get them through the winter and early spring.
Like all things on the internet there are plenty of rabbit-holes to dive down on this, but 45deg is a rule of thumb not an hard cut-off. I probably should have qualified my statement above more carefully.
At the latitude of say Otago which is below this doesn't mean there will be zero UV-B – it's just the level is relatively low and the amount of time necessary for full exposure and a decent summer accumulation is not going to be achievable or comfortable for most modern people.
the problem is that around the equinoxes the sun is so low in the sky on the south that there may not be much Vit D production. I'm not convinced by the 45deg thing (I've been sunburned in early spring), but obviously there is an issue for those in the south.
Two recent pro-VitD references that are worth offering. The first is Prof Robert Scragg from the UoA School of Medicine giving an overview of research in NZ.
Robert’s vitamin D expertise sees him called on to peer-review research and he says it can be frustrating when poorly constructed studies are amplified through the media.
“For example, there have been observational studies published that show people with Covid-19 have low vitamin D levels,” says Robert.
“But they don’t go into the factors as to why they have low levels. Having dark skin contributes to lower vitamin D, for example.
“As well, being overweight or poor can contribute to low levels.
“There was a big international trial I was asked to review that had major methodological flaws in it. This is an example of where you can do a study, and call it a trial, but you may have introduced biases into it. Next thing you know, it’s being quoted as gospel.”
The second link is from Gruff Davies a UK data scientist with a physics background who offers a paper on the VitD/COVID relationship using Causal Inference methodology.
Causal Inference
The COVID-19 pandemic spread globally providing observational data with statistical power many orders of magnitude greater than a devised RCT or observational trial that could be conducted even at national level. Striking patterns emerge directly from this statistical power that are so large they are evident without the need for sophisticated regression analyses. Global location data for 239 locations offers a vast data set that includes homogeneous and heterogeneous populations and subpopulations where latitude, weather conditions, skin colour, age, pregnancy and morbidity states are – in effect – randomly assigned by nature.
A lot of very readable material in this paper and has an Appendix explaining why the so called 'gold standard' RCT's are usually nowhere near as useful as the lay public have been led to think they are.
Totally agree. Another factor that has been completely overlooked is that the normal ability of the skin to synthesise VitD decreases with age. (Just as the risks of COVID increase with age).
The main reason why most medics are cautious about VitD supplementation is that there has been conflicting and paradoxical studies on it's impact.
For a long time the results of just VitD and Calcium supplementation in preventing osteoporosis were disappointing. In essence the VitD certainly enabled the absorbtion of the extra calcium, but instead of improving bone density all it did was raise the risk of calcification in places like the heart, arteries and kidneys. It was called the 'calcium paradox' – too little and you got all the issues of falls and fractures, yet any attempt at improving this immediately raised the risk of heart and circulation conditions. There didn't seem to be any sweet spot.
The missing piece of the puzzle turns out to be VitK2 which is essential to get the calcium from the bloodstream and into the bones where you want it.
Again plenty of good info out there if you look – my comments here are not intended as medical advice.
If the sun is at less than 45 degrees, then you're not producing any Vit D- Apparently. Something to do with the angle of the sun and the blocking capacity of ozone. Also. In places with air pollution (mbe not so much of an issue for most locations in NZ), we can't produce VitD.
Sure. In most parts of the continental world that is the case. Too much dust even at the coast. Doesn't apply that much for a country that is never more the 100kms from the ocean and has a negligible atmospheric dust load.
It doesn't really apply that much to places like Auckland in summer. Dunedin I can understand – it seems to be designed to be a place to get really pale. I came home to Auckland from Dunedin and was startled at
Of course there is always fatty fish and most other marine products, egg yolks, mushrooms even before you get to fortified foods and supplements.
Personally I eat all three and even my sun avoiding geekness doesn't have vitD issues, (If I am going to have to have a blood test every quarter, may as well check everything).
Of course there is always fatty fish and most other marine products, egg yolks, mushrooms even before you get to fortified foods and supplements.
I only recently discovered that these 'food routes' are typically 'indirect sunshine'.
For example the hairy mammals like cats and dogs all secrete oil into their fur, where UVB in sunshine then converts it to one of the VitD forms. Then grooming causes the animal to ingest the VitD they need.
Similarly with most marine sources – they're getting it from the photoplankton they eat and if they're an oily species it's well stored.
Mushrooms the same – but only when they're wild and have been exposed to sunlight.
Unless you're eating a very traditional, pre-industrial diet that's almost exclusively from these wild sources – for most of us pale, geeky moderns it's more effective to supplement.
I've no particular quibble with most of this. The very high R value of Omicron ensures hospitalisation will rise very rapidly and this is an operational concern for all the reasons you describe.
And as I mentioned to weka earlier, I'm willing to accept that just because Omicron presents mostly as a less lethal acute disease, there are good reasons to remain cautious on it's long term chronic effects. Especially given it's rather opaque origin and peculiar genetics.
Not to mention that aussies in summer generate a lot of natural vitamin D along with their sunburn.
This was something I would have said myself up to quite recently until I discovered that VitD photosynthesis from sunshine only happens in some rather specific conditions. And while much of Australia is indeed ideal sunshine territory, the people have been trained for several decades now to not to expose themselves to it.
one of the things that we (the public) will learn from omicron, hopefully, is the complex nature of the crisis. It's not a simple matter of pulling out some stats. There are a lot of different and interacting factors, and the the difference between what looks good on paper (stats on initial omicron severity) and what happens on the ground (hospital impact) is stark.
I took your point the other day about confounding factors, just thought it was more a generality rather than looking into the detail.
It's not a simple matter of pulling out some stats. There are a lot of different and interacting factors, and the the difference between what looks good on paper (stats on initial omicron severity) and what happens on the ground (hospital impact) is stark.
A very interesting opinion piece on this very topic was published today in the Guardian by two prominent UK Statisticians.
Can you capture the complex reality of the pandemic with numbers? Well, we tried…
We had to agree our purpose, as a particular challenge is to fend off the voracious media appetite for blame, speculation and controversy, naturally fed by the broad spectrum of opinion among experts. One camp has supported viral suppression and even elimination, while others have expressed scepticism about the measures taken; it’s become a cliche that their extreme followers can be identified by the phrase “I’ve done my own research”.
One particularly relevant paragraph from the link above:
We tried this strategy back in June 2021 when Public Health England first published data showing that, among older people who had recently died with Covid-19, most had been vaccinated. We wrote an article pointing out that this did not mean the vaccine was ineffective – just that it was imperfect – and that the great majority of people had been vaccinated: in essence, a small proportion of a large number can be bigger than a larger proportion of a small number. Another useful analogy is with seatbelts: most people who die in car accidents are wearing seatbelts, but this does not mean that seatbelts are not effective – it’s just that nearly everyone wears one and they are not perfect.
Tired and overworked healthcare workers in NSW were left with no choice but to support reducing the isolation rules for asymptomatic staff deemed close contacts of COVID-19 cases.
That's alarming. It's a kind of desperation for public health to allow potential infection of staff in order to manage increasing infection in the general population.
Under an exemption to the Public Health Order signed by Health Minister Brad Hazzard on Friday night, these staff can now be ordered back to work.
I'm curious what the people who object to other restrictions make of that.
I made a mistake and the root directory overflowed. To be precise I did
zpool create archive list_of_drives
And forgot to
zpool set mountpoint=/mnt archive
Then proceeded to
rsync holddir /mnt/archive
Cries of dismay from those who delve into and are literate in linux as I hang my head in shame.
Wound up with no space on / and you and everyone else was locked out from logging in or writing comments because there was nowhere to write scratch files.
And I thought I was pretty good figuring out how to delete the photographs on my Olympus camera that were filling up my card…….took me about half a morning but not having to spend $99.00 to get anew card was a good driver. My camera works better with my Mac when taking photographs for TM and Freecycle.
You can usually get into most devices either naturally (eg Mac + iphone) or using a fuse file system or simply popping the card into the card reader on a laptop or desktop. On most things of that type linux or the linux that is OSX find and/or rsync – is your friend.
For instance clearing up old TS database backups (updating that script at present)
Find all files matching my backup drive directory with the name of TheStandardDB_.tar.xz that have a modified date of more than 2 days and delete them.
rsync is also pretty good at doing moves. I usually clean phone directories using rsync to push the data into my workstations dropbox folder with a -delete parameter.
Yes I looked for the card reader on this 2nd hand laptop, not the Mac, but thought that as the previous owner had said the CD drive yes I know!!!!), had been removed it wouldn't have a card reader…….doh.
Just now found the card reader on the other side of the laptop.
Used to have a printer that you could put a card in it. Haven't looked on this one. Finally found a set of instructions online and following them brought home to me how important the editing of tech instructions for non tech people is. My cousin used to do this specialised editing.
My prob with the online instructions was that they had left out a couple of steps that would have been easy for a techy but not for a novice to complete. I thought/think even though PCs are great I lost ways of personalising processes that I had when I worked on a mainframe. I had little sets of coding to do tasks. You seem to have some – do these work off Linux?
If those who had written the instructions I followed this morning had to wrap some coding around them to automate them they would have come to a complete stop!
My primary geek nz email is down for the same reason. Turns out virtual box likes wiping its vbox files when it doesn't have disk space. It will be back later today after I dig out what format it wants.
21 days for 'misgendering' a trans identified male. Lol. Well for what its worth, it finally has arrived the stage where men (human adult males) are starting to get a whiff of this new movement and they better learn to bend the knee and bow down deep to the god of trans lest they end up in prison and / or are having to pay fines.
Ignoring the trans part of that conversation, it sounds like the convicted was a complete fuckwit obsessed by gender issues, and who shouldn't have been allowed on any adult public forum. Too juvenile and childish…
If that was the criteria for being able to use social media – or any other 'adult public forum' then half those participating would be excluded.
In this case, however, that engagement resulted in a 21 day jail sentence. Whereas, other more direct threats on social media, have resulted in no consequence.
Although, you may consider – as I do – the level of this person's contribution to discussion to be less than nil, that is not a reason to incarcerate someone.
Could easily do that here as well under multiple acts, including the HDCA. All it would require is for the perp to not show contrition and to try to argue that the court has no right try it – which appears to be what this idiot fuckwit did.
You should really look at the actual legal provisions of NZ before you start to criticise those of other countries.
'Declan Armstrong, 19, was convicted of using abusive or insulting words to cause harassment. According to Judge Roger Lowe, the public order offence was uplifted to medium-level due to its transphobic nature.
He was put under night-time curfew and ordered to pay £590, including £200 compensation to Police Community Support Officer Connor Freel, 25, who was born female but identifies as male. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) called the incident a ‘hate crime’. Edward Marsh of the CPS said: “Comments deliberately targeting a person in this way have no place in modern society.”
Now two disability support groups – AXIA-ASD and Action for Asperger’s – have condemned the prosecution and called for the courts to think again when dealing with people with disorders such as Autism and Asperger’s. Elaine Nicholson, CEO of Action for Asperger’s said: “This young man is being punished for his condition; having a communication disorder is what Asperger’s is all about.”
There is also the high number of incidents of a number of people utilising this interpretation of the law to harass and harm people they disagree with.
This particular case has a Trans – stake because it is based on 'trans-rights'. So far it is not that common that we lock up people for being insulting tits, if we had done that previously we could not keep up building prisons and staffing them.
But then, i hear that the for profit prison industry is a good market to invest in to, what do you think?
So far it is not that common that we lock up people for being insulting tits,
As I explained in 3.1.1.1.1. The actual offence was almost certainly that of being a idiot fuckwit obsessed by gender issues who challenged the court by saying that they had no legal basis to try him. It did by an act of the legislature, and he now has an opportunity to try the judge's duty to enforce the laws of the land in a court of appeal. I suspect that he and his idiot lawyer will be stupid enough to do that.
It may eventually make it to their equivalent of our supreme court which will look at if the legislature worded the legislation so that the judge was correct in their interpretation or not.
In our case the judgement would be that freedom of expression in BORA is a limited right. It does not include the right to gratuitously insult others for their gender, race, looks, religion, or simply because a offensive fuckwit wants to get their ego off public.
We have a small prison population who have made the same legal mistake. Some are on remand, some on bail, some are still awaiting trial.
As a professional geek, I don’t go around overtly rubbing people up the wrong way simply because they weren’t endowed with the curiosity and drive that is greater than a hamster. If I can keep that strong urge to use my fingers to do that – then so should this idiot gender obsessed fuckwit.
Regardless of you like it or not, freedom of expression does not extend to being a gormless bigot in public to other individuals. And if you feel forced to be one, then it pays to be a a smart one who actually understands some basic legal principles and can avoid forcing a judge to sentence you for simple stupidity.
Incidentally I naturally carefully wrote that last comment so it was lawful and insulting. There is a fundamental legal and societal principle embedded in the comment as to why this would be legal under almost all reasonable legal systems, one that gender obsessed idiotic legal fuckwit did not follow.
I'd be interested if the people above who have a problem with the sentence can understand why? They don't seem to understand it as far as I can see.
I have no idea if or why the dude insulted the other. That is actually not mentioned anywhere. Neither is a picture of either one of them involved that would allow any one to form their own opinion of what was said. We also don't know what let to that altercation, only that it ended with that conversation that what reported to the police as 'hate crime' (or what ever the Norwegian laws to that extend are), and that it lead to a fine and a 21 day sentence.
Now what was said might have been insulting, or it might have been a statement to the fact, who knows we are not giving more information as that. Should that alone be grounds to lock someone up for 21 days? That should be discussed. What else can we not say or if we say it we should expect 21 days in the slammer for wrong speak?
I don't believe the law should be able to send someone to prison for what they say unless it incites violence.
If you take the example JK Rowling who regularly gets death and rape threats, nail bomb threats and doxing, I have to wonder why no action has been taken about the perpetrators of these threats.
I don’t believe the law should be able to send someone to prison for what they say unless it incites violence.
Ah a person who believes in waiting at the bottom of the cliff with an ambulance. Good approach for a ghoul – you get more bodies maimed or dead that way.
As far as I am aware so far, the only interesting part of about this case was that the the idiot said that the written law didn’t apply to them because of a higher law. The judge took them at their word, sentenced them, so if they chose to they could appeal to the people who actually balance those higher laws against other laws. They get the chance to argue it in court possibly before and maybe after serving their sentence.
BTW: Have you ever read any analysis of how lynching, pogroms, riots, and every other destructive practice of humans operates. It is almost from people thinking that they can get away with acting like an arsehole to others and having others cheer them on with their non-violent offensive behaviour against other people. They start to think that it is their ‘right’ to do so. That any laws put in place are just there to stifle them. And you find that they end up burning people in their houses or whatever violence happens to be fashionable.
Judges and indeed most lawyers I know tend to be very aware of this. After all any reading of any case law bangs the stupidity of such attitudes home over and over again along with the inevitability of cause and effect about problems between those who think that they have an absolute right to be obnoxious. I had to deal with my old partners law and being a fast reader I spent some time reviewing it. Prefer programming, but laws have inherent logic that is worth looking at when you have questions about why this or that happens.
Basically every bigot idiot, lynch mob, and pogrom starts because anti-social idiots think that they have a ‘right’ to be offensive to ‘others’. Many laws are put in place simply to make sure that idiots find that out before they manage kill or maim others. Doesn’t always work, but the legal balance between ‘rights’ like being a loudmouth bigot and not getting killed or maimed by one is largely there to catch problems at the top of the cliff – not the bottom.
I have to wonder why no action has been taken about the perpetrators of these threats.
That brings me to the other side. Responsibilities….
I do some support work with computers, where the first question is always the same on any kind of computer failures. Is it plugged in or something equivalent? The second is have you rebooted it? In a good fifth of the cases one of those is the problem.
Hell – I fixed a VoIP issue for someone tonight by powering off and on their router. The router had been running for at least 4 months.
There is an equivalent question that you will find people who have to deals with non-computer social issues always ask, including threats. That is “has XYZ laid a complaint?” Or requested action?
Because in my experience that is usually a small fraction. No force or organisation can take action unless a formal complaint is laid. You also can’t take them to task if they haven’t taken any useful action because none was requested.
Many people go and say that it’d be of no use anyway, or it is too much effort, or it is cheaper to beef up your own security/insurance or whatever. Maybe so. But you can’t know unless it is tried. Also shouldn’t moan and whine about it unless that has happened and failed.
I have also noticed that the people who complain the loudest that something should be done, are also usually those who haven’t lifted a finger in any useful way to help an investigation. Because the first thing that anyone like the police will do is point out that to have a trial it has to be fair and based on evidence – not hearsay. Being a loudmouth moaner doesn’t help. Getting a conviction or substantive action depends on making sure that any subsequent trial or hearing is not contaminated by loudmouths contaminating juries or judges. It is the reason why we have suppression orders.
I have no idea if JK Rowling (vaguely remember her as a fantasy author) has laid complaint about threats or not. But I’d prefer to see an explicit statement that a formal complaint has been laid, and that the authorities are still working on it. If police or whoever drop it, then I’d want to see a copy of the complaint and some idea about evidence before I start getting wound up about that.
Basically hearsay is cheap, usually spun for effect, and most often wrong. So far that is all that I have heard. To me it is meaningless irresponsibility. I might have an opinion based on what I dig out myself and even express my understanding of it. But I tend to treat everything dished up as just being propaganda.
Incidentally, as much as I hit on police for their lackadaisical Luddite behaviour at times, go and ask any mature police officer what they find the most irritating. They will tell you that it is the people who don’t lay charges or who won’t give evidence to enable charges to be laid.
Which is where the other side of a having a right comes into play – acting responsibly.
Incidentally the same principles of balance apply to politics. For that matter for anyone with social duties. Soldiers, nursing staff, police, ambulance staff, wardens, etc. And of course to me.
"Regardless of you like it or not, freedom of expression does not extend to being a gormless bigot in public to other individuals. And if you feel forced to be one, then it pays to be a a smart one who actually understands some basic legal principles and can avoid forcing a judge to sentence you for simple stupidity."
And it appears you missed the point that women on here have been trying to make for many months. There are legislative changes that have the potential to make statements regarding biological sex fall into hate speech by being categorised as transphobic.
Overseas examples are being used, because we have followed the same pattern of changes to legislation, by asking for changes to hate speech, self-id for gender recognition, and conversion therapy. The safeguards requested by submitters that have kept track on how those laws have worked in practical terms have been ignored.
There are legislative changes that have the potential to make statements regarding biological sex fall into hate speech by being categorised as transphobic.
They are already in legislation. Read BORA – legislation since 1990 and the HRA legislation from 1993 that was written with BORA in mind.
That is how they have been treated in the courts for a very long time. Trying to prevent discrimination of this particular facet would be more than 30 years too late.
The former requires that the principles are applied to new and updated legislation. The latter is quite explicit that sexual orientation legally has little to do with biological sex or genetics. It also shows a strong orientation that biological sex is related mostly to child bearing.
What you're looking at in current bills is the routine legislative tidy up that is a requirement of the BORA and less explicitly for the HRA for updated and amended legislation.
Moreover, if you look through our legislation you won't find much that is still in current usage that is explicit about biological sex apart from sections that are explicitly about pregnancy and birth. That is because legislators learnt a long time ago that to make highly explicit legislation based on social circumstances is to provide legal loopholes as society changes under a lagging legal framework.
If you want to see what I mean, just look back to the legislation of 1890s and try to imagine that to be in effect today. Much of it was obsolete withing a few decades after it was made.
As far as I can tell the anti argument is based mostly around customary usage – ie a common law style of legal basis. However in NZ customary usage and common law apply as guiding principle only where not explicitly overridden by legislation.
Essentially what is being proposed by you and others as opposition to updated legislation is not to protect existing law and current established legal interpretation.
It is trying to establish a new legal principle to disadvantage another part of society. It is a new legal principle that its proponents cannot apparently manage to explain (at least to me) the reasons for changing existing law.
Which is why I keep asking for an explanation on why it is important to change the principles of current legislative law.
I'm sure that lawyers amongst us could state that more clearly. However that would be legal advice, be risky, and would probably require an arm or leg to obtain. We all know lawyers are cannibals by customary practice 😈
"Essentially what is being proposed by you and others as opposition to updated legislation is not to protect existing law and current established legal interpretation."
You make this claim but are wrong. It is only recently that sex has been conflated to include gender identity
I suggest once again you make efforts to inform yourself. It's far too hot for me to bother, and I have a reasonable expectation any evidence provided will be casually dismissed.
As I have pointed out numerous times, I have been asking for an explanation.
I’m not interested in one that involves sports
I’m not interested in ones that say someone said something offensive about someone else. We have existing legislation that covers that
I am interested in a social or legal problem that requires legislative powers to control. You know – behaviour that could result in a prison sentence. Like falsely accusing someone of being a pedophile
I’m not interested in explanation that implicitly say I don’t like being around X. That is a common human fragility. I am interested in systematic behavioural issues that need societal correction
Basically everything else is just simple hearsay. But really the drivel I just excluded as being of little interest to me is all the explanation I can see at present.
I don't comment in line with your priorities or reckons, that's apparent. Your lack of insight or knowledge on this topic is also apparent.
Basically everything else is just simple hearsay. But really the drivel I just excluded as being of little interest to me is all the explanation I can see at present.
You are making some fairly wide assumptions sans evidence.
I’m not interested in explanation that implicitly say I don’t like being around X. That is a common human fragility. I am interested in systematic behavioural issues that need societal correction
Not listening or thinking before masterfully summing up seems to be a common response.
potential Cis girls need to know their place, and one can not start teaching them their place early enough. Penis is as Penis does does not matter if it hangs of a transwomen or a male.
"“For a minute I thought, ‘Well, there’s no point in putting compost on. I nearly turned around and drove home. But then I thought, for the boys, I have to look forward. So I went in.
“And last time I went in, we planted seeds. I told them that when you are planting seeds, you’ve got something to look forward to. I wanted them to know there is always hope.”"
Seeds of change: Prison garden tutor named Gardener of the Year
Good on Bronwyn. And Ryman Health Care, for sponsoring the award. Nice to see a volunteer horticulturalist having such a positive effect on young prisoners & getting some of them interested in gardening & horticulture as a career.
That is such a good story. "I told them that when you are planting seeds, you’ve got something to look forward to. I wanted them to know there is always hope.”
I've just been planting seeds this morning before the heat. Read this story with the coffee break. It resonated with me because I planted some old seed amongst all of it, so the idea of hope was certainly there. Sowing seed is to do with life stability, hope, connection to a place. I really respect those working in prisons with such motivation- staff and volunteers.
The excess death measurements over long term norms have been the most useful at looking at the actual mortality levels across nations and regions.
It certainly has been useful for identifying countries whose governments routinely lie to themselves. Really hard to trust Russian government proclaimations at any time during my lifetime – but it is really starting to look like the primary state of dickwaver farces at present.
This is a big issue, and not just because our covid fringe is becoming dangerously extreme.
The education act says that universities, amongst other things, have to "accept a role as critic and conscience of society". That is commonly understood by most academic staff I know to involve publicly speaking out about their areas of expertise.
For a university to essentially state that the risks of speaking out should be minimised by not speaking out – that seems to be a fundamental shift in the resposibilities of academics and universities, and in my opinion most definitely deserves some manner of judicial examination.
Agree that seems a very inappropriate response from a university. Suggesting they comment less in public.
I wonder exactly what they wanted the university to do to protect them from threats, though? We don’t have a lot of info in the article on that.
E.g. I wonder if Hendy wanted Campus Security at his office door, seeing some bloke came to his office & threatened him?
And I wonder where the Police come into this – they’d seem the most appropriate organiation to be following up threats online or in person, perhaps by viewing campus CCTV footage.
Universities have loads of ways of protecting staff and equipment and students.
Most would have centrally-operated door locks on facilities, just to avoid big pouches of keys. These could easily be set to swipe-only access until the heat dies down. Prompt trespass orders. Removing office locations from websites. Then more individually-tailored solutions like panic buttons or relocating carparks, and arranging regular security escorts between offices and vehicles. Many of these are already routinely done for people involved with sensitive research. Many are also trivial amounts of $$$ compared with the free advertising 'community interest' academics in the news produce for an institution – a card lock is like $1200 to bung on a door, last time my work checked. Also, uni IT could be proactive in shutting down threatening emails and social media – just as they would if someone on facebook spoke crap about Auckland Uni.
But the specifics aren't the problem, the problem is the suggestion of shutting academics up rather than working with them to figure out what to do.
Sounds like they laid the initial queries and complaints April 2020. From what I understood on twitter (some really crass stupidity on that forum today), the decision made in August was released yesterday or today. The interesting fact is that they appear to have acted quite responsibly in this – there hasn’t been a peep in any media that I know of about this.
Makes me more inclined to look at it.
I’d expect that both have made complaints with the police and possibly Netsafe under the HDCA (the police will send them there would be my bet). Probably with the social media as well (there were some whispers about people being blocked in 2020).
and in my opinion most definitely deserves some manner of judicial examination.
Yes. If the universities don’t wish to lose what little integrity they have left, then they either need to get the legislation amended and become mere technical colleges and I have some ideas about how they could do that better). Or they need to be able to make sure that their academic staff have the ability to spread knowledge, specialist understanding and ideas outside of the cloisters – because otherwise they’re a useless burden that should be stripped down to just doing a teaching role.
Mac Liman estimates she has fixed 14,000 bicycles over the last 18 years. But increasingly, the bikes coming through her Colorado shop are unfixable — and the manufacturers made them that way on purpose.
The influx of these essentially disposable bicycles has Mac raising the alarm about this trend in planned obsolescence. As we’ve covered in earlier editions of Junked By Design, our society is rife with unfixable products, which creates a mounting ecological problem.
[…]
Signs of an unfixable bike
Because Bikes Together works with donated, used bicycles, Mac has to train staff and volunteers how to process incoming bikes. Increasingly, that means teaching people to identify the bikes it’s not worth bothering to fix.
“The job used to be explaining to people how to fix things. Now, it’s explaining why they cannot,” Mac said. “The job used to be fixing; now, it’s stripping them down and scrapping them.”
Bikes Together has a checklist for spotting bikes made too poorly to fix for donation or resale. If you spot three or more of the following characteristics, the bike should be recycled:
sloppy welding on the frame (holes, pits, bubbles, etc.)
a flimsy, narrow rear dropout (made from stamped steel)
inappropriate plastic components (such as the derailleur or brake lever)
My partner and I bought 2 bikes in Walmart in 2013 in Salt Lake City and cycled 2,000 km with them across the U.S. When we arrived in San Francisco, a few months later, the bikes were still quite rideable, but when we contacted charities about taking them for free, they told us they weren't interested as they would be too costly to fix up (they only cost about US$80 each in Walmart). Gave them away to a homeless co-op eventually after thinking we might just leave them leant up against a wall. Yes, they were crap Chinese made bikes manufactured for short term use. The spare parts could almost to amount the same cost as the whole bikes!
"Sri Lanka is facing a deepening financial and humanitarian crisis with fears it could go bankrupt in 2022 as inflation rises to record levels, food prices rocket and its coffers run dry."
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Photo by Jari Hytönen on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government is talking up the crucial role of gas as a transition fuel “through to 2050 and beyond”. In a gas strategy to be released on Thursday, the government envisages the fuel’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Next week the government will again next try to get its legislation through to deal with non-citizens who won’t cooperate with efforts to deport them. The bill, which the opposition and crossbench refused to rush ...
A long-term project that will set out an alternative vision for Aotearoa that looks beyond the narrow confines of the policy straight jacket adopted by successive governments. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bree Hurst, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business and Law, QUT, Queensland University of Technology TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock A much-awaited report into Coles and Woolworths has found what many customers have long believed – Australia’s big supermarkets engage in price gouging. What started ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney The Albanese government wanted to avoid an inquiry into its migration amendment bill. The report, handed down yesterday by a senate committee that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne Lobbying is at the heart of government. Who has access to and influence over key government officials shapes the decisions governments make – and how they make them. The ability to influence ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Myfany Turpin, Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, Linguistics and Ethnobiology, University of Sydney The act representing Australia at this year’s Eurovision contest has sadly not qualified for the grand final. Yet for Zaachariaha Fielding and Michael Ross, the duo that makes up Electric Fields, ...
In announcing changes to the school lunches programme, David Seymour said kids would no longer be served ‘woke’ foods. To clear up any confusion, The Spinoff has compiled a guide to the wokeness levels of some common food items. Apple = NOT WOKE Avocado = WOKE Avocado, smashed = EVEN ...
The Minister Responsible for GCSB and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security have been notified of this review, and have been provided a finalised Terms of Reference. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Minglu Chen, Senior Lecturer, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney Robert Way/Shutterstock As the past few years have illustrated so clearly, the Australia-China relationship is complicated. As such, it is crucial for Australians to develop a more nuanced understanding of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mariana Campbell, Research Lecturer, Conservation, Charles Darwin University Marilyn Connell Australian freshwater turtles are facing an alarming trend. Almost half of these species are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus) is one of Australia’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debbie Passey, Digital Health Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your preferences and prioritise the content you are shown. Google Maps and artificial intelligence are nothing without ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josephine Barbaro, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, Psychologist, La Trobe University Unsplash We’ve come a long way in terms of understanding that everyone thinks, interacts and experiences the world differently. In the past, autistic people, people with attention deficit hyperactive disorder ...
PNG Post-Courier Papua New Guinea’s deputy opposition leader James Nomane has accused the government of “reckless economic management” that has forced devaluation to manage loan repayments in foreign currency and placate the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prime Minister James Marape “must stop lying to the people of Papua New Guinea”, ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Jane Arthur, author of Brown Bird, and former bookseller at Good Books.The book I wish I’d writtenI have been working on not comparing myself to others. On accepting that what I can ...
The final decision on the Wellington District Plan makes it official: High-density housing is legal across most of Wellington. Housing minister Chris Bishop has announced his decision on the Wellington District Plan, approving a series of amendments to radically upzone most of Wellington, allowing tens of thousands of new townhouses ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to ...
RNZ News As Israel presses ahead with strikes in Rafah and seizing the Rafah crossing from Egypt, aid agencies are sounding the alarm of a “catastrophic humanitarian situation”. Rafah was “significant” because it was the only part in Gaza that had not been terribly damaged by the conflict, United Nations ...
With funding set to be scrapped for the Hamilton-Auckland commuter train, Te Huia enthusiast Georgie Dansey argues for it to be thrown a lifeline. It’s 5.45am and the chain of my crappy old bike falls off slugging up the one hill in Hamilton. I contemplate yeeting the bike into the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Cooke, Honorary Fellow, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland We feel ecological grief when we lose places, species or ecosystems we value and love. These losses are a growing threat to mental health and wellbeing globally. We all see ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shauna Brail, Associate Professor, Institute for Management & Innovation, University of Toronto A shift to hybrid and remote work continues to affect worker presence in Toronto’s downtown.(Shutterstock) Downtown Toronto, the core of Canada’s largest city, continues to reel from the lingering ...
Responding to an Auditor-General's report slamming failures in the administration of the 2023 General Election, Taxpayers’ Union Policy and Public Affairs Manager, James Ross, said: ...
Productivity apps now make up a big chunk of the software market. But do they work? And why do they all have AI integrations?Despite being firmly on the record as a physical planner fan, I sometimes dream of something better than my pretty diary and its scrawled, ugly, interior ...
The Taxpayers’ Union says the Beehive need to lead by example, following reports of more than $50,000 spent upgrading video conferencing equipment and furniture in the Prime Minister’s office. Taxpayers’ Union Campaign Manager, Connor Molloy, ...
An objective list of the 50 most powerful people in New Zealand, as judged by the Spinoff Editorial Board. It’s power list season, baby, and we want in on the action. Sure, there’s the rich list and the powerful “c-suite” list and the young people with power (hmmm) but here, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney ShutterstockThis article contains information on deaths in custody and the names of deceased people, and describes ongoing colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. First Nations people in Australia ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Macquarie University Netflix Baby Reindeer’s phenomenal success has much to do with its writer and lead, Richard Gadd, who plays Donny in a tender semi-autobiographical account of sexual abuse, harassment and stalking. Gadd’s story has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Collins, Laureate Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle KarolinaGrabowska/Pexels If you didn’t have food allergies as a child, is it possible to develop them as an adult? The short answer is yes. But the reasons why are much ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Moon, Professor of History, Auckland University of Technology Ans Westra, self-portrait, c. 1963. National Library ref AWM-0705-F They try but invariably fail – those writers who believe they are capable of encapsulating in prose or verse the essence of ...
Stewart Sowman-Lund looks at the growing concern around the world in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. What’s all this? When Covid-19 arrived on our shores in early 2020, some argued we were too slow, or crucially, ill-prepared for a pandemic. So ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Franco Montalto, Professor of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and Director, Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Laboratory, Drexel University Water runs into a storm drain in a Los Angeles alley on Aug. 19, 2023, during Tropical Storm Hilary.Citizen of the Planet/Universal Images ...
The inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones has turned up a new witness who says he saw two teenagers and a small child in a high vis vest in the area where the boy’s body was found the day he died. Lachie’s body was discovered face up ...
Stories from the tenancy trenches, featuring spider infestations, cupboard rats and same-sex discrimination. Lucy’s brother was living in a damp 1930s building in Mt Eden where “he had to tie the cupboard doors closed so the rats didn’t get in”. Although he shared custody of his six-year-old son, his property ...
Simeon Brown, Chris Luxon, and Wayne Brown climbed into a hole and announced a plan to solve Auckland’s water woes. This is how it’ll work. New Zealand’s pipes are munted. They’re cracked and leaking, and struggling to handle all the extra poos excreted by our rising population. It’s a big, ...
What do a sombrero in Argentina and cognitive driving tests have in common? Don’t worry, we’re not setting up a bad joke. Hinengaro Clinic dementia clinician Gregory Winkelman has the answer on today’s episode of The Detail. “We ask a patient’s spouse or son or daughter: If you went to ...
Wellington long jumper Phoebe Edwards is back and she’s having fun again. Until this year, Edwards, a top athlete in her teens, had never competed as a senior athlete in New Zealand. In March, the 26-year-old won a national long jump title in a lifetime best of 6.28m after ...
After replacing a fifth of their caucus in just four months, the Greens’ opportunity to reset, reshuffle and refocus on the Government is quickly slipping away The post Persistent Green Party scandals delay caucus reset appeared first on Newsroom. ...
I knew Taika Waititi quite well when he was a kid. His mother lived in a tall narrow house in Aro St, and my youngest sister had a similar house two doors along. They were both single mums, they each had a son aged seven. Taika and my nephew Stepan ...
Opinion: “As time passes, knowledge of the circumstances of the August 2016 outbreak will fade and its immediate impact will be lost.” This statement is from the 2017 report of the Official Inquiry into the Havelock North campylobacteriosis outbreak. The then National-led government established the inquiry after the outbreak left ...
Opinion: Nicholas Khoo looks at two key points in the high-stakes foreign policy pact debate – and asks if NZ can engage with as little drama as possible. The post Where to next for the Aukus ruckus? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Wednesday 8 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: ‘Reference-class forecasting’ is at the heart of improving pricing a project and identifying the expected timeframe but it doesn’t appear to be in use here The post ‘Think fast and act slowly’ is failing big projects appeared first on Newsroom. ...
ANALYSIS:By Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day today on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also to mark a defining event for national identity. The battle of Gallipoli against ...
By Robin Martin, RNZ News reporter A New Zealand local authority, Whanganui District Council, has passed a motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, condemnation of all acts of violence and terror against civilians on both sides of the conflict and the immediate return of hostages. It comes as ...
Asia Pacific Report The Aotearoa chapter of the Women’s International league for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has appealed to the New Zealand government to call out Israel over the “cruel and barbaric use of force” in Gaza and demand a permanent ceasefire. The league’s open letter was sent to Prime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will invest $566 million over a decade on data, maps and other tools to promote exploration and development in Australia’s resources industry. The project will fund “the first comprehensive map of what’s ...
Asia Pacific Report Following an open letter by Auckland University academics speaking out in support of their students’ right to protest against the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, a group of academics at Otago University have today also called on New Zealand academic institutions to “repair colonial violence” and end ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda J. Graham, Professor and Director of the Centre for Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology Ryan Tauss/ Unsplash, CC BY Two male students have been expelled from a Melbourne private school for their involvement in a list ranking female students. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The Reserve Bank is now assuming Australians will see no interest rate cuts this year – and quite possibly none before the next federal election, due next May. That’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hayward, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, RMIT University The Victorian budget offered more of the same on Tuesday, with the only change being how the budget papers were packaged. The usual shrink wrap was gone, hinting at savings in the pages ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Coalition is demanding extensive amendments to the government’s legislation targeting non-citizens who refuse to co-operate with their removal. In a dissenting report to the senate inquiry into the legislation, the Coalition says it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanita Yadav, Senior Research Fellow, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University Brett Boardman/Belvoir The complex and grappling issue of violence against women takes centre stage in the soul-stirring solo dance drama Nayika: A Dancing Girl. During a dinner conversation ...
Carrying my reply to RL over as a starter and because I found it interesting to look at real numbers about an outbreak. Better and more disturbing than fatuous hyperbole about minor restrictions on ‘freedom’ related to a dumbarse virus that just treats such human conceits as a breeding opportunity.
Seeing what it does in Australia over the next 6-8 weeks would be sufficient to determine if poses a risk to our health systems to the point that it displaces normal loading to the point that people with other critical health issues die of lack of medical attention.
So far that isn't looking good.
The main operational issue is that medical staff with covid-19 (or any other infectious disease) can't attend vulnerable patients. That stresses the remaining staff
NSW is a similar enough state with a more extensive health system. It is also open enough to view the full effects with limited public health measures to see what is likely to happen here.
Looking at the timeline fro NSW
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/458461/fresh-warning-about-omicron-variant-after-cases-skyrocket-in-nsw
It looks like omnicron really broke out of the initial community transfer about 2 weeks ago.
What is noticeable at present is that the lines for PCR testing have gone ridiculous. Also the uncontrolled price of RAT kits with their unreported testing has now gone to directly to price gouging. Which suggests a large epidemic sweeping the state
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-02/covid-omicron-cognitive-leap-into-2022/100734564
And that the number of reported cases from PCR testing have jumped from 3763 on Dec 22 to 18278 cases yesterday despite the various PCR testing blockages. It looks like it is still doubling the known community infection rate about every 4 days.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-02/nsw-records-18278-covid19-cases-two-deaths/100734294
The key measures however are the hospitalisation rate and the staff overload. That isn't looking good at what is still the early surge phase of a variant epidemic.
There isn't enough info to be sure in NSW, but it looks like about a 2 week period from to get from infection to hospitalisation based on the rates of increase. The number of hospitalisations for covid-19 in NSW has risen from 302 on Dec 22 to three times the number. They only had 166 on Dec 15 a week earlier. Can't be sure of the ICU
And here is the important thing.
If the rate of hospitalisations keeps rising by 2+ times every week in a nearly fully vaccinated state, you can see why they're worried.
It isn't an issue with how less damaging the omnicron outbreak is. That appears to be about 15-30% of the infection vs hospitalisation rate depending where you look world wide.
It is an issue with the rapid rate of infections rapidly driving up the health system into the ground with larger numbers at a lower rate of infection.
I don't think that vitamin D is going to do much in the short term even if it was efficacious. Not to mention that aussies in summer generate a lot of natural vitamin D along with their sunburn.
The evidence is mounting that Omicron causes less severe disease because it tends to multiply in the throat rather than the lungs. This also explains why it is more contagious. The other good news is that research suggests recovery from Omicron is much quicker.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/02/new-studies-reinforce-belief-that-omicron-is-less-likely-to-damage-lungs
I agree with you that a major concern is that the rapid spread of the disease means the availability of essential workers such as medical staff is a major concern, and could have a major impact on our health services.
On the positive side, Omicron does appear to peak very quickly with case numbers already dropping in London.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/01/02/no-need-new-covid-restrictions-say-senior-tories-daily-cases/
From our perspective, we have to accept that Omicron is going to arrive here, sooner or later.
I think we need to take this opportunity to plan how to mitigate the negative impact on our core services for the short time the virus is a problem. Perhaps steps such as ensuring all essential workers have booster jabs, and perhaps even putting medical staff on a preventative course of antivirals for the short time that Covid is a major issue when it arrives.
Omicron also appears to confer considerable protection against Delta so hopefully by some miracle humankind will be helped out its dreadful flailing incompetence by a chance mutation.
I suspect that we have a lot more waves of covid-19 in our near (ie ~5 year) future.
There is going to have to be some serious tradeoffs for the people dependent on overseas tourism, students, and cheap labour. As well as those expecting to fly anywhere anytime.
Good thing really. We have been getting at least one significiant zoonotic disease emerging in human populations about every 5 years for the two to three decades. Well more than double the emergence rate in the 20th century.
Sheer luck that the others didn't grow to pandemic levels.
I would expect that trend to keep increasing in velocity until late this century. We are a useful vector for species hopper viruses.
I think you are being overly pessimistic.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/covid-19-omicron-outbreak-why-2022-and-omicron-variant-will-mark-the-end-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/JZXFOI5E22XSUTMF6PAOBTYV6U/
From the article:
"Despite the less than optimal start to 2022, however, health experts both at home and abroad have suggested the new variant – and the next 12 months – could finally signal the end of the coronavirus pandemic's two-year reign."
And:
"Former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth couldn't have put it more plainly today, writing in an op-ed for The Sydney Morning Herald that "in 2022, the Covid-19 pandemic will end….. Covid-19, he added, "is now the most treatable respiratory virus known to man", and despite its transmissibility, Omicron will likely have a lower case-to-fatality ratio than the flu, "and not a particularly bad flu at that".
So, I think the signs are very positive for us escaping this pandemic and again enjoying the freedoms we once had prior to the pandemic.
In tourism we've had a couple of years of 'journalism' grasping onto the slightest positive event and presenting it as the end of the pandemic restrictions and return to open trade. Aussie bubble was supposed to be tens of thousands chafing at the bit to come to NZ for a holiday asap. Reality turned out to be virtually empty planes and what passengers there were, were visiting family. The breathless pronouncements of impending good times for business were closely followed by an intense campaign from the same media outlets trying to sell advertising.
They are selling hope as fact, and we're very willing marks.
I'm sceptical, and will wait and see what happens.
very good post graeme. the last one of these bullshit news(?) items was a couple of weeks ago when auckland was opened and two days later we had sobstories in msm about how dead queenstown was, and how scared aucklanders were to travel. its not news, its advertising dressed up with very small snippetts of clickbait in between.
Is there and immutable law of biology that says this virus will always mutate to a less severe form? Or that the less severe form will always become dominant?
We've had several 'chance' mutations in this variant that have made it more transmissible, and less severe. I'd presume the increased transmissibility would make it more dominant, but would also increase the probability of further mutation by enabling vastly more infections.
So what's the probability of an equally, or more transmissible, but more severe variant emerging?
The answer is often but not always:
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19/do-bad-viruses-always-become-good-guys-end
There are examples of viruses that have become more deadly.
However, in the case of Covid, humans have the advantage of cumulative knowledge and the ability to adjust our responses so we can allow the spread of benign versions, and use strong countermeasures to limit the spread of the harmful ones.
In that way, we can facilitate the spread and dominance of the mild versions so that the world develops herd immunity to future mutations of Covid, and it eventually becomes background noise, similar to the common cold or flu.
Theoretically. In reality, the large countries that didn't limit spread initially has meant more opportunity for variants to develop.
With more than 30 million active cases globally it is a possibility, but I doubt anyone credible would be prepared to put a (probability) number on it.
If/when such a variant does emerge, then (as with Delta and Omicron) NZ will likely have a window of a few months to prepare.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, imho – the state of Oregon (4.2 million) has done relatively well compared to other US states, with 'only' 0.13% of its people dead with COVID (cf. 0.001% in NZ). Let's be careful out there.
It's my understanding that while a super transmissible and lethal bug is always possible – they are very rare for at least three evolutionary reasons:
Both features require high degrees of specialisation that involve different aspects of the viral structure. The odds getting both in the one variant are even more astronomically rare – assuming natural only evolution.
There seems to be a molecular trade-off between transmissibility and lethality. As a virus loads more resource into one, it has less available to put into the other. There is no hard and fast rule on this – it's an observed heuristic.
And finally simple evolution always favours the variant that is the least likely to kill its host. Again this doesn't preclude a lot of death before a steady state is reached – but in the long run the logic of this will always prevail.
I would agree. The likely course of Covid is towards a more benign bug.
The common cold was probably once a deadly virus at some point in time.
As the article I linked to above pointed out, Omicron has evolved to be more transmissible by mutiplying in the throat rather than the lungs. But this change has resulted in a reduction in severity due to not multiplying so quickly in the lungs.
The best thing we could see in NZ, is for all the Covid measures in place to be immediately dropped. It's summer, the best time to deal with Omicron.
There are growing number of folks becoming non compliant, and that trend is only going to continue. For many it's a conscience thing, and if you remove people freedoms, soon they will feel they have nothing to lose. Segregation has no place in our society. And neither does heavy handed state coercion.
My comment above was in answer to a question about the general principles of viral evolution.
Even though I tend to agree with much of your sentiments on compliance and segregation, the specific case of Omicron and NZ needs to be dealt with on it's own merits. And while the data clearly shows it's less lethal – I still think there is good reason for us to be a 'slow follower' on opening up.
As weka put's it, there will be no stuffing this genie back into the bottle.
I recall a virologist on the tv when this virus first popped up saying that these viruses often follow a 2 year pattern of very dangerous to begin with and then mutating in to a less severe form then going away, .
Looking like he was right, fingers crossed,
(Far to long ago to find a link)
Those promising Guardian studies are on mice and hamsters ie in the very early stages of clinical trials.
It's ironic that the Covid vaccine research studies are so much further advanced ie multiple RCT trials in humans, followed by rollout to millions and millions, ongoing safety and efficacy monitoring yet some (wrongly) still say it's experimental.
We could do all of that. But I suspect that a red listing, especially in the very medically understaffed and under vaccinated provincial areas is in our future. Only realistic way to drop the the rate of spread to a muted roar rather tsunami.
Maybe a good idea to reinstall all the medical personnel fired under mandates…. As the vax clearly does not stop the new variant.
Isn't karma a b*@ch.
Good points lprent. In the UK there have been other spinoffs from the Omicron outbreak and that is the sheer numbers being infected and needing to isolate. Then other industries, particularly mass transit falls over and those who are ell enough to work cannot get to work. So a different set of impacts. May need a different set of mitigations with differing timings as the disease progresses. One of the benefits of the traffic light system allows for flexibility in switching while enabling as many businesses to keep open as sensible.
As far as VitD is concerned my Dr is not keen on supplementation and urged me to get at least 20mins of sun on my forehead ie without hat or sunscreen and for me earlyish in the morning every day. The same advice is good for combatting jet lag, to get outside in your destination in that mid morning time helps the body to switch time zones.
Shanreagh, I am outside quite a lot everyday, and when tested for Vitamin D levels after last summer (spent in the garden), I was in the severely deficient range. Three women friends of menopausal age, who have all been tested – and had results indicating severe deficiency in Vitamin. Two of them keen cyclists, one of whom cycles 30 – 50 km daily.
Apparently, women often lose the ability to metabolise Vitamin D from sunlight as they get older. The current recommendation from doctors to ensure you get a minimum of 20 minutes a day works if your metabolism is still functioning to convert that exposure to Vitamin D. For many, this is no longer the case, and you won't know if you are one of those for whom this is true.
You can consider this anecdotal, and of no importance, but Vitamin D does have a protective role to play in many aspects of good health. Ensuring you have a good level in the blood is a fairly inexpensive way of stacking your odds.
This is the simplest explanation I've seen on the amount of skin to expose to sunlight to get adequate vitamin D metabolised in the blood stream. Shanreagh, having just your forehead exposed is nowhere near enough but it's better than nothing.
https://overcomingms.org/recovery-program/sunlight-vitamin-d/how-much-sun-should-i-get
I think this was a balancing between my family's sun sensitivity and the amount needed for good health. From an early age as children we were not allowed to go out into the sun without protection between 10-2.00pm.
My Dr thought being out in the sun without a hat/sunscreen around morning teatime 10-11am would do me fine……face, hands, sometimes arms exposed. He would have had a fit if I had been out in a swimsuit doing this let alone a bikini like the model in Matiri's reference.
One place I worked a fair skinned Goth colleague was the only other person doing this all year long except for when it was pelting down. He had been told the same thing and had the same fair type of skin.
Food has VitD.
Fatty fish, like tuna, mackerel, and salmon
Foods fortified with vitamin D, like some dairy products, orange juice, soy milk, and cereals
Beef liver
Cheese
Egg yolks
All well and good.
My blood pressure medication says to avoid too much direct sunlight.
Let common sense prevail.
Yes that is true. All of our abilities to do many simple functions diminishes over time, sigh, and some times develop into comorbidities…another sigh.
I am very keen on discussing Vit D but don't get as evangelic about it as i do about the benfits of drinking water!
VitD photosynthesis is only created by UVB – not UVA. It is completely blocked by
The simple rule is 'your shadow must be sharp and shorter than you are tall' in order for the sunshine route to be useful.
The other element that is hard to achieve is full body exposure. It takes on average 30 min of full body exposure in ideal conditions to achieve between 10 – 20,000 IU of VitD. In our pre-industrial state we typically fat stored somewhere between 1 – 2,000,000 IU of VitD over summer that we drew down on over winter. Most of us are going to find it hard to emulate that in our modern lives – unless naturism is your thing.
Modernity has brought many good things, but we're also starting to learn some of the downsides that we overlooked on the way – and social clothing norms and indoor living inadvertently broke that evolved cycle. Hence for most moderns supplementation is necessary to achieve something near to the 60 – 90 ng/ml levels required for good health. All the information you need is out there, but suffice to say it's critical to understand not just the role of VitD but it's partner VitK2 and the role co-factors such as magnesium, zinc and boron play.
All this is relatively new information many GP's will not have had the time nor inclination to discover – but some have. We're lucky to have stumbled across one here in Brisbane, and if you seek out the Functional Medicine types they're typically all over this.
Since my work trip to the Canadian Arctic in 2017 I've been gradually becoming more informed on the VitD story – it's been a fascinating and for both of us an increasingly rewarding journey in all sorts of unexpected ways. I hope you have as much fun with this as we have
Yes Potassium is important and often overlooked. Bananas are high sources of potassium. (And the skins are good cut up and placed around rose bushes!).
All of the elements/vitamins/s exercise/sunshine work together and reinforce the need for exercise and good eating habits. Incidentally my Dr is also a sports medicine Dr and has a large practice of post menopausal women and he is also not keen on OTT eating regimes that strip the body of fat.
Having been tested a couple of years ago and then having a period of time on IV feeding in hospital I know that my Potassium levels are prone to dipping. As I am on on High cholesterol drugs for Familial hypercholesterolemia ('a genetic disorder caused by a defect on chromosome 19. The defect makes the body unable to remove low density lipoprotein (LDL, or bad) cholesterol from the blood. This results in a high level of LDL in the blood') I also have to supplement with VitB as the drugs strip out VitB.
It is fascinating …how our bodies have so many perfectly balanced and intricate systems and processes.
Thanks – I'll checkout the potassium aspect. Any good links?
I've tried to steer a middlish path through the COVID controversies, but if it brings a wider awareness of what real 'public health' might mean – it will turn out a silver lining to what's been a very dark cloud.
Do you know what the evidence base for this is? I've seen it said a fair bit, but it's unclear to me. Presumable there's a curve of decline as the sun lowers in the sky (each day and over the year) rather than a sharp cut off at 45deg.
One of the implications is that the Vit D people at lower latitudes make during the summer and autumn has to get them through the winter and early spring.
Like all things on the internet there are plenty of rabbit-holes to dive down on this, but 45deg is a rule of thumb not an hard cut-off. I probably should have qualified my statement above more carefully.
At the latitude of say Otago which is below this doesn't mean there will be zero UV-B – it's just the level is relatively low and the amount of time necessary for full exposure and a decent summer accumulation is not going to be achievable or comfortable for most modern people.
Otago at present ( mid summer) gets more solar insolation then Auckland.
http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/eman/weather_station/current.php#solar
the problem is that around the equinoxes the sun is so low in the sky on the south that there may not be much Vit D production. I'm not convinced by the 45deg thing (I've been sunburned in early spring), but obviously there is an issue for those in the south.
Here's a critique of the latitude hypothesis (read this ages ago)
https://www.westonaprice.org/vitamin-d-problems-with-the-latitude-hypothesis/
And the main research it relies on? (haven't read this)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17142054/
One of aforementioned rabbit holes I think.
Two recent pro-VitD references that are worth offering. The first is Prof Robert Scragg from the UoA School of Medicine giving an overview of research in NZ.
The second link is from Gruff Davies a UK data scientist with a physics background who offers a paper on the VitD/COVID relationship using Causal Inference methodology.
Causal Inference
A lot of very readable material in this paper and has an Appendix explaining why the so called 'gold standard' RCT's are usually nowhere near as useful as the lay public have been led to think they are.
Totally agree. Another factor that has been completely overlooked is that the normal ability of the skin to synthesise VitD decreases with age. (Just as the risks of COVID increase with age).
The main reason why most medics are cautious about VitD supplementation is that there has been conflicting and paradoxical studies on it's impact.
For a long time the results of just VitD and Calcium supplementation in preventing osteoporosis were disappointing. In essence the VitD certainly enabled the absorbtion of the extra calcium, but instead of improving bone density all it did was raise the risk of calcification in places like the heart, arteries and kidneys. It was called the 'calcium paradox' – too little and you got all the issues of falls and fractures, yet any attempt at improving this immediately raised the risk of heart and circulation conditions. There didn't seem to be any sweet spot.
The missing piece of the puzzle turns out to be VitK2 which is essential to get the calcium from the bloodstream and into the bones where you want it.
Again plenty of good info out there if you look – my comments here are not intended as medical advice.
earlyish in the morning every day.
If the sun is at less than 45 degrees, then you're not producing any Vit D- Apparently. Something to do with the angle of the sun and the blocking capacity of ozone. Also. In places with air pollution (mbe not so much of an issue for most locations in NZ), we can't produce VitD.
Sure. In most parts of the continental world that is the case. Too much dust even at the coast. Doesn't apply that much for a country that is never more the 100kms from the ocean and has a negligible atmospheric dust load.
It doesn't really apply that much to places like Auckland in summer. Dunedin I can understand – it seems to be designed to be a place to get really pale. I came home to Auckland from Dunedin and was startled at
Of course there is always fatty fish and most other marine products, egg yolks, mushrooms even before you get to fortified foods and supplements.
Personally I eat all three and even my sun avoiding geekness doesn't have vitD issues, (If I am going to have to have a blood test every quarter, may as well check everything).
Of course there is always fatty fish and most other marine products, egg yolks, mushrooms even before you get to fortified foods and supplements.
I only recently discovered that these 'food routes' are typically 'indirect sunshine'.
For example the hairy mammals like cats and dogs all secrete oil into their fur, where UVB in sunshine then converts it to one of the VitD forms. Then grooming causes the animal to ingest the VitD they need.
Similarly with most marine sources – they're getting it from the photoplankton they eat and if they're an oily species it's well stored.
Mushrooms the same – but only when they're wild and have been exposed to sunlight.
Unless you're eating a very traditional, pre-industrial diet that's almost exclusively from these wild sources – for most of us pale, geeky moderns it's more effective to supplement.
I've no particular quibble with most of this. The very high R value of Omicron ensures hospitalisation will rise very rapidly and this is an operational concern for all the reasons you describe.
And as I mentioned to weka earlier, I'm willing to accept that just because Omicron presents mostly as a less lethal acute disease, there are good reasons to remain cautious on it's long term chronic effects. Especially given it's rather opaque origin and peculiar genetics.
Not to mention that aussies in summer generate a lot of natural vitamin D along with their sunburn.
This was something I would have said myself up to quite recently until I discovered that VitD photosynthesis from sunshine only happens in some rather specific conditions. And while much of Australia is indeed ideal sunshine territory, the people have been trained for several decades now to not to expose themselves to it.
one of the things that we (the public) will learn from omicron, hopefully, is the complex nature of the crisis. It's not a simple matter of pulling out some stats. There are a lot of different and interacting factors, and the the difference between what looks good on paper (stats on initial omicron severity) and what happens on the ground (hospital impact) is stark.
I took your point the other day about confounding factors, just thought it was more a generality rather than looking into the detail.
A very interesting opinion piece on this very topic was published today in the Guardian by two prominent UK Statisticians.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/02/2021-year-when-interpreting-covid-statistics-crucial-to-reach-truth
One particularly relevant paragraph from the link above:
my bold
very good, thanks!
Saw another good analogy today, an alleged back-and-forth that might never have happened but I hope it really did.
Good one!
Just as well it wasn't Bobby Riggs saying that about Billy Jean King!
That's alarming. It's a kind of desperation for public health to allow potential infection of staff in order to manage increasing infection in the general population.
I'm curious what the people who object to other restrictions make of that.
https://i.imgur.com/bAAGbVy.gif
Knocked you off your morning perch this morning 🙂
😈
Whoever has been cloning the Open Mike obviously got caught in my maintenance yesterday.
🙂 Yes, I noticed the late start to Open Mike.
Usually someone sets it up a little after 6am. If I’m up early I usually have a look & then sometimes race to try & beat Dennis. 😀
Usually gets set up the previous day and auto unfolds like an ⛱ at 0600
I sent you an e-mail late last night, but my access seems to have been miraculously restored overnight. Will be BAU from now on.
Welcome back
Thanks, but I never really left. Stayed in the furthest corners of TS to schedule OM and DR every day
I made a mistake and the root directory overflowed. To be precise I did
zpool create archive list_of_drives
And forgot to
zpool set mountpoint=/mnt archive
Then proceeded to
rsync holddir /mnt/archive
Cries of dismay from those who delve into and are literate in linux as I hang my head in shame.
Wound up with no space on / and you and everyone else was locked out from logging in or writing comments because there was nowhere to write scratch files.
And I thought I was pretty good figuring out how to delete the photographs on my Olympus camera that were filling up my card…….took me about half a morning but not having to spend $99.00 to get anew card was a good driver. My camera works better with my Mac when taking photographs for TM and Freecycle.
You can usually get into most devices either naturally (eg Mac + iphone) or using a fuse file system or simply popping the card into the card reader on a laptop or desktop. On most things of that type linux or the linux that is OSX find and/or rsync – is your friend.
For instance clearing up old TS database backups (updating that script at present)
find $BACKUPDIR/TheStandardDB_.$TAREXT -mtime +2 -delete
Find all files matching my backup drive directory with the name of TheStandardDB_.tar.xz that have a modified date of more than 2 days and delete them.
rsync is also pretty good at doing moves. I usually clean phone directories using rsync to push the data into my workstations dropbox folder with a
-delete
parameter.Yes I looked for the card reader on this 2nd hand laptop, not the Mac, but thought that as the previous owner had said the CD drive yes I know!!!!), had been removed it wouldn't have a card reader…….doh.
Just now found the card reader on the other side of the laptop.
Used to have a printer that you could put a card in it. Haven't looked on this one. Finally found a set of instructions online and following them brought home to me how important the editing of tech instructions for non tech people is. My cousin used to do this specialised editing.
My prob with the online instructions was that they had left out a couple of steps that would have been easy for a techy but not for a novice to complete. I thought/think even though PCs are great I lost ways of personalising processes that I had when I worked on a mainframe. I had little sets of coding to do tasks. You seem to have some – do these work off Linux?
If those who had written the instructions I followed this morning had to wrap some coding around them to automate them they would have come to a complete stop!
My primary geek nz email is down for the same reason. Turns out virtual box likes wiping its vbox files when it doesn't have disk space. It will be back later today after I dig out what format it wants.
You could try my gmail address. first.second@gmail.com or even thestandardnz gmail
A very cool email addy
Actually first and last
lynn prentice
G'day Incognito, Compliments of the Season to ya.
Thanks and my best wishes to you.
A milestone for Pickles Pook What a clever boy. Thanks Gezza (2).
for those interested, a thread about legislative changes in Norway and how they were achieved:
https://twitter.com/Sappfo_/status/1302625614718001158?t=LAt84W_uAvZq48T_aF66xA&s=19
did you see this?
https://4w.pub/man-convicted-for-misgendering-trans-identified-male/
21 days for 'misgendering' a trans identified male. Lol. Well for what its worth, it finally has arrived the stage where men (human adult males) are starting to get a whiff of this new movement and they better learn to bend the knee and bow down deep to the god of trans lest they end up in prison and / or are having to pay fines.
Ignoring the trans part of that conversation, it sounds like the convicted was a complete fuckwit obsessed by gender issues, and who shouldn't have been allowed on any adult public forum. Too juvenile and childish…
Wouldn't you agree?
If that was the criteria for being able to use social media – or any other 'adult public forum' then half those participating would be excluded.
In this case, however, that engagement resulted in a 21 day jail sentence. Whereas, other more direct threats on social media, have resulted in no consequence.
Although, you may consider – as I do – the level of this person's contribution to discussion to be less than nil, that is not a reason to incarcerate someone.
Could easily do that here as well under multiple acts, including the HDCA. All it would require is for the perp to not show contrition and to try to argue that the court has no right try it – which appears to be what this idiot fuckwit did.
You should really look at the actual legal provisions of NZ before you start to criticise those of other countries.
Of course I am concerned about the similar legislative changes proposed here in NZ, noting the conflation once again of biological sex and gender identity.
(Noting also the shoehorning in of trans as a unspecified protected category that will be defined at a later stage.)
If you can't see the benefit of avoiding unintended consequences by improving legislation before it's passed, that's your perspective. Mine differs.
As a case for discussion, the 2020 conviction of an autistic teen who asked "Is it a boy or a girl?" and was found guilty of a hate crime in Wales.
'Declan Armstrong, 19, was convicted of using abusive or insulting words to cause harassment. According to Judge Roger Lowe, the public order offence was uplifted to medium-level due to its transphobic nature.
He was put under night-time curfew and ordered to pay £590, including £200 compensation to Police Community Support Officer Connor Freel, 25, who was born female but identifies as male. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) called the incident a ‘hate crime’. Edward Marsh of the CPS said: “Comments deliberately targeting a person in this way have no place in modern society.”
Now two disability support groups – AXIA-ASD and Action for Asperger’s – have condemned the prosecution and called for the courts to think again when dealing with people with disorders such as Autism and Asperger’s. Elaine Nicholson, CEO of Action for Asperger’s said: “This young man is being punished for his condition; having a communication disorder is what Asperger’s is all about.”
There is also the high number of incidents of a number of people utilising this interpretation of the law to harass and harm people they disagree with.
This particular case has a Trans – stake because it is based on 'trans-rights'. So far it is not that common that we lock up people for being insulting tits, if we had done that previously we could not keep up building prisons and staffing them.
But then, i hear that the for profit prison industry is a good market to invest in to, what do you think?
As I explained in 3.1.1.1.1. The actual offence was almost certainly that of being a idiot fuckwit obsessed by gender issues who challenged the court by saying that they had no legal basis to try him. It did by an act of the legislature, and he now has an opportunity to try the judge's duty to enforce the laws of the land in a court of appeal. I suspect that he and his idiot lawyer will be stupid enough to do that.
It may eventually make it to their equivalent of our supreme court which will look at if the legislature worded the legislation so that the judge was correct in their interpretation or not.
In our case the judgement would be that freedom of expression in BORA is a limited right. It does not include the right to gratuitously insult others for their gender, race, looks, religion, or simply because a offensive fuckwit wants to get their ego off public.
We have a small prison population who have made the same legal mistake. Some are on remand, some on bail, some are still awaiting trial.
As a professional geek, I don’t go around overtly rubbing people up the wrong way simply because they weren’t endowed with the curiosity and drive that is greater than a hamster. If I can keep that strong urge to use my fingers to do that – then so should this idiot gender obsessed fuckwit.
Regardless of you like it or not, freedom of expression does not extend to being a gormless bigot in public to other individuals. And if you feel forced to be one, then it pays to be a a smart one who actually understands some basic legal principles and can avoid forcing a judge to sentence you for simple stupidity.
Incidentally I naturally carefully wrote that last comment so it was lawful and insulting. There is a fundamental legal and societal principle embedded in the comment as to why this would be legal under almost all reasonable legal systems, one that gender obsessed idiotic legal fuckwit did not follow.
I'd be interested if the people above who have a problem with the sentence can understand why? They don't seem to understand it as far as I can see.
I have no idea if or why the dude insulted the other. That is actually not mentioned anywhere. Neither is a picture of either one of them involved that would allow any one to form their own opinion of what was said. We also don't know what let to that altercation, only that it ended with that conversation that what reported to the police as 'hate crime' (or what ever the Norwegian laws to that extend are), and that it lead to a fine and a 21 day sentence.
Now what was said might have been insulting, or it might have been a statement to the fact, who knows we are not giving more information as that. Should that alone be grounds to lock someone up for 21 days? That should be discussed. What else can we not say or if we say it we should expect 21 days in the slammer for wrong speak?
That was my only point for posting this link.
I don't believe the law should be able to send someone to prison for what they say unless it incites violence.
If you take the example JK Rowling who regularly gets death and rape threats, nail bomb threats and doxing, I have to wonder why no action has been taken about the perpetrators of these threats.
Ah a person who believes in waiting at the bottom of the cliff with an ambulance. Good approach for a ghoul – you get more bodies maimed or dead that way.
As far as I am aware so far, the only interesting part of about this case was that the the idiot said that the written law didn’t apply to them because of a higher law. The judge took them at their word, sentenced them, so if they chose to they could appeal to the people who actually balance those higher laws against other laws. They get the chance to argue it in court possibly before and maybe after serving their sentence.
BTW: Have you ever read any analysis of how lynching, pogroms, riots, and every other destructive practice of humans operates. It is almost from people thinking that they can get away with acting like an arsehole to others and having others cheer them on with their non-violent offensive behaviour against other people. They start to think that it is their ‘right’ to do so. That any laws put in place are just there to stifle them. And you find that they end up burning people in their houses or whatever violence happens to be fashionable.
Judges and indeed most lawyers I know tend to be very aware of this. After all any reading of any case law bangs the stupidity of such attitudes home over and over again along with the inevitability of cause and effect about problems between those who think that they have an absolute right to be obnoxious. I had to deal with my old partners law and being a fast reader I spent some time reviewing it. Prefer programming, but laws have inherent logic that is worth looking at when you have questions about why this or that happens.
Basically every bigot idiot, lynch mob, and pogrom starts because anti-social idiots think that they have a ‘right’ to be offensive to ‘others’. Many laws are put in place simply to make sure that idiots find that out before they manage kill or maim others. Doesn’t always work, but the legal balance between ‘rights’ like being a loudmouth bigot and not getting killed or maimed by one is largely there to catch problems at the top of the cliff – not the bottom.
That brings me to the other side. Responsibilities….
I do some support work with computers, where the first question is always the same on any kind of computer failures. Is it plugged in or something equivalent? The second is have you rebooted it? In a good fifth of the cases one of those is the problem.
Hell – I fixed a VoIP issue for someone tonight by powering off and on their router. The router had been running for at least 4 months.
There is an equivalent question that you will find people who have to deals with non-computer social issues always ask, including threats. That is “has XYZ laid a complaint?” Or requested action?
Because in my experience that is usually a small fraction. No force or organisation can take action unless a formal complaint is laid. You also can’t take them to task if they haven’t taken any useful action because none was requested.
Many people go and say that it’d be of no use anyway, or it is too much effort, or it is cheaper to beef up your own security/insurance or whatever. Maybe so. But you can’t know unless it is tried. Also shouldn’t moan and whine about it unless that has happened and failed.
I have also noticed that the people who complain the loudest that something should be done, are also usually those who haven’t lifted a finger in any useful way to help an investigation. Because the first thing that anyone like the police will do is point out that to have a trial it has to be fair and based on evidence – not hearsay. Being a loudmouth moaner doesn’t help. Getting a conviction or substantive action depends on making sure that any subsequent trial or hearing is not contaminated by loudmouths contaminating juries or judges. It is the reason why we have suppression orders.
I have no idea if JK Rowling (vaguely remember her as a fantasy author) has laid complaint about threats or not. But I’d prefer to see an explicit statement that a formal complaint has been laid, and that the authorities are still working on it. If police or whoever drop it, then I’d want to see a copy of the complaint and some idea about evidence before I start getting wound up about that.
Basically hearsay is cheap, usually spun for effect, and most often wrong. So far that is all that I have heard. To me it is meaningless irresponsibility. I might have an opinion based on what I dig out myself and even express my understanding of it. But I tend to treat everything dished up as just being propaganda.
Incidentally, as much as I hit on police for their lackadaisical Luddite behaviour at times, go and ask any mature police officer what they find the most irritating. They will tell you that it is the people who don’t lay charges or who won’t give evidence to enable charges to be laid.
Which is where the other side of a having a right comes into play – acting responsibly.
Incidentally the same principles of balance apply to politics. For that matter for anyone with social duties. Soldiers, nursing staff, police, ambulance staff, wardens, etc. And of course to me.
"Regardless of you like it or not, freedom of expression does not extend to being a gormless bigot in public to other individuals. And if you feel forced to be one, then it pays to be a a smart one who actually understands some basic legal principles and can avoid forcing a judge to sentence you for simple stupidity."
And it appears you missed the point that women on here have been trying to make for many months. There are legislative changes that have the potential to make statements regarding biological sex fall into hate speech by being categorised as transphobic.
Overseas examples are being used, because we have followed the same pattern of changes to legislation, by asking for changes to hate speech, self-id for gender recognition, and conversion therapy. The safeguards requested by submitters that have kept track on how those laws have worked in practical terms have been ignored.
They are already in legislation. Read BORA – legislation since 1990 and the HRA legislation from 1993 that was written with BORA in mind.
That is how they have been treated in the courts for a very long time. Trying to prevent discrimination of this particular facet would be more than 30 years too late.
The former requires that the principles are applied to new and updated legislation. The latter is quite explicit that sexual orientation legally has little to do with biological sex or genetics. It also shows a strong orientation that biological sex is related mostly to child bearing.
What you're looking at in current bills is the routine legislative tidy up that is a requirement of the BORA and less explicitly for the HRA for updated and amended legislation.
Moreover, if you look through our legislation you won't find much that is still in current usage that is explicit about biological sex apart from sections that are explicitly about pregnancy and birth. That is because legislators learnt a long time ago that to make highly explicit legislation based on social circumstances is to provide legal loopholes as society changes under a lagging legal framework.
If you want to see what I mean, just look back to the legislation of 1890s and try to imagine that to be in effect today. Much of it was obsolete withing a few decades after it was made.
As far as I can tell the anti argument is based mostly around customary usage – ie a common law style of legal basis. However in NZ customary usage and common law apply as guiding principle only where not explicitly overridden by legislation.
Essentially what is being proposed by you and others as opposition to updated legislation is not to protect existing law and current established legal interpretation.
It is trying to establish a new legal principle to disadvantage another part of society. It is a new legal principle that its proponents cannot apparently manage to explain (at least to me) the reasons for changing existing law.
Which is why I keep asking for an explanation on why it is important to change the principles of current legislative law.
I'm sure that lawyers amongst us could state that more clearly. However that would be legal advice, be risky, and would probably require an arm or leg to obtain. We all know lawyers are cannibals by customary practice 😈
"Essentially what is being proposed by you and others as opposition to updated legislation is not to protect existing law and current established legal interpretation."
You make this claim but are wrong. It is only recently that sex has been conflated to include gender identity
I suggest once again you make efforts to inform yourself. It's far too hot for me to bother, and I have a reasonable expectation any evidence provided will be casually dismissed.
Recent as in 30 years old in NZ?
As I have pointed out numerous times, I have been asking for an explanation.
Basically everything else is just simple hearsay. But really the drivel I just excluded as being of little interest to me is all the explanation I can see at present.
@lprent.
Apologies for the delay, I was AFK for a while.
I don't comment in line with your priorities or reckons, that's apparent. Your lack of insight or knowledge on this topic is also apparent.
You are making some fairly wide assumptions sans evidence.
Not listening or thinking before masterfully summing up seems to be a common response.
And Sabines piece about the Norwegian man being sent to prison. Watch this happen with our hate speech laws
potential Cis girls need to know their place, and one can not start teaching them their place early enough. Penis is as Penis does does not matter if it hangs of a transwomen or a male.
"“For a minute I thought, ‘Well, there’s no point in putting compost on. I nearly turned around and drove home. But then I thought, for the boys, I have to look forward. So I went in.
“And last time I went in, we planted seeds. I told them that when you are planting seeds, you’ve got something to look forward to. I wanted them to know there is always hope.”"
Seeds of change: Prison garden tutor named Gardener of the Year
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/garden/127318958/seeds-of-change-prison-garden-tutor-named-gardener-of-the-year
Good on Bronwyn. And Ryman Health Care, for sponsoring the award. Nice to see a volunteer horticulturalist having such a positive effect on young prisoners & getting some of them interested in gardening & horticulture as a career.
Great story, and a deserved win.
That is such a good story. "I told them that when you are planting seeds, you’ve got something to look forward to. I wanted them to know there is always hope.”
I've just been planting seeds this morning before the heat. Read this story with the coffee break. It resonated with me because I planted some old seed amongst all of it, so the idea of hope was certainly there. Sowing seed is to do with life stability, hope, connection to a place. I really respect those working in prisons with such motivation- staff and volunteers.
Nearly 90,000 official fatalities in November alone.
Fknows what the rest of their winter will bring.
https://twitter.com/ArielKarlinsky/status/1477531148611985412
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-covid-19-death-toll-climbs-worlds-second-highest-2021-12-30/
The excess death measurements over long term norms have been the most useful at looking at the actual mortality levels across nations and regions.
It certainly has been useful for identifying countries whose governments routinely lie to themselves. Really hard to trust Russian government proclaimations at any time during my lifetime – but it is really starting to look like the primary state of dickwaver farces at present.
What a complete surprise. Not.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (US Rep Congresswowman from Georgia and Covid misinformation spreader) has (finally) been permanently banned from Twitter.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2022/01/twitter-permanently-bans-marjorie-taylor-greene-for-repeated-covid-19-misinformation.html
She joins other Covid persona non grata using Telegram.
Souxsie Wiles and Shaun Hendy have both made complaints that the University of Auckland isn't doing enough to protect them (as employees) from dangerous, jerks.
This is a big issue, and not just because our covid fringe is becoming dangerously extreme.
The education act says that universities, amongst other things, have to "accept a role as critic and conscience of society". That is commonly understood by most academic staff I know to involve publicly speaking out about their areas of expertise.
For a university to essentially state that the risks of speaking out should be minimised by not speaking out – that seems to be a fundamental shift in the resposibilities of academics and universities, and in my opinion most definitely deserves some manner of judicial examination.
Agree that seems a very inappropriate response from a university. Suggesting they comment less in public.
I wonder exactly what they wanted the university to do to protect them from threats, though? We don’t have a lot of info in the article on that.
E.g. I wonder if Hendy wanted Campus Security at his office door, seeing some bloke came to his office & threatened him?
And I wonder where the Police come into this – they’d seem the most appropriate organiation to be following up threats online or in person, perhaps by viewing campus CCTV footage.
Universities have loads of ways of protecting staff and equipment and students.
Most would have centrally-operated door locks on facilities, just to avoid big pouches of keys. These could easily be set to swipe-only access until the heat dies down. Prompt trespass orders. Removing office locations from websites. Then more individually-tailored solutions like panic buttons or relocating carparks, and arranging regular security escorts between offices and vehicles. Many of these are already routinely done for people involved with sensitive research. Many are also trivial amounts of $$$ compared with the
free advertising'community interest' academics in the news produce for an institution – a card lock is like $1200 to bung on a door, last time my work checked. Also, uni IT could be proactive in shutting down threatening emails and social media – just as they would if someone on facebook spoke crap about Auckland Uni.But the specifics aren't the problem, the problem is the suggestion of shutting academics up rather than working with them to figure out what to do.
Sounds like they laid the initial queries and complaints April 2020. From what I understood on twitter (some really crass stupidity on that forum today), the decision made in August was released yesterday or today. The interesting fact is that they appear to have acted quite responsibly in this – there hasn’t been a peep in any media that I know of about this.
Makes me more inclined to look at it.
I’d expect that both have made complaints with the police and possibly Netsafe under the HDCA (the police will send them there would be my bet). Probably with the social media as well (there were some whispers about people being blocked in 2020).
Yes. If the universities don’t wish to lose what little integrity they have left, then they either need to get the legislation amended and become mere technical colleges and I have some ideas about how they could do that better). Or they need to be able to make sure that their academic staff have the ability to spread knowledge, specialist understanding and ideas outside of the cloisters – because otherwise they’re a useless burden that should be stripped down to just doing a teaching role.
Cricket, cricket, cricket!
What a fantastic effort by Bangladesh, a couple of days of out playing the Black Caps and putting themselves in a potentially game winning position
Can the Black Caps come back themselves or are they playing for a draw
For the next test will the selectors swop Ravindra for Mitchell, drop a bowler for Patel or drop a bowler for a Mitchell
South Africa will certainly be following this test with interest
.Captain Samuel Vimes boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness strikes.
Mac Liman estimates she has fixed 14,000 bicycles over the last 18 years. But increasingly, the bikes coming through her Colorado shop are unfixable — and the manufacturers made them that way on purpose.
The influx of these essentially disposable bicycles has Mac raising the alarm about this trend in planned obsolescence. As we’ve covered in earlier editions of Junked By Design, our society is rife with unfixable products, which creates a mounting ecological problem.
[…]
Signs of an unfixable bike
Because Bikes Together works with donated, used bicycles, Mac has to train staff and volunteers how to process incoming bikes. Increasingly, that means teaching people to identify the bikes it’s not worth bothering to fix.
“The job used to be explaining to people how to fix things. Now, it’s explaining why they cannot,” Mac said. “The job used to be fixing; now, it’s stripping them down and scrapping them.”
Bikes Together has a checklist for spotting bikes made too poorly to fix for donation or resale. If you spot three or more of the following characteristics, the bike should be recycled:
https://uspirg.org/blogs/blog/usp/bikes-last-4-months
My partner and I bought 2 bikes in Walmart in 2013 in Salt Lake City and cycled 2,000 km with them across the U.S. When we arrived in San Francisco, a few months later, the bikes were still quite rideable, but when we contacted charities about taking them for free, they told us they weren't interested as they would be too costly to fix up (they only cost about US$80 each in Walmart). Gave them away to a homeless co-op eventually after thinking we might just leave them leant up against a wall. Yes, they were crap Chinese made bikes manufactured for short term use. The spare parts could almost to amount the same cost as the whole bikes!
Look who's laughing all the way to the bank.
https://www.linz.govt.nz/overseas-investment/decision-summaries-statistics/2020-09/202000204
Edit: and again, the self appended 1
When debt meets inflation.
"Sri Lanka is facing a deepening financial and humanitarian crisis with fears it could go bankrupt in 2022 as inflation rises to record levels, food prices rocket and its coffers run dry."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/02/covid-crisis-sri-lanka-bankruptcy-poverty-pandemic-food-prices
The list of countries on the brink grows by the day…..dominoes.