The outrage and bellicosity that has greeted the fall of the Bauer publications from comfy centrists, neolib and other out of touch media types who are for once in the frontline rather than sniping from the back of an economic crisis is a classic illustration that when tens of thousands of others lose their jobs it is a necessary market correct but when the pampered middle class lose theirs it is a government failure led depression.
One should feel very sorry for the people who have lost their jobs, but I think you can also be permitted to savour a certain delicious irony at watching publications (like the Listener) that long ago transformed themselves into cheerleading journals for the comfy and complacent middle class winners of neoliberalism, globalisation and unfettered foreign ownership of our assets scream for government intervention when the grim reaper of "market forces" comes for them. And let's not get started at how Mediaworks – who consistently argue the government should pull out media altogether because it shows then up and they compete – are bellowing about the need for government help as well now.
Some – most – have taken it on the chin, but others (Lizzie Marvelley's splenetic twitter outbursts would be funny if it wasn't tragic, a snowflake right there) have reacted in a way that kinda confirms the suspicion that quite a few of the chatterati think of themselves as part of the other, pampered class and quite different from Joe and Jane Sixpack on Struggle street.
Then you've got aging types like Chris Trotter, who yearns these days for NZ to be like it was in the 1980s. His reaction is bordering on the hysterical, as trusty mastheads of his youth fall all around him and nothing is certain anymore.
The thing is we can argue all day about the whys and wherefores of this. A wildly angry Wendyl Nissan (so much for the smooth veneer of media objectivity when the abstract becomes the personal) claimed on RNZ yesterday that the Woman's Weekly was making money. Some claim Bauer are clearing out the local opposition ahead of simply bringing it's Australian equivalents. It does seem like COVID-19 has provided a nice cover for Bauer to engage in a bit of disaster capitalism.
But really these titles have gone broke because increasingly no one reads them and nobody wants to advertise in them. Gone with not a bang, but a whimper. The Listener – the biggest of them all I think – nowadays has a "readership" of a couple of hundred thousand. That isn't sales, just what they think the number of people who read an issue is so they can pump their advertising costs. Sure, they may have been turning over a trickle of profit. But their ruthless German publishing masters clearly thought wurst was to come.
the future of how to pay for longform journalism is a conundrum even the media experts don't have an answer for. Perhaps it is time for government subsidies – but the idea that those subsidies should go to obsolescent publications owned by foreign corporations? Hmmm. Not so sure.
For what it is worth, I think it is time for a licence fee – a fee on data usage, collected by ISPs and paid to a state broadcasting entity. According to stats NZ (https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-zealand-internet-is-going-unlimited) in 2018 the average unlimited broadband user consumed 150 gigabytes a month and broadband usage was about 280 million gigabytes a month. Imagine NZers used four billion gigabytes of data a year in 2020. A fee of 1.5c a gigabyte would bring in sixty million or so (if my morning maths isn't to wobbly). It would add $27-$30 a year to the cost of that average unlimited broadband connection. Is $30 a year a price New Zealanders are willing to pay to keep a local media? Could that be a way to help fund journalism?
Have the companies pay that. There are people in NZ who can't afford to eat and pay their rent, so I think a set fee on all usage is not the best option.
I am amazed at the lack of solidarity – let alone memory – from those on the left like Sanctuary who saw their communities ripped apart in the 1990s with meatworks closing down, manufacturing industries dying, farmers walking off their land and suiciding, mortgagee sales piling up, and entire generations wrecked and forced into near-perpetual social welfare.
Did we protest at the time for the devastated provincial proletariat?
Hell yes we did. And the "we" includes Chris Trotter and plenty of others with actual functioning memories.
It may well be too much to ask people like you to lift a fucking finger in protest when it happens to the bourgeoisie. But that's just a measure of your integrity.
There will of course be plenty who like you will continue to sneer from their keyboards because they don't like the ideological impurities of the New Zealand Women's Weekly or any of the other media for which it is about to happen – but that just shows how out of touch you are with how many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders communicate.
And now for the real stuff.
We are losing thousands upon thousands to unemployment by the day right now.
They are from all kinds of industries.
Almost none of it is the fault of the newly unemployed.
Before anyone else like Sanctuary or Alwyn commits to their keyboard again and tries to offload their bile about who is more or less deserving to hold onto a job, do just one thing:
Imagine it happening to you.
Who knows, perhaps you have the memory still to remember a time when it got all a bit too close. When families were devastated, homes were lost, marriages broke down. Like is happening right now.
To avoid derailing Micky's post, what is this "bowl cut" instruction of which you wrote? Not that I'd use it. I do have experience of cutting back my fringe though, with a kind of point cutting.
I haven't seen what he wrote but I imagine he's talking about what we used to call a pudding basin haircut back in the day when you would no more waste money on sending your child to a hairdresser than fly. Your mother cut your hair. Typically the result looked as though she had upturned a pudding basin on your head and cut around it – lol. Traditionally you got one of these when you turned 5 and started school!
Yes. I know what a bowl cut is. My dad used to give my brothers such a cut. My younger bro hated them. Or maybe a slight variation on them. Bowl cuts were something I associated with Brit immigrants.
My dad had clippers that shaved the back and sides – AKA "short back and sides"
A permanent solution, no….as far as I can see all solutions have a limited period of functionality until they cease to work any longer though that period may be decades.
What I do see however is a need for some form of government employment scheme to transition out of the worst of the crisis as wasnt done in the eighties reforms…we cannot leave it all to market forces this time round because we know how that plays out.
Not all of them. For instance my maternal grandfather spent a chunk of the late depression hammering out Scenic Drive in Auckland’s Waitakere ranges pretty much by hand and blasting until they got it flat enough to get a bulldozer in. Even the thought of doing 26 miles of road in a basalt base is enough to make my skin crawl.
I was tempted to gloat about the prospect so many right wing propaganda mongering bene bashing overpaid fools, getting the medicine they are so keen on dishing out to those "lazy, other people".
But. Thinking about it, I don't wish that on anyone, apart from people like Hosking's and Richardson having their monstrous salaries reduced, to their true worth.
There are all the other people in the organisation losing their jobs, printers, delivery people typesetters etc, and the few remaining actual, journalists!
And my mum, who has been reading woman's weekly for near on 80 years.
Its not a case of wishing it upon anyone , or gloating or even indifference…nor is it dismissing the value of the work….it is a recognition of the realities.
There has been much reportage about the 'zombie' companies only surviving due to the low cost of debt and obviously were vulnerable to any revenue shock….this will be far from the last company to close its doors and the government cannot buy them all out.
One should feel very sorry for the people who have lost their jobs, but I think you can also be permitted to savour a certain delicious irony at watching publications (like the Listener) that long ago transformed themselves into cheerleading journals for the comfy and complacent middle class winners of neoliberalism, globalisation and unfettered foreign ownership of our assets scream for government intervention when the grim reaper of "market forces" comes for them.
Did you watch TV1 6pm news yesterday? Did you note the palatial back-grounds of the big names associated with said magazines who were interviewed in their homes?
To suggest he is "lacking solidarity… with those who saw their communities ripped apart in the 1990s…" and is "lacking in human empathy" is reading something into Sanctuary's comments that isn't there.
As a person who was adversely affected at the time, I see no comparison whatsoever to the events of the 1990s and Sanctuary's response to the demise of a bunch of magazines whose time was up, so the owners used the pandemic to close them down.
"Before anyone else like Sanctuary or Alwyn commits to their keyboard again and tries to offload their bile about who is more or less deserving to hold onto a job, do just one thing: "
You really don't get it do you? I don't make any comments, or express any opinions about who is "more or less deserving to hold onto a job". I merely state that if people don't buy printed magazines, and nobody is willing to pay to advertise in them they will die.
Technology becomes redundant. People in jobs within those technologies lose their jobs. I don't make decisions on those matters. Look for example at the computer industry. Remember the days of the punch rooms where a lot of people were occupied in punching data into punched cards to feed the computers of the day? Should we insist that that technology must be restored to recreate those jobs?
Of course not.
If you have access to a map of Australia have a look at the route of the railway line from Perth to Sydney. In particular have a look at the little places between Kalgoorlie and Woomera. Every name on that map was a settlement where people lived in the days when the trains were coal fueled and used water in the bilers.
Soneville, Karonie, Zanthus, Kitchener, Naretha, Rawlinna, Haig, Nurina, Loongana, Forest, Reid, Deakin, Hughes, Denman, Cook, Fisher, O'Malley, Watson, Ooldea, Bates,Wynbring, ……. There are others but I am sick of reading the names in the very small print on my map.
They were all places where people lived and worked. They were needed because a train had to take on coal about every 160 km and water every 80 km,
Well now they have Diesels and they refuel at, I believe, Kalgoorlie and Cook. Cook has a population of 4. Nothing exists of all the other places. All the people who worked there lost their jobs because the steam train was dead. Should we bring them back to recreate the jobs of yesteryear?
Why? And if you won't do it for those jobs why do it for magazines that not many people buy. Why do YOU think you have the power to decide which jobs stay and which go? Because that is the power you are claiming for yourself when you decide that these particular magazines must continue, at taxpayers expense, to be preserved.
.
Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces
There'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier
There'll be no refreshment for a thirsty jackaroo
From Melbourne to Adelaide on the overlander
With newfangled buffet cars and faster locomotives
The train stopped in Serviceton less and less often
No, there's nothing sadder than a town with no cheer
Vic Rail decided the canteen was no longer necessary there
No spirits, no bilgewater and eighty dry locals
And the high noon sun beats a hundred and four
There's a hummingbird trapped in a closed-down shoe store
This tiny Victorian rhubarb
Kept the watering hole open for sixty-five years
Now it's boilin' in a miserable March twenty-first
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of Patterson's curse
The train smokes down the xylophone, there’ll be no stopping here
All you can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer
No Bourbon, no Branchwater, though the townspeople here
Fought her Vic Rail decree tooth and nail
Now it’s boilin’ in a miserable March twenty-first
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of Patterson’s curse
The train smokes down the xylophone, there’ll be no stopping here
All ya can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer
Town With No Cheer – Tom Waits (Swordfishtrombones)
Nobody wishes the ills that follow job loss upon anyone. But this is a different issue to the problem of what publications like The Listener represent. The ideal situation is that The Listener dies and never again sees the light of day, and the consequences don't include any kind of hardship for anyone. There's an interesting piece on Stuff about a number of things but I think the issue of pointless jobs is its prevailing theme:
My favourite was the tantrum by Bill Ralston looking like something from the Australian outback (is that the new Ponsonby look?) Still can't stop giggling.
Brilliant summation-this'Some claim Bauer are clearing out the local opposition ahead of simply bringing it's Australian equivalents. It does seem like COVID-19 has provided a nice cover for Bauer to engage in a bit of disaster capitalism.'.
"…You know some folk do '…read Farrar for news and opinion.'.."
Maybe once upon a time. Farrar's blog struggles for relevance these days and is regarded as toxic – something he can only blame himself for, as he allows the comments of completely fucking insane nutters to remain up. To put it bluntly, he has inherited the Whaleoil crowd and done nothing about it – and his reputation as a source has suffered accordingly.
To put it bluntly, he has inherited the Whaleoil crowd and done nothing about it – and his reputation as a source has suffered accordingly.
??!!??!!!?
That statement suggests that Farrar's blog has been less toxic and less extreme than Whaleoil's. That's not true, not in the slightest. Farrar's views are as horrible as Cameron Slater's, and the people commenting on his site are no more better informed or humane. Farrar himself is a disgrace: he once wrote about a visit he made to the Occupied Terrritories, and claimed that he had not noticed anything at all to suggest that Palestinians were being oppressed.
Over many years, Farrar has encouraged and/or turned a blind eye to the most ignorant and racist comments outside of a NewstalkZB announcers' barbecue….
I don't think he should be fired (last thing we need right now is a change of Health Minister during a pandemic). But I do think he and Ardern should address this more directly. He needs to own up to having fucked up (the traveling thing, they can deal with the stupid of a sign written car internally) and point out we are all on a learning curve, an apology would be good too.
Unfortunately we have a macho political culture that will try and use that to take Labour down. Labour should still do the right thing.
I'm also mindful that those government people will be full of stress chemicals, and they're going to have to sustain living like that for quite some time. I can understand why he would want and even need to do what he did. It's still a fuck up though.
Wow. Some one on the Standard actually admits Clark made a mistake or a fuck up in your words.
IPrent will ban you! The echo chamber must be preseved at all costs.
[lprent: Or you could be less of a moronic dimwit and listen when a moderator talks to you about your behaviour. Commentary is ok. However this is a forum for debate and that involves dealing with other peoples disagreeing with you, especially when they make reasonable objections to your points. Sticking your head firmly up your arse and ignoring them, which appears to be your childish default behaviour isn’t acceptable. FFS grow up. ]
Not sure how new you are to TS, but most of us have been criticising Labour for a long time. I suggest you take note of Lynn's moderations, because now you just look like a troll.
It would make little to no difference to the pandemic management if the Health Minister is sacked, the bureaucrats in the ministry are effectively directing and running the show at present.
What it would do if he was severely censured is signal that no one in NZ whatever their status is above those impositions being placed on the rest of us.
The names of the MOH bureaucrats might change, but the culture remains.
This government demonstrated its subservience to the Ministry when it allowed the demonstrably incompetent Group Manager of MOH:DSS to closely advise Ministers on disability and carer issues.
I don't think he should be sacked, but certainly hope the PM gives him a kick up the backside.
No, it wasn't terrible, it wasn't near the level of Ministerial misbehaviour in the past, BUT he's just made his own job – and the government's – harder. Not helping.
Hopefully it will highlight the overreach, of banning, all, car travel for exercise, when there are people who cannot get enough exercise while following the distancing rules and keeping safe, without some car travel.
Letting scared people on Facebook,and "past their use by date" Senior cops who got there by attrition, set the rules.
But it won't. And by giving those people a stick to beat the Government with. I was going to say he should go. But maybe this is an opportunity to be more rational about total bans on activities.
Yes, there have been a few changes like that. For instance going from a complete ban on swimming to swimming in a way that is very safe (ie no surfing). These changes are to be expected This is such a novel situation that it would be impossible to be completely right from the get go.
In my neighbourhood people are being very sensible and reasonable. Almost no traffic at all. I wonder if car use will reduce in a more permanent way, even when we can drive freely?
I hope it does Wayne. People have been pushing for less traffic for a long time, seems an ideal opportunity to adopt some new social practices. Less pollution, better for climate mitigation, more liveable urban spaces, more health, lots of benefits.
Agreed on the need to adapt advice over time. Not least because they'd have to wait and see how well people were getting what needed to be done.
I wonder how much of our low community transmission, so far, is due to people thinking for themselves and maintaining their distance, well before the Government required it?
In our previous week before the lockdown, we obviously didn't see many people, but the ones we did were already socialising from several metres away, in their dinghies, the local shop was sanitising the EFTPOS pad between customers and the fuel bowser attendant was cleaning it between fills. People walking on the road were keeping their distance.
Unless it is for essentials, the answer is no. If you have to drive somewhere for a walk, for example, then it is not regarded as local and you’re flouting the rules. I saw a Government clip somewhere yesterday that explained it well but I cannot find it 🙁
if someone needs to drive 4 blocks to the local park so their kids can run around, and this is for the parents' mental health as much as anything, that seems as essential to health as walking round the block next to one's house in terms of personal physical exercise.
As long as people are social distancing, not using jungle gyms, and not taking the piss or socialising, this seems reasonable to me.
If the govt cracks down on that under the current level, it will be because of people doing stupid shit like socialising, not because someone went an extra few blocks.
No. It hasn’t weka @ 2.3.1.1 Those who need to travel by car to get to an area for exercising can do so provided it is within their neighbourhood. I think it was Bush who reiterated this only yesterday. I am one of those affected since I can no longer walk to the beach for exercise because of severely arthritic knees.
In the case of David Clark… I gather he drove 2 kms to get to a motorbike track which was closely associated with his neighbourhood. I think the public pearl clutching over his 'misdemeanour' is being a tad overdone for political reasons.
Anne. Clark drove his electorate vehicle emblazoned with a photo of his physiognomy to a mountain bike track for a spot of between video conferencing mountain biking.
An activity on the 'We 'd rather you not indulge in because of risk of injury' list.
The whole incident smacks of either extraordinary arrogance or extreme tone deafness.
Or both.
This is a fuck up of quite significant proportions and could not have come at a worse time.
He used his electorate vehicle because he could put his bike into it. It was hardly for publicity because there was no one there but himself. Looked like an easy ride – nothing dangerous – and there are few spots he can go to where he can have any privacy.
You've got it in for him as you seem to have a good many people, and you are using it to discredit him. No different from those who are doing it for political reasons.
Why didn't he just ride his bike to the track if it is so close ? Or just ride it around his suburb a few times like people seem to be doing in my neck of the woods ?
Or just ride it around his suburb a few times like people seem to be doing in my neck of the woods ?
I'm a commuter cyclist. So when I ride, I ride as much as possible on cycle paths and only go on the roads when I absolutely have to.
That is because many motorists can be classed as dangerous fuckwits on the road.
They open doors whilst parked without looking in their mirror. That happened to me on Wednesday. Fortunately I was riding a metre out from the parked cars and didn't have truck or SUV trying to pass me.
They change lanes without notice because they expect cyclists to be really slow. That last happened on Tuesday. FFS: I routinely ride my e-bike between 35km/hour and 50km/hour except uphill. The number of time I've had to crash on the brakes to stop crashing into fuckwit driver who jumps into the left lane directly in front of me and then slows down to lok for a park is almost a daily occurrance if I'm on a road.
They (especially now) speed through intersections when the other traffic has a green light because it was orange when they crossed the line. That happened to me yesterday. Which is why I sometimes get a honk from cars behind. The acceleration for an electric bike is such that cars are just slow starters. I have to make sure that there isn't damn fool running a orange light.
Of course there are even more driver who are considerate and not impatient dimwits. But when you have no protection you stick to what you know works and what you have experience with.
It seems unlikely that David Clark is a commuter. He sounds like a recreational mountain biker. Probably doesn't ride on the road because it is too damn dangerous.
I trust that answers your query.
I expect it doesn’t. To me it is apparent that I’d class you as being a ignorant dangerous fuckwit motorist who is too stupid to think through what other road users do.
They (especially now) speed through intersections when the other traffic has a green light because it was orange when they crossed the line
Incidentally I frequently see cyclists (and some scooter user) do the same even when the light is red. Basically police should seize their bikes/scooters and sell them to someone who is less stupid. If they are renting them, then they should inform all hire companies that they should not be able to hire one again. Can't think of anything that is a more stupid behaviour.
"I expect it doesn’t. To me it is apparent that I’d class you as being a ignorant dangerous fuckwit motorist who is too stupid to think through what other road users do."
Perhaps you haven't noticed the vast decrease in traffic on the road at the moment ? This is making it vastly easier for cyclists to get out and about without worrying nearly as much about motorists.
Please continue with your specious rant it's most amusing.
A friend, homeless and forced to live in a campground and share facilities with a swag of overseas backpacker types, drives her wee van out of the camp ground and down the road to a near deserted beach to allow her aged and grass averse dog to walk on sand and in soothing seawater.
No risk. No harm. And believe me, her fragile state means that the whole social distancing thing has been her way of life for years.
She gets tailed by the local cops in a marked car who park right behind her. They don't approach her in a community friendly manner. Just intimidate by their close presence. Later, when she is driving out of the camp for another dog walk and soul repair session she gets told by the camp managers she's going out too often.
Now. Do you think that Dr. (of god only knows) Clark will intervene and allow my highly stressed friend a pass to indulge in an activity that is causing harm to no one and benefiting her and her wee dog immeasurably?
Of course not. Don't be silly.
But bet you we get a call or a text sometime today when she reads about Clark's little lapse.
Her fingernails are ragged enough already.
But what does that matter so long as we all abide by the New Way and allow our Minister of Health in time of a pandemic to openly and loudly flout the rules he demands we plebs follow?
And while you're there Anne and making this personal…who ate these "…good many people…" I have it in for?
I think Jacinda's conversation with David Clark will probably start with, "David. What the actual fuck?!"
Unless he's oblivious to everything going on around him, I struggle to comprehend how he thought doing what he did was in any way a good idea. And taking a van. With your fucking face painted on it. Christ on a bike, man!
I guess he was hoping everyone was at home and no one would notice. But the Blue Team are watching. The Blue Team are always watching…
Speaking of the Blue Team, I see Joyce and English have slithered out from whatever rocks they've been hiding under to throw handfuls of muck at the government. Armchair generals are the very best kind after all.
and "Jesus Christ on a fucking chariot" were my first comments last night when I read it on Stuff.
And Farrar, Blue to his core, had the breathtaking audacity to dig up the putrid corpse of Ryall and state categorically that 'he would never do such a thing…'
Ryall was a numpty of outstanding proficiency who accepted bucketsloads of absolute bullshit from his trusted advisors at the Ministry of Health. Outstanding he was. Set a whole new standard for fuckwittedness of Ministers of Health.
This is of course from the point of view of a family carer of a MOH:DSS client with very high support needs who still hasn't managed to remove the knife in my back planted there by Ryall and driven home by subsequent Ministers, including the current incumbent.
I agree totally. He's made a dumb mistake and even Willie Jackson couldn't defend him this morning. Its probably not sack able but does undermine the govt. Jacinda will have a talking to him. Anyway, shouldn't really question on this blog as you are not allowed to debate or disagree according to IPrent below. – Goodbye.
More and more it looks to me like a situation with no good outcome. Such are our times.
But yep, people need to be able to make personalised decisions within the rules. Otherwise we will have rules designed for middle of the bell curve people that cause problems for others.
Don't be silly Rosemary. He was 0.3km outside the 2km limit-hardly a hanging offence. It is possible the bike track was on the way to or near his local supermarket-have you thought about this? I have to drive 19km to my local supermarket which opens up no end of biking/walking opportunities.
It appears the Health Minister followed all other self-isolation criteria. Media I have read/listened too (Stuff/RNZ) have not given this story any oxygen at all.
Here in Wanaka groups of people are congregating on bridges and jumping into the Clutha River, ignoring all of the s-i rules-these are the people the police should be chasing.
I do sympathise with some of the comment on Kiwiblog criticising the fact that people seem to be getting away with biking, including mountain-biking, all over the place. Mountain biking is more dangerous than skiing in terms of injuries suffered. Meanwhile I am not allowed to take my sailing boat out in light winds with reefed sails, which is safer than both.
"He was 0.3km outside the 2km limit-hardly a hanging offence"
If he was Joe Bloggs, it wouldn't matter. He's the Minister of Health and has a perception/messaging issue to deal with now. Hoping it blows over, but it does leave the problem of the perception that we can bend the rules.
Yes, a senior Minister should grasp the basics of perception.
We know (and he should have) that the PM will be asked about it at the press conference today. She is now obliged to say …
either "No biggie, not bothered", which she can't then combine with her usual messaging. She can't switch seamlessly from a shrug to a call for sacrifice.
or (more likely) "The Minister got it wrong".
Ardern's tough-but-kind persona is very effective in this crisis, and she doesn't need that undermined. More importantly, the country doesn't.
Yes it is about perception – rightly or wrongly people in the public eye are held to a higher standard of behaviour whether they like it or not! Silly man!!!
Its not so much that he was 0.3km out of range, its the fact that its a deserted bike trail that the general public are not using as they've been told not to do those sort of activities, but Clark decides that rule only applies to the plebs not him. What if he had an accident somewhere along the trail?
you should read the link though, tracks aren't closed, it's the huts and campsites that are. Obviously they're also telling people to not go into the back country and to use tracks in the neighbourhood (they also say don't drive to them).
Yes but point being we are all told not to go surfing, hunting, sailing, swimming? or anything else and slightly dangerous. So now the general public stuck at home with time on their hands will say if its ok for him (and he makes the rules) its ok for us.
Yes, which is why he has apologised, and everyone is reiterating stay home, don't drive unless it's necessary, get some exercise, wash your hands and practice physical distancing.
"For everyone’s safety, at Alert Level 4 people must not to head into the backcountry or remote areas, nor should they undertake outdoor activities (such as adventure sports or hunting) that would expose them to higher levels of risk." https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/issues/covid-19/
Clark wasn't in a remote area, nor was he partaking in an adventure sport. Nor was he even in a DOC area to start with.
Then that's great. We can all head out to the parks.
Did you notice in the photo the car park was empty so the public was actually staying away!
[lprent: Read my note please – rather than your current career of being a dimwitted repetitive troll who never listens. I’ll release one more comment, otherwise I’ll get ride of you as stupid time wasting problem with a brain of stone and clogged up ‘ears’ that need a pneumatic drill to clear them. ]
There seems to be people, and different branches of Government, making up ad-hoc rules all over the place.
Not even sure myself, where we were at in the "driving to exercise" rules, and I've been going on the Government Covid website every day.
They are not, helping.
Why does it matter how far I walk, for example, when the only thing I touch on the entire walk is my front gate, and all of us on every walk, are keeping, so far, several metres apart.
I am refraining from sailing in the harbour ,, even though I can do that without going within 20metres of anyone, and my coastal capable boat, is extremely unlikely to require help, where I can almost walk ashore, as much not to bother the cop who has to tell me off, as much as any other reason.
I would rather they spent their time, talking to the few, that are really doing things that endanger other people.
If everyone tries to follow the principal, "act as though you have it", and keep away from people outside your bubble, we will not, have community transmission. Whether someone drove 2.174km or 1.999km, away from home is not going to change that.
Some people like the reassurance of, rules, or the power kick from forcing others to follow them. But arbitrary, detailed and confusing rules, treating people like children, don't work.
My only thought about the whole thing is why didn't he just bike to the start of the trail? At 2.3km away, it would have taken bugger-all longer than the time needed to load and unload his bike into the van.
If you aren't used to riding on the road, most cyclists won't if they have any choice. It is frigging dangerous.
I've only started since I don't have a bike path between me and work from december (they moved). Even now, during my daily exercise during the lockdown, I'm still getting close to having idiot car driver caused accidents most days. I’m road riding now because it is an ideal time to get more experience at avoid the dipshit motorists. I normally ignore main roads, riding on footpaths by preference because it is safer for me and not that dangerous to pedestrians (I just wait at slow speeds until they move over).
Most mountain bikers who do trails don’t ride on roads. They don’t have the road skills and their bikes don’t have all of the lights, reflectors and other crap like highlighted clothes and road level helmets that road cyclists routinely have.
I bike because I can't walk far due to a pad wearing out between my right big toe and the foot bones.
I avoid road riding around Dorkland, it's no fun at all and scary AF. And I'm the kind of person that needs a bit of adrenaline with my exercise, whether it's on a bike or kayak or skis. But right now in lockdown it might be ok.
When it comes to the specific ride in question, supposedly David's home is in Opoho. The roads to and from the Logan Park High School carpark don't look like the kind of hazards our Orcland roads are. Or better yet, do a loop to the carpark, over the Big Easy, then back home via Signal Hill Rd.
I did my MBA in Dunedin from 1985 and was there for while afterwards until the end of 1988 while my partner at the time finished her dual degrees.
We had bikes the entire time that I was there and never rode them around the city. The main reason was because compared to Auckland the streets were quite narrow (more like the rabbit warren cart track streets in the water side of Ponsonby or Kingsland) and the parked cars made them too dangerous. Instead we walked most of the time or took a car.
Where we used the bikes was where there were no parked cars and the roads were pretty wide – riding around most of the West Coast for instance.
I think that the roads are wider further out from the centre of Dunedin from what I saw this Xmas at least on the flat. Once you get into those hills however they looked like single way cart tracks winding their way up and down. The danger on bikes is mostly proximity to cars.
I can’t remember much about Opoho, but generally I regard any route as dangerous if at any point you get to effectively single lane with even occasional parked cars. Which is why I never road there. All of the roads around where I lived were like that.
While there are lot of roads that are like that in Auckland, there are usually routes that allow you to avoid them here. Less so in Wellington or Dunedin. Whereas riding in Christchurch or Invercargill is just so damn easy.
"We had bikes the entire time that I was there and never rode them around the city."
At that same time I commuted via bike from Maryhill to work at the bottom of MacClaggan Street. One morning I rode (with feet sliding) all the way down down High Street in snow.
My point wasn’t really about snow or the shape of roads – it was about bloody motorists.
I grew up in Mt Albert in Auckland. We used to ride everywhere all of the time. But the traffic went from being not a problem in the late 60s to bleeding dangerous by the early 80s as the population went up markedly and the quality of the drivers dropped.
In the late 70s and early 80s I’d had several accidents on pushbikes and motor scooters, all the fault of drivers. The worst was riding down a shallow slope on morningside drive by St Lukes Mall and having a car abruptly turn right in front of me to go into the mall. Or having a car pull out of a parking space on the side of the road obviously without having looked in their wing mirror.
Problem is that with a bike of any kind you’re reliant on dimwits in cars. After a few accidents caused by motorists you become a really defensive rider very fast. Dunedin city drivers really didn’t impress me with the care that they took looking around.
Of course I could just have high standards…
I’d point out that in my entire car driving career, I’ve only had a few accidents. One where another car turned right into me (I still have no idea how they could have missed an burnt orange peugeot). One where a tire blew out after running into the end of someones exhaust dropped in the southern motorway – it was evening and I didn’t see the pipe on the road until too late. And one on the bridge evening commuter shuffle when an idiot talking to the female passenger (I’d be watching him in the mirror) behind me ran straight into my arse.
Oh and I slid a long wheel base land rover off a track once, while I was trying to get around a slip in the clay road.
…why didn't he just bike to the start of the trail?
Riding mountain bikes on the road is a pain in the arse with those fat, knobby tyres. You'd have to be very determined or a glutton for punishment to choose to do it.
Not as much a pain in the arse as riding skinny road tyres around a mountain bike trail. Or snow, for that matter. I was a product development engineer at Trek in Wisconsin for a year. I've ridden some weird shit and seen a lot of even weirder shit happen on bikes.
In San Diego I lived about 4km from some primo trails. I almost always rode there and back, it just felt wrong to drive there. It helped to pump up the tyres a bit for the road and let them down for the trails. Not locking out the shocks on the road was good for dialling in smooth pedalling technique.
I don't know where in Opoho he lives but that's the suburb with Dunedins steepest streets (Baldwin for eg, like excessively steep), to get to Logan Park you'd have to use the high windy narrow road through the Botanical Gardens, or go the long way (bout 5-6 kms) through the university.
This is mountain biking we're talking here. Steepness and hills are kinda the point.
Baldwin street is overrated. Hell, my driveway here in Titirangi is steeper. For about ten metres or so, anyways. Was down there in November and my twins on their learners permit wanted to drive up it to see what the big deal was. It was a letdown for them.
Shoulda made them do a three point turn at the steepest bit.
Baldwin Street is further up North East Valley and doesn't link to Opoho, but there are other steep-ish streets from NEV up to Opoho Like Blacks Road, which on paper links to the Big Easy (down a gully). Clark will live at about 100m which isn't much in Dunedin.
Funny thing is he drove down from Opoho to near Logan Park at near sea level (at what was Pelichet Bay before it was reclaimed). Then the Big Easy track heads up the Opoho Creek gully to closer to where he lives. There's walking track access from Opoho, but I don't know if there's bike access.
But the driving a couple of km to the track isn't what the PM told him off for, it was for doing risky recreation which has clearly been officially discouraged for ordinary people.
Presumably some people would get a bit grumpy if the Minister of Health ended up crocked up in hospital right now.
From trail ratings I've read, Big Easy does not qualify as risky recreation. As lprent says, even with reduced lockdown traffic riding the streets is riskier.
He would have been told off for the "not a good look" of getting sprung for doing something we've all been sorta kinda instructed to not do.
I'm good with trusting people to make decisions in their own location. But we do need the govt to be seen to doing the right thing here, because now people will be going oh, it's ok to drive to my local bike track. I wish he'd taken a plain car.
But perception is everything. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of what he did, he's the health minister. At a time when the message is stay at home what he did means there'll be people who'll think 'what's good for the goose' then find themselves being confronted by the cops. It's a time when the government needs the support and cooperation of citizens, which in turn means the respect of citizens. Without that we're stuffed. Clark should've known that and have acted accordingly.
Reminded me of when I was a kid at a friends house for dinner, and they all prayed, I didn't as I had no idea what they were doing, anyway, one of the other kids told their dad I hadn't prayed and the dad said "how did you know? were you not praying too?". Just the person who took the photograph was a couple kms away from wherever they lived too (I know the area).
But ignoring all that – it goes against what we are being asked to do. If everybody acted in the same way as the minister of health did in this circumstance the whole isolation 'thing' would be nowhere as effective and people will die.
No they're not. They are telling us not to go swimming in clusters and to keep the full 2 metre distance from one another. That did not happen in Mission Bay, Auckland for example, so they shooed the lot of them off the beach. Since then they appear to have eased the rules and if people are acting sensibly… going for a swim by themselves or in pairs and keeping a good distance from one another they are being left alone. That is what is happening at my local beach anyway.
Your political bias is shining through. Knew it wouldn’t take long before the rwnj’s were back to normal. In fact they’ve been strangely absent here up until now.
Justify it anyhow you like……Clark was an idiot. He is obviously above the rules for us plebs.
[lprent: You appear to be reluctant to actually deal with the objections to your pre-written scenario. That does not constitute robust debate. That just makes you look like a fucking useless and ignorant idiot troll. I suggest that you engage or leave before I make the decision for you. ]
Yes. It was mistake to go in his electorate van. His bad luck that a Nat – who was also 2 km away from his residence – happened to spot him and took a photo and dropped him into it. Someone should trace the source of the photo and see who it was, and what he/she was doing in the area too.
So it would've been okay to go in his private car without the identifying stuff on the side of it? Why then wouldn't it have been okay for the photographer to have been there?
Perhaps the photographer lived across the road and was going for a quick walk alone for a bit of exercise? There's certainly nothing to suggest the photographer was mountain biking, either.
So you're saying, mcflock, that the photographer had no business being there? The point is that their presence may have been well within the common understanding of the limits of the lock down.
No, I'm saying that there are no houses "just across the road".
If the photographer thought being there was fine for them, why would anyone think Clark's presence was camera-worthy? You're coming up with imaginings to defend rank hypocrisy.
The carpark is down a long dead end track behind the school, so the photographer must have been in there for a specific reason. Maybe going for a ride themselves, dropping someone off or picking them up, or maybe had seen the van and followed it in.
"If the photographer thought being there was fine for them, why would anyone think Clark's presence was camera-worthy? You're coming up with imaginings to defend rank hypocrisy."
Even if there aren't 'houses across the road', my point is the photographer may have been there within the limits of the lock down. Clark clearly wasn't. It hasn't been established the photographer had no business being there. If the photographer was there legitimately there's no hypocrisy. Your logic is lacking.
McFlock, that's your stomping ground isn't it? The Oddity says the van was parked at Logan Park school, other reports say it was at Signal Hill. Do you recognise from the photo which carpark it was?
edit: never mind, Pete seems pretty definite it was Logan Park school.
Thanks Pete. I couldn't match up what was in the news photo with what was in the google maps satellite photo, but there's a pin there for the carpark in an open field. S'pose the carpark has been developed since the satellite photo.
Wouldn't catch me anywhere near a cycle track lol.
But you can see from the stuff pic and pete's link the start of the track as a V and the position of individual trees that it's at the lower carpark next to LPHS.
Oh, and if you look at the map, Clark lives in Ohopo and he parked at the Signal Hill reserve carpark. The way the crow flies this is probably about 500m, certainly well under 1km, let alone 2km!!!
The only way to get to Signal Hill lookout is by car or bike, no one walks that road, if you did walk it would take maybe 40 mins, an hour? There are no houses near there, it's a tourist spot normally.
The Nat-voting numpty who ratted on Clark at what is a time of major pressure would have known exactly where the minister lived and they would have known exactly what they were doing when they went public.
I’ve imagined myself in the same position and I wouldn’t breathlessly go to the media. But Nat voters are venal like that.
The car park is behind Logan Park High School at the bottom of the track. It may be 500m by bike but there's no direct route by car, via Lovelock Track it's 2.4km.
But according to the PM the distance isn't the issue.
Hi Anne – hope you are well. I'm really not that concerned about him using his electorate van. The guys probably working his ass off at the moment, and I don't begrudge him some 'me' time at all. I think the issue is the nature of the activity – mountain biking. https://covid19.govt.nz/help-and-advice/for-everyone/leaving-your-house/ says this:
Help our emergency services by only doing safe activities, such as going for a walk.
Don’t go swimming, surfing, hunting or tramping.
Anyone giving Clark flack for having a break is being a dick. But IMHO he should not have been mountain biking.
All that said, I'm loooking out over the upper harbour towards TeAtatu and gee it's tempting to put my little boat in. We're all human after all!
Nice one Paddington. Of course he made a mistake and he has admitted as much.
What I take objection to is the over-reactions largely by those who are indulging in political point scoring. Interestingly, these types have been strangely silent on this blog for weeks now, then suddenly when a cabinet minister makes a wee mistake – and let anyone name a minister of any political persuasion who hasn't – and they all turn up for the kill.
Their motivations are crystal clear for all to see.
I'm not so "silly" as to read the comments from Farrar's Ferals, my primary interest is following what various platforms are choosing to highlight by way of posts and opinion pieces.
I have a particular and very personal interest in all things Ministry of Health and especially the relationship between the Ministry and the Minister.
And although, despite his Higher Education, Clark was clearly unsuited from day one to be the Minister in Charge of the Transformation of Kindness (after the much need high colonic) promised by Our Leaders he has outdone even my low expectations of him.
Heavens to Betsy BG, he gave the lot if us in Lockdown a very emphatic FU.
If what David Clark did was a general member of the public it would have likely gone unnoticed, and if the police had discovered them they would probably have been 'educated'.
But Clark isn't just an ordinary member of the public.
So this doesn't look good for Clark nor for the Government, on an issue that is annoying many people due to open abuses and borderline cases and in particular a lack of clarity (that has to be rectified quickly). Clark has made it appear that anyone can decide for themselves what they do.
Possible more importantly, Clark has what must be one of the most important jobs in the country, in the biggest issue facing health in probably a hundred years.
So why is he working from home and not in Wellington?
The Prime Minister has seen fit to work from Wellington. The Minister of Finance and the Director-General of Health and the Commissioner of Police and the Director of Civil Defence and Emergency Management are all in Wellington dealing with an unprecedented crisis.
I can understand Clark preferring to be at home for personal and family reasons, but he can't be as effective from home asd he could be working with the other key personnel and his Ministry of Health in Wellington.
Unless he is unofficially but deliberately sidelined .
I'm self-isolating to protect myself and others including a vulnerable person. I haven't left my property for nearly two weeks.
But it's obvious from media and social media coverage that many people are doing a wide range of activities away from home. This is likely to keep creeping to more activities and more risks.
In case you hadn’t noticed ( *sigh* ) all Ministers and MPs, apart from Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson, are working from where ever their home is. The reason why these two are required to be at the centre is because they need to use their actual hands to formally and legally sign things – like requests to use powers granted by the ‘crown’ like asking to use the armed forces and expending money from the treasury.
Everyone else is remote..
Ministers don’t need to be in Wellington. After all they don’t exactly have bits of hardware like bodies or sewerage systems that they’re working on. Most of their ‘hands’ are part of the bureaucracy or at the coalface. They just need to be able to communicate with those that they are responsible for and working with all around the country.
This includes the epidemic response committee which arguably is as important or more important as a frigging minister of cabinet.
The only requirement in our system for MPs to be together otherwise is pass legislation with even a token presence. Which they did before stage 4 when parliament shut itself down for a time.
You're right about that. I do most of my work remotely from Dunedin. I've been working in Timaru, Auckland and the UK today from home. But for big and critical jobs we like to do site visits, there are things you can miss from not being on site dealing with key people face to face and seeing a bigger picture.
All the other key leaders seem to be involved in person, they have appeared in various combinations in media conferences (keeping appropriate distances to set a good example) so must have a safe bubble to work in.
Keep in touch with what the Government doesn't want you to do when in isolation, or when in a key ministerial position?
Remote conferencing is good for many things, but it isn't as good as face to face for important discussions and decision making.
Face-to-face meetings allow for clearer communication. In addition to being able to read facial expressions, body language, and inflection, in-person meetings often end up being more positive, and considered more credible than online or virtual conversations.
In a face-to-face meeting, participants can see the reactions of others, recognizing body language and gestures. Those nonverbal signs help participants and meeting leaders to know if others understand the points they are making.
Ardern: “People can go outside to get fresh air and drive short distances if needed, but we have asked people to avoid activities where there is a higher risk of injury, and the Minister should have followed this guidance.”
The latest Daily COVID-19 update from the New Zealand Government (just received by email):
Answers to common questions
Q. I want to get some fresh air in my neighbourhood this weekend. How can I stay safe?
A. You might be tempted to leave the house this weekend, particularly if the weather is nice. Remember, staying home is the best thing you can do to stop the spread of COVID-19. But you can leave the house to buy groceries or to get some fresh air in your neighbourhood.
If you do leave the house this weekend, here are some do’s and don’ts to remember:
Keep a 2 metre distance from other people at all times.
Stay local if you go out for exercise and stay close to home.
Keep it solitary when going out, just by yourself or with the people you live with.
If you're exercising in your neighbourhood and it's too busy, go home. Go out later.
Help our emergency services by only doing safe activities, such as going for a walk.
Don’t go swimming, surfing, hunting or tramping.
Don’t touch surfaces others may have touched and avoid park benches or playgrounds.
Don’t travel far from home, especially not to baches or second homes.
Clark has apologised for doing something a bit risky (riding a bike on a dirt track). But sometimes driving a short distance for exercise seems to be within the rules from what I can tell. The guidance is to avoid unnecessary travel.
I do video conferencing all of the time. Kind of have to with my current project team being in the UK, aussie, parts of the US and now locked down here. It isn’t any worse or better than when we all did the same thing around a meeting room table with or without video links to outliers as I did it a decade ago. Or when doing it via chat rooms and version control systems as I did 20 years ago.
Or as programmers do it these days; via slack, jira, confluence, stash and jenkins or their equivalents. We seldom use video conferencing except to deal with the unskilled (like managers and customer), because we’ve been doing this kind of remote stuff forever and we’re efficient doing it.
These days we just layer all of those together depending on who the audience is.
It is like everything else – you get better at it the more you do it.
I don't think it's fair or correct to sack Clark for anything in particular. He's clearly an idiot so blame shouldn't come into it. He should just be sacked for general incompetence.
Liz Craig would be very appropriate but this is her first term so it could be a bit soon. She wasn't even appointed to the Epidemic Response Committee.
There is a very funny picture leading Brian Easton's column on Pundit re Trump masking. I can't copy and paste it but it can be seen on https://www.pundit.co.nz/
The PM will likely address the Minister of Health’s brain fade at her press conference today. Hopefully anyway, and use him as an example of what not to do. He should apologise profusely. Jacinda did not need this at this time. She has to keep well and get enough sleep and not be kept awake at night by such stupidity.
Jacinda is a very weak leader re staff. Twyford, Lees-Galloway and Clark (and NZ First MP's) often embarrass her but she will not fire anyone. The talent pool is too shallow we all know that. She also only acted on Clare Curran and Meka Whaitiri as she was forced to.
She needs to take a leaf out of Helen Clarks' playbook.
Like many others, Jimmy is still tuned in to "politics as usual".
Previous cases are irrelevant here. Firings have always been based more on the importance of the sinner than the sin (Murray McCully broke more rules than there are in the book, but survived, because he was Murray McCully and knew where the bodies were buried).
The PM won't fire Clark because she is dealing with an extraordinary challenge, and the health system doesn't need a newbie learning the name tags. That is vastly more important than playing the Beehive games which made headlines on a slow news day, but are entirely irrelevant now.
I have to agree with you on Jacinda's communication (and not just this Covid-19 thing), it is always very good. Just wish she would put some of her MP's in their place when the do absolutely dumb things like this that embarrass them.
Gee the leader of the of a labour party (the party that try's to make workers lifes better) doesnt believe in pulling their metaphorical penis out and sacking people to prove they’re the bees knees.
She was none of those things Chris. OK maybe a bit duplicitous in a political sense but you name a prominent politician who isn't. But she was from broadly the same generation and Presbyterian background as I came from. We were brought up not to show our emotions on our sleeve. It was often mistaken for coldness and lack of empathy. It was neither of those things.
Helen Clark was certainly no idiot. But I knew her personally. She was none of the other things.
I disagreed with her simply calling a hiatus to the Neo-liberal onslaught. “New Zealand is tired of changes”, But doubt anyone could have achieved much more at the time, in that direction.
Male politicians with similar characteristics, would have been credited with much more positive descriptions.
The only brain fade was using a marked van. In his defence a chance to get away on his own and do a bit of clear thinking is probably invaluable considering how many are yapping in his ear. I once had a job that required a bit of clear headed thinking on occasion and I used to drive a few kms away and park-up and think without distraction for 5 or 10 minutes.
It seems COVID-19 deaths in Europe are being way under-reported. For instance, in France and Spain, retirement home deaths apparently aren't included in reported totals.
Every morning Bill de Blasio, mayor of NY does a presser.
This morning he is advising all NYer's to wear a 'face covering'. People may carry the virus yet have no symptoms, so they just spread it, asymptomatic . He does not want people using surgical masks, as those need to be saved for those on the 'front line'. Instead encouraging people to make their own or wear a bandana.
It must be horrendous in NY, he's asking for the military to mobilize and for any medical people to come to NY to help.
If your interested, I usually watch it on this link, comes on around 9.30-10am.
Meanwhile, agent orange has just started his daily presser…
The Presidential presser yesterday started off with an astonishing electioneering session. They didn't want to talk about the new milestones or the number of deaths and infected so went full out on war.
The navy is going to sort out the drug cartels. This is war. Iran is going to be sorted out, this is war. 'We are not sleeping, no-one should think that while we're distracted we're not ready." The navy is ready, they're ready to go. As of today they're …
And all those saying how great the Leader is. The election is the week before Veterans Day. I wonder if the troops and rockets and bowing and scraping experts will be ready for the parade in Washington.
Great piece here from the NYTimes about the demise of advertising-funded print media. Perhaps a few of the loud mouthed media commentators here in NZ should read it and have a deeper look at the reasons their industry is headed the same way as the dinosaurs. Apologies if it’s paywalled, an online sub to the NYT is the same price as the NZHerald though and about a million times better.
Maybe contact Mitre 10 and ask them to have it included in their list of essential items? I under stand they had to submit such a list to the government?
In anticipation of a resolution of our current homeless/NFA situation I eagerly went online seeking 5ol heavy duty storage crates with lids. The crates I originally packed our books in have not fared well in the shed they are stored in. They will not survive being trucked to our prospective home.
Got the same NO CAN SELL message.
Played the phone tag game for a while, but life is short.
They plan to test hundreds of thousands for the presence of the antibodies and issue 'Immunity Certificates' to those who test positive-allowing their work to be exempt from the lockdown.
This information will be a huge weapon against the virus.
— Professor Karol Sikora (@ProfKarolSikora) March 30, 2020
Health secretary @MattHancock says govt is looking at issuing certificates or wrist bands to those who have had Covid-19 and could have a degree of immunity #bbcqt Says can’t happen now, but could be for the future
In a small clinical trial just granted approval, about 30 COVID-19 patients at Karolinska University Hospital may soon begin to receive blood plasma from people who have recovered from the disease. Sweden's Ethical Review Authority has approved the trial treatment, and its effectiveness will be evaluated in a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital.
Several seriously ill covid-19 patients in Sweden have been treated with chlorikin, the active substance in malaria medicine – something praised by researchers in other parts of the world. Now comes alarming reports that the drug on the contrary can be dangerous. – That is why we have decided in Gothenburg and in Västra Götaland that we do not use it, says Magnus Gisslén, chief physician at the Eastern Hospital.
The idiot US President has some other idiot on there talking about the big learnings to come out of the current situation. Apparently relying on other countries for essential things is bad. Stuff is being made overseas because of cheap labour is bad.
Hello? Globalisation has been good for scores of years when American companies decamped production off shore for cheap labour so they could make a killing. Now essential medical needs should be manufactured at home? How about making everything at home?
Whingeing about their sacred capitalist system not working how they want it to work when the going gets tough? Just another effect of the virus I suppose.
What happens when you displease Dear Leader by telling the truth,
BREAKING: US Navy is expected to announce that it has relieved the captain who sounded the alarm about a coronavirus outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, according to two US officials. https://t.co/fNZXSjCkGm
Why the hell is it all Trump, Pence, and Jared Kushner? Where are the DOCTORS? Why do the press corps just sit there like dummies and accept this evil farce?
Many main stream are considering not covering these publicly funded "election rallies", despite the fact that people are anxious to find out the latest information regarding the pandemic, and are thinking about simply reporting the key "take way" messages, after they have been clarified by WH staff.
President Trump is a ratings hit, and some journalists and public health experts say that could be a dangerous thing.
Whoa! Just looked up from my laptop, glanced out my window. A couple of PO-licemen in the front yard of neighbour, talking to neighbour – same place there was a loud altercation a couple of evenings' back.
I guess I'm becoming a curtain twitcher under lock down.
No one wearing PPE and no handcuffs, pepperspray or tasers.
At one stage four members of the household were in the back of the ambulance and were then joined by a thin mask wearing paramedic.
All but the Man of The House exited said ambulance and it went on it's way.
The constables spent some time in deep conversation with an Older Gentleman who had arrived earlier in the day. Possibly to hold the a-frame ladder while the man of the house perched atop so he could remove crud from his spouting and hurl it hither and thither.
Mildly interesting, but I was busy, so I detached from this timeless suburban pursuit with a dismissive…'silly bugger's going to fall and break his neck' to my partner.
Total relief when I saw them all walking in and out of the ambulance.
We have to get right down and personal and help NZs stuck overseas and not just keep repeating that refrain that's almost a threnody, stay in place for the duration. That's economic thinking, we say it and turn it into reality without concern for the implementation. These people need money and need it now. And to be advised of any transport available, and they need a 24 hour line with people who have a budget to facilitate things now. Not save money or supplies up for a possible greater need tomorrow.
NZ Government – support our people. You have been in globalisation mode for quite a while now – but the other side of it is that everyone needs a home, not in the globe in general, but on some definite ground which is here in NZ. Bring them home, or support them until they can get here.
The federal government has explicit powers under the Defense Production Act to take control of this, order companies to produce what's needed and set the price at cost plus a reasonable margin, and coordinate sending product to where it's most needed. But it's not doing that with the bilious fake-bronze baboon preferring to just sit back and fire off twitter insults against those trying to fight the problem.
White power Tucker's pissed off because 3M is selling what is rightfully the tRump crime family's PPE to foreigners.
/
JARED KUSHNER: "The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states stockpiles that they then use." pic.twitter.com/9Q7j8QBCMv
Given the atrocious way the CCP have treated the Falun Gong, this should be unsurprising. The CCP's relationship with all religious traditions has varied from overbearing and oppressive, to hostile and murderous.
I don't know a great deal about Falun Gong, but whatever the propaganda from either side says, it's clear that nothing good has happened.
Then look at the Uighur situation for another example of totalitarian oppression.
Then listen to what many of the Christian Churches say, forced to operate underground or work with severe restrictions such as not being allowed to teach their own children their faith. Or compelled to register with State bodies that ensure compliance with state dictates.
Or just go back to the Maoist destruction of China's own indigenous religious and cultural traditions during the Cultural Revolution.
Yes there is a lot of propaganda from all sides, and with the language barrier plus our social remove none of us are in a position to make much sense of it all. Yet one thing is clear, the CCP is not merely a political party; it represents a totalitarian ideology that brooks no serious competitors.
My mainland born SIL reckons it's China's Chernobyl. Local officials minimised and prevaricated, things were out of control long before Beijing was aware of the severity of the situation and from then on it's only ever been a face saving exercise.
But this time there was no radiation to be detected so we'll never know how widespread the disease was let alone how many deaths occurred.
"Countries may have good reasons to change the way they collect data as circumstances change, but it apparently happens often enough that the World Health Organisation feels that they have to ask countries to notify them when they do it. Famously, China did so earlier in the epidemic, but others do too: in complying with the WHO’s request, Australia has noted that it has changed its definition of a Covid-19 “case” (and therefore a Covid-19 “death”) at least 12 times since 23 January.
As for the number of urns delivered to funeral homes in Hubei after the quarantine was lifted one has also to consider the number of regular death. Hubei province has some sixty million inhabitants. The regular mortality rate in China is 726 per 100.000 inhabitants per year. The regular expected number of death from January 1 to March 31 in Hubei province without the epidemic was 108.900. In Wuhan, which has 14 million inhabitants, the expected number was 25.410. Photos that show the delivery of a few thousands of urns to large funeral homes in Wuhan are thereby not a sign for a higher Covid-19 death rate. To claim such is propaganda nonsense."
Really some of the crap coming out of American Trump and Bannon wannabes is laughable .Pravda redux.
I think it's far more insidious than pravda. Pravda was one outlet, not a conglomeration of corporate media outlets always singing from the same song book and from the page they have been told to turn to by (usually) anonymous western "Intelligence Sources".
Throw on top of that the fact that most people (it seems) continue to labour under the notion that there's a "vibrant free press" comprised of competing outlets and mediums bent on providing facts and discovering truths.
That's not provocative. It's just a reflection of who and what you are.
I already provided a lengthy article that covered the propaganda of the Wuhan urns – that article "outed" the source of the story and much else besides and you didn't challenge a word of it. But for anyone who might be stumbling across this bile for the first time, below is the relevant passage from the article I already provided to you.
And for those who don't know, the source for the story – RFA is Radio Free Asia – " a US government news agency created during the Cold War as part of a “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA”, according to the New York Times."
And, of course, versions of the urn story are being carried uncritically by multiple western outlets (google "chinese urns" for a partial run down), because that's what they do – "follow the script" that's fed to them – China being an "official enemy" and all….
Oddly, none of the social media posts RFA referred to were quoted in its article.
RFA’s “estimates” are based on morbid speculation regarding the cremation capacity of Wuhan’s funeral homes. RFA cites a story by the Chinese media outlet Caixin on funeral arrangements being made by Wuhan residents during the crisis. On March 26, Caixin reported that 5,000 cremation urns had arrived at a mortuary in Wuhan over a two-day period. This is treated as nefarious evidence of Chinese government deception solely because it exceeds the official death total in Wuhan.
RFA completely ignores the fact that residents have continued to die from other causes during the pandemic, as well as the backlog in funerals and cremations caused by the city’s several month long lockdown. In 2019, approximately 56,000 cremations took place in Wuhan, according to the city’s official statistics.
That means that roughly 4600 residents died per month, a figure that was likely higher during the winter months and with Wuhan’s health care system overwhelmed by the outbreak. With Wuhan under lockdown since January 23, a substantial increase in the use of funeral homes and crematoriums should have been expected.
The university was pulling the business as usual card up until a day before it locked its doors.
It constantly couches everything, especially publicly, in concern for safety and wellbeing, but then put the onus on staff to demonstrate why they should be able to stay home, tried to implement some BS "working from home" leave request that required above-department signoff, and generally shows a lack of human consideration worthy of a nat blogger.
Plus everything in the Critic opinion piece.
A month or two back (who can tell these days) the uni decided to improve morale by telling us to consider what we could do to make our colleagues happier. Telling colleagues that everyone in the top rungs of the hierarchy was retiring would cheer a lot of people up.
Skegg was pretty good, as I recall. People were quite optimistic about Hayne, as another practising academic rather than academic-turned professional university administrator.
Shame it turned out this way. She's possibly even worse than Fogelberg was, and he was a total wanker as VC. In those days we could get 2,000 people outside his office chanting exactly that 🙂
Given the events of the last few weeks, anyone else think the grim reaper of New Zealand, David Seymour, will have trouble with his legalised murder bill in the upcoming referendum?
2/ in short supply and customers who are willing to pay anything because they need it to prevent residents of their states from dying. The US doing airlifts to bring supplies from abroad for private contractors is part of this. But only one part.
Adam Schlesinger died from Covid-19 on 1 April in New York (aged 52). He was a singer-songwriter, record producer, guitarist, keyboardist, and frontman for several bands including "Fountains of Wayne".
It makes me very sad, but I just wanted to remember him and share one of his bands popular songs released in 2003.
Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne (Live In Chicago).
The ultra-rich have done very, very well out of the pandemic. Globally, the wealth of the ten richest people rose by US$540 billion last year, enough money to pay for the pandemic in its entirity. And in New Zealand, local billionaire Graeme Hart saw his wealth increase by almost NZ$3.5 ...
Postmodernism has long been looked upon as an indecipherable ideology and a source of amusement. In 1996 Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University, had a hoax article published in ‘Social Text’ an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. In ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Anew study in Nature Sustainability incorporates the damages that climate change does to healthy ecosystems into standard climate-economics models. The key finding in the study by Bernardo Bastien-Olvera and Frances Moore from the University of California at Davis: The models have been underestimating the ...
In a recent interview with RNZ (14th of January), NZ Council of Civil Liberties Chair Thomas Beagle, in response to Simon Bridges condemnation of the post-Trump Twitter purge of local far Right and other accounts, said the following: “Cos the thing about freedom of expression is that it’s not just ...
Let’s be clear: if Trump is not politically killed off once and for all, he will become a MAGA Dracula, rising from the dead to haunt US politics for years to come and giving inspiration to his wretched family of grifters and thousands of deplorables well into the next decade. ...
Since its demise as an imperial power, and especially its deindustrialisation under Thatcher, the UK's primary economic engine has been its role as a money laundry, using its network of overseas territories as tax havens to enable rich people around the world to steal from the societies they live in. ...
Last month OMV quit the Great South Basin and surrendered its offshore exploration permits outside of Taranaki. This month, Australian-owned Beach Energy has done the same: Beach Energy Resources New Zealand has decided to abandon all of its oil and gas exploration permits off the South Island coast, including ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why. Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA ...
MARVIN HUBBARD, US citizen by birth, New Zealand citizen by choice, Quaker and left-wing activist, has been broadcasting his show, "Community or Chaos", on Otago Access Radio for the best part of 30 years. On 24 November last year, I spoke with him about the outcome of the 2020 General ...
This is a guest blog post by Daniel Tamberg, Potsdam, co-founder and director of SCIARA GmbH. The non-profit organisation SCIARA is developing and operating a flexible software platform for scientific simulation games that allows thousands of players to explore, design and understand possible climate futures together. Decision-makers in politics, business, ...
Yesterday's Gone: Cold shivers are running up and down the spines of conservatives everywhere. Donald Trump may have gone, but all the signs point to there being something much more momentous in the wind-shift than a simple return to the status quo ante. A change is gonna come. ONE COULD ...
Is it possible to live and let live in the post-Trump era? The online campaign to vilify Christopher Liddell, ex-White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to Trump, makes for an interesting case study. Liddell is a New Zealander whose illustrious career in corporate America once earned him plaudits ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 17, 2021 through Sat, Jan 23, 2021Editor's Choice12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for climate action ...
This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
A Waitomo-based Jobs for Nature project will keep up to ten people employed in the village as the tourism sector recovers post Covid-19 Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “This $500,000 project will save ten local jobs by deploying workers from Discover Waitomo into nature-based jobs. They will be undertaking local ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta today announced three diplomatic appointments: Alana Hudson as Ambassador to Poland John Riley as Consul-General to Hong Kong Stephen Wong as Consul-General to Shanghai Poland “New Zealand’s relationship with Poland is built on enduring personal, economic and historical connections. Poland is also an important ...
Work begins today at Wainuiomata High School to ensure buildings and teaching spaces are fit for purpose, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. The Minister joined principal Janette Melrose and board chair Lynda Koia to kick off demolition for the project, which is worth close to $40 million, as the site ...
A skilled and experienced group of people have been named as the newly established Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory Board by Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis today. The Board will provide independent advice and assurance to the Minister for Children across three key areas of Oranga Tamariki: relationships with families, whānau, and ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlyn Forster, PhD Candidate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney This summer’s wetter conditions have created great conditions for flowering plants. Flowers provide sweet nectar and protein-rich pollen, attracting many insects, including bees. Commercial honey bees are also thriving: ...
Lotto scratchie tickets featuring the pop band Six60 are being withdrawn after a public backlash. In a statement, Lotto NZ said there had been a mutual decision made with the band to remove the tickets from sale following the negative feedback, and it offered an apology. The band faced criticism, both ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology , University of New England Shell-crushing predation was already in full swing half a billion years ago, as our new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals. A hyena devouring ...
Vodafone has suspended advertising on the radio station amid calls for talkback host John Banks to be taken off air after yet another racist outburst. Alex Braae reports. In an alarming segment of talkback radio, former Auckland mayor John Banks endorsed the views of a caller who described Māori as a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland When a COVID-19 case was found in Northland last Sunday, Aotearoa’s second-longest period with no detected community case came to an end. ESR scientists worked late into Sunday night to obtain a whole genome sequence ...
He has the perfect moustache, an exceptional mullet, and he uses terms like ‘face hole’ on national TV. Who or what is Dr Joel Rindelaub?I was drawn in by the moustache, but it was the mullet that really kept me there. Watching TVNZ’s Breakfast yesterday morning I was fixated. Often, ...
We’ll never be royals with nearly a quarter of declined baby names featuring “Royal” in some form or another. Te Tari Taiwhenua Department of Internal Affairs has released the list of names declined in 2020 by the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and ...
After a raft of inquiries delving into and recommending what should be done about the politically beleaguered Orangi Tamaraki, along with the briefing papers we suppose he has been given, we imagined Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis would have no more need for expert advice. Wrong. He has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University There’s a common assumption men take longer than women to poo. People say so on Twitter, in memes, and elsewhereonline. But is that right? What could explain it? And if ...
Just as sexuality is a spectrum, so too is asexuality. In Ace of Hearts, members of New Zealand’s asexual community talk about the challenges and misconceptions of identifying as ace.First published November 17, 2020.Ace of Hearts is part of Frame, a series of short documentaries produced by Wrestler for The Spinoff.“A ...
Sam Brooks wasn’t allowed to watch kids TV as a kid. Now, as a 30 year old man, he watches it for the first time.My mother’s approach to parenting was unorthodox. I wrote weekly book reports on top of my actual homework, I did maths equations in Roman numerals and ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk More leading Indonesian figures have made racial slurs against Natalius Pigai, former chair of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) – and all West Papuans, says United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda. “Since the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1963, Indonesian ...
“The Government’s failure to even conduct a standard cost-benefit analysis for the most expensive infrastructure project in New Zealand’s history is mind-bogglingly arrogant,” says New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke. “A ...
The Ministry of Health is today drawing backlash from the local New Zealand vaping industry following its release of proposed regulations for the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act. Vaping Trade Association New Zealand (VTANZ) President, ...
Sophie Gilmour and Simon Day are joined by special guest Hugo Baird, co-owner of Grey Lynn’s Honey Bones and Lilian, to talk about opening new pub Hotel Ponsonby.Auckland is a city of many bars but few really good pubs – the kind of places you’d be just as comfortable going ...
The appointment of an advisory board for Oranga Tamariki is welcome and should be a step toward a total transformation of the care and protection system to a by Māori, for Māori approach, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft said today. Minister ...
Taking control of your financial wellbeing can have cascading positive impacts for your life and it can also be fun. With the help of the team at Kiwi Wealth, we’ve compiled some simple tricks for balancing your books in 2021. There’s something about the beginning of a new year, especially after ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology As we know, getting into New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult. There are practicalities, such as high airfare and managed isolation costs. And there are legal requirements, including pre-flight testing, mandatory ...
New Zealand faces the risk of a generation being locked out of the housing market unless land is freed up and more houses built, National Party leader Judith Collins says. ...
On Sunday, Stuff published a months-long investigation by Alison Mau detailing allegations of harassment and exploitation within the local music industry.The piece, ‘Music industry professionals demand change after speaking out about its dark side’, includes allegations of inappropriate behaviour and abuse of power by male artists, international acts and executives; ...
“The Government is all at sea on timelines for Australia and New Zealand’s respective vaccine roll-outs, with the worst news coming from the mouth of Pfizer Australia CEO Anne Harris,” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “Yesterday, under increasing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Higgins, Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised the US would demonstrate “global leadership on refugees”. Once elected, he pledged to vastly increase refugee resettlement in the US. If history is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Baumann, Casual Academic, School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University Among the many hard truths exposed by COVID-19 is the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor. As economies went into freefall, the world’s billionaires increased their already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Lanicek, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History and Jewish History, UNSW On January 27 communities worldwide commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz — the largest complex of concentration camps and extermination centres during the Holocaust. This is the first year the International ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorinda Cramer, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian Catholic University The summer break is over, marking a return to the office. For some, this ends almost a year of working from home in lockdown. Some analysts are predicting it might also mark an enduring ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 27, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato New Zealand has a strong history of protecting and promoting human rights at home and internationally, and prides itself on being an outspoken critic and global leader in this area. So, when the most ...
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*This articlefirst appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. The tourism industry isn't holding its breath for a trans-Tasman travel bubble being in place after Australia temporarily closed its borders to New Zealand. New Zealanders could be waiting even longer for a full trans-Tasman bubble, with the ...
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A Covid reset will force costly and inflexible cities to take a hard look at their planning systems, or people will vote with their feet. Broken urban planning systems make for misery even in the best of times. If land use and housing regulations prevent metropolitan areas from growing up or out as ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
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Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 26, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur Members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
The outrage and bellicosity that has greeted the fall of the Bauer publications from comfy centrists, neolib and other out of touch media types who are for once in the frontline rather than sniping from the back of an economic crisis is a classic illustration that when tens of thousands of others lose their jobs it is a necessary market correct but when the pampered middle class lose theirs it is a government failure led depression.
One should feel very sorry for the people who have lost their jobs, but I think you can also be permitted to savour a certain delicious irony at watching publications (like the Listener) that long ago transformed themselves into cheerleading journals for the comfy and complacent middle class winners of neoliberalism, globalisation and unfettered foreign ownership of our assets scream for government intervention when the grim reaper of "market forces" comes for them. And let's not get started at how Mediaworks – who consistently argue the government should pull out media altogether because it shows then up and they compete – are bellowing about the need for government help as well now.
Some – most – have taken it on the chin, but others (Lizzie Marvelley's splenetic twitter outbursts would be funny if it wasn't tragic, a snowflake right there) have reacted in a way that kinda confirms the suspicion that quite a few of the chatterati think of themselves as part of the other, pampered class and quite different from Joe and Jane Sixpack on Struggle street.
Then you've got aging types like Chris Trotter, who yearns these days for NZ to be like it was in the 1980s. His reaction is bordering on the hysterical, as trusty mastheads of his youth fall all around him and nothing is certain anymore.
The thing is we can argue all day about the whys and wherefores of this. A wildly angry Wendyl Nissan (so much for the smooth veneer of media objectivity when the abstract becomes the personal) claimed on RNZ yesterday that the Woman's Weekly was making money. Some claim Bauer are clearing out the local opposition ahead of simply bringing it's Australian equivalents. It does seem like COVID-19 has provided a nice cover for Bauer to engage in a bit of disaster capitalism.
But really these titles have gone broke because increasingly no one reads them and nobody wants to advertise in them. Gone with not a bang, but a whimper. The Listener – the biggest of them all I think – nowadays has a "readership" of a couple of hundred thousand. That isn't sales, just what they think the number of people who read an issue is so they can pump their advertising costs. Sure, they may have been turning over a trickle of profit. But their ruthless German publishing masters clearly thought wurst was to come.
the future of how to pay for longform journalism is a conundrum even the media experts don't have an answer for. Perhaps it is time for government subsidies – but the idea that those subsidies should go to obsolescent publications owned by foreign corporations? Hmmm. Not so sure.
For what it is worth, I think it is time for a licence fee – a fee on data usage, collected by ISPs and paid to a state broadcasting entity. According to stats NZ (https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/new-zealand-internet-is-going-unlimited) in 2018 the average unlimited broadband user consumed 150 gigabytes a month and broadband usage was about 280 million gigabytes a month. Imagine NZers used four billion gigabytes of data a year in 2020. A fee of 1.5c a gigabyte would bring in sixty million or so (if my morning maths isn't to wobbly). It would add $27-$30 a year to the cost of that average unlimited broadband connection. Is $30 a year a price New Zealanders are willing to pay to keep a local media? Could that be a way to help fund journalism?
Have the companies pay that. There are people in NZ who can't afford to eat and pay their rent, so I think a set fee on all usage is not the best option.
I am amazed at the lack of solidarity – let alone memory – from those on the left like Sanctuary who saw their communities ripped apart in the 1990s with meatworks closing down, manufacturing industries dying, farmers walking off their land and suiciding, mortgagee sales piling up, and entire generations wrecked and forced into near-perpetual social welfare.
Did we protest at the time for the devastated provincial proletariat?
Hell yes we did. And the "we" includes Chris Trotter and plenty of others with actual functioning memories.
It may well be too much to ask people like you to lift a fucking finger in protest when it happens to the bourgeoisie. But that's just a measure of your integrity.
There will of course be plenty who like you will continue to sneer from their keyboards because they don't like the ideological impurities of the New Zealand Women's Weekly or any of the other media for which it is about to happen – but that just shows how out of touch you are with how many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders communicate.
And now for the real stuff.
We are losing thousands upon thousands to unemployment by the day right now.
They are from all kinds of industries.
Almost none of it is the fault of the newly unemployed.
Before anyone else like Sanctuary or Alwyn commits to their keyboard again and tries to offload their bile about who is more or less deserving to hold onto a job, do just one thing:
Imagine it happening to you.
Who knows, perhaps you have the memory still to remember a time when it got all a bit too close. When families were devastated, homes were lost, marriages broke down. Like is happening right now.
That thing called human empathy.
Good comment. A post would be good. Hint. Hint.
Mickey has a post on it already up.
To avoid derailing Micky's post, what is this "bowl cut" instruction of which you wrote? Not that I'd use it. I do have experience of cutting back my fringe though, with a kind of point cutting.
I haven't seen what he wrote but I imagine he's talking about what we used to call a pudding basin haircut back in the day when you would no more waste money on sending your child to a hairdresser than fly. Your mother cut your hair. Typically the result looked as though she had upturned a pudding basin on your head and cut around it – lol. Traditionally you got one of these when you turned 5 and started school!
Yes. I know what a bowl cut is. My dad used to give my brothers such a cut. My younger bro hated them. Or maybe a slight variation on them. Bowl cuts were something I associated with Brit immigrants.
My dad had clippers that shaved the back and sides – AKA "short back and sides"
Enjoy.
https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=bowl+cuts&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwip1-3c78roAhVj7nMBHahTDcsQ_AUoAXoECBIQAw&biw=1733&bih=982
😊
It could become the new trend for 2020-2021.
I understand the lock downs internationally are cause some despair among young trendees with undercuts.
"Imagine it happening to you. "
For many of us its not a case of imagining….its a case of remembering.
4 times in the 80s and twice more in the 90s
Exactly. That's why I started my response that way.
Then you will know that protesting wont change it.
Do you know what changes it?
are you referring to this specific case or employment in general?
As general as possible 🙂
lol…not much to ask.
A permanent solution, no….as far as I can see all solutions have a limited period of functionality until they cease to work any longer though that period may be decades.
What I do see however is a need for some form of government employment scheme to transition out of the worst of the crisis as wasnt done in the eighties reforms…we cannot leave it all to market forces this time round because we know how that plays out.
The thing is most make work projects are just nave work hard and uninspiring.
It worked in the depression but it wont now with a benefit backstop.
Not all of them. For instance my maternal grandfather spent a chunk of the late depression hammering out Scenic Drive in Auckland’s Waitakere ranges pretty much by hand and blasting until they got it flat enough to get a bulldozer in. Even the thought of doing 26 miles of road in a basalt base is enough to make my skin crawl.
Pat 11.03am Rational and wise – let's do it for the good of society and those who are left bereft without work and a way to go.
@bwaghorn
some define a 'depression' by an unemployment rate of 25% or more
or a prolonged decline in GDP of greater than 10%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QHha1zko1A&ab_channel=LittleBig
I was tempted to gloat about the prospect so many right wing propaganda mongering bene bashing overpaid fools, getting the medicine they are so keen on dishing out to those "lazy, other people".
But. Thinking about it, I don't wish that on anyone, apart from people like Hosking's and Richardson having their monstrous salaries reduced, to their true worth.
There are all the other people in the organisation losing their jobs, printers, delivery people typesetters etc, and the few remaining actual, journalists!
And my mum, who has been reading woman's weekly for near on 80 years.
Its not a case of wishing it upon anyone , or gloating or even indifference…nor is it dismissing the value of the work….it is a recognition of the realities.
There has been much reportage about the 'zombie' companies only surviving due to the low cost of debt and obviously were vulnerable to any revenue shock….this will be far from the last company to close its doors and the government cannot buy them all out.
We will adapt….because the alternative is not to.
I agree, that the Government cannot support companies which were on their way under anyway..
Especially when they take the opportunity to close down companies, when they can pretend that it was Covid 19, not them.
Supporting the staff into new industries, that do have a future, is something I've always advocated, as a legitimate role of the Government.
Good and varied Journalism is an essential infrastructure, in my book. The recipes and knitting patterns serve a purpose as well.
Noting that the Government agrees. They did offer support to keep those staff employed.
Sanctuary @ 1
Did you watch TV1 6pm news yesterday? Did you note the palatial back-grounds of the big names associated with said magazines who were interviewed in their homes?
To suggest he is "lacking solidarity… with those who saw their communities ripped apart in the 1990s…" and is "lacking in human empathy" is reading something into Sanctuary's comments that isn't there.
As a person who was adversely affected at the time, I see no comparison whatsoever to the events of the 1990s and Sanctuary's response to the demise of a bunch of magazines whose time was up, so the owners used the pandemic to close them down.
"Before anyone else like Sanctuary or Alwyn commits to their keyboard again and tries to offload their bile about who is more or less deserving to hold onto a job, do just one thing: "
You really don't get it do you? I don't make any comments, or express any opinions about who is "more or less deserving to hold onto a job". I merely state that if people don't buy printed magazines, and nobody is willing to pay to advertise in them they will die.
Technology becomes redundant. People in jobs within those technologies lose their jobs. I don't make decisions on those matters. Look for example at the computer industry. Remember the days of the punch rooms where a lot of people were occupied in punching data into punched cards to feed the computers of the day? Should we insist that that technology must be restored to recreate those jobs?
Of course not.
If you have access to a map of Australia have a look at the route of the railway line from Perth to Sydney. In particular have a look at the little places between Kalgoorlie and Woomera. Every name on that map was a settlement where people lived in the days when the trains were coal fueled and used water in the bilers.
Soneville, Karonie, Zanthus, Kitchener, Naretha, Rawlinna, Haig, Nurina, Loongana, Forest, Reid, Deakin, Hughes, Denman, Cook, Fisher, O'Malley, Watson, Ooldea, Bates,Wynbring, ……. There are others but I am sick of reading the names in the very small print on my map.
They were all places where people lived and worked. They were needed because a train had to take on coal about every 160 km and water every 80 km,
Well now they have Diesels and they refuel at, I believe, Kalgoorlie and Cook. Cook has a population of 4. Nothing exists of all the other places. All the people who worked there lost their jobs because the steam train was dead. Should we bring them back to recreate the jobs of yesteryear?
Why? And if you won't do it for those jobs why do it for magazines that not many people buy. Why do YOU think you have the power to decide which jobs stay and which go? Because that is the power you are claiming for yourself when you decide that these particular magazines must continue, at taxpayers expense, to be preserved.
.
Well it's hotter 'n blazes and all the long faces
There'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier
There'll be no refreshment for a thirsty jackaroo
From Melbourne to Adelaide on the overlander
With newfangled buffet cars and faster locomotives
The train stopped in Serviceton less and less often
No, there's nothing sadder than a town with no cheer
Vic Rail decided the canteen was no longer necessary there
No spirits, no bilgewater and eighty dry locals
And the high noon sun beats a hundred and four
There's a hummingbird trapped in a closed-down shoe store
This tiny Victorian rhubarb
Kept the watering hole open for sixty-five years
Now it's boilin' in a miserable March twenty-first
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of Patterson's curse
The train smokes down the xylophone, there’ll be no stopping here
All you can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer
No Bourbon, no Branchwater, though the townspeople here
Fought her Vic Rail decree tooth and nail
Now it’s boilin’ in a miserable March twenty-first
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of Patterson’s curse
The train smokes down the xylophone, there’ll be no stopping here
All ya can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer
Town With No Cheer – Tom Waits (Swordfishtrombones)
Come, come. Be more cheerful. Always look on the bright side of life.
They may have called it Patterson's Curse in your part of Australia but it was better known in South Australia as Salvation Jane.
How the same plant could be regarded as a poisonous scourge in one place and a suitable feed for livestock in another was totally beyond me.
I hope you'll forgive me for thinking that listening to this once, and I did listen to all of it, is enough for my lifetime.
LOL
Nobody wishes the ills that follow job loss upon anyone. But this is a different issue to the problem of what publications like The Listener represent. The ideal situation is that The Listener dies and never again sees the light of day, and the consequences don't include any kind of hardship for anyone. There's an interesting piece on Stuff about a number of things but I think the issue of pointless jobs is its prevailing theme:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120728480/what-will-the-world-be-like-after-coronavirus-four-possible-futures
My favourite was the tantrum by Bill Ralston looking like something from the Australian outback (is that the new Ponsonby look?) Still can't stop giggling.
Brilliant summation-this'Some claim Bauer are clearing out the local opposition ahead of simply bringing it's Australian equivalents. It does seem like COVID-19 has provided a nice cover for Bauer to engage in a bit of disaster capitalism.'.
What should happen today is the Minister of Health is fired.
He shouldn't be allowed to resign.
Ardern should fire him.
Publicly.
Primarily for gifting the Right more ground from which to sling shit.
Making it too easy for Farrar's Mob.
If you read Farrar for news and opinion? Jesus wept.
Sanctuary.
You know some folk do '…read Farrar for news and opinion.'
Just like folk come to TS and go to TDB.
Or, one just might see an article in the mainstream news and then find out where that particular news item is being discussed.
Ignoring our problems does not make them go away dear.
"…You know some folk do '…read Farrar for news and opinion.'.."
Maybe once upon a time. Farrar's blog struggles for relevance these days and is regarded as toxic – something he can only blame himself for, as he allows the comments of completely fucking insane nutters to remain up. To put it bluntly, he has inherited the Whaleoil crowd and done nothing about it – and his reputation as a source has suffered accordingly.
To put it bluntly, he has inherited the Whaleoil crowd and done nothing about it – and his reputation as a source has suffered accordingly.
??!!??!!!?
That statement suggests that Farrar's blog has been less toxic and less extreme than Whaleoil's. That's not true, not in the slightest. Farrar's views are as horrible as Cameron Slater's, and the people commenting on his site are no more better informed or humane. Farrar himself is a disgrace: he once wrote about a visit he made to the Occupied Terrritories, and claimed that he had not noticed anything at all to suggest that Palestinians were being oppressed.
Over many years, Farrar has encouraged and/or turned a blind eye to the most ignorant and racist comments outside of a NewstalkZB announcers' barbecue….
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2016/11/general_debate_3_november_2016.html/comment-page-1#comment-1810551
I don't think he should be fired (last thing we need right now is a change of Health Minister during a pandemic). But I do think he and Ardern should address this more directly. He needs to own up to having fucked up (the traveling thing, they can deal with the stupid of a sign written car internally) and point out we are all on a learning curve, an apology would be good too.
Unfortunately we have a macho political culture that will try and use that to take Labour down. Labour should still do the right thing.
I'm also mindful that those government people will be full of stress chemicals, and they're going to have to sustain living like that for quite some time. I can understand why he would want and even need to do what he did. It's still a fuck up though.
Wow. Some one on the Standard actually admits Clark made a mistake or a fuck up in your words.
IPrent will ban you! The echo chamber must be preseved at all costs.
[lprent: Or you could be less of a moronic dimwit and listen when a moderator talks to you about your behaviour. Commentary is ok. However this is a forum for debate and that involves dealing with other peoples disagreeing with you, especially when they make reasonable objections to your points. Sticking your head firmly up your arse and ignoring them, which appears to be your childish default behaviour isn’t acceptable. FFS grow up. ]
Not sure how new you are to TS, but most of us have been criticising Labour for a long time. I suggest you take note of Lynn's moderations, because now you just look like a troll.
As far as I can tell since 8 June 2018 so ignorance is no excuse.
It would make little to no difference to the pandemic management if the Health Minister is sacked, the bureaucrats in the ministry are effectively directing and running the show at present.
What it would do if he was severely censured is signal that no one in NZ whatever their status is above those impositions being placed on the rest of us.
Same as it has been for the past two decades.
The names of the MOH bureaucrats might change, but the culture remains.
This government demonstrated its subservience to the Ministry when it allowed the demonstrably incompetent Group Manager of MOH:DSS to closely advise Ministers on disability and carer issues.
SSDD
I don't think he should be sacked, but certainly hope the PM gives him a kick up the backside.
No, it wasn't terrible, it wasn't near the level of Ministerial misbehaviour in the past, BUT he's just made his own job – and the government's – harder. Not helping.
Hopefully it will highlight the overreach, of banning, all, car travel for exercise, when there are people who cannot get enough exercise while following the distancing rules and keeping safe, without some car travel.
Letting scared people on Facebook,and "past their use by date" Senior cops who got there by attrition, set the rules.
But it won't. And by giving those people a stick to beat the Government with. I was going to say he should go. But maybe this is an opportunity to be more rational about total bans on activities.
Has car travel for exercise been banned?
As I said not sure.
My son says it was on the Covid website from the 30th, but if it was, I missed it.
The Police Commissioner was saying one thing about it one day, and something different the next.
I see the "car travel to exercise" has been removed from the Unite against Covid 19 website.
"Essential purposes only".
which I take to me: please don't drive to exercise if you can avoid it, but people need to make their own decisions based on need and location.
i.e. not a ban.
Yes, there have been a few changes like that. For instance going from a complete ban on swimming to swimming in a way that is very safe (ie no surfing). These changes are to be expected This is such a novel situation that it would be impossible to be completely right from the get go.
In my neighbourhood people are being very sensible and reasonable. Almost no traffic at all. I wonder if car use will reduce in a more permanent way, even when we can drive freely?
I hope it does Wayne. People have been pushing for less traffic for a long time, seems an ideal opportunity to adopt some new social practices. Less pollution, better for climate mitigation, more liveable urban spaces, more health, lots of benefits.
Agreed on the need to adapt advice over time. Not least because they'd have to wait and see how well people were getting what needed to be done.
I wonder how much of our low community transmission, so far, is due to people thinking for themselves and maintaining their distance, well before the Government required it?
In our previous week before the lockdown, we obviously didn't see many people, but the ones we did were already socialising from several metres away, in their dinghies, the local shop was sanitising the EFTPOS pad between customers and the fuel bowser attendant was cleaning it between fills. People walking on the road were keeping their distance.
Yeah in general it's been really good for a couple of weeks now.
Nah, I walked through the uni here in Dunedin during and after St Patricks day (coz my work) & there were 100s of people like any other day.
Unless it is for essentials, the answer is no. If you have to drive somewhere for a walk, for example, then it is not regarded as local and you’re flouting the rules. I saw a Government clip somewhere yesterday that explained it well but I cannot find it 🙁
if someone needs to drive 4 blocks to the local park so their kids can run around, and this is for the parents' mental health as much as anything, that seems as essential to health as walking round the block next to one's house in terms of personal physical exercise.
As long as people are social distancing, not using jungle gyms, and not taking the piss or socialising, this seems reasonable to me.
If the govt cracks down on that under the current level, it will be because of people doing stupid shit like socialising, not because someone went an extra few blocks.
People on twitter are saying it's in the daily briefings, which is not much use for those of us that don't watch them.
No. It hasn’t weka @ 2.3.1.1 Those who need to travel by car to get to an area for exercising can do so provided it is within their neighbourhood. I think it was Bush who reiterated this only yesterday. I am one of those affected since I can no longer walk to the beach for exercise because of severely arthritic knees.
In the case of David Clark… I gather he drove 2 kms to get to a motorbike track which was closely associated with his neighbourhood. I think the public pearl clutching over his 'misdemeanour' is being a tad overdone for political reasons.
Anne. Clark drove his electorate vehicle emblazoned with a photo of his physiognomy to a mountain bike track for a spot of between video conferencing mountain biking.
An activity on the 'We 'd rather you not indulge in because of risk of injury' list.
The whole incident smacks of either extraordinary arrogance or extreme tone deafness.
Or both.
This is a fuck up of quite significant proportions and could not have come at a worse time.
BS.
He used his electorate vehicle because he could put his bike into it. It was hardly for publicity because there was no one there but himself. Looked like an easy ride – nothing dangerous – and there are few spots he can go to where he can have any privacy.
You've got it in for him as you seem to have a good many people, and you are using it to discredit him. No different from those who are doing it for political reasons.
Why didn't he just ride his bike to the track if it is so close ? Or just ride it around his suburb a few times like people seem to be doing in my neck of the woods ?
Why doesn't Anne walk on the beach?
I'm a commuter cyclist. So when I ride, I ride as much as possible on cycle paths and only go on the roads when I absolutely have to.
That is because many motorists can be classed as dangerous fuckwits on the road.
Of course there are even more driver who are considerate and not impatient dimwits. But when you have no protection you stick to what you know works and what you have experience with.
It seems unlikely that David Clark is a commuter. He sounds like a recreational mountain biker. Probably doesn't ride on the road because it is too damn dangerous.
I trust that answers your query.
I expect it doesn’t. To me it is apparent that I’d class you as being a ignorant dangerous fuckwit motorist who is too stupid to think through what other road users do.
Incidentally I frequently see cyclists (and some scooter user) do the same even when the light is red. Basically police should seize their bikes/scooters and sell them to someone who is less stupid. If they are renting them, then they should inform all hire companies that they should not be able to hire one again. Can't think of anything that is a more stupid behaviour.
Squished cyclist is unpleasant for everyone.
"I expect it doesn’t. To me it is apparent that I’d class you as being a ignorant dangerous fuckwit motorist who is too stupid to think through what other road users do."
Perhaps you haven't noticed the vast decrease in traffic on the road at the moment ? This is making it vastly easier for cyclists to get out and about without worrying nearly as much about motorists.
Please continue with your specious rant it's most amusing.
Anne.
A friend, homeless and forced to live in a campground and share facilities with a swag of overseas backpacker types, drives her wee van out of the camp ground and down the road to a near deserted beach to allow her aged and grass averse dog to walk on sand and in soothing seawater.
No risk. No harm. And believe me, her fragile state means that the whole social distancing thing has been her way of life for years.
She gets tailed by the local cops in a marked car who park right behind her. They don't approach her in a community friendly manner. Just intimidate by their close presence. Later, when she is driving out of the camp for another dog walk and soul repair session she gets told by the camp managers she's going out too often.
Now. Do you think that Dr. (of god only knows) Clark will intervene and allow my highly stressed friend a pass to indulge in an activity that is causing harm to no one and benefiting her and her wee dog immeasurably?
Of course not. Don't be silly.
But bet you we get a call or a text sometime today when she reads about Clark's little lapse.
Her fingernails are ragged enough already.
But what does that matter so long as we all abide by the New Way and allow our Minister of Health in time of a pandemic to openly and loudly flout the rules he demands we plebs follow?
And while you're there Anne and making this personal…who ate these "…good many people…" I have it in for?
That'll be why the Bush police have no time to check up on self isolating travellers. I thought they were too busy playing with their guns.
I think Jacinda's conversation with David Clark will probably start with, "David. What the actual fuck?!"
Unless he's oblivious to everything going on around him, I struggle to comprehend how he thought doing what he did was in any way a good idea. And taking a van. With your fucking face painted on it. Christ on a bike, man!
I guess he was hoping everyone was at home and no one would notice. But the Blue Team are watching. The Blue Team are always watching…
Speaking of the Blue Team, I see Joyce and English have slithered out from whatever rocks they've been hiding under to throw handfuls of muck at the government. Armchair generals are the very best kind after all.
"What the actual fucking fuck."
and "Jesus Christ on a fucking chariot" were my first comments last night when I read it on Stuff.
And Farrar, Blue to his core, had the breathtaking audacity to dig up the putrid corpse of Ryall and state categorically that 'he would never do such a thing…'
Ryall was a numpty of outstanding proficiency who accepted bucketsloads of absolute bullshit from his trusted advisors at the Ministry of Health. Outstanding he was. Set a whole new standard for fuckwittedness of Ministers of Health.
This is of course from the point of view of a family carer of a MOH:DSS client with very high support needs who still hasn't managed to remove the knife in my back planted there by Ryall and driven home by subsequent Ministers, including the current incumbent.
Jesus the axes at your place must be really blunt, given the amount of time you spend on grinding them.
I agree totally. He's made a dumb mistake and even Willie Jackson couldn't defend him this morning. Its probably not sack able but does undermine the govt. Jacinda will have a talking to him. Anyway, shouldn't really question on this blog as you are not allowed to debate or disagree according to IPrent below. – Goodbye.
More and more it looks to me like a situation with no good outcome. Such are our times.
But yep, people need to be able to make personalised decisions within the rules. Otherwise we will have rules designed for middle of the bell curve people that cause problems for others.
Don't be silly Rosemary. He was 0.3km outside the 2km limit-hardly a hanging offence. It is possible the bike track was on the way to or near his local supermarket-have you thought about this? I have to drive 19km to my local supermarket which opens up no end of biking/walking opportunities.
It appears the Health Minister followed all other self-isolation criteria. Media I have read/listened too (Stuff/RNZ) have not given this story any oxygen at all.
Here in Wanaka groups of people are congregating on bridges and jumping into the Clutha River, ignoring all of the s-i rules-these are the people the police should be chasing.
I do sympathise with some of the comment on Kiwiblog criticising the fact that people seem to be getting away with biking, including mountain-biking, all over the place. Mountain biking is more dangerous than skiing in terms of injuries suffered. Meanwhile I am not allowed to take my sailing boat out in light winds with reefed sails, which is safer than both.
there's safety statistically, and there's safety individually, and then there's plain bad luck.
Where does it say 2km is the limit?
"He was 0.3km outside the 2km limit-hardly a hanging offence"
If he was Joe Bloggs, it wouldn't matter. He's the Minister of Health and has a perception/messaging issue to deal with now. Hoping it blows over, but it does leave the problem of the perception that we can bend the rules.
Yes, a senior Minister should grasp the basics of perception.
We know (and he should have) that the PM will be asked about it at the press conference today. She is now obliged to say …
either "No biggie, not bothered", which she can't then combine with her usual messaging. She can't switch seamlessly from a shrug to a call for sacrifice.
or (more likely) "The Minister got it wrong".
Ardern's tough-but-kind persona is very effective in this crisis, and she doesn't need that undermined. More importantly, the country doesn't.
Yes it is about perception – rightly or wrongly people in the public eye are held to a higher standard of behaviour whether they like it or not! Silly man!!!
Its not so much that he was 0.3km out of range, its the fact that its a deserted bike trail that the general public are not using as they've been told not to do those sort of activities, but Clark decides that rule only applies to the plebs not him. What if he had an accident somewhere along the trail?
The general public has been told to stop using easy bike trails like "The Big Easy" ??
Yes. Most bike trails are closed. Why do you think the car park is deserted?
That ones normally busy
"Most bike trails are closed."
Citation please.
DOC website. When you go on web site a covid-19 window comes up saying "stay at home, All DOC facilities are closed"
https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/things-to-do/mountain-biking/
you should read the link though, tracks aren't closed, it's the huts and campsites that are. Obviously they're also telling people to not go into the back country and to use tracks in the neighbourhood (they also say don't drive to them).
Yes but point being we are all told not to go surfing, hunting, sailing, swimming? or anything else and slightly dangerous. So now the general public stuck at home with time on their hands will say if its ok for him (and he makes the rules) its ok for us.
Yes, which is why he has apologised, and everyone is reiterating stay home, don't drive unless it's necessary, get some exercise, wash your hands and practice physical distancing.
"For everyone’s safety, at Alert Level 4 people must not to head into the backcountry or remote areas, nor should they undertake outdoor activities (such as adventure sports or hunting) that would expose them to higher levels of risk." https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/issues/covid-19/
Clark wasn't in a remote area, nor was he partaking in an adventure sport. Nor was he even in a DOC area to start with.
Then that's great. We can all head out to the parks.
Did you notice in the photo the car park was empty so the public was actually staying away!
[lprent: Read my note please – rather than your current career of being a dimwitted repetitive troll who never listens. I’ll release one more comment, otherwise I’ll get ride of you as stupid time wasting problem with a brain of stone and clogged up ‘ears’ that need a pneumatic drill to clear them. ]
Otago Rail Trail = Open.
Trails in the Queenstown area = Open
Where did this 2km limit come from?
There seems to be people, and different branches of Government, making up ad-hoc rules all over the place.
Not even sure myself, where we were at in the "driving to exercise" rules, and I've been going on the Government Covid website every day.
They are not, helping.
Why does it matter how far I walk, for example, when the only thing I touch on the entire walk is my front gate, and all of us on every walk, are keeping, so far, several metres apart.
I am refraining from sailing in the harbour ,, even though I can do that without going within 20metres of anyone, and my coastal capable boat, is extremely unlikely to require help, where I can almost walk ashore, as much not to bother the cop who has to tell me off, as much as any other reason.
I would rather they spent their time, talking to the few, that are really doing things that endanger other people.
If everyone tries to follow the principal, "act as though you have it", and keep away from people outside your bubble, we will not, have community transmission. Whether someone drove 2.174km or 1.999km, away from home is not going to change that.
Some people like the reassurance of, rules, or the power kick from forcing others to follow them. But arbitrary, detailed and confusing rules, treating people like children, don't work.
East Germany tried that!
There is not a 2 km limit. There is in Ireland and there is talk about local limits.
Call me biased but the incident fills me with "meh". He drove to a carpark near his home where there was no one and got some exercise.
Hardly a hanging offence.
You and I can say "meh".
But the PM can't. That's the point.
She can say, what's your problem with this?
My only thought about the whole thing is why didn't he just bike to the start of the trail? At 2.3km away, it would have taken bugger-all longer than the time needed to load and unload his bike into the van.
If you aren't used to riding on the road, most cyclists won't if they have any choice. It is frigging dangerous.
I've only started since I don't have a bike path between me and work from december (they moved). Even now, during my daily exercise during the lockdown, I'm still getting close to having idiot car driver caused accidents most days. I’m road riding now because it is an ideal time to get more experience at avoid the dipshit motorists. I normally ignore main roads, riding on footpaths by preference because it is safer for me and not that dangerous to pedestrians (I just wait at slow speeds until they move over).
Most mountain bikers who do trails don’t ride on roads. They don’t have the road skills and their bikes don’t have all of the lights, reflectors and other crap like highlighted clothes and road level helmets that road cyclists routinely have.
I bike because I can't walk far due to a pad wearing out between my right big toe and the foot bones.
I avoid road riding around Dorkland, it's no fun at all and scary AF. And I'm the kind of person that needs a bit of adrenaline with my exercise, whether it's on a bike or kayak or skis. But right now in lockdown it might be ok.
When it comes to the specific ride in question, supposedly David's home is in Opoho. The roads to and from the Logan Park High School carpark don't look like the kind of hazards our Orcland roads are. Or better yet, do a loop to the carpark, over the Big Easy, then back home via Signal Hill Rd.
https://www.wildthings.club/trails/otago/dunedin/signal-hill-big-easy/
In normal times I won't ride on the road in Wellington. The drivers actively try to kill you.
Better in Auckland. They are just unaware of your existence.
I did my MBA in Dunedin from 1985 and was there for while afterwards until the end of 1988 while my partner at the time finished her dual degrees.
We had bikes the entire time that I was there and never rode them around the city. The main reason was because compared to Auckland the streets were quite narrow (more like the rabbit warren cart track streets in the water side of Ponsonby or Kingsland) and the parked cars made them too dangerous. Instead we walked most of the time or took a car.
Where we used the bikes was where there were no parked cars and the roads were pretty wide – riding around most of the West Coast for instance.
I think that the roads are wider further out from the centre of Dunedin from what I saw this Xmas at least on the flat. Once you get into those hills however they looked like single way cart tracks winding their way up and down. The danger on bikes is mostly proximity to cars.
I can’t remember much about Opoho, but generally I regard any route as dangerous if at any point you get to effectively single lane with even occasional parked cars. Which is why I never road there. All of the roads around where I lived were like that.
While there are lot of roads that are like that in Auckland, there are usually routes that allow you to avoid them here. Less so in Wellington or Dunedin. Whereas riding in Christchurch or Invercargill is just so damn easy.
"We had bikes the entire time that I was there and never rode them around the city."
At that same time I commuted via bike from Maryhill to work at the bottom of MacClaggan Street. One morning I rode (with feet sliding) all the way down down High Street in snow.
My point wasn’t really about snow or the shape of roads – it was about bloody motorists.
I grew up in Mt Albert in Auckland. We used to ride everywhere all of the time. But the traffic went from being not a problem in the late 60s to bleeding dangerous by the early 80s as the population went up markedly and the quality of the drivers dropped.
In the late 70s and early 80s I’d had several accidents on pushbikes and motor scooters, all the fault of drivers. The worst was riding down a shallow slope on morningside drive by St Lukes Mall and having a car abruptly turn right in front of me to go into the mall. Or having a car pull out of a parking space on the side of the road obviously without having looked in their wing mirror.
Problem is that with a bike of any kind you’re reliant on dimwits in cars. After a few accidents caused by motorists you become a really defensive rider very fast. Dunedin city drivers really didn’t impress me with the care that they took looking around.
Of course I could just have high standards…
I’d point out that in my entire car driving career, I’ve only had a few accidents. One where another car turned right into me (I still have no idea how they could have missed an burnt orange peugeot). One where a tire blew out after running into the end of someones exhaust dropped in the southern motorway – it was evening and I didn’t see the pipe on the road until too late. And one on the bridge evening commuter shuffle when an idiot talking to the female passenger (I’d be watching him in the mirror) behind me ran straight into my arse.
Oh and I slid a long wheel base land rover off a track once, while I was trying to get around a slip in the clay road.
So he could have used his legs and pushed the damned thing.
…why didn't he just bike to the start of the trail?
Riding mountain bikes on the road is a pain in the arse with those fat, knobby tyres. You'd have to be very determined or a glutton for punishment to choose to do it.
Not as much a pain in the arse as riding skinny road tyres around a mountain bike trail. Or snow, for that matter. I was a product development engineer at Trek in Wisconsin for a year. I've ridden some weird shit and seen a lot of even weirder shit happen on bikes.
In San Diego I lived about 4km from some primo trails. I almost always rode there and back, it just felt wrong to drive there. It helped to pump up the tyres a bit for the road and let them down for the trails. Not locking out the shocks on the road was good for dialling in smooth pedalling technique.
I don't know where in Opoho he lives but that's the suburb with Dunedins steepest streets (Baldwin for eg, like excessively steep), to get to Logan Park you'd have to use the high windy narrow road through the Botanical Gardens, or go the long way (bout 5-6 kms) through the university.
This is mountain biking we're talking here. Steepness and hills are kinda the point.
Baldwin street is overrated. Hell, my driveway here in Titirangi is steeper. For about ten metres or so, anyways. Was down there in November and my twins on their learners permit wanted to drive up it to see what the big deal was. It was a letdown for them.
Shoulda made them do a three point turn at the steepest bit.
Baldwin Street is further up North East Valley and doesn't link to Opoho, but there are other steep-ish streets from NEV up to Opoho Like Blacks Road, which on paper links to the Big Easy (down a gully). Clark will live at about 100m which isn't much in Dunedin.
Funny thing is he drove down from Opoho to near Logan Park at near sea level (at what was Pelichet Bay before it was reclaimed). Then the Big Easy track heads up the Opoho Creek gully to closer to where he lives. There's walking track access from Opoho, but I don't know if there's bike access.
But the driving a couple of km to the track isn't what the PM told him off for, it was for doing risky recreation which has clearly been officially discouraged for ordinary people.
Presumably some people would get a bit grumpy if the Minister of Health ended up crocked up in hospital right now.
Come on Pete. Admit you have been camped outside Minister Clark's house watching his movements for the last week.
I hope that's a stupid attempt at a joke.
I haven't been away from home since Saturday two weeks ago – I had decided to go into isolation before we had to.
You do seem to know a lot about his movements, Pete…
From trail ratings I've read, Big Easy does not qualify as risky recreation. As lprent says, even with reduced lockdown traffic riding the streets is riskier.
He would have been told off for the "not a good look" of getting sprung for doing something we've all been sorta kinda instructed to not do.
This "incident" is a Pete George "magic moment" – his glee is palpable!
I say (again), ho hum.
I'm good with trusting people to make decisions in their own location. But we do need the govt to be seen to doing the right thing here, because now people will be going oh, it's ok to drive to my local bike track. I wish he'd taken a plain car.
But perception is everything. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of what he did, he's the health minister. At a time when the message is stay at home what he did means there'll be people who'll think 'what's good for the goose' then find themselves being confronted by the cops. It's a time when the government needs the support and cooperation of citizens, which in turn means the respect of citizens. Without that we're stuffed. Clark should've known that and have acted accordingly.
Well said.
Reminded me of when I was a kid at a friends house for dinner, and they all prayed, I didn't as I had no idea what they were doing, anyway, one of the other kids told their dad I hadn't prayed and the dad said "how did you know? were you not praying too?". Just the person who took the photograph was a couple kms away from wherever they lived too (I know the area).
I do not believe there is a 2km limit that you are referring to. But there are guidelines that dont support the actions he did (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120613766/coronavirus-mountain-bike-trails-close-as-cyclists-asked-to-ride-local)
But ignoring all that – it goes against what we are being asked to do. If everybody acted in the same way as the minister of health did in this circumstance the whole isolation 'thing' would be nowhere as effective and people will die.
So – should his behaviour be ignored?
As you can see from the car park, the place was deserted. What if Clark had had an accident and needed rescuing somewhere on the track?
They are telling us not to go swimming and surfing but idiot Clark goes on a bike trail!
Also telling us to keep away from other people!
They are telling us not to go swimming.
No they're not. They are telling us not to go swimming in clusters and to keep the full 2 metre distance from one another. That did not happen in Mission Bay, Auckland for example, so they shooed the lot of them off the beach. Since then they appear to have eased the rules and if people are acting sensibly… going for a swim by themselves or in pairs and keeping a good distance from one another they are being left alone. That is what is happening at my local beach anyway.
Your political bias is shining through. Knew it wouldn’t take long before the rwnj’s were back to normal. In fact they’ve been strangely absent here up until now.
Justify it anyhow you like……Clark was an idiot. He is obviously above the rules for us plebs.
[lprent: You appear to be reluctant to actually deal with the objections to your pre-written scenario. That does not constitute robust debate. That just makes you look like a fucking useless and ignorant idiot troll. I suggest that you engage or leave before I make the decision for you. ]
Yes. It was mistake to go in his electorate van. His bad luck that a Nat – who was also 2 km away from his residence – happened to spot him and took a photo and dropped him into it. Someone should trace the source of the photo and see who it was, and what he/she was doing in the area too.
That sounds a bit like sour grapes. You are allowed out but you are not supposed to do "dangerous"activities else I would go surfing!
Please read my note to you about your behaviour at 2.4.6.2.1
So it would've been okay to go in his private car without the identifying stuff on the side of it? Why then wouldn't it have been okay for the photographer to have been there?
In which case, why did the photographer consider it photo-worthy?
Perhaps the photographer lived across the road and was going for a quick walk alone for a bit of exercise? There's certainly nothing to suggest the photographer was mountain biking, either.
"lived across the road".
He got papped by the wilderpeople living in the green belt. Much lols
So you're saying, mcflock, that the photographer had no business being there? The point is that their presence may have been well within the common understanding of the limits of the lock down.
No, I'm saying that there are no houses "just across the road".
If the photographer thought being there was fine for them, why would anyone think Clark's presence was camera-worthy? You're coming up with imaginings to defend rank hypocrisy.
The carpark is down a long dead end track behind the school, so the photographer must have been in there for a specific reason. Maybe going for a ride themselves, dropping someone off or picking them up, or maybe had seen the van and followed it in.
"If the photographer thought being there was fine for them, why would anyone think Clark's presence was camera-worthy? You're coming up with imaginings to defend rank hypocrisy."
Even if there aren't 'houses across the road', my point is the photographer may have been there within the limits of the lock down. Clark clearly wasn't. It hasn't been established the photographer had no business being there. If the photographer was there legitimately there's no hypocrisy. Your logic is lacking.
McFlock, that's your stomping ground isn't it? The Oddity says the van was parked at Logan Park school, other reports say it was at Signal Hill. Do you recognise from the photo which carpark it was?
edit: never mind, Pete seems pretty definite it was Logan Park school.
There's a car park called Signal Hill Reserve Carpark in behind the school. That's different to the lookout carpark at the top of the bike tracks.
Thanks Pete. I couldn't match up what was in the news photo with what was in the google maps satellite photo, but there's a pin there for the carpark in an open field. S'pose the carpark has been developed since the satellite photo.
This DCC rates map is more up to date and shows the formed car park behind the school..
https://dunedin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=759c35fd91ee487e8e7ac3c9581b17b6
Wouldn't catch me anywhere near a cycle track lol.
But you can see from the stuff pic and pete's link the start of the track as a V and the position of individual trees that it's at the lower carpark next to LPHS.
First of all you identify the person taking the photo as a "Nat" and then state that they were also over 2km away from their residence.
Anything to back that up?
No? funny that.
It'll be Pete George, won't it?
An ACT voter in fact 🙂
Oh, and if you look at the map, Clark lives in Ohopo and he parked at the Signal Hill reserve carpark. The way the crow flies this is probably about 500m, certainly well under 1km, let alone 2km!!!
The only way to get to Signal Hill lookout is by car or bike, no one walks that road, if you did walk it would take maybe 40 mins, an hour? There are no houses near there, it's a tourist spot normally.
Quite.
Er, just saying he wasn't 2.3km from his house 🙂
It was almost literally his own back yard.
The Nat-voting numpty who ratted on Clark at what is a time of major pressure would have known exactly where the minister lived and they would have known exactly what they were doing when they went public.
I’ve imagined myself in the same position and I wouldn’t breathlessly go to the media. But Nat voters are venal like that.
It was political…
The car park is at the bottom near Logan Park High School, not up at the lookout.
Ok, so you're making dirty false insinuations.
I've never voted for ACT.
The car park is behind Logan Park High School at the bottom of the track. It may be 500m by bike but there's no direct route by car, via Lovelock Track it's 2.4km.
But according to the PM the distance isn't the issue.
I feel my family is a lot safer knowing Pete is all over this. Never know when Ministers of the Crown are going to recklessly drive out of their zone.
are there any residences within 2km of the car park?
https://twitter.com/five15design/status/1245880004723916802/photo/3
Yes, it's within 1km of a lot of university flats and accommodation.
See if you can see from this link:
https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/Logan+Park+High+School/@-45.8588339,170.5290984,1770m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0xa82eac5b1186b223:0x759b80f37df43f00!8m2!3d-45.8619093!4d170.5288774
Clark lives somewhere near the Presbyterian Church in Opoho.
Funny coincidence, there's an Arden Street House nearby.
Hi Anne – hope you are well. I'm really not that concerned about him using his electorate van. The guys probably working his ass off at the moment, and I don't begrudge him some 'me' time at all. I think the issue is the nature of the activity – mountain biking. https://covid19.govt.nz/help-and-advice/for-everyone/leaving-your-house/ says this:
Anyone giving Clark flack for having a break is being a dick. But IMHO he should not have been mountain biking.
All that said, I'm loooking out over the upper harbour towards TeAtatu and gee it's tempting to put my little boat in. We're all human after all!
If there was an issue with the nature of the activity, the website would probably say don't go mountain biking as well.
The last time I tried it, mountain biking was dangerous!
Nice one Paddington. Of course he made a mistake and he has admitted as much.
What I take objection to is the over-reactions largely by those who are indulging in political point scoring. Interestingly, these types have been strangely silent on this blog for weeks now, then suddenly when a cabinet minister makes a wee mistake – and let anyone name a minister of any political persuasion who hasn't – and they all turn up for the kill.
Their motivations are crystal clear for all to see.
What gets me is the ignorance and outright stupidity of some of them…
It is like they just ignored the events and discussion going into stage 4.
I guess it is what people say – being conservatives makes people into wishful thinkers.
I'm not so "silly" as to read the comments from Farrar's Ferals, my primary interest is following what various platforms are choosing to highlight by way of posts and opinion pieces.
I have a particular and very personal interest in all things Ministry of Health and especially the relationship between the Ministry and the Minister.
And although, despite his Higher Education, Clark was clearly unsuited from day one to be the Minister in Charge of the Transformation of Kindness (after the much need high colonic) promised by Our Leaders he has outdone even my low expectations of him.
Heavens to Betsy BG, he gave the lot if us in Lockdown a very emphatic FU.
Perhaps Clark’s god can help us?
Clark's certainly not going to set the world on fire.
Agreed.
If what David Clark did was a general member of the public it would have likely gone unnoticed, and if the police had discovered them they would probably have been 'educated'.
But Clark isn't just an ordinary member of the public.
So this doesn't look good for Clark nor for the Government, on an issue that is annoying many people due to open abuses and borderline cases and in particular a lack of clarity (that has to be rectified quickly). Clark has made it appear that anyone can decide for themselves what they do.
Possible more importantly, Clark has what must be one of the most important jobs in the country, in the biggest issue facing health in probably a hundred years.
So why is he working from home and not in Wellington?
The Prime Minister has seen fit to work from Wellington. The Minister of Finance and the Director-General of Health and the Commissioner of Police and the Director of Civil Defence and Emergency Management are all in Wellington dealing with an unprecedented crisis.
I can understand Clark preferring to be at home for personal and family reasons, but he can't be as effective from home asd he could be working with the other key personnel and his Ministry of Health in Wellington.
Unless he is unofficially but deliberately sidelined .
"… on an issue that is annoying many people due to open abuses and borderline cases …"
You are self isolating to do the right thing, it isn't a competition. Do your bit and concentrate on what you can control.
You could follow your own advice.
I'm self-isolating to protect myself and others including a vulnerable person. I haven't left my property for nearly two weeks.
But it's obvious from media and social media coverage that many people are doing a wide range of activities away from home. This is likely to keep creeping to more activities and more risks.
In case you hadn’t noticed ( *sigh* ) all Ministers and MPs, apart from Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson, are working from where ever their home is. The reason why these two are required to be at the centre is because they need to use their actual hands to formally and legally sign things – like requests to use powers granted by the ‘crown’ like asking to use the armed forces and expending money from the treasury.
Everyone else is remote..
Ministers don’t need to be in Wellington. After all they don’t exactly have bits of hardware like bodies or sewerage systems that they’re working on. Most of their ‘hands’ are part of the bureaucracy or at the coalface. They just need to be able to communicate with those that they are responsible for and working with all around the country.
This includes the epidemic response committee which arguably is as important or more important as a frigging minister of cabinet.
The only requirement in our system for MPs to be together otherwise is pass legislation with even a token presence. Which they did before stage 4 when parliament shut itself down for a time.
There was an interesting RNZ article on the legal issues from last month.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/the-house/audio/2018738161/how-to-run-a-country-in-a-pandemic
Please avoid straw man arguments based on a ignorant and rather stupid spurious premise.
I think they have phones down in Dunedin. Correct me if I'm wrong.
You're right about that. I do most of my work remotely from Dunedin. I've been working in Timaru, Auckland and the UK today from home. But for big and critical jobs we like to do site visits, there are things you can miss from not being on site dealing with key people face to face and seeing a bigger picture.
Are you suggesting that the Health Minister should be doing face to face meetings? Or going to sites? Why?
All the other key leaders seem to be involved in person, they have appeared in various combinations in media conferences (keeping appropriate distances to set a good example) so must have a safe bubble to work in.
Six key people (see Lynn's explanation) are working in Wellington. Some of those for obvious reasons (eg press conferences).
What can Clark do in Wellington that he can't do from Dunedin?
Ride his mountain bike?
Keep in touch with what the Government doesn't want you to do when in isolation, or when in a key ministerial position?
Remote conferencing is good for many things, but it isn't as good as face to face for important discussions and decision making.
https://medium.com/@shannonkelly_80469/steve-jobs-on-the-importance-of-face-to-face-meetings-even-in-the-age-of-iphones-a5a4b83621a6
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/longdistance-meetings-vs-facetoface-meetings-35427.html
Clark seems to have not properly understood Ardern's stay-at-home related advice.
So you are suggesting that he does face to face meetings, despite all work places being told to work from home where possible.
"Clark seems to have not properly understood Ardern's stay-at-home related advice."
I can't see anything that Clark needs to be face to face for for the month, and no-one seems to be able to be specific on this.
How so? We're allowed out to exercise.
Ardern: “People can go outside to get fresh air and drive short distances if needed, but we have asked people to avoid activities where there is a higher risk of injury, and the Minister should have followed this guidance.”
The latest Daily COVID-19 update from the New Zealand Government (just received by email):
Answers to common questions
Q. I want to get some fresh air in my neighbourhood this weekend. How can I stay safe?
A. You might be tempted to leave the house this weekend, particularly if the weather is nice. Remember, staying home is the best thing you can do to stop the spread of COVID-19. But you can leave the house to buy groceries or to get some fresh air in your neighbourhood.
If you do leave the house this weekend, here are some do’s and don’ts to remember:
Clark has apologised for doing something a bit risky (riding a bike on a dirt track). But sometimes driving a short distance for exercise seems to be within the rules from what I can tell. The guidance is to avoid unnecessary travel.
Hey that is just crap.
I do video conferencing all of the time. Kind of have to with my current project team being in the UK, aussie, parts of the US and now locked down here. It isn’t any worse or better than when we all did the same thing around a meeting room table with or without video links to outliers as I did it a decade ago. Or when doing it via chat rooms and version control systems as I did 20 years ago.
Or as programmers do it these days; via slack, jira, confluence, stash and jenkins or their equivalents. We seldom use video conferencing except to deal with the unskilled (like managers and customer), because we’ve been doing this kind of remote stuff forever and we’re efficient doing it.
These days we just layer all of those together depending on who the audience is.
It is like everything else – you get better at it the more you do it.
'We' might need to get over 'ourselves'.
Did Clark's actions actually threaten anyone with Covid-19? No.
Media beat-up. They are desperate to tarnish the gold that is Jacinda (and Robertson).
I don't think it's fair or correct to sack Clark for anything in particular. He's clearly an idiot so blame shouldn't come into it. He should just be sacked for general incompetence.
Who should be Minister of Health?
I don't know. Louisa Wall? Liz Craig? I’m liking Chloe Swarbrick more and more.
Liz Craig would be very appropriate but this is her first term so it could be a bit soon. She wasn't even appointed to the Epidemic Response Committee.
Bit of a joke that last bit, given her CV.
Out of interest, have you seen Farrar's post from yesterday about the Covid-19 comittee members? He makes the same point about Liz Craig.
Farrars mob?
Haven't they been wishing for someone more like bill english in a crisis?
John Hopkins just ticked over a million reported cases. Took 8 days to double from half a million.
There is a very funny picture leading Brian Easton's column on Pundit re Trump masking. I can't copy and paste it but it can be seen on https://www.pundit.co.nz/
Seem to remember that picture heading one of the posts on here recently…..and the article is as good as the picture
No..wasnt here…mustve been somewhere else
Ha!
Direct link to image:
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/5c19a371aa49a150fcfe2851/1585805622387-U9K4J4WNMX8LWPUO2DCC/ET_NX18WoAUPp39.jpg?content-type=image%2Fjpeg
The PM will likely address the Minister of Health’s brain fade at her press conference today. Hopefully anyway, and use him as an example of what not to do. He should apologise profusely. Jacinda did not need this at this time. She has to keep well and get enough sleep and not be kept awake at night by such stupidity.
Jacinda is a very weak leader re staff. Twyford, Lees-Galloway and Clark (and NZ First MP's) often embarrass her but she will not fire anyone. The talent pool is too shallow we all know that. She also only acted on Clare Curran and Meka Whaitiri as she was forced to.
She needs to take a leaf out of Helen Clarks' playbook.
Like many others, Jimmy is still tuned in to "politics as usual".
Previous cases are irrelevant here. Firings have always been based more on the importance of the sinner than the sin (Murray McCully broke more rules than there are in the book, but survived, because he was Murray McCully and knew where the bodies were buried).
The PM won't fire Clark because she is dealing with an extraordinary challenge, and the health system doesn't need a newbie learning the name tags. That is vastly more important than playing the Beehive games which made headlines on a slow news day, but are entirely irrelevant now.
Really? I've never sacked anyone either.
Told a few, including myself, "I hope you have bloody well learned from this, and will do better next time".
Works much better than shooting people for their cockups.
You just end up replacing them with another fallible human, who you have to train to avoid the mistakes, the previous one learned from.
Some people are promoted beyond their capabilities. Clark, Curran, ILG and Twyford are examples in Labour IMO.
Nick Smith, Paula Bennett are examples in National also IMO.
I still have an open mind about which of them were, "promoted beyond their capabilities" and which are learning a huge job, on the trot.
It remains to be seen.
National were in long enough to make it obvious.
Jacinda Adern has done an excellent job, of communicating, which is her role, so far, as have many others.
I have to agree with you on Jacinda's communication (and not just this Covid-19 thing), it is always very good. Just wish she would put some of her MP's in their place when the do absolutely dumb things like this that embarrass them.
Some people are promoted beyond their capabilities.
IMO, Simon Bridges.
Gee the leader of the of a labour party (the party that try's to make workers lifes better) doesnt believe in pulling their metaphorical penis out and sacking people to prove they’re the bees knees.
Who woulda thunk it.?
I'm simply saying Helen Clark would not have put up with this shit from her MP's.
Yeah well Clark was a 90s poly and the first elected female PM Nz was still dragging its knuckles then some are trying to walk upright nowadays
Oh look. Jimmy was almost certainly calling Helen Clark an idiot – and a few other names no doubt – when she was PM.
It is Helen Clark's playbook by the way. Just a little grammar lesson for you.
Did you get out of the wrong side of someone's bed Anne?
No I did very well under the Clark government and she certainly surrounded herself with much more competent people. But also did not suffer fools.
But thanks for the grammar lesson….I must admit I'm not a good typist.
Helen Clark was no idiot. Cold, uncaring, heartless, calculating, unkind, at times even duplicitous – but she was no idiot.
Some (…) would call that a backhanded compliment, others would call it a character assassination.
Like her or loathe her (Helen that is), she was a good politician and PM.
She was none of those things Chris. OK maybe a bit duplicitous in a political sense but you name a prominent politician who isn't. But she was from broadly the same generation and Presbyterian background as I came from. We were brought up not to show our emotions on our sleeve. It was often mistaken for coldness and lack of empathy. It was neither of those things.
Helen Clark was certainly no idiot. But I knew her personally. She was none of the other things.
I disagreed with her simply calling a hiatus to the Neo-liberal onslaught. “New Zealand is tired of changes”, But doubt anyone could have achieved much more at the time, in that direction.
Male politicians with similar characteristics, would have been credited with much more positive descriptions.
The only brain fade was using a marked van. In his defence a chance to get away on his own and do a bit of clear thinking is probably invaluable considering how many are yapping in his ear. I once had a job that required a bit of clear headed thinking on occasion and I used to drive a few kms away and park-up and think without distraction for 5 or 10 minutes.
It seems COVID-19 deaths in Europe are being way under-reported. For instance, in France and Spain, retirement home deaths apparently aren't included in reported totals.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/official-coronavirus-figures-dont-reveal-the-true-scale-of-the-pandemic_n_5e846d7ac5b6a1bb76507da7
Same in Italy
The poms hadn't been counting deaths outside hospital.
https://youtu.be/WimbyL_25Nw
If only David Clark had listened to Randy Rainbow.
Every morning Bill de Blasio, mayor of NY does a presser.
This morning he is advising all NYer's to wear a 'face covering'. People may carry the virus yet have no symptoms, so they just spread it, asymptomatic . He does not want people using surgical masks, as those need to be saved for those on the 'front line'. Instead encouraging people to make their own or wear a bandana.
It must be horrendous in NY, he's asking for the military to mobilize and for any medical people to come to NY to help.
If your interested, I usually watch it on this link, comes on around 9.30-10am.
Meanwhile, agent orange has just started his daily presser…
The Presidential presser yesterday started off with an astonishing electioneering session. They didn't want to talk about the new milestones or the number of deaths and infected so went full out on war.
The navy is going to sort out the drug cartels. This is war. Iran is going to be sorted out, this is war. 'We are not sleeping, no-one should think that while we're distracted we're not ready." The navy is ready, they're ready to go. As of today they're …
And all those saying how great the Leader is. The election is the week before Veterans Day. I wonder if the troops and rockets and bowing and scraping experts will be ready for the parade in Washington.
Bit of a dilemma for the trumpskyites, is it still ok to rip veils off muslims.
Great piece here from the NYTimes about the demise of advertising-funded print media. Perhaps a few of the loud mouthed media commentators here in NZ should read it and have a deeper look at the reasons their industry is headed the same way as the dinosaurs. Apologies if it’s paywalled, an online sub to the NYT is the same price as the NZHerald though and about a million times better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-journalists-newspapers.html?searchResultPosition=9
NYT gives you some free articles before you hit the paywall.
Well worth it though. IMHO.
http://archive.li/9pRUw
On the lighter side. Walked past a couple of women, several metres apart, sitting on their respective front lawns, drinking wine.
Told us they were practising their "social" distancing.
Oh joy Mitre 10 can sell padlocks online – pity I have a broken exterior door lock – which they stock
BUT CAN'T BLOODY SELL ME!
Maybe contact Mitre 10 and ask them to have it included in their list of essential items? I under stand they had to submit such a list to the government?
Got through to their customer service centre – transferred to a supervisor… left message on his answerphone – wish me luck
Good. 👍
Good luck!
In anticipation of a resolution of our current homeless/NFA situation I eagerly went online seeking 5ol heavy duty storage crates with lids. The crates I originally packed our books in have not fared well in the shed they are stored in. They will not survive being trucked to our prospective home.
Got the same NO CAN SELL message.
Played the phone tag game for a while, but life is short.
Papiere Bitte!
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/uk-plans-coronavirus-immunity-passports-so-brits-can-leave-lockdown-2020-4?
Hoping this leads to something…
In a small clinical trial just granted approval, about 30 COVID-19 patients at Karolinska University Hospital may soon begin to receive blood plasma from people who have recovered from the disease. Sweden's Ethical Review Authority has approved the trial treatment, and its effectiveness will be evaluated in a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-04-green-trial-blood-plasma-recovered.html
..and this quackery is done.
Several seriously ill covid-19 patients in Sweden have been treated with chlorikin, the active substance in malaria medicine – something praised by researchers in other parts of the world. Now comes alarming reports that the drug on the contrary can be dangerous. – That is why we have decided in Gothenburg and in Västra Götaland that we do not use it, says Magnus Gisslén, chief physician at the Eastern Hospital.
(google translate)
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/malariamedicin-provas-pa-sjuka-infektionslakaren-dumt
The idiot US President has some other idiot on there talking about the big learnings to come out of the current situation. Apparently relying on other countries for essential things is bad. Stuff is being made overseas because of cheap labour is bad.
Hello? Globalisation has been good for scores of years when American companies decamped production off shore for cheap labour so they could make a killing. Now essential medical needs should be manufactured at home? How about making everything at home?
Whingeing about their sacred capitalist system not working how they want it to work when the going gets tough? Just another effect of the virus I suppose.
What happens when you displease Dear Leader by telling the truth,
And people criticise the Chinese.
Not that one baby killing lying murderous Government, is any better than the other.
People also criticise the yankers you know.
Horror Show, Live
Why the hell is it all Trump, Pence, and Jared Kushner? Where are the DOCTORS? Why do the press corps just sit there like dummies and accept this evil farce?
Because as far as he is concerned it is all about Trump. As has been the case all his life. It's not going to change even for 100,000+ lives.
True enough, Trump is more heinous than anyone could have predicted. But the real problem here is the deferential, compliant press corps.
Many main stream are considering not covering these publicly funded "election rallies", despite the fact that people are anxious to find out the latest information regarding the pandemic, and are thinking about simply reporting the key "take way" messages, after they have been clarified by WH staff.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/media/trump-coronavirus-briefings-ratings.html
and
https://deadline.com/2020/03/coronavirus-chris-hayes-don-lemon-1202896531/
Whoa! Just looked up from my laptop, glanced out my window. A couple of PO-licemen in the front yard of neighbour, talking to neighbour – same place there was a loud altercation a couple of evenings' back.
I guess I'm becoming a curtain twitcher under lock down.
Same here yesterday.
Ambulance first. Then cop car.
No one wearing PPE and no handcuffs, pepperspray or tasers.
At one stage four members of the household were in the back of the ambulance and were then joined by a thin mask wearing paramedic.
All but the Man of The House exited said ambulance and it went on it's way.
The constables spent some time in deep conversation with an Older Gentleman who had arrived earlier in the day. Possibly to hold the a-frame ladder while the man of the house perched atop so he could remove crud from his spouting and hurl it hither and thither.
Mildly interesting, but I was busy, so I detached from this timeless suburban pursuit with a dismissive…'silly bugger's going to fall and break his neck' to my partner.
Total relief when I saw them all walking in and out of the ambulance.
Oh happy days.
Yes. All these little dramas in the residential areas. I take an interest for a minute or 2 and go back to what I am doing.
Mostly my hood is pretty quiet. No illegal or risky behaviours as far as I know. Probably just some stressed people with short fuses.
Maybe people don't have much imagination, or maybe I have too much, but the last place I would want to be right now is in traction in a hospital.
These days you're more likely to be fitted up with an external fixator and sent home to suffer.
that would suit me. But you take my point.
Yup. Not a great time to be hospitalised
Help! What are we doing for these people. Our people overseas, now needing help in all parts of the globe.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/413303/kiwis-stuck-in-new-dehli-call-for-help-from-the-government
We have to get right down and personal and help NZs stuck overseas and not just keep repeating that refrain that's almost a threnody, stay in place for the duration. That's economic thinking, we say it and turn it into reality without concern for the implementation. These people need money and need it now. And to be advised of any transport available, and they need a 24 hour line with people who have a budget to facilitate things now. Not save money or supplies up for a possible greater need tomorrow.
NZ Government – support our people. You have been in globalisation mode for quite a while now – but the other side of it is that everyone needs a home, not in the globe in general, but on some definite ground which is here in NZ. Bring them home, or support them until they can get here.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXnRf3TQcpk
Bring Him Home from Les Miserables
Bring him peace, bring him joy
He is young, he is only a boy
You can take, you can give
Let him be, let him live…
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home
Worth a laugh, funny news
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfIsuMmncm0&ab_channel=SomeMoreNews
Here's a good illustration of the kind of price gouging and profiteering going on right now in the US.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-york-medical-equipment-payments_n_5e863fd7c5b6d302366cf992
The federal government has explicit powers under the Defense Production Act to take control of this, order companies to produce what's needed and set the price at cost plus a reasonable margin, and coordinate sending product to where it's most needed. But it's not doing that with the bilious fake-bronze baboon preferring to just sit back and fire off twitter insults against those trying to fight the problem.
More who love the market model. Coming up with some altruistic crap about loving America and doing things for America.
People do things for money. That's how it works. More money, quicker money. Donald Trump would be happy.
White power Tucker's pissed off because 3M is selling what is rightfully the tRump crime family's PPE to foreigners.
/
I am, I admit, being a little provocative here: a link for bill. The first 20 minutes worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WP2xcV97Nk
Tedros of WHO a member of the Maoist Party of Ethiopia?
Yeah, Falun Gong don't like the CCP.
Given the atrocious way the CCP have treated the Falun Gong, this should be unsurprising. The CCP's relationship with all religious traditions has varied from overbearing and oppressive, to hostile and murderous.
I don't know a great deal about Falun Gong, but whatever the propaganda from either side says, it's clear that nothing good has happened.
Then look at the Uighur situation for another example of totalitarian oppression.
Then listen to what many of the Christian Churches say, forced to operate underground or work with severe restrictions such as not being allowed to teach their own children their faith. Or compelled to register with State bodies that ensure compliance with state dictates.
Or just go back to the Maoist destruction of China's own indigenous religious and cultural traditions during the Cultural Revolution.
Yes there is a lot of propaganda from all sides, and with the language barrier plus our social remove none of us are in a position to make much sense of it all. Yet one thing is clear, the CCP is not merely a political party; it represents a totalitarian ideology that brooks no serious competitors.
My mainland born SIL reckons it's China's Chernobyl. Local officials minimised and prevaricated, things were out of control long before Beijing was aware of the severity of the situation and from then on it's only ever been a face saving exercise.
But this time there was no radiation to be detected so we'll never know how widespread the disease was let alone how many deaths occurred.
What has transpired is too big to be left to individual countries. Particularly closed-off and authoritarian ones.
Doctors and health officials need an independent global body which to report to the next time this happens.
We can't go through this shit again.
Well, who does.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/04/china-did-not-deceive-us-counting-death-during-an-epidemic-is-really-difficult.html#more
an excerpt:
As for the number of urns delivered to funeral homes in Hubei after the quarantine was lifted one has also to consider the number of regular death. Hubei province has some sixty million inhabitants. The regular mortality rate in China is 726 per 100.000 inhabitants per year. The regular expected number of death from January 1 to March 31 in Hubei province without the epidemic was 108.900. In Wuhan, which has 14 million inhabitants, the expected number was 25.410. Photos that show the delivery of a few thousands of urns to large funeral homes in Wuhan are thereby not a sign for a higher Covid-19 death rate. To claim such is propaganda nonsense."
Really some of the crap coming out of American Trump and Bannon wannabes is laughable .Pravda redux.
Pravda redux.
I think it's far more insidious than pravda. Pravda was one outlet, not a conglomeration of corporate media outlets always singing from the same song book and from the page they have been told to turn to by (usually) anonymous western "Intelligence Sources".
Throw on top of that the fact that most people (it seems) continue to labour under the notion that there's a "vibrant free press" comprised of competing outlets and mediums bent on providing facts and discovering truths.
It's truly horrible.
That's not provocative. It's just a reflection of who and what you are.
I already provided a lengthy article that covered the propaganda of the Wuhan urns – that article "outed" the source of the story and much else besides and you didn't challenge a word of it. But for anyone who might be stumbling across this bile for the first time, below is the relevant passage from the article I already provided to you.
And for those who don't know, the source for the story – RFA is Radio Free Asia – " a US government news agency created during the Cold War as part of a “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA”, according to the New York Times."
And, of course, versions of the urn story are being carried uncritically by multiple western outlets (google "chinese urns" for a partial run down), because that's what they do – "follow the script" that's fed to them – China being an "official enemy" and all….
Oddly, none of the social media posts RFA referred to were quoted in its article.
RFA’s “estimates” are based on morbid speculation regarding the cremation capacity of Wuhan’s funeral homes. RFA cites a story by the Chinese media outlet Caixin on funeral arrangements being made by Wuhan residents during the crisis. On March 26, Caixin reported that 5,000 cremation urns had arrived at a mortuary in Wuhan over a two-day period. This is treated as nefarious evidence of Chinese government deception solely because it exceeds the official death total in Wuhan.
RFA completely ignores the fact that residents have continued to die from other causes during the pandemic, as well as the backlog in funerals and cremations caused by the city’s several month long lockdown. In 2019, approximately 56,000 cremations took place in Wuhan, according to the city’s official statistics.
That means that roughly 4600 residents died per month, a figure that was likely higher during the winter months and with Wuhan’s health care system overwhelmed by the outbreak. With Wuhan under lockdown since January 23, a substantial increase in the use of funeral homes and crematoriums should have been expected.
Critic banned.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120800211/university-of-otago-cuts-off-studentrun-critic-magazine-over-coronavirus-article
Critic can be a bit of a loose unit at times.
The editorial's not even that bad. Just accurate.
The university was pulling the business as usual card up until a day before it locked its doors.
It constantly couches everything, especially publicly, in concern for safety and wellbeing, but then put the onus on staff to demonstrate why they should be able to stay home, tried to implement some BS "working from home" leave request that required above-department signoff, and generally shows a lack of human consideration worthy of a nat blogger.
Plus everything in the Critic opinion piece.
A month or two back (who can tell these days) the uni decided to improve morale by telling us to consider what we could do to make our colleagues happier. Telling colleagues that everyone in the top rungs of the hierarchy was retiring would cheer a lot of people up.
Universities seem to have had the worst of incompetent, chair polishing managerialism inflicted on them. Since they have been "run like a business".
Skegg was pretty good, as I recall. People were quite optimistic about Hayne, as another practising academic rather than academic-turned professional university administrator.
Shame it turned out this way. She's possibly even worse than Fogelberg was, and he was a total wanker as VC. In those days we could get 2,000 people outside his office chanting exactly that 🙂
I'm staggered by the numbers of overseas tourists still in NZ.
12,000 Germans have registered for repatriation from NZ.
Thats a lot of rentals opened up. Every cloud…
Given the events of the last few weeks, anyone else think the grim reaper of New Zealand, David Seymour, will have trouble with his legalised murder bill in the upcoming referendum?
The robber barons never went away.
Adam Schlesinger died from Covid-19 on 1 April in New York (aged 52). He was a singer-songwriter, record producer, guitarist, keyboardist, and frontman for several bands including "Fountains of Wayne".
It makes me very sad, but I just wanted to remember him and share one of his bands popular songs released in 2003.
Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne (Live In Chicago).
Sesame Street for Adults:
Brought to you by the letters W T and F
Two weeks ago bus driver Jason Hargrove posted a video on FB saying he was worried about coronavirus transmission after a woman coughed on his bus.
He's died after contracting coronavirus.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/04/02/detroit-bus-drivers-dead-covid-19/5115450002/