That was covered in Yesterday's Dom/Post as well. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.
What I particularly liked was that, after it was obvious that the patrol craft was taking on water, that "the cruise ship had remained in the vicinity of the incident for more than an hour and had offered assistance.. It's Captain alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Curacao which eventually advised him to continue his journey."
Go away! Stop looking at us! Let us sink in peace!
There are an enormous number of uploads on Youtube but all they are is just stock footage of both ships. None show the ramming attempt as far as I could discover.
Why does David Lange's comment come to mind?
'Shortly after the Mikhail Lermontov, the pride of the Soviet cruising fleet, ended her life at the bottom of the Marlborough Sounds, Lange declared that little old New Zealand was "the only nation to sink a Russian Ship since the Second World War."'.
To those that think we were too slow, and to those that think we went too severe, 1 death, so far. Look at the UK, nurses, Drs, Bus Drivers, a 5 year old yesterday! Each county numbering 100s of deaths. Big thanks to those working their arses off keeping us as safe as they can.
For a start the lockdown would have been delayed, "because of the cost to business".
Those on welfare would have been ignored.
Big businesses with lobbying clout would have all still been open and their employees forced to work.
There would be no uptick in demand from a minimum wage rise.
Help would have been directed at banks and corporates. Small business, sole traders,beneficiaries and wage earners would have been last on the list, if at all.
Lastly, communication from Bridges would have been abysmal, and even their own voters don't really trust National. Except for tax cuts and lining their own pockets.
You are letting your political bias blind you to political reality. As SM says there would have been virtually no difference in response (except minimum wage increase).
All the fiscal measures to support wages and salaries, to support small business survive would have been implemented.
How do I know this? Because what the govt has done is modelled on what National did in Christchurch. They have actually said as much.
Under National there would have been much tougher border surveillance and earlier. That has been and remains a major failure of the government.
KJT may be right. Wayne may be right. We'll never know. I lean towards KJT's point of view. National would have been likely followed Scumo's weaker response. But as I said, it's history, and words spoken now about what would have happened are worthless and meaningless.
I agree. Nice as it may sound, it’s rather pointless and not even an ‘academic’ exercise. It also carries the risk of polarising opinions, which we don’t really need in these times or in any time for that matter, IMHO.
The health system in NZ has hardly changed in the last two decades (apart from new technology). The health budget has increased under both governments at more or less the same rate.
The proliferation of administrators on high pay, often much higher than operational staff, has swallowed up a large proportion of funding increases for schools, universities and schools, for the last 3 decades.
So the idea that funding has increased may be true on the face of it.
But so much has gone in those salaries and payments to private providers, all those sectors have shown the effects of being run down, in reality.
If you want to read about a health system being privatised by stealth read this. How the likes of fun f**king loving Branson the one along with Stagecoach f**ked eastern region railways in the UK and expected compensation is now a big player "running" the NHS
Nationalise the lot, tell them all to F**k Off with no compensation. I think Bo-Jo has a bloody cheek putting on his podium "Save the NHS" when since the days of Thatcher the Tories have done their utmost to run it into the ground.
"Bridges as PM" is not the same as "National in government".
I would give Key/English the benefit of the doubt. But the "bonfire of red tape" (Simon Bridges' own plans, in his own words) was announced as a response to Covid-19.
"The arguments for these things just becomes stronger as a result of Covid-19 … Clearing away red tape means businesses are freer to get up in the morning to hire people and building houses, cutting hair, doing the things that need to be done without the unnecessary rules and regulations," he said.
That was in March 2020. Less than a month ago. Only days before the lockdown. It was pure fantasy.
"Clearing away red tape means businesses are freer to get up in the morning to hire people and building houses, cutting hair, doing the things that need to be done without the unnecessary rules and regulations," he said.
I would be fascinated to know what unnecessary rules and regulations there might be governing cutting hair.
Yep Bridges was completely out of touch. Almost like he continued to waffle on along prepared lines without any awareness of how serious things were becoming.
"Because what the govt has done is modelled on what National did in Christchurch."
What did National do for beneficiaries at that time? I don't remember an across the board benefit rise for Canterbury people. Nor an energy payment that winter. Can't remember what National's response was. Anyone?
it was extended by a few weeks but was further restricted from memory but as far as direct financial support went that was the extent if I recall correctly.
Its worth noting that the fact a business support package (wage subsidy) had been implemented before, albeit on a limited basis, would likely have promoted it as an option on this occasion.
Having said that I think KJT's assertion that Nationals response would have differed holds a considerable amount of water as with everything the emphasis, priorities and timing would have been different …the devil is always in the detail
Single issue lunacy from you KJT, surround by a huge amount of conjecture and what if’s’
I think the response has been over the top. If anyone thinks this thing isn’t coming back for round 2 at some point, they’re deluded. Will we just shut the economy down again? Or is it better to allow some deaths amongst the lower risk demographics and try and focus isolation and support on the high risk? Then at least we can build some immunity.
No economy in the world can meets the all of the health needs of citizens and prevent all disease related deaths. What economies can do is generate capital to support and resource health systems. The stronger the economy, the greater the resources governments can give to health systems. The issue as it always has been is about how to best allocate those resources. This requires careful judgement (not evident with the current Minister of Health).
For instance cancer patients have for years been competing with each other and with other medical conditions for resources. There is never enough resource to go round and so there will always be priorities and winners and losers.
No one is "happy" about "sacrificing"people. And it doesn't happen "for the economy". Your thinking on this doesn't make sense. Its emotive bullshit.
To reiterate, its the 'economy' that makes it possible to build better health systems.
The problem with these armchair alternatives is that they ignore the most basic question in a democracy. Does the government tell the people what it is doing?
If "No", then you're arguing for a cover-up. Which would inevitably leak out, and there would be uproar.
If "Yes", how do you propose that a NZ government (ANY government, forget the names and parties) announces to the people:
"We think it is better to allow some deaths, so we'll be doing that."
By and large the evidence strongly suggests that the young don't die at anywhere near the same rates as 'the old and infirm" as a result of Convid 19. So that sacrifice is not being asked of the young. And neither should it.
The same rate does not mean that there is no rate. They still get sick, they still die, and they still infect others. Therefore they are still sacrificing.
Moreover as they have to go off sick in large quantities, they will cause businesses to fail thereby eventually losing themselves and others their jobs.
What kind of moronic point are you trying to make? Simpleton aphorisms don’t make an argument – they merely define someone being an idiot.
I agree with your statements concerning the use of the concept, 'rates'.
My other point (which I should have made more clearly) is that I don't think we should be expecting the young to make unreasonable sacrifices for, say, boomers, for example.
I understand that you're probably been a little too lazy to read up on epidemics. But the issue in a epidemic without a vaccine or a effective treatment is that everyone almost without exception gets sick.
The more often that you get exposed and infected again before you develop any immunities, the more likely it is that you'll wind up with a dose of infecting agents that manage to overwhelm anyones immune system. Without adequete medical treatment you're more likely to die or have a downstream consequence – like a permanently compromised immune system.
So instead of whining about someone else based on a discussion about probabilities, perhaps you should look more closely at how you stop you, your family, your friends, and your workmates getting into a situation that they get into the worst possible epidemic case.
Try looking at New York where it appears the major demographic dying or severely distressed now are in their 30s and 40s because they have been swanning around in virus haze thinking that they're immune.
Meanwhile the boomers buttoned up weeks ago because they were told that they were at risk.
You can also look to OZ where the risk takers are the most affected ie 20's.
Dr McAnulty said that younger people are being affected.
"Young people need to be aware that they are not immune from getting severe disease.
"The older people and people with underlying health problems, cardiac or chest or immune problems, are most prone to getting severe disease and requiring intensive care and ventilation, but younger people are getting infected as well, and the biggest single age group is people in their 20s.
"In fact, we have seen also three people who were ventilated in intensive care in their 30s."
My other point (which I should have made more clearly) is that I don't think we should be expecting the young to make unreasonable sacrifices for, say, boomers, for example.
Why not? We're all in this together. Some of the at risk people will be younger people eg those with asthma or immune issues. Everyone is making sacrifices, not just young people, so why single them out as a group and pit them against others?
Further, why is the boomer generation not worthy of being helped? What about the elderly who will die if we all don't do our bit?
Are those young going to have there student loans remitted? As they face ruinous generational bills to pay for the privilege of extending the lives of those who benefited from a free education? Will the young get advantageous interest rates on their mortgages as they take lower paid roles in order to support the old and infirmary right to live where they are on a full government super? Will that same super be affordable for future generations as reward for sacrificing so much for the old and infirm who demanded the economy be shut down to protect them.
the same voices crying for there future generations to be protected from climate change are now sadly forgotten as those same voices revert to individualistic selfishness.
For the moment, I’m ignoring the rest of your comment, which is basking in ignorance, IMO.
Then at least we can build some immunity.
Nobody knows or is sure if exposure to (i.e. infection with) COVID-19 will induce immunity and, if so, how long this will last. This pandemic is too young to tell and it is highly risky to make predictions and extrapolate from the experience with other coronaviruses or research on animals.
Pretty weak excuse. It’s not wiping people out. It’s fatality rate amongst people without other morbidity factors is nearing .25%.
its the old and infirm and the occasionally unlucky other who then gets sensationalised. I’m not saying it’s not something to be afraid of, but when the theoretical cure is worse than the disease…
we don’t even know if isolation will actually break the transmission cycle. It’s a best guess based on an assumption. So no less valid than Sweden’s approach, which is what I think we should follow.
but hey, if you blindly accept MoH media reports and briefings, be my guest.
people are going to die regardless, do we want to lower everyone who survives quality of life for generations to come to potentially save a small portion of the population? And save them only the first time round?
its a tough choice, no one gets it right, but the draconian response is out of proportion.
Yes, we’re all going to die, one day. However, we don’t leave anyone behind in this country.
You seem to be suggesting that we “potentially” sacrifice “a small portion of the population” so that the survivors can have better quality of life.
You say that this is a tough choice. Well, no, for me it’s an easy choice and my QALYs would be lower because of my burdened conscience assuming I’ll be among the survivors. You don’t seem to have that problem!?
Getting sick is not the same as dying from Covid 19. Probably why we aren’t seeing lots of deaths relative to our infection rate.
so either your example about New Zealand’s young is designed to be misleading about the fatality impact of covid 19 or it supports my point that the at risk people (fat Americans, old people, underlying health conditions) should be isolated and have massively targeted support and the very low risk people should be allowed to live almost as normal, with some restrictions. As covid 19 isn’t fatally dangerous to them
When falling sick, you risk dying from it. This applies to all ages, but not equally, which nobody has disputed so this is a strawman.
When becoming a carrier, you risk spreading the virus and infecting others. This has nothing to do with your own ‘risk status’.
To prevent this from happening and to try to stamp out the virus, we’re in Alert Level 4. This is likely why we aren’t seeing lots of deaths relative to our infection rate.
You’re suggesting to let the virus go rampant among the population without knowing who are at risk and who aren’t; you don’t know whom it will be “fatally dangerous” to. You’re prepared to let people die so that others can live “almost as normal”. You believe that this is a price worth paying.
Who’s talking about “fat Americans” in our NZ society? Are you deliberately misleading?
You’re as ignorant about COVID-19 as you are about CC, which actually makes a lot of sense.
'…if you blindly accept MoH media reports and briefings, ..'
Hmm blindly following the actual experts advice or some pseudonymous commenter on a blog….. that's a tough one.
Have you ever seen any of the vaccination threads on this site.. lots of pseudonymous commenters thinking they know better than the experts and their science.
We encourage strong debate supported by sound arguments. We ask the ignorami to educate themselves and improve their arguments and debating skills. You’re starting to sound like a straight-up denier, as you did with CC. Keep it up and you’ll be booted off this site.
Who is denying CC? You’re getting confused. CC is happening, I think there are other ways to deal with it than jetting around hectoring people or organising wasteful marches.
3 people ventilated. It’s hardly reason enough to shut down society. Some will be unlucky enough to get it seriously or even fatally. It’s unfortunate, but not enough to wreck the futures of the rest of their generation.
And. If the hospitals are full of Coronavirus cases, a hell of a lot of other people are going to die of other conditions. Because there is no place or people to treat them.
But. They are just part of the "collateral damage" right.
One of my friends, a health worker, still cannot work because his constantly postponed hip replacement, has been postponed again due to coronavirus. Isn't that a cost, to?
The reason some of those Drs and nurses are dying is because they are getting reinfected, and each time it hits them stronger, then they die. You may end up like Boris Johnson, in denial, then sick.
Bridges was interviewed on Q+A this morning, and it was far the best I've seen him. Sensible, largely supportive of Government measures dealing with Covid, but pertinent questions about testing and quarantining of incoming travelers.
He seemed to be natural and informed.
This perhaps shows the benefits of being isolated from party strategists and media trainers.
All of them the bane of modern politics and the ruin of potential leaders. David Shearer suffered badly from it, as did Andrew Little (but as it turns out Ardern is a far better communicator anyway).
Ardern herself has been better when finding herself in times of crisis where she acts as she sees fit rather than being projected through a PR lens. Her interview on Seven Sharp on Friday wasn't one her best, it looked prepared and scripted, and laughing off the Clark question and pivoting to a lecture to the rest of us to not do what Clark had done was poor.
We to often forget that a Leader is still part of a group/party.
Who, may not even agree with the things they have to front.
Or, like Trump, is the figurehead for a large number of enablers behind him.
Then they have, in both Labour and National, to deal with a large number of chair polishers, and outright loons, their selection processes saddle them with.
Ardern's interview on 7 Sharp on Friday was simply propaganda and politicking. Its was straight out of the ex Women's Weekly playbook.
TVNZ need to be careful about providing a platform at prime time for political propaganda of this sort. Hillary Barry asking the tough questions is a joke. The programme was unbalanced and biased.
Jack Tane's Q & A programme provides the template for how these things should be done; especially in these times.
Bollocks. What you saw is Simon as he is. Politicians both left and right are not automatons and just puppets of polling. Yes, polling is done. But basically a politician has to use his/her judgement. And once before the camera they just say what they say. It is not nearly as scripted as you seem to think.
I wonder how the ACC levies are going with the loss of income.
Bearing in mind the markets, I suspect they’d be more worried about their reserves which are the buffer. The levies are probably gone down roughly in line with the claims.
We shall never know how Simon would have handled the crisis (thank God for that) but if we look overseas we can see numerous examples of how right wing governments have fared, Think Trump, think Johnson, think Morrison.
It would be fair to say Simon would not have been much better than any of them.
Add to that the Chinese ambassador's annoyance when we closed our borders to China and you can be sure the borders would have stayed open for longer – notwithstanding what Simon says now.
Australia is doing ok. Its current management of the problem is producing results similar to NZ.
Mostly because the various state governments like NSW, Vic and SA have been doing far closer what the NZ government has done. Closing borders. Forcing businesses to close. People to self-isolate early.
They are doing this despite the Federal government’s vacillating and inconsistent policies that seemed largely designed to reduce the call on federal funds at the unemployment.
However the federal government has now seemed to get on with the task at hand in recent days with what looks a lot like our stimulus programmes.
Very, very good. It explains why the Dems have singularly misunderstood Trump, underestimated him and miserably failed to compete against such an egregious goat of a man:
Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York seems to understand something that no other politician or political candidate up against President Trump has yet grasped. You can’t fight a Reality TV Presidency with an argument, you have to fight it with another reality show, a newer and better one.
And you have to fight it by showing a better way, not just promising it or arguing about it.
In essence, you undercut Trump by being the very opposite of him on television every single day when so many people are paying attention. You do not do this by attacking him or quarreling with him. It’s entertainment, stupid, fighting and offending is his specialty, it is most people’s weakness. You try to show what government, at its best, can do.
Reminder #23628 of why it's a really not a good idea for a political leader to own and control substantial business interests: the Dotard of Doltistan is looking for substantial debt relief from Deutsche Bank at the same time as the Department of Justice (which he is in charge of) is investigating Deutsche Bank for various crimes.
I think Morrissey is referring to the article he posted, Starmer intends to address anti-semitism in the party (which doesn't really exist, but was an invention of many "friends of Israel" and some other hidden forces), this will be a direct attack on all socialists in the party who support Palestinian's human rights.
Starmer has previously said he would take action to eliminate prejudice against Jews in his party “on day one” in order to demonstrate “the difference that new leadership will make on the issue.”
He has also said he would look to fully cooperate with the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s report into anti-Semitism in the party, which is currently in the works, but that he had no intention of waiting for its results in order to take action.
Starmer deliberately mislabels opposition to the crimes of the Israeli regime as "anti-Semitism." That obviously sits well with the extreme right Times of Israel, which published this encomium, but it's another nail in the coffin for the future of the Labour Party.
So he hasn't "vowed to expel every Labour Party member who cares about human rights" then and you just made that up?
What caught my attention about that was that the other leader candidates signed a pledge to support the expulsion of gender critical feminists from the party. From memory Starmer didn't, or at least he was restrained in his handling of that rather than throwing a large number of Labour feminists under the bus.
So making shit up about expulsions carries more stupid weight than normal.
He joined in the campaign of defamation against Jeremy Corbyn, which descended into a purge of anyone who spoke out against Israeli crimes. I didn't make that up, it's an unpleasant fact.
Do you support the contention of the Blairite rump of that party that criticism of Israel is, per se, anti-Semitism?
'The so-called “friends of Israel”, who support Israel automatically and blindly: this has nothing to do with friendship. They are enemies of Israel—they corrupt us. The Jewish establishment in Australia kept saying to me: “Israel right or wrong.” Well, Israel is wrong and they need to stop supporting it. Continuous support by Western governments and by the Jewish establishment is anything BUT friendship.'
What it looks like is that you are back in your routine of feigned ignorance. I doubt that you are unaware of the brutal campaign of "anti-Semitism" allegations that was directed against Corbyn over the last four years. So why pretend you are?
I'm asking for evidence that the Labour party has purged members or intends to. You've made the claim twice, and both times refused to back it up, so I assume now you are lying.
In terms of your politics around Israel and Palestine and what Labour are doing re that, not interested in talking about that today.
I'm asking for evidence that the Labour party has purged members or intends to.
If you don't know that the Labour Party is purging human rights activists, you should not be commenting here. I expect to find displays of willful ignorance on Kiwiblog, but not on this normally excellent forum.
In terms of your politics around Israel and Palestine and what Labour are doing re that, not interested in talking about that today.
The false anti-Semitism smear and the witchhunt and the demand for apologies has everything to do with the "politics around Israel-Palestine." I don't believe, by the way, that you are ignorant about this matter.
Morrissey, you run your own blog, IIRC. You should know that many blogs, particularly TS, are not for little tête-à-têtes but for robust debate. Anybody can join in but many read this site without ever commenting. So, when somebody, particularly a Moderator, asks you for evidence to back up your allegations, then please oblige without sounding like a petulant little child. Thanks.
I'm not "alleging" that the right wing (Blairite) rump of the Labour Party, which has now manoeuvred itself back into control—a pyrrhic victory if ever there was one—has operated an unrelenting smear campaign against Corbyn and anyone who stands up for the rights of the Palestinians, any more than I would allege that the sun is coming up tomorrow morning or that today is Sunday. It's a fact.
You say there is "no evidence" of a purge of human rights activists from the Labour Party. This charming little encapsulation of Starmer's agenda comes from the article I provided for you in my original comment on this thread:
New opposition chief immediately apologizes to Jews for anti-Semitism in ranks, vows to ‘tear out this poison’….
When Starmer says "this poison" he doesn't mean anti-Semitism, he means criticism of the Israeli regime. What do you think he means when he says he's going to "tear out" these critics?
Morrissey, you could have saved yourself the trouble with those utterances that I personally am not interested in.
My concern is your behaviour here and how you respond, or not for that matter, to basic requests for evidence to support your allegations. This is a necessary element of good debate, which we treasure on this site.
You have been around here long enough to know how it works. Next time, please just provide the evidence and don’t argue. It is wasting our time and I find it tedious enough to get the ban-hammer out.
I thought it was kinda obvious. Robertson said that Clark was "always available" for interviews according to Jason Walls.
Also Stuff reported Robertson as saying “He’s available to front anytime".
But Jack Tame pointed out he reneged on a scheduled Q+A interview for today so wasn't always available as stated. RNZ Live referred to it as "a no show'.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was grilled by journalists as to why Health Minister David Clark has declined some interviews this weekend. She said others had fronted, he was at home at lockdown and he would continue to be available for interviews.
Dr Clark refused Newshub's repeated requests for an interview, instead sending a short statement.
So according to Robertson and Ardern, Clark is "available to front any time" and "would continue to be available for interviews", but according to journalists he isn't.
The Minister of Health, during the biggest health crisis for decades, is remote from the centre of Government and Ministry of Health activity and is not giving interviews despite the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance saying he is available (knowing he isn't doing interviews).
If he's not giving interviews to gossip columnists who want to rabbit on about him going for a bike ride, then good so. Why should someone in his position indulge such childish bullshit? If they were actually interested in asking him questions about the pandemic and NZ's response to it, it would be dereliction of duty for him to refuse the interviews – but they aren't, and it isn't.
Q+A is hardly a gossip column, it's not perfect but it's one of the best political media forums we have.
With Clark not fronting up Simon Bridges got a spot, and surprisingly he came across well, far different from his usual. Generally supportive of Government actions but with some reasonable questions and criticisms.
So at least something good came of Clark's no show. Bridges may be capable of rising to the occasion that the current situation requires of our politicians.
” it would be dereliction of duty for him to refuse the interviews – but they aren’t”
Do you have proof of this? I heard O’Brien saying she had specific and relevant (to the pandemic) sounding questions.
The fact that David Clark went for a bikeride is quite possibly the most serious thing facing our nation right now and think Jacinda should have focussed her entire press conference on this incredibly important issue. Tova is obviously the Woodward and Bernstein of her time.
Good move by Clark imo, let's see how much media work he does in the coming week. Journos want to sensationalise a story that should have been over by now. Under normal circumstances that would just be tedious, but under these circumstances it's bizarre.
PM's press conference today: the first there-were-so-many-I-can't-recall-how-many questions were all about David Clark going for a bike ride. Nothing about Tova O'Brien's previous reporting suggests she'd operate to a higher standard than that, in fact for all I know it was her asking those questions (the questioners aren't identified in the video).
What is obvious is that your mind is not like mine, obviously.
Being available for interviews is not the same as being available for a game of pin the tail on the donkey, no matter how much it appeals to a certain audience and certain pundits who have made a hobby out of reporting on it.
When something smells a little off, it could be a ripening French cheese. Yum!
So how long do you think that Clark should refuse to do interviews (despite Ardern and Robertson saying he is always available) just in case someone asks him an awkward question that he would prefer not to answer?
Or do you think he should only do interviews with questions he allows in advance?
Or should Bloomfield, Robertson and Ardern just speak on his behalf. It's not as if he has a very important job, is it.
I think this tweet speaks for itself, adding to this thread.
Also for all of the people telling the Gallery off for asking David Clark questions, who are you serving by helping the PM suppress questions about a health minister who has so clearly been marginalised in a health crisis? She decides there are only 15 minutes for questions
I never thought the bike ride was a big deal apart from being embarrassing for Ardern efforts to get people following her message of staying away from risky pastimes.
But what it has highlighted is a Minister of Health being shielded or hiding away at the most important time for any Minister of Health for decades. That's an important issue. Do we have a functional Minister of Health?
What’s more important: de we have a scandal that can bring down this Government? Will the PM call a snap election? What do the polls say? What’s for dinner tonight?
You attempt at flippancy is a pretty lame attempt at diversion, and I think stupid in the current situation of a pandemic.
Media have picked up on the MIA issue…
The PM used the word idiot to describe a member of the public and Tova put her words back to her. Legitimate question when every day the PM decides whether David Clark is sitting in Dunedin with a ministerial warrant and a cool 250k in the middle of a crisis.
Do you really not see what Ardern did today? She knew exactly what was coming (our political journos are nothing if not predictable). She fed them a line: "idiots".
Then she took the (predictable) questions on Clark and quietly kicked him in the shins. She didn't repeat "idiot", because she didn't need to.
She also knew that while a minuscule minority of poli-tragics on blogs might still be getting worked up about Clark, the vast majority of the public are rolling their eyes at the journos (see the social media reaction in real time, which is unspun).
What do leaders usually say when one of their team lapses? "It was within the rules …" "I do not condone but …" "What about what about?" etc. Weasel words, which only make it worse.
She is smarter than that, and still many can't/won't see it.
Yes, she gave journalists an opening to infer Clark was an idiot, a notion she didn't do much to dispel.
If Ardern is smart she won't let this fester away, which is likely if left unaddressed and information is sought from the Minister of Health – he can't go to ground forever.
It isn't festering away. Nobody cares much, except journos who help to make sure nobody cares by going on about it some more. She has political capital in spades, they don't.
I don't think you would even recognize her smarts, TBH.
Good question. I don't know. I do know that he has seemed to struggle with interviews he has given over the last couple of weeks, he has sounded unsure and lacking in confidence. Perhaps that's why he has quietly been given a reduced role.
It's a bit superfluous for him to be doing interviews when the PM is fronting this issue. Journalists know that too, hence no squawking about lack of interviews until now. It's clear why they have a sudden interest in interviewing him, and also clear that the reason is "childish gotcha bullshit."
Virgin Australia has shut down its NZ operations. 600 jobs gone, more than twice as many as the Bauer debacle. No doubt the howls of outrage in the media are coming…?
The airline industry is going to be a very sad place for a long time. There's a lot of airlines that have been loosing serious money prior to the covid19 restrictions on travel. Virgin Australia was one.
This piece from ABC sums it up nicely. Bottom line, Virgin is an overseas owned business and the Australian government is very unlikely to bail them out. Unfortunately some / most of the overseas airlines that own Virgin are worse. Can't see them being around for long.
The global airline industry will probably resemble the airline industry of the late 60's by the end of this, a few national flag carriers serving their home states and a couple of larger international based ones. And a lot of surplus aluminium parked in the desert. And a lot of people out of work.
Virgin Australia were in big trouble 8 months ago….losses of $1.2 billion over the last 6 years. They would probably have folded without Covid-19. See:
"a lot of surplus aluminium parked in the desert. "
I wonder how that will affect the prospects of Rio Tinto at Tiwai? Their "best aluminium" claims revolve mainly around aircraft manufacture, I understand.
The high purity of the aluminium from Tiwai Point is more valuable for electronics purposes that directly use it in the pure state. The large portion of the output that goes to Japan is used for that.
High purity aluminium is useless for any kind of structural use, it's much too soft and weak. So it has to be alloyed with significant amounts of other elements, and the tiny quantities of impurities disappear into the tolerances of the alloying proportions. For instance, a common high-performance alloy is 7075 with a recipe that roughly includes 5.6–6.1% zinc, 2.1–2.5% magnesium, 1.2–1.6% copper, and less than a half percent of silicon, iron, manganese, titanium, chromium, and other metals.
"our high-purity aluminium is valuable for aerospace" makes for a good marketing story, though. It's useful to make locals feel special about what they produce, in order to add to their social license to operate. Even when it's bullshit.
Its likely, for the moment, that any subsidies paid to Tiwai will be cheaper than unemployment support for the numerous on and off site staff and losses to the wider community. But the plant owners could pull the plug anytime, which would be sad.
The real shame is that money, which could have been used to develop long term sustainable employment in Southland, has instead been wasted on bribes to Rio Tinto. It would have been cheaper to shut it down, and just continue paying the staff.
And we have all been paying higher power bills, for decades, for the same reason.
Other industries and infrastructure, such as electric rail, could have used that power.
a faster curve than expected, but we were always going to end up here and I'm relieved it's happening now rather than in 20 years when it's way too late.
My hope now is that we create sustainable jobs rather than rushing back to the pollution economy.
I notice the usual suspects gearing up for business as usual.
Including Federated farmers, trying to get out of ceasing to pollute waterways, and businesses which relied on cheap labour, tax payer support and capital gains, trying to use this an excuse for even more largess from their employees, and the rest of us.
I don’t have much hope. They are already trying to paint targets on anyone who is against de- regulation and subsidies for polluting businesses.
Once China has built it's strategic milk powder mountain a shock could be on the way. No markets, or severely fucked markets, will mean much less going off farm.
Add to that less containers coming into the country full of all the shit we buy from Briscoes et al, so we've got to import empty boxes, and NZ agriculture could be in for a squeeze like it's never seen before.
NZ agriculture could be in for a squeeze like it's never seen before.
Twaddle,demand in china for WMP is increasing due to the CCP expectation that everyone needs to drink 300ml of milk a day.Neither China or NZ can meet that cumulative demand.
There is also expected a global shortfall in whole foods such as apples,kiwifruit,oranges.and grain due to export restrictions from former CIS states.
Agriculture is resilient ie antifragile during recessions,whether NZ can sustain the harvest,due to staff shortages or government policy in horticulture (limited selling venues) is the open problem.
As few additional house sales will be transacted over the lockdown period,and those who do not seek mortgage holidays,repayment would also exceed bank household lending.
household sector savings provide protection from offshore impacts including exchange rate fluctuations is true enough…hence the RBNZ increased requirement in recent times…however there is another side to that ledger which somewhat negates your cheerleading…both household debt and total debt has increased more in the same period
The floating exchange rate could be expected to provide (some) protection in normal circumstances however we are looking at a prolonged reduction in worldwide economic activity which is it self deflationary as there will be reduced demand and ability to purchase our goods and our competitors are capable of increasing production at a scale (and will be looking to do so) we cannot cope with even if we had spare capacity , which we dont…and the non commodity imports required for our (now) high input model of ag will not deflate at the same rate.
Yes oil is low at the moment but that wont remain the case for long as the russians and saudis will agree to cut production soon enough especially in light of further reduced demand.
from your final comment it appears your horizon is around 3 months…..seriously???
and the fixed costs spread over a smaller pool will necessitate considerable fare increases…cheap travel is gone for the foreseeable (once the dust settles)
When walking I have noticed the increase of "Dog Mines" just off footpaths 🤬. When giving way to others: using the footpath as a 2m guide walk whilst passing using either side of the grass verge. Be careful watch out for dog poo being tramped thru the house. 😉
Only when I enter into our entrance or garage then leave shoes inside front or back door – there is the isolated occasion that there is a need rush inside 😉 – And that will be the one occasion that "stuff" is on the sole of the shoe.
A longish but very worthwhile piece on the idea of there being a trade-off between the economy and public health (spoiler: there isn't), with a focus on when and how to back off on restrictions.
That sort never thinks. He has no excuse except to apologise humbly for being a natural dork. He should go through a rigorous Army training program to strengthen his discipline muscle.
Funny how the corporate media have been avoiding talking about the Biden sexual assault allegations. And then it gets all mixed up in an attack on Alyssa Milano, ever get the feeling women mean nothing in politics, and are just props?
Please don't do the usual and throw in trump to dilute the debate. I know he's a absolute sexist arse, and anyone not living under a rock knows it too.
I actually did not consider my comment being linked to a virus.
I tried to get glasses recently and the only pair which suited that I really liked were in the children's section and had a superman on them so were not an option.
I am finding the styles of frames to be so variable from like thick window frames to looking like goggles.
The easiest solution is to keep the frames and update the lens.
Congratulations to Keir Starmer for taking out the labour leadership contest. Not my choice, who came in third, but thankfully the continuity candidate Wrong Daily fell well short, and with her, the momentum led ultra faction.
Not only did Starmer have the overwhelming backing of all three voting groups, he also took effective control of the NEC (executive council) after his supporters won in a series of separate elections.
Starmer describes himself as a socialist but not a Corbynite, and will keep key policies from the Corbyn era, such as nationalising rail, mail and water and repealing anti-union laws, but the hope is he won't be anywhere near as unpopular and unelectable as the biggest labour loser in living memory.
With 5 years until the next election, and though much needs to be done to shore up and rebuild the red wall, my advice to the new leader is the same I gave Cunliffe when he rose to the top – Don't invite the enemy into the camp, purge. He should also seek to redefine the bond between the party and the unions so the likes of McCluskey are sidelined as much as possible. If he doesn't like it, tough, he can always advise those who pay his large salary to vote tory, though I suspect he'd have a moan and succumb, realising what side his bread is richly buttered on.
… the hope is he won’t be anywhere near as unpopular and unelectable
That will depend on whether or not there’s a concerted defamation campaign against him as there was against Corbyn. Starmer was one of the foulest defamers, along with the likes of such intellectual luminaries as J.K. Rowling. Tom Watson, and Rachael Riley.
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This party is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! He’s f*ckin’ snuffed it!…..THIS IS AN EX-PARTY!!
A sheep farming nieghbour of mine has yearly given himself a shot of drench at that time of year. He reckons that if it can't kill a lamb it will have its work cut out on him. It will get him one day, but it had better get a move on, he's 82 and still working.
What the actual fuck??? Just checked my replies tab and the replies to the mozzie's droning whines showed up, not replies to me. I'm struggling to not take it as a personal insult.
Dollars to be made so of course tRump and gHouliani are touting this shit.
A conservative business group founded by a prolific Republican political donor is pressuring the White House to greenlight an unproven COVID-19 treatment, saying in an online petition that the country has plants in the U.S. ready to produce a drug but can’t because of “red tape, regulation, and a dysfunctional healthcare supply chain.”
In recent days, Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus’ Job Creators Network has placed Facebook ads and texted supporters to sign a petition urging President Donald Trump to “CUT RED TAPE” and make an anti-malarial drug called hydroxychloroquine available for treating those sickened with the virus, one such message obtained by ProPublica reads.
All the nit picking, repetitive, sanctimonious Pete George comments seem to indicate he desperate to have a soapbox. Has his own blog closed down?
Most people have agreed David Clark made a mistake going for his bike ride. It was not at all appropriate at this time. He has apologised, and there now are more important issues to deal with. Yes, the media conferences are no doubt left to the PM and Grant Robertson as the best people to handle the media pack of wolves. Both are very ably doing this. Any crisis of this magnitude has to be tightly managed.
There are 2 American utube spokespeople attracting viewers in the millions for their daily press briefings at the moment. Trump and Cuomo.
Cuomo has Trump's measure, he is a better showman.
Trump had me chortling at his relentless superlatives, Cuomo had me in tears.
Cuomo doesn't attack Trump, Donald has nowhere to go but praise Cuomo's popular forthrightness. The guy's little brother is a CNN anchor and has just come down with the virus.
Is it too late for Cuomo to line up against Donald for the Hot Seat? Americans of all stripes are learning to love that guy.
My 79 year old Dad has just been taken to Waikato Hospital by Ambulance. He's normally very healthy, but started having breathing difficulties early Sunday morning. He had to go on his own because of the current rules. This is really scary stuff. I don't know what's happening.
There are lots of people still getting breathing difficulties that have nothing to do with 19.
It could be 19 but wait for something decent to worry about before you worry about it too much fireblade.
Put a call into Waikato Hospital and ask how you can be advised like you were phoning them every 5 minutes but without phoning them every 5 minutes. eg: Be advised of what's going on immediately.
Dad is home again now. The Hospital did an ECG, chest x-ray, Influenza test, Covid-19 test and blood tests. They gave him some medication and he can breath more easily now.
He water blasted the concrete area behind his house on Saturday afternoon and the Hospital thinks this irritated his lungs. Hopefully the tests will be normal/negative. St John Ambulance and the Waikato Hospital were both fantastic.
People are dying overseas because hospitals aren't able to provide artificial lungs until an aged person generates enough of an immune system to counter-act the mongrel.
Because Jacinda jumped early, we have all the ventilators we need for as long as the patients need them. Worst case scenario, you're still stuck with your grumpy old man.
Arundhati Roy writes about how Covid19 threatens India.
She concludes;
Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
The historical normality of India,is pestilence and famine.The former is here and the later will follow almost surely.
India – the world’s second-most populous country, where a majority of the population is involved in agriculture – is among the most vulnerable nations to the disruptions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a 21-day lockdown with just a few hours notice on March 25, leaving many of its 120 million migrant laborers struggling to get home and with no money for rent, food or transport.
The country’s northern grain bowl relies on labor from eastern parts of the country, but workers have left the farms because of the lockdown. [L4N2BO25E]
“Who is going to fill the grain bags and bring the produce to market, and transport it to mills?” asked Jadish Lal, a merchant in Punjab’s Khanna grain market, the country’s largest.
Wow, Cuoro is brilliant, he is giving Donald an awful time while leaving no target.
In his live conference he talks about having no choice but go cap in hand to China and beg for ventilators and masks.
He just needs to drop the tiniest of 'I wish we could sort this out in our homeland' hints and it hits like a sledge hammer.
Cuoro is a master story teller. A good story teller doesn't tell, they show, they give us room to create our own narrative. I think Donald has met his match.
The PM’s comments this evening seemed out of her recent character. Her suggestion that we should be grateful we have only 1000 cases instead of the 4000 predicted by some model has drawn cheers from the cheap seats
On reflection tho, hearing her fishing for praise for her performance to date smacks of a commander briefing her troops for a battle she knows we are about to loose. “Remember me lads! I did my best; honest!” Trying to score political points at this early stage is somewhat worrying.
It’d pretty much be relief. This is an epidemic exponential growth curve where the infected rate is expected to double every 2-3 days. That means if it was 4000 now, then we could expect it to be somewhere over 16,000 at the end of next week and somewhere over 64,000 the week after.
Getting the rate down to 1000 after a week and half in lockdown means that the bet that the executive council made in requesting a state of emergency and a epidemic order, plus the steps being taken are actually working. Provided some idiots like those I have fun disparaging here don’t affect progress, we’re more likely to control the epidemic over coming months than we are to lose control.
You really don’t have to work up a dumb conspiracy theory. Simple relief is sufficient. Now maybe she’ll eat better and get some damn sleep with a reduce stress level.
With a grain but it sure looks like the Generals are getting antsy.
Jair Bolsonaro’s irresponsibility in the face of the SARS-CoV-2 virus crisis may have irritated the Armed Forces into choosing Chief Minister of the Civil House, Walter Braga Netto, as the new operational president of Brazil, it was reported today.
Brasil 247 portal quoted Argentine investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky, saying that a high-ranking officer in the Brazilian Army told a peer from Argentina in a telephone conversation, that Bolsonaro is not heard by authorities when making decisions.
‘The Brazilian party reported they had made the decision to ignore President Bolsonaro in all important decisions,’ said the communicator on the program. ‘There will be consequences’, says the quote by Radio El Destape.
Verbitsky stated that Bolsonaro acts as ‘a monarch without effective power’ and that General Walter Braga Netto of the Civil House is now in charge of the country.
Military website defesanet.com.br, considered the most important news page in the areas of defense, strategy, intelligence and security in Latin America, also confirmed that Braga Neto will be in charge of directing and centralizing all government administration, at least while the crisis lasts due to the Covid-19.
…a lot of things unrelated to the pandemic were happening. Relatively little attention was given to some major events on the global stage, so I thought I would do a quick recap of some of the high (or low) -lights, starting with something familiar. The common theme throughout is human ...
Labour's talk of gutting the RMA to push through "shovel ready" projects to boost employment after the pandemic predictably has every half-arsed pipe-dream crawling out of the woodwork demanding special treatment. Today, it's the West Coast inbreds, who are demanding a host of laws be rescinded so they can dig ...
"I can't breathe, Mama. I'm dying." - Last words of George Floyd.LOOK HARD at this image. Think about what it depicts. Ask yourself how one human-being could behave so brutally when so many eye-witnesses – and very soon millions of people online around the world – were there to watch ...
Since the government announced its pandemic wage subsidy, there have been regular stories about companies taking it and then sacking or refusing to pay their workers - essentially committing fraud. But how often does this happen? The Minister just doesn't want to know: Government ministers are not receiving up to ...
"You call that a conservative?Nah, this is a conservative!" New Zealanders are in the market for a quiet and reassuring small-c conservative political centrist. The critical question, however, is which politician is currently playing that role? Who has mastered the art of relaxed, informal and intimate political communication? Who ...
I’VE OFTEN WONDERED if South African immigrants passing through towns like Kerikeri and Kaikohe ever wonder how we do it. In their homeland, through the bitter years of Apartheid, keeping the races segregated required pass laws, Alsatian dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets and, all-too-often, live rounds. Not here. Not in ...
Below is the list of gender-critical material which appeared on Redline from July 31, 2019 to September 30, 2019. Sports categories must be by sex, not gender identity Queer theory glossary Woke misogyny and homophobia: a gay critique of trans ideology Another unfortunate experiment? New Zealand’s transgender health policy and ...
Smart Energy Europe: A Plan to provide 100% of ALL ENERGY using Renewable Energy to EuropeIntroductionAll Energy renewable energy systems are often commented on here at Skeptical Science. Many comments suggest that it will be difficult, expensive or impossible to use renewable energy to power the world. To ...
The government released its Action for Healthy Waterways package today, ostensibly with the goal of cleaning up our rivers and making them swimmable within a generation. Doing that, of course, requires confronting the cow in the room: the dairy industry which causes most of the pollution. But while they've imposed ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzI would like to know if New Zealand’s carbon emissions ...
Remember KiwiBuild? Previously the government's flagship policy, it was supposed to build thousands of new homes every year for kiwi families. But instead of flooding the market, we've got a pathetic dribble: The Government's former flagship housing policy is so far behind schedule it will take more than 400 years ...
Don Franks Now Covid-19 restrictions allow gatherings of a hundred, an urgent hui needs calling. A special conference of the Council of Trade Unions. Today, workers face the greatest attack on employment, pay and conditions since the depression, we need a strong united union voice. As it stands now, organised ...
George Henderson New Zealand schools have introduced a climate change resource that suggests children “eat less meat and dairy”, even though teachers will not know how much meat or dairy any child in their care has eaten. Opinion pieces in the papers have called for the reduction of meat and ...
Questioning the number of district health boards in New Zealand has got to the extent that “too many DHBs” has become a perceived truth requiring no further elaboration. It is rarely challenged by policy advisers, academics, and journalists. But when one drills down further it becomes clear that the number ...
The emergence of a new National party leader, seemingly out of nowhere, has – not surprisingly – raised a number of questions as to who Todd Mulller actually is and what makes him tick. He has been an MP for some time but seems to have hidden his light under ...
Costa Rica has become the first country in Central America to recognise same-sex marriage: The first same-sex weddings have taken place in Costa Rica, the first Central American country to equalise its marriage legislation. A lesbian couple became the first to tie the knot in a ceremony that took ...
There's a new twist in the Winston Peters secret donation story. It appears that a significant chunk of NZ First's secret laundered donations goes straight into the pockets of the people administering the scheme: Tens of thousands in donor's funds given to the New Zealand First Foundation were spent paying ...
Is Todd Muller the Ned Flanders of the National Party? This is how he’s been characterised by political commentator Gordon Campbell, who suggests the change in leadership is, in Simpsons terms, akin to swapping the scary and cruel Monty Burns for Homer Simpson’s compassionate but conservative neighbour. There’s almost a ...
We all know that many so-called journalists and political commentators in New Zealand work directly or indirectly for political parties or for certain political factions. This was obviously the case when pundit for hire Matthew Hooton launched a campaign against then National Party leader, Simon Bridges, over their numerous polling ...
Let's Roll! The easy victory over a Bridges-led National Party which the Left had every cause to anticipate just a few days ago is no longer in the offing. Our enemy’s position has changed. His numbers are swelling. A rapid thrust to the left, followed by an audacious outflanking manoeuvre ...
New National Party leader Todd Muller has been interviewed about his policies, and has promised to restart offshore fossil fuel exploration if elected: The Bay of Plenty MP rolled former leader Simon Bridges last week, but says the party has not changed its stance on previous promises. "That is ...
Anyone who keeps an eye on evidence around cannabis and public health will be familiar with the Christchurch Health and Development Study. It's one of two local longitudinal studies frequently cited with respect to cannabis and youth development. But in a new article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, it is ...
In the age of covid we are Jacinda’s team of five million, except for some. There has rarely been a more blatant case of discrimination against beneficiaries than Grant Robertson’s announcement yesterday that people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus will receive weekly payments of $490 per week for 12 weeks and $250 per week for part time ...
It was 75 years ago this month that Germany surrendered and the Allies celebrated VE (Victory in Europe) Day. Millions of people around the world had been killed and many more injured or captured. It was an end to war not just for Europeans, but their allies too, in countries across Africa. But its impact is ...
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...
Watching Todd Muller make his first speech as the newly minted Leader of the Opposition after Simon Bridges’ defenestration on Friday brought to mind a headmaster addressing a school assembly. He showed no particular desire to ingratiate himself with his audience although the occasional flash of self-deprecating humour indicated a ...
The government has announced another income support scheme for people affected by the economic aftershocks of the pandemic: a $490 a week tax-free payment for the newly unemployed, which you can get even if you have a working partner. Which is great, because its supporting people who need help, but ...
The Greens have released their party list, and it contains a few surprises. The one that's getting all the news is that the membership are clearly fans of Chlöe Swarbrick, and she has worked hard to earn that. But they've also favoured incumbent protection over new blood, and in the ...
age credit:Science and Politics – Skeptically.org It seems impossible to keep politics out of science. It’s a pity because politics can end up forcing science to produce the results desired by ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Matthew Parry, Dr Ayesha Verrall, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Martin Eichner (author details*)This blog details a recent modelling study we conducted. In it we estimated that it would take between 27 and 33 days of no new detected cases of COVID-19 for there to be ...
The 2015 Schol Bio paper included a question about a group of birds known as honeycreepers, specifically, the 56 species endemic to the Hawaiian islands. (Or, were endemic: 18, or perhaps 19, are still living; the others are extinct.) Students who’ve already had a look at this paper as part of ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... What a Week’s Disasters Tell Us About Climate and the PandemicExtreme weather presents an even bigger threat ...
Todd Muller has made a good start to his leadership, though it would obviously be pretty stupid to extrapolate too much from the first couple of days. Nevertheless, as a matter of speculation, it is interesting to think what success on his part might say about the preferences of the ...
A guest post by Hamish Price.“A leader is a dealer in hope.”— Napoléon BonaparteCatholics have a name for potential successors to a dead pope. Papabile. The small coterie of distinguished cardinals who have what it takes to step up. Todd Muller has always been one.I first met Muller at a National ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, May 17 through Sat, May 23, 2020Editor's ChoiceMore than 80 killed in India and Bangladesh as Cyclone Amphan heaps misery on coronavirus-hit areasA man salvages items from ...
Two poor political polls within the same week had seen National for the first time in over a decade dropping major support in the face of a competent and assured COVID-19 health response from the Coalition government. Step forward the relatively unknown Todd Muller, who by Friday afternoon had secured ...
SUNDAY MAY 24The Luminaries (TVNZ 1, 8.30pm). There are an awful lot of indeterminate accents in The Luminaries; even lead Eve Hewson seems undecided about being Irish, and she is Irish. Fair play, accents can go badly wrong, so perhaps not over-egging was a consideration. Marton Csokas, always impeccable, and Himesh Patel ...
Let’s be honest; Simon Bridges was a disaster of a political leader. If he wasn’t attempting to criticise the Government’s perfectly good policy initiatives that the public generally supported, he was fudging his lines after getting caught out in yet another lie. When Jami-Lee Ross said Bridges “is a flawed individual ...
The media treat budgets as bit of a circus: lots of theatre and soon forgotten. For a serious economist they show how a team of economists is thinking about the wider economy. The 2020 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) was the most difficult forecasting exercise in the history of ...
Air NZ shed 1,300 workers, Fletchers about to sack 1000. Economists Strateg.Ease predict over 12,400 jobs gone by March next year in central Auckland alone. Here’s Don Franks during the 2008 election campaign when he stood for the Workers Party. He’s talking about fightback strategies, ideas that he believes are ...
One of these MPs is the new leader of the National party. Can you pick which? (Source: Office of the Clerk/Parliamentary Service) National has chosen its new leader, and as expected, it is an old bald white man. Totally representative of modern New Zealand, then. But its not ...
Five years ago, Know Your Stuff didn't have a name. They were just a group of people from the festival community who began testing party drugs onsite because they'd seen the consequences of people taking substances they couldn't identify or didn't understand. They didn't want to see people in their ...
Last week, an article on Newsroom made it clear how the funder / provider split - a core part of our public service - was used to enable underfunding. The government holds the purse strings, but dumps responsibility for its decisions on providers, so they get the blame for poor ...
Dr Jaijus Pallippadan-Johny1, Dr John McDermott2, Rodney Jones1 and Michael Duddin1 (1 Wigram Capital Advisors, Auckland; 2Motu Economic and Policy Research, Wellington)In this blog, we introduce our modelling approach to estimating the transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate the usefulness of ...
The Illusions Of Power: Does Jacinda Ardern, like Abraham Lincoln, wake in the dark watches of the night still enveloped in the terrors of life-and-death decision-making? Maybe – maybe not. She’s a twenty-first century prime minister, not so susceptible, perhaps, to the deep religious feeling and romanticism that was such ...
Well, that seals it. The supposedly more National sympathetic One News-Colmar Brunton poll has tonight delivered Simon Bridges’ National Party a worst result than the Newshub-Reid Research three days agoi.On tonight’s numbers Labour sits at an “unprecedented” 59 percent, while National has slumped 17 percent to 29 percent. Anything in ...
The National Party are quite simply a party out of time…Literally, insofar as the 2020 Election is concerned, and certainly in terms of their ideological positioning which has grown far more trenchantly extreme in the last few years in particular, under the leadership of both Simon Bridges, and Paula ...
If tonight’s 1News-Colmar Brunton poll result is anywhere near the 31% recorded in Monday’s Newshub-Reid Research poll, Simon Bridges will surely be dog tucker when his caucus colleagues meet tomorrow to vote on the National Party leadership. The momentum is with newcomer Todd Muller, who seems likely to be installed ...
At last year's Splore festival Listening Lounge sessions, one of the most popular discussions was the one on psychedelic therapy. So for this year's festival, I brought back two of the participants from that panel – Dr Will Evans and Amadeus Diamond – and was delighted to be able to ...
The government is reportedly looking at "helicopter money" - giving cash directly to people to spend - as a way of stimulating the economy in the wake of the pandemic. But its not just central government: Palmerston North City Council is looking at the same thing, though on a much ...
Mahmoud Elkhodr, CQUniversity AustraliaNew Zealanders finally have access to the government’s new tracing app to help people monitor their movements as lockdown continues to ease. As businesses can now open, the NZ COVID Tracer app allows people to keep a register of the places they visit. This “digital diary” ...
Eyes Left! On the face of it, the election of Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye is a no-brainer. New Zealanders are clearly in no mood for a “dirty little street-fighter” and, if the polls are any indication, resent strongly Bridges’ implication that they are. To be at all competitive with ...
Tahu Kukutai, University of Waikato; Helen Moewaka Barnes, Massey University; Tim McCreanor, Massey University, and Tracey McintoshAs schools and businesses reopen and attention shifts to the longer-term repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical that Māori be involved in decision making more equitably than has so far happened. ...
Dane Giraud from The Free Speech Coalition talks with Redline writer and editor Daphna Whitmore on cancel culture, gender ideology, postmodernism and irrationalism. They look at the free speech implications of issues like the Twitter mob, the Government’s proposed emergency police powers, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Free Speech interview ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzAlmost every threat to modern humanity can be traced simply ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee is holding an inquiry into the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 which was rushed through Parliament last week, and has called for submissions. Submissions are due by Sunday, 28 June 2020. You can either submit online through the form above, or by posting dead ...
While the world is currently struggling with the pandemic, we have another crisis to deal with as well: climate change. Fortunately, not everyone has forgotten about it, with Spain announcing ambitious plans to go net-zero by 2050: Under the law, which still needs to be approved by Parliament, the government ...
Children used in this study were from Lintingkou town (a normal-fluoride/control area) and Dakoutun town (a high-fluoride area) in Baodi district of Tianjin, China. The towns are 25 km apart. Anti-fluoridation activists on ...
When we see how the pandemic is being handled in the rest of the world, we can thank our lucky stars that we live here, in New Zealand, and under our current government, led by Jacinda Ardern. The latest polls suggest that this is exactly how Kiwis feel. But the ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Sophie Febery, Dr Ling Chan, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael BakerThe concepts of an Alert Level system, household “bubbles”, and social event size limits are all valuable pandemic control measures. Nevertheless, better “source control” of COVID-19 at various Alert Levels by requiring masks in ...
This is a repost from the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund blog, by CSLDF Executive Director Lauren Kurtz The COVID-19 pandemic illuminates the crucial role scientists at university, state, and local laboratories in the United States and abroad play in protecting public health and safety—and shows that global research must be done ...
Arguments by religious folk that they are being discriminated against under the Level 2 pandemic restrictions in NZ, which limit church services to ten people or less when schools, restaurants, malls and other service outlets are allowed to host many more people under voluntary self-distancing protocols, got me to think ...
Now that the initial wave has passed, and we are (hopefully) safe in our national bubble, the government is thinking about how to keep the economy ticking over, and how to salvage the bits (like tourism) that are now useless. And for that particular industry, she has mentioned a great ...
There’s been a lot of conjecture concerning the reasons behind the National Party’s fall to 30% in the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll. Some commentators have correctly ascertained that the current leader, Simon Bridges, has been consistently getting his tone wrong! Others believe that the shift in support is all about ...
It probably was too good to last. The blessed peace on the roads that I wrote about here began eroding even before we left Level 4 of the Covid-19 restrictions – and on day one of Level 3, with the tradies rushing to catch upon their work, the double-cab utes ...
Missing From The Electoral Action: The radical Left's last forlorn hope, the "Missing Million", is generally despised by mainstream New Zealand and mistrusted by the respectable members of their own communities. They have moved well beyond the reach of conventional electoral politics.TO SAY the Left’s reaction to Grant Robertson’s “Recovery ...
by Don Franks As we face new unknowns against Covid 19, there’s something reassuring about level 2’s basic rules. “Physical distancing- keep your distance when out and about. Two metres in public and in retail stores, like supermarkets. One metre in most other environments like workplaces, cafes, restaurants, and gyms.” ...
The Green Party says major freshwater reforms announced today provide the strongest ever protections of our waterways, to help ensure the next generation can swim in the rivers of Aotearoa. ...
The Green Party has begun the process for a Select Committee inquiry into student accommodation, which has been exposed during COVID-19 as an under-regulated sector that straddles students with unfair debt. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Megan Woods, Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Hon Dr David Clark, Minister of Health Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods, and Health Minister David Clark today announced a COVID-19 vaccine strategy, ...
Budget 2020 is about rebuilding together, supporting jobs, getting business moving and the books back into the black. It’s an integral part of our COVID-19 economic response, and our plan to grow our economy and get New Zealand moving again.Here’s a quick look at the five top things you ...
The Coalition Government has approved $206 million in essential upgrades at Ōhakea Air Base. Defence Minister Ron Mark said the money would be spent on improving old infrastructure. He said safety issues would be addressed, as well as upgrades to taxiways, accommodation and fresh, storm and waste water systems. "This ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First “I am not persisting with this case just for myself, but for all people who have had their privacy breached. Privacy of information is a cornerstone of our country’s democracy. Without it our society truly faces a bleak future. We now ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones has introduced a Bill to Parliament that he says will "force more transparency, integrity and respect" for the domestic wood-processing sector through the registration of log traders and practice standards. The Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Amendment Bill had its first reading in ...
Green MP Golriz Ghahraman is joining over 300 lawmakers from around the world in calling on the big banks and the IMF to forgive the debt of developing countries, in the wake of the COVID crisis. ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones says concerns that carbon foresters are planting pine trees that will never be harvested are the result of "misinformation". "The billion tree strategy is an excellent idea, unfortunately from time to time it's tainted by misinformation spread by the National Party or their grandees, hiding in scattered ...
The Green Party welcomes funding in the budget to reunite more refugees with their families, ensuring they have the best chance at a new life in Aotearoa New Zealand. ...
This year’s Budget is about rebuilding New Zealand together in the face of COVID-19. Jobs are central to how we’re going to do that.There’s a lot of targeted investment for employment in this year’s Budget, with announcements on creating new jobs, training people for the jobs we have, and supporting ...
Speaking to Stuff's Coronavirus NZ podcast, Foreign Minister Winston Peters revealed China tried to dissuade New Zealand from going into lockdown.“Without speaking out of turn, they wanted a discussion as to why we were doing it, because they thought it was an overreaction,” Mr Peters told Stuff’s Coronavirus NZ podcast.He also ...
The Coalition Government is making changes to the Overseas Investment Act to ensure New Zealand assets don't fall into the hands of foreign ownership in the economic aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Associate Minister of Finance David Parker announced the Act will be amended to bring forward a national interest ...
A quick start to a trans-Tasman bubble could see the tourism industry make a swift recovery, according to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters. "I believe tourism will turn around dramatically faster than people think," Mr Peters told reporters after Thursday's Budget. "Why? Because I think the Tasman bubble is [going ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Please check against deliveryhttps://vimeo.com/418303651 Budget 2020: Jobs, Business and Balance Introduction Acknowledgements to all Cabinet colleagues, and party ministers Tracey Martin, Shane Jones and Ron Mark, Under-Secretary Fletcher Tabuteau and to caucus colleagues. Thank you for your support, your ...
The 2020 Budget includes significant support to stabilise New Zealand’s family violence services, whose work has been shown to be so essential throughout the COVID-19 lockdown. ...
The Green Party says huge new investment in public and transitional housing will get thousands more families into the warm, safe homes they deserve. ...
The Green Party says the $1.1 billion environmental investment in this year’s budget to create thousands of green jobs will help jump start a sustainable recovery from the COVID crisis. ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said today the Coalition Government told foreigners at the start of the Covid-19 crisis that if their circumstances had changed dramatically, they should go home. "And 50,000 did," Mr Peters said. Official advice to Cabinet revealed there is potentially 380,000 foreigners and migrant workers in ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the decision today to go to Alert Level 2 from midnight Wednesday, says Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters. Alert Level 2 will mean a return to work for the vast majority of New Zealand’s businesses. A return ...
Nurses now look set to get more protection from violence at work, under a proposed new law.This after NZ First MP Darroch Ball's "Protection for First Responders Bill", which introduces a six-month minimum sentence for assaults on first responders, will now also cover emergency department healthcare workers. The ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Law and Order Spokesperson An amendment to the ‘Protection of First Responders Bill’ is being tabled which will see emergency department healthcare workers included in the legislation. “During this COVID-19 crisis we have seen reports of violence and specifically increased incidents of spitting towards ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is breathing new life into the proposal to move Auckland's port to Whangārei to help in the economic recovery post Covid-19 pandemic.If New ZealandFirst was returned in the September general election, Minister Jones said a priority would be development of an "economic haven" at Northport, ...
A jobseekers programme for the creative sector and four new funds have been set up by the Government to help our arts and music industry recover from the blow of COVID-19. Thousands of jobs will be supported through today’s $175 million package in a crucial economic boost to support the ...
Minister for Veterans Ron Mark has welcomed the First Reading of a Bill that will make legislative changes to further improve the veterans’ support system. The Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill No 2, which will amend the Veterans’ Support Act 2014, passed First Reading today. The bill addresses a number of ...
Views sought on Order in Council to help fast track the reinstatement of the Christ Church Cathedral The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Hon Poto Williams, will be seeking public written comment, following Cabinet approving the drafting of an Order in Council aimed at fast-tracking the reinstatement of the ...
The law setting out New Zealanders’ basic civil and human rights is today one step towards being strengthened following the first reading of a Bill that requires Parliament to take action if a court says a statute undermines those rights. At present, a senior court can issue a ‘declaration of ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today reiterated the deep concern of the New Zealand Government following confirmation by China’s National People’s Congress of national security legislation relating to Hong Kong. “New Zealand shares the international community’s significant and long-standing stake in Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability,” Mr Peters said. “New Zealand ...
Thousands of artists and creatives at hundreds of cultural and heritage organisations have been given much-needed support to recover from the impact of COVID-19, Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern announced today. “The cultural sector was amongst the worst hit by the global pandemic,” Jacinda ...
Key New Zealand assets will be better protected from being sold to overseas owners in a way contrary to the national interest, with the passage of the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Bill. The Bill, which passed its third reading in Parliament today, also cuts unnecessary red tape to help attract ...
Setting higher health standards at swimming spots Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams Putting controls on higher-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feed lots Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health Ensuring ...
The Government is on the verge of reaching its target of state sector boards and committees made up of at least 50 percent women, says Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa. For the first time, the Government stocktake measures the number of Māori, ...
The Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister and Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister, Kris Faafoi, has today announced the appointment of Tristan Gilbertson as the new Telecommunications Commissioner and member of the Commerce Commission. “Mr Gilbertson has considerable experience in the telecommunications industry and a strong reputation amongst his peers,” ...
The Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa have agreed to settle the pay equity claim for teacher aides, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This will see more than 22,000 teacher aides, mostly women, being valued and paid fairly for the work they do. “Teacher aides are frontline ...
Subcontractors will have greater certainty, more cashflow support and job security with new changes to retention payments under the Construction Contracts Act says Minister for Building and Construction, Jenny Salesa. A recent review of the retentions money regime showed that most of the building and construction sector is complying with ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong have marked the first anniversary of the New Zealand-Singapore Enhanced Partnership with a virtual Leaders’ Meeting today. The Enhanced Partnership, signed on 17 May 2019, provides the framework for cooperation across the four main areas of trade, defence and ...
On 17 May 2019, New Zealand and Singapore established an Enhanced Partnership to elevate our relations. The Enhanced Partnership – based on the four pillars of trade and economics, security and defence, science, technology and innovation, and people-to-people links – has seen the long-standing relationship between our countries strengthen over the ...
State-Owned Enterprises Minister Winston Peters has welcomed KiwiRail’s announcement that it is seeking a preferred shipyard to build two new rail-enabled ferries for the Cook Strait crossing. “This Government is committed to restoring rail to its rightful place in New Zealand. Bigger, better ships, with new technology are yet another ...
Better protection for seabirds is being put in place with a new National Plan of Action to reduce fishing-related captures, Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash and Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage announced today. The National Plan of Action for Seabirds 2020 outlines our commitment to reduce fishing-related captures and associated seabird ...
Almost $1 billion in interest-free loans for small businesses More than 55,000 businesses have applied; 95% approved Average loan approx. $17,300 90% of applications from firms with ten or fewer staff A wide cross-section of businesses have applied, the most common are the construction industry, accommodation providers, professional firms, and ...
Thousands of children will have healthier lungs after the Government’s ban on smoking in cars with kids becomes law, says Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa. This comes after the third reading of Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill earlier today. “This law makes it ...
The special Epidemic Response Committee (ERC) has successfully concluded its role, Leader of the House Chris Hipkins said today. The committee was set up on 25 March by the agreement of Parliament to scrutinise the Government and its actions while keeping people safe during levels 4 and 3 of lockdown. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today announced four diplomatic appointments: New Zealand’s Ambassador to Belgium, High Commissioners to Nauru and Niue, and Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism. “As the world seeks to manage and then recover from COVID-19, our diplomatic and trade networks are more important than ever,” Mr Peters said. “The ...
New Zealanders will be better protected from online harm through a Bill introduced to Parliament today, says Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin. “The internet brings many benefits to society but can also be used as a weapon to spread harmful and illegal content and that is what this legislation targets,” ...
New Zealand’s world-first plan to eradicate the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis is on track the latest technical data shows, says Agriculture and Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor. “Two years ago the Government, DairyNZ and Beef + Lamb New Zealand and industry partners made a bold decision to go hard and commit ...
Further support for New Zealanders affected by 1-in-100 year global economic shock 12-week payment will support people searching for new work or retraining Work programme on employment insurance to support workers and businesses The Government today announced a new temporary payment to support New Zealanders who lose their jobs due ...
The Provincial Growth Fund will play a vital role in New Zealand’s post-COVID-19 recovery by creating jobs in shorter timeframes through at least $600 million being refocused on projects with more immediate economic benefits, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has announced. The funding is comprised of repurposed Provincial Growth ...
Government exempts some home improvements from costly consents Homeowners, builders and DIYers will soon have an easier time making basic home improvements as the Government scraps the need for consents for low-risk building work such as sleep-outs, sheds and carports – allowing the construction sector to fire back up quicker ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says the New Zealand Government has reacted with concern at the introduction of legislation in China’s National People’s Congress relating to national security in Hong Kong. “We have a strong interest in seeing confidence maintained in the ‘one country, two systems’ principle under which Hong ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio, says the theme for the 2020 Samoa Language Week is a perfect fit for helping our Pacific communities cope with the unfolding COVID-19 crisis, and to prepare now for the journey ahead as New Zealand focuses on recovery plans and rebuilding New ...
A nearly 40-year programme to protect one of New Zealand’s most critically endangered birds is paying off, with a record number of adult kakī/black stilt recently recorded living in the wild, the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage announced today. “Thanks to the team effort involved in the Department of Conservation’s ...
The story of the Waikato-Tainui Treaty process and its enduring impact on the community is being told with a five-part web story launched today on the 25th anniversary of settlement, announced Associate Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Carmel Sepuloni. “I am grateful to Waikato-Tainui for allowing us to help capture ...
Taita College in the Hutt Valley will be redeveloped to upgrade its ageing classrooms and leaky roofs, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. “The work is long overdue and will make a lasting difference to the school for generations to come,” Chris Hipkins said. “Too many of our schools are ...
The Government is allocating $36.72 million to projects in regions hard hit economically by COVID-19 to keep people working, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. Projects in Hawke’s Bay, Northland, Rotorua and Queenstown will be funded from the Government’s $100 million worker ...
A $35m boost to financial capability service providers funded by MSD will help New Zealanders manage their money better both day to day and through periods of financial difficulty, announced Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni. “It’s always been our position to increase support to key groups experiencing or at risk ...
Dunedin barrister Melinda Broek has been appointed as a District Court Judge with Family Court jurisdiction to be based in Rotorua, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Ms Broek has iwi affiliations to Ngai Tai. She commenced her employment in 1996 with Scholefield Cockroft Lloyd in Invercargill specialising in family and ...
The Coalition Government has approved a business case for $206 million in upgrades to critical infrastructure at Royal New Zealand Air Force Base Ohakea, with the first phase starting later this year, Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. The investment will be made in three phases over five years, and ...
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today released the Ministry of Transport’s review of the organisational culture at the Civil Aviation Authority. Phil Twyford says all employees are entitled to a safe work environment. “I commissioned this independent review due to the concerns I had about the culture within the CAA, and ...
Ensuring that Stats NZ’s direction and strategy best supports government policy decisions will be a key focus for a new Governance Advisory Board announced today by the Minister for Statistics, James Shaw. The new Governance Advisory Board will provide strategic advice to Stats NZ to ensure it is meeting New ...
Environment Judge David Kirkpatrick of Auckland has been appointed as the Principal Environment Judge, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Judge Kirkpatrick was appointed an Environment Judge in February 2014. From December 2013 to July 2016 he was Chair of the Auckland Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel. Prior to appointment he ...
A programme to connect marae around the country to the internet has received $1.4 million to expand to include urban marae in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister Kris Faafoi and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The funding for the Marae Connectivity Programme ...
The Government will provide $500,000 to the Hawke’s Bay Mayoral Drought Relief Fund to help farmers facing one of the worst droughts in living memory, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. “Yesterday afternoon I received a letter from Hawke's Bay's five local Government leaders asking me to contribute to the Fund. ...
Budget 2020 provides a major investment in New Zealand’s documentary heritage sector, with a commitment to leasing a new Archives Wellington facility and an increase in funding for Archives and National Library work. “Last year I released plans for a new Archives Wellington building – a purpose-built facility physically connected ...
Creative Kiwis and cockies are among the beneficiaries of government decisions announced yesterday. The creative crowd was given support amounting to $95 million (or so), announced by Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern, who said thousands of artists and creatives at hundreds of cultural and ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35)Winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the most ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Clarke, Associate Professor, National Security College, Australian National University There were certainly questions asked when Victoria first signed a memorandum of understanding to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2018, but it wasn’t until the past week that the ...
The brains trust at World Rugby have conjured up some optional law trials to obviate the risks of coronavirus. Scotty Stevenson is intrigued.The World Rugby Executive Committee yesterday announced that it had “approved 10 optional law trials which are designed to provide national member unions with Covid-19 transmission risk reduction ...
The Government’s lax approach to monitoring wrongful wage subsidy claims sends a dangerous message, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “The Government must regularly release figures highlighting how ...
In announcing the Covid Income Relief Payment this week the Hon. Grant Robertson stated the Government is also considering an “enduring solution” to support New Zealanders experiencing job loss beyond the current crisis. The Career Development ...
Workers at Dunedin Railways have rejected Dunedin City Council claims there is not enough time for a feasibility study and commuter rail trial this year. Keep Dunedin Rail Rolling spokesperson Dave Kearns says workers at DRL were bitterly disappointed ...
We’ve published The Auditor-General’s strategic intentions to 2025 . Our strategic intentions describe the outcomes and impacts we are ultimately working towards, and the strategy we have developed to help get us there. Every three years, we publish ...
A new first-person photography game set in a dystopian Tauranga under lockdown is the best work of Māori science-fiction this decade, writes Dan Taipua.Umurangi Generation is a first-person photography game set din the shitty future. Designed and developed by Naphtali Faulkner (aka Veselekov) the game has you move about a ...
“Queen’s Birthday holiday is the most irrelevant public holiday on our calendar. It’s time for a holiday that actually reflects Aotearoa’s unique place in the world” said Lewis Holden, Campaign Chair of New Zealand Republic. New Zealand Republic ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Fredericks, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement), The University of Queensland National Reconciliation Week is a time of reflection, talking and sharing of histories, cultures and achievements. It is a time to think about our relationships as Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This year’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thami Croeser, Research Officer, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University As Australia re-opens, the bars, cafes and restaurants that give life to our streets face a tough ask: stay open and stay afloat with just a fraction of the customers. From June ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week announced plans for a potential “grand bargain” on industrial relations. Speaking at the National Press Club, he framed the issue as one of boosting economic productivity: We must ...
A low toothfish catch hits Sanford's result, but it is less affected by Covid-19 as factories kept working in Level 4 and a high-margin strategy pays off ...
The milestone pay settlement for teacher aides is both good news for gender pay equity and for valuing the education of disabled children, says Disability Rights Commissioner Paula Tesoriero. “The pay rates have negatively impacted women disproportionately ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University Group B streptococcal (GBS) is a common bacteria that likes to live in the human gut and migrate down the rectum, vagina and sometimes to the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hitchcock, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Canberra Each year the ocean is inundated with 4.8 to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic washed in from land. A big proportion of this plastic is between 0.001 to 5 millimetres, and called “microplastic”. But ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Malcolm Burt, Amusement academic and disruptive media researcher, CQUniversity Australia In the not-so-distant past I commuted fairly hefty distances in a fairly garbage car. But you didn’t hear me complaining – I had an extensive library of podcasts (or “my stories” as ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Mixed views on freshwater rules, pay equity settlement for teacher aides, and concerns raised about new internet filtering proposal.The final form of a major package of freshwater reforms was announced yesterday, and it was notable how little anger came from ...
Up-to-date data on breaches of the $10 billion wage subsidy scheme are not being provided, with Carmel Sepuloni's office saying it is "not something we're interested in". ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias.FICTION 1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35) Hard-out story of a tragic family, and winner of the best novel of the year at the 2020 Ockham New ...
Those working to stop family violence must keep consider both victims and the violent - but those at greatest risk of harm must be paramount, writes Julia TolmieIf we are to stop family violence, then offenders need to stop using violence. It follows that we need to engage more ...
How many languages do you think are spoken in New Zealand on a daily basis? Five, 10, 50? The answer is that more than 160 languages. That being the case, how do we make sure all our children are receiving the best possible education? Dr Corinne Seals from Te Herenga ...
After a pandemic-induced lockdown, a ministry pulls services from terror victims because of “minimal contact”. David Williams reports Imam Abdul Alabi Lateef opens the new, sturdy door at Christchurch’s Linwood Islamic Centre which, little more than a year ago, was the scene of a terrorist attack. The first thing he ...
A case over the treatment of pigs in New Zealand will be in court in less than two weeks. Pat Baskett takes a look at the potential impacts of the outcome. Phoebe was a pig I wrote about some years ago. Her life was a misery. She lived in a ...
Tāmati Kruger speaks to Rod Oram about Tūhoe's response to Covid-19 in the Te Urewera mountains, and how the iwi is looking to a much stronger NZ society that's aware of its obligations to be a far wiser caretaker of our natural resources. ...
The government is heralding its $700m Te Mana o te Wai package as a game-changer for the health of New Zealand waterways. But for freshwater scientist Russell Death, it’s a bitter disappointment.Two weeks into alert level two, it seems we have already forgotten all those resolutions about the pandemic being ...
The prime minister yesterday announced a package including $25m to ‘provide artists whose projects are funded by Creative NZ with jobs.’ An even more substantial investment in the creative arts will help drive our post-Covid recovery, argues Paul Millar.When Covid-19 forced the postponement of the popular international literary festival WORD ...
How can the country return to normal and still keep the good things about lockdown? That includes kinder politics, and working from home. New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic isn’t done and dusted quite yet. But considering daily new cases are now odds-on to be zero, what lessons have we learned from the past ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra It was Greg Combet, one-time ACTU secretary and former Labor minister, who got Christian Porter and Sally McManus together in the early days of the pandemic. Recalling what happened, Porter told the Australian Financial Review ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristy Hess, Associate Professor (Communication), Deakin University With swift and savage force, the COVID-19 pandemic has inadvertently attacked Australia’s local news media ecology, which was already battling a weakened immune system. As a researcher working on Australia’s largest academic study into the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael (Mike) Joy, Senior Researcher; Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand’s government has been praised for listening to health experts in its pandemic response, but when it comes to dealing with pollution ...
Rod Oram spoke to the leaders of 16 Kiwi businesses over seven weeks, during which they and their businesses rose to meet unprecedented demands. Here's what he learned. ...
Tenants in the commercial property market continue to wait for Covid-19 relief while government coalition partners Labour and New Zealand First hammer out a deal. ...
They call themselves the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, but they’re not a church, and the treatment they sell is called Miracle Mineral Supplement – but it’s chlorine dioxide, commonly known as bleach. Susan Strongman reports for RNZ.A New Zealand website is advising people with symptoms of coronavirus ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin. On Project Syndicate – and in other places in recent months – orthodox US economist Kenneth Rogoff has presented the case for deeply negative interest rates. Another financial sacred cow falls; yes, interest rates can be negative, even substantially negative. It can take ...
The Government is cracking down on nitrogen fertiliser use and asking councils to speed up their planning processes in order to clean up the country's waterways, Marc Daalder reports One in five farmers will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertiliser they are using under a new rule announced ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to New Zealand investor and business advisor David Bell. As a university professor ...
The calls for public health specialists for more taxpayer funding could be taken more seriously if they stopped wasting money on pointless public relations campaigns under the guise of public health, says the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union . Union Executive ...
The New Zealand College of Midwives is calling on the Government to release details of the funding allocated to maternity services in this year’s budget, and is supporting their GP colleagues in asking the Minister of Health to immediately release Heather ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia Australia’s chief medical officer Brendan Murphy told a senate inquiry earlier this week our COVID-19 public health response had avoided about 14,000 deaths. This is in contrast to his deputy Paul Kelly, who ...
By Sri Krishnamurthi, contributing editor Pacific Media Watch Homegrown Australian television shows to the tune of $17.1 million will be broadcast in the Pacific in a bid believed intended to stymie China’s diplomatic and media rise in the region. Shows such as The Voice, Border Security, Neighbours and are to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nik Thompson, Senior Lecturer, Curtin University Data is the new oil, and online platforms will siphon it off at any opportunity. Platforms increasingly demand our personal information in exchange for a service. Avoiding online services altogether can limit your participation in society, ...
By RNZ News New Zealand has reported no new cases of covid-19 coronavirus today, but the death toll has risen to 22 to include a woman who died after recovering from the disease. Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said there were only eight active cases in the country and ...
Fisheries New Zealand is seeking public feedback on a draft Pāua Fisheries Plan and a proposed subdivision of the pāua fishery along the Kaikōura and Canterbury coasts, known as the PAU3 quota management area. “Splitting the quota management ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jarrod Haar, Professor of Human Resource Management, Auckland University of Technology When New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said recently, “I’ve heard lots of people suggesting we should have a four-day week”, she inevitably ignited debate. Ardern was not, as some critics ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Bricknell, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Health, CQUniversity Australia Now we have fewer cases of COVID-19, and restrictions are lifting, many of us are thinking of rejuvenating our social lives by heading to our local cafe or favourite restaurant. What can we ...
Former Race Relations Commissioner, Gregory Fortuin says he agrees with Judith Collins that no one should be superficially judge on skin colour and ethnicity . Fortuin was responding to Collins’ reported outburst about "sick of being demonised" ...
The government says it allowed the Avatar film crew back into New Zealand in spite of the current border closures because the making of the film offers “significant economic value” to our country. But this criterion is being applied unevenly. What ...
New Zealand Defence Force bases in Auckland are attacking their water use as the region battles one of the worst droughts in recent history. The taps are being turned off at Devonport Naval Base, RNZAF Base Auckland at Whenuapai, Papakura Military ...
The Kahui Wai Maori Advisory group welcomed the announcement made by the Hon David Parker, Minister for the Environment today of the new rules designed to clean up our waterways. At the heart of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management ...
Water New Zealand says the Government’s Action for Healthy Waterways package provides a sensible and realistic way forward and will result in much-needed improvements in freshwater quality. Acting CEO John Mackie says it’s vital that there is no ...
When Claire Freeman became a wheelchair user at age 17, the questions she had about how she might enjoy sex were dismissed and she was made to feel like that part of her life was over. Here she flips the script with some advice on how to find pleasure on ...
As companies in New Zealand’s property development and building sectors digest opportunities presented by the Budget, what they need most urgently to move forwards is Resource Management Act and policy reform in order to rebuild together, says the ...
“We are pleased to see that the Government’s freshwater reforms announced today respond to some of the issues raised, and recommendations made, by the irrigation sector,” says Elizabeth Soal, Chief Executive of IrrigationNZ. “But there is ...
The government is imposing tough rules on water quality despite over 17,000 submissions, many of them complaining the move would impose a huge financial burden. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all Australians, but there are very good reasons why the impact might be more keenly felt by people with disability and their carers. Our new research on behalf ...
Freshwater campaigners are frustrated the Government has delayed a crucial decision on nitrogen pollution for a further 12 months until after the election. “We have urged the Government many times to put in place clear and unequivocal limits for ...
The government has just announced a whole lot of new rules and policies for freshwater with the aim of urgently stopping degradation and cleaning up rivers over the long term.What’s all this then? A massive package of work on freshwater quality has just been announced in an attempt to halt further ...
The Environmental Defence Society (EDS) has welcomed the announcement by Ministers David Parker, Damien O’Connor and James Shaw this morning of the much-awaited freshwater reforms. “This package of changes to the present regulatory settings largely delivers ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) has welcomed the Government’s announcement of a set of targeted tools to improve the quality of freshwater. LGNZ is the peak body representing New Zealand’s 78 local councils, providing a unified voice for ...
Many families facing newfound financial hardship due to COVID-19 may not be seeking help – believing they should be able to manage on their own or unaware they qualify for support, according to Good Shepherd NZ. The charitable organisation provides ...
Open mike 05/04/2020 
…a lot of things unrelated to the pandemic were happening. Relatively little attention was given to some major events on the global stage, so I thought I would do a quick recap of some of the high (or low) -lights, starting with something familiar. The common theme throughout is human ...26 mins ago
Labour's talk of gutting the RMA to push through "shovel ready" projects to boost employment after the pandemic predictably has every half-arsed pipe-dream crawling out of the woodwork demanding special treatment. Today, it's the West Coast inbreds, who are demanding a host of laws be rescinded so they can dig ...30 mins ago
1 hour ago
Below is the list of gender-critical material which appeared on Redline from July 31, 2019 to September 30, 2019. Sports categories must be by sex, not gender identity Queer theory glossary Woke misogyny and homophobia: a gay critique of trans ideology Another unfortunate experiment? New Zealand’s transgender health policy and ...12 hours ago
Smart Energy Europe: A Plan to provide 100% of ALL ENERGY using Renewable Energy to Europe Introduction All Energy renewable energy systems are often commented on here at Skeptical Science. Many comments suggest that it will be difficult, expensive or impossible to use renewable energy to power the world. To ...19 hours ago
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz I would like to know if New Zealand’s carbon emissions ...23 hours ago
Don Franks Now Covid-19 restrictions allow gatherings of a hundred, an urgent hui needs calling. A special conference of the Council of Trade Unions. Today, workers face the greatest attack on employment, pay and conditions since the depression, we need a strong united union voice. As it stands now, organised ...1 day ago
Questioning the number of district health boards in New Zealand has got to the extent that “too many DHBs” has become a perceived truth requiring no further elaboration. It is rarely challenged by policy advisers, academics, and journalists. But when one drills down further it becomes clear that the number ...2 days ago
The emergence of a new National party leader, seemingly out of nowhere, has – not surprisingly – raised a number of questions as to who Todd Mulller actually is and what makes him tick. He has been an MP for some time but seems to have hidden his light under ...2 days ago
We all know that many so-called journalists and political commentators in New Zealand work directly or indirectly for political parties or for certain political factions. This was obviously the case when pundit for hire Matthew Hooton launched a campaign against then National Party leader, Simon Bridges, over their numerous polling ...3 days ago
Anyone who keeps an eye on evidence around cannabis and public health will be familiar with the Christchurch Health and Development Study. It's one of two local longitudinal studies frequently cited with respect to cannabis and youth development. But in a new article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, it is ...3 days ago
In the age of covid we are Jacinda’s team of five million, except for some. There has rarely been a more blatant case of discrimination against beneficiaries than Grant Robertson’s announcement yesterday that people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus will receive weekly payments of $490 per week for 12 weeks and $250 per week for part time ...3 days ago
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...4 days ago
age credit: Science and Politics – Skeptically.org It seems impossible to keep politics out of science. It’s a pity because politics can end up forcing science to produce the results desired by ... 4 days ago
The National Party are quite simply a party out of time… Literally, insofar as the 2020 Election is concerned, and certainly in terms of their ideological positioning which has grown far more trenchantly extreme in the last few years in particular, under the leadership of both Simon Bridges, and Paula ...1 week ago
Children used in this study were from Lintingkou town (a normal-fluoride/control area) and Dakoutun town (a high-fluoride area) in Baodi district of Tianjin, China. The towns are 25 km apart. Anti-fluoridation activists on ... 1 week ago
The Green Party says new government support for creatives and artists is a vital lifeline for a sector struggling to survive the COVID crisis. ...41 mins ago
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Megan Woods, Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Hon Dr David Clark, Minister of Health Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods, and Health Minister David Clark today announced a COVID-19 vaccine strategy, ...3 days ago
Budget 2020 is about rebuilding together, supporting jobs, getting business moving and the books back into the black. It’s an integral part of our COVID-19 economic response, and our plan to grow our economy and get New Zealand moving again. Here’s a quick look at the five top things you ...4 days ago
A jobseekers programme for the creative sector and four new funds have been set up by the Government to help our arts and music industry recover from the blow of COVID-19. Thousands of jobs will be supported through today’s $175 million package in a crucial economic boost to support the ...40 mins ago
Creative Kiwis and cockies are among the beneficiaries of government decisions announced yesterday. The creative crowd was given support amounting to $95 million (or so), announced by Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern, who said thousands of artists and creatives at hundreds of cultural and ...7 mins ago
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35)Winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction, the most ...33 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Clarke, Associate Professor, National Security College, Australian National University There were certainly questions asked when Victoria first signed a memorandum of understanding to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2018, but it wasn’t until the past week that the ...33 mins ago
...48 mins ago
The government has announced a $175 million package to boost the arts and creative sector in the wake of Covid-19. ...50 mins ago
A low toothfish catch hits Sanford's result, but it is less affected by Covid-19 as factories kept working in Level 4 and a high-margin strategy pays off ...5 hours ago
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by Steve Braunias. FICTION 1 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $35) Hard-out story of a tragic family, and winner of the best novel of the year at the 2020 Ockham New ...7 hours ago
Those working to stop family violence must keep consider both victims and the violent - but those at greatest risk of harm must be paramount, writes Julia Tolmie If we are to stop family violence, then offenders need to stop using violence. It follows that we need to engage more ...7 hours ago
How many languages do you think are spoken in New Zealand on a daily basis? Five, 10, 50? The answer is that more than 160 languages. That being the case, how do we make sure all our children are receiving the best possible education? Dr Corinne Seals from Te Herenga ...7 hours ago
After a pandemic-induced lockdown, a ministry pulls services from terror victims because of “minimal contact”. David Williams reports Imam Abdul Alabi Lateef opens the new, sturdy door at Christchurch’s Linwood Islamic Centre which, little more than a year ago, was the scene of a terrorist attack. The first thing he ...7 hours ago
A case over the treatment of pigs in New Zealand will be in court in less than two weeks. Pat Baskett takes a look at the potential impacts of the outcome. Phoebe was a pig I wrote about some years ago. Her life was a misery. She lived in a ...7 hours ago
Tāmati Kruger speaks to Rod Oram about Tūhoe's response to Covid-19 in the Te Urewera mountains, and how the iwi is looking to a much stronger NZ society that's aware of its obligations to be a far wiser caretaker of our natural resources. ...7 hours ago
How can the country return to normal and still keep the good things about lockdown? That includes kinder politics, and working from home. New Zealand’s Covid-19 pandemic isn’t done and dusted quite yet. But considering daily new cases are now odds-on to be zero, what lessons have we learned from the past ...8 hours ago
Rod Oram spoke to the leaders of 16 Kiwi businesses over seven weeks, during which they and their businesses rose to meet unprecedented demands. Here's what he learned. ...19 hours ago
The Government is cracking down on nitrogen fertiliser use and asking councils to speed up their planning processes in order to clean up the country's waterways, Marc Daalder reports One in five farmers will have to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertiliser they are using under a new rule announced ...20 hours ago
A wee piece of real-life comedy for you this morning.
Naval boat repeatedly rams a cruise liner for no reason other than testosterone poisoning.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/03/americas/venezuela-navy-cruise-liner-incident-intl/index.html
Naval ship didn't realise – after ramming the cruise liner multiple times – that the cruise liner prow was reinforced to withstand antarctic ice.
Whoops.
Naval boat crumples and sinks.
Cruise liner: 1
Venezuelan navy: 0
That was covered in Yesterday's Dom/Post as well. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.
What I particularly liked was that, after it was obvious that the patrol craft was taking on water, that "the cruise ship had remained in the vicinity of the incident for more than an hour and had offered assistance.. It's Captain alerted the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Curacao which eventually advised him to continue his journey."
Go away! Stop looking at us! Let us sink in peace!
I'm just disappointed there's no video of the whole thing.
There are an enormous number of uploads on Youtube but all they are is just stock footage of both ships. None show the ramming attempt as far as I could discover.
Why does David Lange's comment come to mind?
'Shortly after the Mikhail Lermontov, the pride of the Soviet cruising fleet, ended her life at the bottom of the Marlborough Sounds, Lange declared that little old New Zealand was "the only nation to sink a Russian Ship since the Second World War."'.
To those that think we were too slow, and to those that think we went too severe, 1 death, so far. Look at the UK, nurses, Drs, Bus Drivers, a 5 year old yesterday! Each county numbering 100s of deaths. Big thanks to those working their arses off keeping us as safe as they can.
And the US 28k new cases to day!!
This is a short tic toc using trump statements on various days.
It is tragic
https://www.tiktok.com/@butdidiask17/video/6806022464519310598?region=JP&mid=6806013252699540230&u_code=d99c7j1c2cic98&preview_pb=0&language=en×tamp=1585986518&utm_source=line&app=tiktok&iid=6802162459673511682&utm_campaign=client_share&utm_medium=ios&tt_from=line&user_id=6758790832193111041&source=h5_t
+ 100% Well said, I feel love.
We are extremely lucky we don't have fools, in power like the USA.
Imagine if Bridges was PM?
'Imagine if Bridges was PM?'
OK …
I doubt that very much.
For a start the lockdown would have been delayed, "because of the cost to business".
Those on welfare would have been ignored.
Big businesses with lobbying clout would have all still been open and their employees forced to work.
There would be no uptick in demand from a minimum wage rise.
Help would have been directed at banks and corporates. Small business, sole traders,beneficiaries and wage earners would have been last on the list, if at all.
Lastly, communication from Bridges would have been abysmal, and even their own voters don't really trust National. Except for tax cuts and lining their own pockets.
KJT,
You are letting your political bias blind you to political reality. As SM says there would have been virtually no difference in response (except minimum wage increase).
All the fiscal measures to support wages and salaries, to support small business survive would have been implemented.
How do I know this? Because what the govt has done is modelled on what National did in Christchurch. They have actually said as much.
Under National there would have been much tougher border surveillance and earlier. That has been and remains a major failure of the government.
My reply is not from my political bias.
It is from what first hand knowledge of what National, really did, in Christchurch.
Not the PR spin version.
Tougher border surveillance could, and I think also, should, have been done sooner.
In fact I consider the border shutdown could have been sooner.
But. Don’t tell me that National wouldn’t have been prevaricating about, costs! long after the co-alition acted.
Bridges was still going on about costs to business not long ago. FFS..
KJT may be right. Wayne may be right. We'll never know. I lean towards KJT's point of view. National would have been likely followed Scumo's weaker response. But as I said, it's history, and words spoken now about what would have happened are worthless and meaningless.
I agree. Nice as it may sound, it’s rather pointless and not even an ‘academic’ exercise. It also carries the risk of polarising opinions, which we don’t really need in these times or in any time for that matter, IMHO.
You still haven't answered my question.
Who restocked our National pandemic supplies in 2017.
And another. Which Government was engaged in privatising by stealth, our health system? Which is going to severely limit our response.
What privatising of health by stealth?
The health system in NZ has hardly changed in the last two decades (apart from new technology). The health budget has increased under both governments at more or less the same rate.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/90153732/medical-laboratory-union-frustrated-at-wait-for-information-from-health-board
Two minutes on Google.
Many other examples.
And Labour wasn't guiltless, either.
The Neo-liberal disease.
The proliferation of administrators on high pay, often much higher than operational staff, has swallowed up a large proportion of funding increases for schools, universities and schools, for the last 3 decades.
So the idea that funding has increased may be true on the face of it.
But so much has gone in those salaries and payments to private providers, all those sectors have shown the effects of being run down, in reality.
Hospitals, universities and schools.
If you want to read about a health system being privatised by stealth read this. How the likes of fun f**king loving Branson the one along with Stagecoach f**ked eastern region railways in the UK and expected compensation is now a big player "running" the NHS
Nationalise the lot, tell them all to F**k Off with no compensation. I think Bo-Jo has a bloody cheek putting on his podium "Save the NHS" when since the days of Thatcher the Tories have done their utmost to run it into the ground.
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/30/covid-19-contending-with-a-dual-pathology-in-britain/
"Bridges as PM" is not the same as "National in government".
I would give Key/English the benefit of the doubt. But the "bonfire of red tape" (Simon Bridges' own plans, in his own words) was announced as a response to Covid-19.
"The arguments for these things just becomes stronger as a result of Covid-19 … Clearing away red tape means businesses are freer to get up in the morning to hire people and building houses, cutting hair, doing the things that need to be done without the unnecessary rules and regulations," he said.
That was in March 2020. Less than a month ago. Only days before the lockdown. It was pure fantasy.
Simon Bridges would have cost lives.
link to Simon Bridges' speech
Cutting hair? Was this before or after scomofo conferred essentialness upon the coiffeurs?
I would be fascinated to know what unnecessary rules and regulations there might be governing cutting hair.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120824045/coronavirus-police-modify-guidelines-for-frontline-officers
Yep Bridges was completely out of touch. Almost like he continued to waffle on along prepared lines without any awareness of how serious things were becoming.
I gave Key credit at the time when he raised welfare payments.
And for not going full austerity after the GFC, like so many of the Clowns, overseas.
"Because what the govt has done is modelled on what National did in Christchurch."
What did National do for beneficiaries at that time? I don't remember an across the board benefit rise for Canterbury people. Nor an energy payment that winter. Can't remember what National's response was. Anyone?
https://iknow.cch.co.nz/document/zntxtnewsUio1805910sl278464566/christchurch-earthquake-support-package
Is that the total of what they did or part?
it was extended by a few weeks but was further restricted from memory but as far as direct financial support went that was the extent if I recall correctly.
Its worth noting that the fact a business support package (wage subsidy) had been implemented before, albeit on a limited basis, would likely have promoted it as an option on this occasion.
Having said that I think KJT's assertion that Nationals response would have differed holds a considerable amount of water as with everything the emphasis, priorities and timing would have been different …the devil is always in the detail
Single issue lunacy from you KJT, surround by a huge amount of conjecture and what if’s’
I think the response has been over the top. If anyone thinks this thing isn’t coming back for round 2 at some point, they’re deluded. Will we just shut the economy down again? Or is it better to allow some deaths amongst the lower risk demographics and try and focus isolation and support on the high risk? Then at least we can build some immunity.
Another happy to sacrifice "other people". For the "economy".
Where else are we hearing that from?
By the way, they are heading tens thousands of deaths, if not millions, and their economy, is still fucked.
KJT
No economy in the world can meets the all of the health needs of citizens and prevent all disease related deaths. What economies can do is generate capital to support and resource health systems. The stronger the economy, the greater the resources governments can give to health systems. The issue as it always has been is about how to best allocate those resources. This requires careful judgement (not evident with the current Minister of Health).
For instance cancer patients have for years been competing with each other and with other medical conditions for resources. There is never enough resource to go round and so there will always be priorities and winners and losers.
No one is "happy" about "sacrificing"people. And it doesn't happen "for the economy". Your thinking on this doesn't make sense. Its emotive bullshit.
To reiterate, its the 'economy' that makes it possible to build better health systems.
Not the point. And you know it.
The problem with these armchair alternatives is that they ignore the most basic question in a democracy. Does the government tell the people what it is doing?
If "No", then you're arguing for a cover-up. Which would inevitably leak out, and there would be uproar.
If "Yes", how do you propose that a NZ government (ANY government, forget the names and parties) announces to the people:
"We think it is better to allow some deaths, so we'll be doing that."
So the young should die to protect the old and the infirm?
By and large the evidence strongly suggests that the young don't die at anywhere near the same rates as 'the old and infirm" as a result of Convid 19. So that sacrifice is not being asked of the young. And neither should it.
The same rate does not mean that there is no rate. They still get sick, they still die, and they still infect others. Therefore they are still sacrificing.
Moreover as they have to go off sick in large quantities, they will cause businesses to fail thereby eventually losing themselves and others their jobs.
What kind of moronic point are you trying to make? Simpleton aphorisms don’t make an argument – they merely define someone being an idiot.
I agree with your statements concerning the use of the concept, 'rates'.
My other point (which I should have made more clearly) is that I don't think we should be expecting the young to make unreasonable sacrifices for, say, boomers, for example.
You know you are utterly unconvincing and lack a compelling argument when you use clichés like that.
I understand that you're probably been a little too lazy to read up on epidemics. But the issue in a epidemic without a vaccine or a effective treatment is that everyone almost without exception gets sick.
The more often that you get exposed and infected again before you develop any immunities, the more likely it is that you'll wind up with a dose of infecting agents that manage to overwhelm anyones immune system. Without adequete medical treatment you're more likely to die or have a downstream consequence – like a permanently compromised immune system.
So instead of whining about someone else based on a discussion about probabilities, perhaps you should look more closely at how you stop you, your family, your friends, and your workmates getting into a situation that they get into the worst possible epidemic case.
Try looking at New York where it appears the major demographic dying or severely distressed now are in their 30s and 40s because they have been swanning around in virus haze thinking that they're immune.
Meanwhile the boomers buttoned up weeks ago because they were told that they were at risk.
You can also look to OZ where the risk takers are the most affected ie 20's.
Dr McAnulty said that younger people are being affected.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-05/coronavirus-australia-live-blog-updates-covid-19-april-5/12122460
Why not? We're all in this together. Some of the at risk people will be younger people eg those with asthma or immune issues. Everyone is making sacrifices, not just young people, so why single them out as a group and pit them against others?
Further, why is the boomer generation not worthy of being helped? What about the elderly who will die if we all don't do our bit?
Are those young going to have there student loans remitted? As they face ruinous generational bills to pay for the privilege of extending the lives of those who benefited from a free education? Will the young get advantageous interest rates on their mortgages as they take lower paid roles in order to support the old and infirmary right to live where they are on a full government super? Will that same super be affordable for future generations as reward for sacrificing so much for the old and infirm who demanded the economy be shut down to protect them.
the same voices crying for there future generations to be protected from climate change are now sadly forgotten as those same voices revert to individualistic selfishness.
Still with the right wing, trying to set generations against each other, bollocks.
What a mighty spectacle of shadowboxing strawmen you paint there.
In case you missed it, we’re currently trying to protect and save (!) every vulnerable New Zealander irrespective of age and socio-economic status.
Go ahead and sacrifice yourself. Which business are you going to throw yourself under the covid bus for?
For the moment, I’m ignoring the rest of your comment, which is basking in ignorance, IMO.
Nobody knows or is sure if exposure to (i.e. infection with) COVID-19 will induce immunity and, if so, how long this will last. This pandemic is too young to tell and it is highly risky to make predictions and extrapolate from the experience with other coronaviruses or research on animals.
Pretty weak excuse. It’s not wiping people out. It’s fatality rate amongst people without other morbidity factors is nearing .25%.
its the old and infirm and the occasionally unlucky other who then gets sensationalised. I’m not saying it’s not something to be afraid of, but when the theoretical cure is worse than the disease…
we don’t even know if isolation will actually break the transmission cycle. It’s a best guess based on an assumption. So no less valid than Sweden’s approach, which is what I think we should follow.
but hey, if you blindly accept MoH media reports and briefings, be my guest.
The fatality rate from COVID-19 among people who don’t get infected with COVID-19 is 0.00%.
We don’t know all the morbidity factors and some people have undiagnosed factors.
Young healthy people without any conditions or morbidity factors have died and are still dying from COVID-19.
New Zealand’s approach is not Sweden’s one. Sweden currently has 373 deaths caused by COVID-19.
but hey, if you blindly display your ignorance, be my guest.
The fatality rate is incredibly low amongst young people. So your statement young are getting sick and dying is misleading.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/
people are going to die regardless, do we want to lower everyone who survives quality of life for generations to come to potentially save a small portion of the population? And save them only the first time round?
its a tough choice, no one gets it right, but the draconian response is out of proportion.
There is no misleading in my statement about young people dying from COVID-19, as your own link shows. You, OTOH, are displaying your ignorance again.
In New Zealand, the young are the single largest group of positive cases, which is why the PM singled them out in one of recent press conferences.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases#age
Yes, we’re all going to die, one day. However, we don’t leave anyone behind in this country.
You seem to be suggesting that we “potentially” sacrifice “a small portion of the population” so that the survivors can have better quality of life.
You say that this is a tough choice. Well, no, for me it’s an easy choice and my QALYs would be lower because of my burdened conscience assuming I’ll be among the survivors. You don’t seem to have that problem!?
Getting sick is not the same as dying from Covid 19. Probably why we aren’t seeing lots of deaths relative to our infection rate.
so either your example about New Zealand’s young is designed to be misleading about the fatality impact of covid 19 or it supports my point that the at risk people (fat Americans, old people, underlying health conditions) should be isolated and have massively targeted support and the very low risk people should be allowed to live almost as normal, with some restrictions. As covid 19 isn’t fatally dangerous to them
Ignorant still, but not a surprise.
When falling sick, you risk dying from it. This applies to all ages, but not equally, which nobody has disputed so this is a strawman.
When becoming a carrier, you risk spreading the virus and infecting others. This has nothing to do with your own ‘risk status’.
To prevent this from happening and to try to stamp out the virus, we’re in Alert Level 4. This is likely why we aren’t seeing lots of deaths relative to our infection rate.
You’re suggesting to let the virus go rampant among the population without knowing who are at risk and who aren’t; you don’t know whom it will be “fatally dangerous” to. You’re prepared to let people die so that others can live “almost as normal”. You believe that this is a price worth paying.
Who’s talking about “fat Americans” in our NZ society? Are you deliberately misleading?
You’re as ignorant about COVID-19 as you are about CC, which actually makes a lot of sense.
'…if you blindly accept MoH media reports and briefings, ..'
Hmm blindly following the actual experts advice or some pseudonymous commenter on a blog….. that's a tough one.
Have you ever seen any of the vaccination threads on this site.. lots of pseudonymous commenters thinking they know better than the experts and their science.
This guy knows what’s what. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/
are people dying of or with covid-19?
They’re dying of COVID-19.
See also https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-05-04-2020/#comment-1698395
We encourage strong debate supported by sound arguments. We ask the ignorami to educate themselves and improve their arguments and debating skills. You’re starting to sound like a straight-up denier, as you did with CC. Keep it up and you’ll be booted off this site.
Who is denying CC? You’re getting confused. CC is happening, I think there are other ways to deal with it than jetting around hectoring people or organising wasteful marches.
3 people ventilated. It’s hardly reason enough to shut down society. Some will be unlucky enough to get it seriously or even fatally. It’s unfortunate, but not enough to wreck the futures of the rest of their generation.
FIFY
And only one fatality case so far. We’re so lucky, indeed!
And. If the hospitals are full of Coronavirus cases, a hell of a lot of other people are going to die of other conditions. Because there is no place or people to treat them.
But. They are just part of the "collateral damage" right.
One of my friends, a health worker, still cannot work because his constantly postponed hip replacement, has been postponed again due to coronavirus. Isn't that a cost, to?
Keen to volunteer your family as guinea pigs to see if your half arsed theory is correct.?
Yup. I am.
nothing half arsed about it. How else would a vaccine be effective if it wasn’t exposed to virus.
get back to FB Karen
The reason some of those Drs and nurses are dying is because they are getting reinfected, and each time it hits them stronger, then they die. You may end up like Boris Johnson, in denial, then sick.
Bridges was interviewed on Q+A this morning, and it was far the best I've seen him. Sensible, largely supportive of Government measures dealing with Covid, but pertinent questions about testing and quarantining of incoming travelers.
He seemed to be natural and informed.
This perhaps shows the benefits of being isolated from party strategists and media trainers.
And focus groups and polls.
All of them the bane of modern politics and the ruin of potential leaders. David Shearer suffered badly from it, as did Andrew Little (but as it turns out Ardern is a far better communicator anyway).
Ardern herself has been better when finding herself in times of crisis where she acts as she sees fit rather than being projected through a PR lens. Her interview on Seven Sharp on Friday wasn't one her best, it looked prepared and scripted, and laughing off the Clark question and pivoting to a lecture to the rest of us to not do what Clark had done was poor.
We to often forget that a Leader is still part of a group/party.
Who, may not even agree with the things they have to front.
Or, like Trump, is the figurehead for a large number of enablers behind him.
Then they have, in both Labour and National, to deal with a large number of chair polishers, and outright loons, their selection processes saddle them with.
Ardern's interview on 7 Sharp on Friday was simply propaganda and politicking. Its was straight out of the ex Women's Weekly playbook.
TVNZ need to be careful about providing a platform at prime time for political propaganda of this sort. Hillary Barry asking the tough questions is a joke. The programme was unbalanced and biased.
Jack Tane's Q & A programme provides the template for how these things should be done; especially in these times.
Bollocks. What you saw is Simon as he is. Politicians both left and right are not automatons and just puppets of polling. Yes, polling is done. But basically a politician has to use his/her judgement. And once before the camera they just say what they say. It is not nearly as scripted as you seem to think.
Yeah I ve seen Bridges in action -"Angry Simon implodes on Campbell Live"
very natural oh him wasn't it Wayne?
Yes. Saw it again yesterday. Bridges back to being a twit.
"Government should let more businesses open if it is safe for them to do so".
As if it isn't what they are doing already. FFS.
Bridges will have his platform when it comes to the usual May budget. I do not envy Robertson one bit when it comes to this.
There was a mild earth quake in Christchurch this morning. We had the EQC for the earthquakes.
We had a surplus which helps with the current Covid-19.
We have ACC for injuries.
I wonder how the ACC levies are going with the loss of income.
Does anyone know?
Bearing in mind the markets, I suspect they’d be more worried about their reserves which are the buffer. The levies are probably gone down roughly in line with the claims.
It will be interesting to see what the claim number will be during the lockdown and the breakdown of them.
FFS, Pete, where is your link?
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/bridges-calls-more-businesses-safely-operate-during-lockdown
We shall never know how Simon would have handled the crisis (thank God for that) but if we look overseas we can see numerous examples of how right wing governments have fared, Think Trump, think Johnson, think Morrison.
It would be fair to say Simon would not have been much better than any of them.
Add to that the Chinese ambassador's annoyance when we closed our borders to China and you can be sure the borders would have stayed open for longer – notwithstanding what Simon says now.
Check the data Tony. Australia is doing ok. Its current management of the problem is producing results similar to NZ.
Mostly because the various state governments like NSW, Vic and SA have been doing far closer what the NZ government has done. Closing borders. Forcing businesses to close. People to self-isolate early.
They are doing this despite the Federal government’s vacillating and inconsistent policies that seemed largely designed to reduce the call on federal funds at the unemployment.
However the federal government has now seemed to get on with the task at hand in recent days with what looks a lot like our stimulus programmes.
Only because the states have responsibility for Health and NSW and Victoria went harder, faster than the Federal government was always proposing.
A grim read of the article on The Cut thanks KJT. I think?
A bit long and wordy but a great take on the Trump/Cuomo show.
https://www.bedlamfarm.com/2020/04/02/the-cuomo-brothers-versus-the-president-what-a-show/
Very, very good. It explains why the Dems have singularly misunderstood Trump, underestimated him and miserably failed to compete against such an egregious goat of a man:
Reminder #23628 of why it's a really not a good idea for a political leader to own and control substantial business interests: the Dotard of Doltistan is looking for substantial debt relief from Deutsche Bank at the same time as the Department of Justice (which he is in charge of) is investigating Deutsche Bank for various crimes.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/deutsche-bank-trump-debt-help-coronavirus-conflict-of-interest_n_5e87ee89c5b6cc1e47758499
Are these the loans guaranteed by Simeon Mogilivch the Russian mafia boss of bosses
Ruined party elects block of wood as "leader"
Tony Blair sans the charisma.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/413473/sir-keir-starmer-to-lead-uk-labour-party
I'll take the views of UK Labour people who work with Starmer every day over your sideline cynicism, thanks.
He's vowed to expel every Labour Party member who cares about human rights. You don't know much, or anything, about the UK Labour Party.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/keir-starmer-elected-uk-labour-chief-apologizes-to-jews-for-party-anti-semitism/
"He's vowed to expel every Labour Party member who cares about human rights"
Citation please (so we know what you are talking about).
I think Morrissey is referring to the article he posted, Starmer intends to address anti-semitism in the party (which doesn't really exist, but was an invention of many "friends of Israel" and some other hidden forces), this will be a direct attack on all socialists in the party who support Palestinian's human rights.
It's an attack not just on "socialists" but on all people who dare to speak out for the victims of injustice.
From the article I provided with my link:
Starmer deliberately mislabels opposition to the crimes of the Israeli regime as "anti-Semitism." That obviously sits well with the extreme right Times of Israel, which published this encomium, but it's another nail in the coffin for the future of the Labour Party.
So he hasn't "vowed to expel every Labour Party member who cares about human rights" then and you just made that up?
What caught my attention about that was that the other leader candidates signed a pledge to support the expulsion of gender critical feminists from the party. From memory Starmer didn't, or at least he was restrained in his handling of that rather than throwing a large number of Labour feminists under the bus.
So making shit up about expulsions carries more stupid weight than normal.
He joined in the campaign of defamation against Jeremy Corbyn, which descended into a purge of anyone who spoke out against Israeli crimes. I didn't make that up, it's an unpleasant fact.
Do you support the contention of the Blairite rump of that party that criticism of Israel is, per se, anti-Semitism?
'The so-called “friends of Israel”, who support Israel automatically and blindly: this has nothing to do with friendship. They are enemies of Israel—they corrupt us. The Jewish establishment in Australia kept saying to me: “Israel right or wrong.” Well, Israel is wrong and they need to stop supporting it. Continuous support by Western governments and by the Jewish establishment is anything BUT friendship.'
—Gideon Levy, speaking in Auckland, 3 Dec. 2017
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2017/12/unbelievable-brutality-day-after-day.html
Citation needed, because it looks like you are making shit up again.
What it looks like is that you are back in your routine of feigned ignorance. I doubt that you are unaware of the brutal campaign of "anti-Semitism" allegations that was directed against Corbyn over the last four years. So why pretend you are?
I'm asking for evidence that the Labour party has purged members or intends to. You've made the claim twice, and both times refused to back it up, so I assume now you are lying.
In terms of your politics around Israel and Palestine and what Labour are doing re that, not interested in talking about that today.
I'm asking for evidence that the Labour party has purged members or intends to.
If you don't know that the Labour Party is purging human rights activists, you should not be commenting here. I expect to find displays of willful ignorance on Kiwiblog, but not on this normally excellent forum.
In terms of your politics around Israel and Palestine and what Labour are doing re that, not interested in talking about that today.
The false anti-Semitism smear and the witchhunt and the demand for apologies has everything to do with the "politics around Israel-Palestine." I don't believe, by the way, that you are ignorant about this matter.
Morrissey, you run your own blog, IIRC. You should know that many blogs, particularly TS, are not for little tête-à-têtes but for robust debate. Anybody can join in but many read this site without ever commenting. So, when somebody, particularly a Moderator, asks you for evidence to back up your allegations, then please oblige without sounding like a petulant little child. Thanks.
A purging that everyone knows about but for which there is no evidence. Right.
Incognito:
I'm not "alleging" that the right wing (Blairite) rump of the Labour Party, which has now manoeuvred itself back into control—a pyrrhic victory if ever there was one—has operated an unrelenting smear campaign against Corbyn and anyone who stands up for the rights of the Palestinians, any more than I would allege that the sun is coming up tomorrow morning or that today is Sunday. It's a fact.
https://www.medialens.org/2019/reopening-auschwitz-the-conspiracy-to-stop-corbyn/
weka,
You say there is "no evidence" of a purge of human rights activists from the Labour Party. This charming little encapsulation of Starmer's agenda comes from the article I provided for you in my original comment on this thread:
When Starmer says "this poison" he doesn't mean anti-Semitism, he means criticism of the Israeli regime. What do you think he means when he says he's going to "tear out" these critics?
Morrissey, you could have saved yourself the trouble with those utterances that I personally am not interested in.
My concern is your behaviour here and how you respond, or not for that matter, to basic requests for evidence to support your allegations. This is a necessary element of good debate, which we treasure on this site.
You have been around here long enough to know how it works. Next time, please just provide the evidence and don’t argue. It is wasting our time and I find it tedious enough to get the ban-hammer out.
Over and out.
Well look where charisma gets us.
Jack Tame?
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/jack-tame-emotes-after-newtown.html
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/04/jack-tames-interview-of-chris-liddell.html
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2019/02/jack-tame-chief-worshipper-of-hosk-dec.html
None of that looks relevant to the two tweets, it looks more like a shoot the messenger diversion.
Did you read what Tame wrote about a real shooting? "Solipsistic" is the most generous spin you could put on it.
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/jack-tame-emotes-after-newtown.html
I didn't read a link to something from two years ago – it's still irrelevant to the tweets.
I didn't read a link to something from two years ago…
Tame's horrible little meditation was from eight years ago.
What is your point, Pete? Are you playing ‘trick or treat’ with us here on TS?
I thought it was kinda obvious. Robertson said that Clark was "always available" for interviews according to Jason Walls.
Also Stuff reported Robertson as saying “He’s available to front anytime".
But Jack Tame pointed out he reneged on a scheduled Q+A interview for today so wasn't always available as stated. RNZ Live referred to it as "a no show'.
Also from RNZ Live:
Tova O'Brien reported:
So according to Robertson and Ardern, Clark is "available to front any time" and "would continue to be available for interviews", but according to journalists he isn't.
The Minister of Health, during the biggest health crisis for decades, is remote from the centre of Government and Ministry of Health activity and is not giving interviews despite the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance saying he is available (knowing he isn't doing interviews).
Something is obviously not right here.
If he's not giving interviews to gossip columnists who want to rabbit on about him going for a bike ride, then good so. Why should someone in his position indulge such childish bullshit? If they were actually interested in asking him questions about the pandemic and NZ's response to it, it would be dereliction of duty for him to refuse the interviews – but they aren't, and it isn't.
Q+A is hardly a gossip column, it's not perfect but it's one of the best political media forums we have.
With Clark not fronting up Simon Bridges got a spot, and surprisingly he came across well, far different from his usual. Generally supportive of Government actions but with some reasonable questions and criticisms.
So at least something good came of Clark's no show. Bridges may be capable of rising to the occasion that the current situation requires of our politicians.
” it would be dereliction of duty for him to refuse the interviews – but they aren’t”
Do you have proof of this? I heard O’Brien saying she had specific and relevant (to the pandemic) sounding questions.
You mean Tova Woodward?
Good move by Clark imo, let's see how much media work he does in the coming week. Journos want to sensationalise a story that should have been over by now. Under normal circumstances that would just be tedious, but under these circumstances it's bizarre.
PM's press conference today: the first there-were-so-many-I-can't-recall-how-many questions were all about David Clark going for a bike ride. Nothing about Tova O'Brien's previous reporting suggests she'd operate to a higher standard than that, in fact for all I know it was her asking those questions (the questioners aren't identified in the video).
"and is not giving interviews"
When was the last time Clark gave an interview then?
What is obvious is that your mind is not like mine, obviously.
Being available for interviews is not the same as being available for a game of pin the tail on the donkey, no matter how much it appeals to a certain audience and certain pundits who have made a hobby out of reporting on it.
When something smells a little off, it could be a ripening French cheese. Yum!
So how long do you think that Clark should refuse to do interviews (despite Ardern and Robertson saying he is always available) just in case someone asks him an awkward question that he would prefer not to answer?
Or do you think he should only do interviews with questions he allows in advance?
Or should Bloomfield, Robertson and Ardern just speak on his behalf. It's not as if he has a very important job, is it.
I thought it was kinda obvious. During Alert Level 4, he should only do interviews on how to repair punctures when mountain biking in the wild.
I think this tweet speaks for itself, adding to this thread.
I don’t hear any voices, Pete, do you?
Yap! Yap! Yap!
Please Pete – Give it a bone.
There are way more important issues than someone going on a bike ride, even if they are the Minister of Health.
I never thought the bike ride was a big deal apart from being embarrassing for Ardern efforts to get people following her message of staying away from risky pastimes.
But what it has highlighted is a Minister of Health being shielded or hiding away at the most important time for any Minister of Health for decades. That's an important issue. Do we have a functional Minister of Health?
What’s more important: de we have a scandal that can bring down this Government? Will the PM call a snap election? What do the polls say? What’s for dinner tonight?
You attempt at flippancy is a pretty lame attempt at diversion, and I think stupid in the current situation of a pandemic.
Media have picked up on the MIA issue…
…and that's a big deal for a Minister of Health during an unprecedented pandemic.
Irony not your strongest point, Pete, i.e. MIA?
Do you really not see what Ardern did today? She knew exactly what was coming (our political journos are nothing if not predictable). She fed them a line: "idiots".
Then she took the (predictable) questions on Clark and quietly kicked him in the shins. She didn't repeat "idiot", because she didn't need to.
She also knew that while a minuscule minority of poli-tragics on blogs might still be getting worked up about Clark, the vast majority of the public are rolling their eyes at the journos (see the social media reaction in real time, which is unspun).
What do leaders usually say when one of their team lapses? "It was within the rules …" "I do not condone but …" "What about what about?" etc. Weasel words, which only make it worse.
She is smarter than that, and still many can't/won't see it.
"Do you really not see what Ardern did today? "
Yes, she gave journalists an opening to infer Clark was an idiot, a notion she didn't do much to dispel.
If Ardern is smart she won't let this fester away, which is likely if left unaddressed and information is sought from the Minister of Health – he can't go to ground forever.
It isn't festering away. Nobody cares much, except journos who help to make sure nobody cares by going on about it some more. She has political capital in spades, they don't.
I don't think you would even recognize her smarts, TBH.
Have you and other journos [see what I did there?] called out Stuart Nash yet. I heard he’s been spotted in his home gym lifting weights.
And why didn't you bring this up before the bike ride?
when was the last time Clark gave an interview?
Good question. I don't know. I do know that he has seemed to struggle with interviews he has given over the last couple of weeks, he has sounded unsure and lacking in confidence. Perhaps that's why he has quietly been given a reduced role.
so you don't actually know if he is refusing to give interviews, other than he pulled out of one today?
As above, refusing interviews from Newshub.
And obviously other journalists are showing concerns about it.
Fair bet 90% of the interviews in the next few days would have revolved around bicycles, so why bother.
Probably with other pretexts but it woulod have come up for sure. But he's got to front up sooner or later and deal to that.
Or is he going to go full funkstille?
Gotcha issues have a short expiry date.
Non-performing ministers in critical portfolios in a crisis probably have a longer expiry date – like for as long as he refuses interviews.
how has he been non-performing other than refusing a couple of interviews?
*crickets*
This one?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018741008/coronavirus-health-minister-on-testing-ventilators
It's a bit superfluous for him to be doing interviews when the PM is fronting this issue. Journalists know that too, hence no squawking about lack of interviews until now. It's clear why they have a sudden interest in interviewing him, and also clear that the reason is "childish gotcha bullshit."
Not when he's cleaning his chain, obv. I mean come on.
Virgin Australia has shut down its NZ operations. 600 jobs gone, more than twice as many as the Bauer debacle. No doubt the howls of outrage in the media are coming…?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/413455/loss-of-600-jobs-as-virgin-australia-shuts-its-nz-operations
3000 from Air New Zealand.
The airline industry is going to be a very sad place for a long time. There's a lot of airlines that have been loosing serious money prior to the covid19 restrictions on travel. Virgin Australia was one.
This piece from ABC sums it up nicely. Bottom line, Virgin is an overseas owned business and the Australian government is very unlikely to bail them out. Unfortunately some / most of the overseas airlines that own Virgin are worse. Can't see them being around for long.
The global airline industry will probably resemble the airline industry of the late 60's by the end of this, a few national flag carriers serving their home states and a couple of larger international based ones. And a lot of surplus aluminium parked in the desert. And a lot of people out of work.
Virgin is an overseas owned business and the Australian government is very unlikely to bail them out.
Taleb had a scathing response (and solution)
Virgin Australia were in big trouble 8 months ago….losses of $1.2 billion over the last 6 years. They would probably have folded without Covid-19. See:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-virgin-australia-strategy-focus/turnaround-may-prove-tricky-for-new-virgin-australia-ceo-scurrah-idUSKCN1VG01O
"a lot of surplus aluminium parked in the desert. "
I wonder how that will affect the prospects of Rio Tinto at Tiwai? Their "best aluminium" claims revolve mainly around aircraft manufacture, I understand.
Wind turbines?
The high purity of the aluminium from Tiwai Point is more valuable for electronics purposes that directly use it in the pure state. The large portion of the output that goes to Japan is used for that.
High purity aluminium is useless for any kind of structural use, it's much too soft and weak. So it has to be alloyed with significant amounts of other elements, and the tiny quantities of impurities disappear into the tolerances of the alloying proportions. For instance, a common high-performance alloy is 7075 with a recipe that roughly includes 5.6–6.1% zinc, 2.1–2.5% magnesium, 1.2–1.6% copper, and less than a half percent of silicon, iron, manganese, titanium, chromium, and other metals.
"our high-purity aluminium is valuable for aerospace" makes for a good marketing story, though. It's useful to make locals feel special about what they produce, in order to add to their social license to operate. Even when it's bullshit.
Its likely, for the moment, that any subsidies paid to Tiwai will be cheaper than unemployment support for the numerous on and off site staff and losses to the wider community. But the plant owners could pull the plug anytime, which would be sad.
The real shame is that money, which could have been used to develop long term sustainable employment in Southland, has instead been wasted on bribes to Rio Tinto. It would have been cheaper to shut it down, and just continue paying the staff.
And we have all been paying higher power bills, for decades, for the same reason.
Other industries and infrastructure, such as electric rail, could have used that power.
A necessity to help stop man made global warming.
But. Still sad for the people out of work.
a faster curve than expected, but we were always going to end up here and I'm relieved it's happening now rather than in 20 years when it's way too late.
My hope now is that we create sustainable jobs rather than rushing back to the pollution economy.
I notice the usual suspects gearing up for business as usual.
Including Federated farmers, trying to get out of ceasing to pollute waterways, and businesses which relied on cheap labour, tax payer support and capital gains, trying to use this an excuse for even more largess from their employees, and the rest of us.
I don’t have much hope. They are already trying to paint targets on anyone who is against de- regulation and subsidies for polluting businesses.
Once China has built it's strategic milk powder mountain a shock could be on the way. No markets, or severely fucked markets, will mean much less going off farm.
Add to that less containers coming into the country full of all the shit we buy from Briscoes et al, so we've got to import empty boxes, and NZ agriculture could be in for a squeeze like it's never seen before.
I've too many family members in farming, to cheer on, it's reduction.
However commodity milk powder, was bound to run into a wall, at some stage.
Not to mention I expect the EU, and others to be trying to make up for lost trade at the same time as us.
No one who was around at the time, can forget the effects of "lakes of milk and mountains of butter" the EU, can produce, if they want to.
Expecting agriculture to pull us out of the hole, is not a given.
And. Our so called “free trade” agreements will prevent us from developing, replacement industry.
NZ agriculture could be in for a squeeze like it's never seen before.
Twaddle,demand in china for WMP is increasing due to the CCP expectation that everyone needs to drink 300ml of milk a day.Neither China or NZ can meet that cumulative demand.
There is also expected a global shortfall in whole foods such as apples,kiwifruit,oranges.and grain due to export restrictions from former CIS states.
Agriculture is resilient ie antifragile during recessions,whether NZ can sustain the harvest,due to staff shortages or government policy in horticulture (limited selling venues) is the open problem.
but at what price?…deflation is a feature of depressions
Deflation is across the entire economy,as people replace capex etc with the necessary and small treats.
During the GFC prices went up,before falling (due to increased supply)
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
wishful thinking….you may wish to look a little further back than the GFC.
and you may also wish to consider the impact of deflation on debt loadings especially in an already highly leveraged sector
Think of the cash in the bank.yr on yr.(deposits)
Feb 2019. 345,571 (m$)
Feb 2020 365,691 (m$)
Households holding an extra 7.5 b$
As few additional house sales will be transacted over the lockdown period,and those who do not seek mortgage holidays,repayment would also exceed bank household lending.
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/s40-banks-liabilities-deposits-by-sector
your point?….household sector savings have little to do with agricultural debt nor non performing loans.
Household and domestic savings provide stable liquidity for NZ
Agriculture (export) has an interesting built in safety valve,as ahve most commodity currencies.the fast 15% depreciation in the $nz
Fuel costs are down so internal transport costs reduce.Working capital interest costs have also been reduced.
Staffing for the harvest would be the biggest problem at present.
household sector savings provide protection from offshore impacts including exchange rate fluctuations is true enough…hence the RBNZ increased requirement in recent times…however there is another side to that ledger which somewhat negates your cheerleading…both household debt and total debt has increased more in the same period
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/s30-banks-assets-loans-by-sector
The floating exchange rate could be expected to provide (some) protection in normal circumstances however we are looking at a prolonged reduction in worldwide economic activity which is it self deflationary as there will be reduced demand and ability to purchase our goods and our competitors are capable of increasing production at a scale (and will be looking to do so) we cannot cope with even if we had spare capacity , which we dont…and the non commodity imports required for our (now) high input model of ag will not deflate at the same rate.
Yes oil is low at the moment but that wont remain the case for long as the russians and saudis will agree to cut production soon enough especially in light of further reduced demand.
from your final comment it appears your horizon is around 3 months…..seriously???
from your final comment it appears your horizon is around 3 months…..seriously???
Thats when they make most of their income,ie from the harvest to sustain them over the year.
Nobody told the cows
That's what they said to me, the last time I said dairy prices were going to drop steeply.
Of course telling me it was "twaddle" didn't stop them going down.
There will be longships to row, no doubt.
and the fixed costs spread over a smaller pool will necessitate considerable fare increases…cheap travel is gone for the foreseeable (once the dust settles)
Like I said, back to the 60's. Not quite passenger lists in the social pages, but close.
1st World problems:
When walking I have noticed the increase of "Dog Mines" just off footpaths 🤬. When giving way to others: using the footpath as a 2m guide walk whilst passing using either side of the grass verge. Be careful watch out for dog poo being tramped thru the house. 😉
You wear shoes inside! How od
Only when I enter into our entrance or garage then leave shoes inside front or back door – there is the isolated occasion that there is a need rush inside 😉 – And that will be the one occasion that "stuff" is on the sole of the shoe.
As the great philosophy forest gump said .
Shit happens.
I thought you were a dairyman bwaghorn. Dog poo and cow poo are not in the same race.
Wash your mouth out I'm a shepherd.
Mind I was a dairy farmer but shit really did happen in that game in more ways than one.!
A longish but very worthwhile piece on the idea of there being a trade-off between the economy and public health (spoiler: there isn't), with a focus on when and how to back off on restrictions.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/02/coronavirus-economy-reopen-deaths-balance-analysis-159248
Coronavirus: Man arrested after filming himself coughing on fellow shoppers
WTF was he thinking? He's lucky no one decked him given how stressed out and on edge many are currently. Hopefully the prick didn't have the disease.
Apparently he had a bit too much to drink so wasn't thinking.
He has been charged.
I think he should be trespassed from all food shops.
So the virus does spread by arseole.
That sort never thinks. He has no excuse except to apologise humbly for being a natural dork. He should go through a rigorous Army training program to strengthen his discipline muscle.
He clearly has FITH disease.
It's an hereditary condition so there's likely more like him out there.
Good.
Funny how the corporate media have been avoiding talking about the Biden sexual assault allegations. And then it gets all mixed up in an attack on Alyssa Milano, ever get the feeling women mean nothing in politics, and are just props?
Please don't do the usual and throw in trump to dilute the debate. I know he's a absolute sexist arse, and anyone not living under a rock knows it too.
Please don't do the usual and throw in trump to dilute the debate. I know he's a [sic] absolute sexist arse…
So is Biden. And then there was Clinton. And this creep…
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/justin-trudeaus-blackface-is-far-from-the-worst-of-his-offenses-video/
I am watching The Nation. I am so fixated on Paul Goldsmith's goggles that I can not concentrate on what he is saying.
Has he got eye virus?
I actually did not consider my comment being linked to a virus.
I tried to get glasses recently and the only pair which suited that I really liked were in the children's section and had a superman on them so were not an option.
I am finding the styles of frames to be so variable from like thick window frames to looking like goggles.
The easiest solution is to keep the frames and update the lens.
Congratulations to Keir Starmer for taking out the labour leadership contest. Not my choice, who came in third, but thankfully the continuity candidate Wrong Daily fell well short, and with her, the momentum led ultra faction.
Not only did Starmer have the overwhelming backing of all three voting groups, he also took effective control of the NEC (executive council) after his supporters won in a series of separate elections.
Starmer describes himself as a socialist but not a Corbynite, and will keep key policies from the Corbyn era, such as nationalising rail, mail and water and repealing anti-union laws, but the hope is he won't be anywhere near as unpopular and unelectable as the biggest labour loser in living memory.
With 5 years until the next election, and though much needs to be done to shore up and rebuild the red wall, my advice to the new leader is the same I gave Cunliffe when he rose to the top – Don't invite the enemy into the camp, purge. He should also seek to redefine the bond between the party and the unions so the likes of McCluskey are sidelined as much as possible. If he doesn't like it, tough, he can always advise those who pay his large salary to vote tory, though I suspect he'd have a moan and succumb, realising what side his bread is richly buttered on.
Better luck next time Lisa.
… the hope is he won’t be anywhere near as unpopular and unelectable
That will depend on whether or not there’s a concerted defamation campaign against him as there was against Corbyn. Starmer was one of the foulest defamers, along with the likes of such intellectual luminaries as J.K. Rowling. Tom Watson, and Rachael Riley.
The Labour Party in Britain is dead.
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This party is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! He’s f*ckin’ snuffed it!…..THIS IS AN EX-PARTY!!
lol
Got it in one brilliant take, Al1en!
Keep up the good work, my man.
I know! You really wanted to be that
stenographerlumberjack. 😆I'll stick to being a "third-rate stenographer", as the boys at Kiwiblog* used to cruelly call me.
.
.
.
.
.
.
* I'm excluded from that site now.
I guess you can still wear high heels, suspendies and a bra.
They've insinuated that I'm into that kind of thing too. Bastards.
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2019/01/that-is-strike-one-breen-cops-formal.html
Did they quote Python?
Going on Kiwiblog is to step into Monty Python.
Farmers, better lock up your sheep drench. The zombie hordes of the clueless reading about the latest miracle cure are no doubt on their way.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120825594/coronavirus-australian-scientists-discover-head-lice-drug-kills-covid19-in-lab
A sheep farming nieghbour of mine has yearly given himself a shot of drench at that time of year. He reckons that if it can't kill a lamb it will have its work cut out on him. It will get him one day, but it had better get a move on, he's 82 and still working.
What the actual fuck??? Just checked my replies tab and the replies to the mozzie's droning whines showed up, not replies to me. I'm struggling to not take it as a personal insult.
Phew. Now it's pat's. That's not so bad.
Now it's Macro's. I can live with that.
😆
the mozzie's droning whines…
Assuming that "the mozzie" is this writer, i.e., moi, could you possibly explain how any of my posts constitute a "droning whine"?
Thanks in advance,
Morrissey.
https://www.ecomist.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mosquito-biting-hand-feature.jpg
Recommended reading for weka
The lockdown gives you and nearly everyone else a chance to actually do some reading.
https://www.versobooks.com/books/3215-antisemitism-and-the-labour-party
The Economist on antibody testing.
http://archive.li/JXqnX
Good article. It does point towards a need to start looking for fly-by-night kits.
Dollars to be made so of course tRump and gHouliani are touting this shit.
A conservative business group founded by a prolific Republican political donor is pressuring the White House to greenlight an unproven COVID-19 treatment, saying in an online petition that the country has plants in the U.S. ready to produce a drug but can’t because of “red tape, regulation, and a dysfunctional healthcare supply chain.”
In recent days, Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus’ Job Creators Network has placed Facebook ads and texted supporters to sign a petition urging President Donald Trump to “CUT RED TAPE” and make an anti-malarial drug called hydroxychloroquine available for treating those sickened with the virus, one such message obtained by ProPublica reads.
https://www.propublica.org/article/republican-billionaire-group-pushes-unproven-covid-19-treatment-trump-promoted
All the nit picking, repetitive, sanctimonious Pete George comments seem to indicate he desperate to have a soapbox. Has his own blog closed down?
Most people have agreed David Clark made a mistake going for his bike ride. It was not at all appropriate at this time. He has apologised, and there now are more important issues to deal with. Yes, the media conferences are no doubt left to the PM and Grant Robertson as the best people to handle the media pack of wolves. Both are very ably doing this. Any crisis of this magnitude has to be tightly managed.
There are 2 American utube spokespeople attracting viewers in the millions for their daily press briefings at the moment. Trump and Cuomo.
Cuomo has Trump's measure, he is a better showman.
Trump had me chortling at his relentless superlatives, Cuomo had me in tears.
Cuomo doesn't attack Trump, Donald has nowhere to go but praise Cuomo's popular forthrightness. The guy's little brother is a CNN anchor and has just come down with the virus.
Is it too late for Cuomo to line up against Donald for the Hot Seat? Americans of all stripes are learning to love that guy.
My 79 year old Dad has just been taken to Waikato Hospital by Ambulance. He's normally very healthy, but started having breathing difficulties early Sunday morning. He had to go on his own because of the current rules. This is really scary stuff. I don't know what's happening.
There are lots of people still getting breathing difficulties that have nothing to do with 19.
It could be 19 but wait for something decent to worry about before you worry about it too much fireblade.
Put a call into Waikato Hospital and ask how you can be advised like you were phoning them every 5 minutes but without phoning them every 5 minutes. eg: Be advised of what's going on immediately.
Yep, thanks. Will phone Waikato Hospital.
Dad is home again now. The Hospital did an ECG, chest x-ray, Influenza test, Covid-19 test and blood tests. They gave him some medication and he can breath more easily now.
He water blasted the concrete area behind his house on Saturday afternoon and the Hospital thinks this irritated his lungs. Hopefully the tests will be normal/negative. St John Ambulance and the Waikato Hospital were both fantastic.
Excellent news!!
glad to hear
People are dying overseas because hospitals aren't able to provide artificial lungs until an aged person generates enough of an immune system to counter-act the mongrel.
Because Jacinda jumped early, we have all the ventilators we need for as long as the patients need them. Worst case scenario, you're still stuck with your grumpy old man.
The French are at it again.
Experimentation? There is no doubt, Rugby, League, NFL, NBL, most sports, chances are you're gonna be better off with a brown person. Music?
Did you catch Tiki locked down with his family?
Arundhati Roy writes about how Covid19 threatens India.
She concludes;
Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca
Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
The historical normality of India,is pestilence and famine.The former is here and the later will follow almost surely.
India – the world’s second-most populous country, where a majority of the population is involved in agriculture – is among the most vulnerable nations to the disruptions.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a 21-day lockdown with just a few hours notice on March 25, leaving many of its 120 million migrant laborers struggling to get home and with no money for rent, food or transport.
The country’s northern grain bowl relies on labor from eastern parts of the country, but workers have left the farms because of the lockdown. [L4N2BO25E]
“Who is going to fill the grain bags and bring the produce to market, and transport it to mills?” asked Jadish Lal, a merchant in Punjab’s Khanna grain market, the country’s largest.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-food-supplies-insi/coronavirus-upends-global-food-supply-chains-in-latest-economic-shock-idUSKBN21L2V7
Wow, Cuoro is brilliant, he is giving Donald an awful time while leaving no target.
In his live conference he talks about having no choice but go cap in hand to China and beg for ventilators and masks.
He just needs to drop the tiniest of 'I wish we could sort this out in our homeland' hints and it hits like a sledge hammer.
Cuoro is a master story teller. A good story teller doesn't tell, they show, they give us room to create our own narrative. I think Donald has met his match.
The PM’s comments this evening seemed out of her recent character. Her suggestion that we should be grateful we have only 1000 cases instead of the 4000 predicted by some model has drawn cheers from the cheap seats
On reflection tho, hearing her fishing for praise for her performance to date smacks of a commander briefing her troops for a battle she knows we are about to loose. “Remember me lads! I did my best; honest!” Trying to score political points at this early stage is somewhat worrying.
What does she know that we don’t, yet?
It’d pretty much be relief. This is an epidemic exponential growth curve where the infected rate is expected to double every 2-3 days. That means if it was 4000 now, then we could expect it to be somewhere over 16,000 at the end of next week and somewhere over 64,000 the week after.
Getting the rate down to 1000 after a week and half in lockdown means that the bet that the executive council made in requesting a state of emergency and a epidemic order, plus the steps being taken are actually working. Provided some idiots like those I have fun disparaging here don’t affect progress, we’re more likely to control the epidemic over coming months than we are to lose control.
You really don’t have to work up a dumb conspiracy theory. Simple relief is sufficient. Now maybe she’ll eat better and get some damn sleep with a reduce stress level.
I think she was praising us, all of us, the nation, for our collective performance under testing circumstances.
Great story Andrew, and I'm sure you are a great man and father, but you should be back with your family in the Phillipines as far as as I can see.
Sorry, but why the hell is the wage subsidy going to migrant workers who then send it off-shore?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12322066
With a grain but it sure looks like the Generals are getting antsy.
Jair Bolsonaro’s irresponsibility in the face of the SARS-CoV-2 virus crisis may have irritated the Armed Forces into choosing Chief Minister of the Civil House, Walter Braga Netto, as the new operational president of Brazil, it was reported today.
Brasil 247 portal quoted Argentine investigative journalist Horacio Verbitsky, saying that a high-ranking officer in the Brazilian Army told a peer from Argentina in a telephone conversation, that Bolsonaro is not heard by authorities when making decisions.
‘The Brazilian party reported they had made the decision to ignore President Bolsonaro in all important decisions,’ said the communicator on the program. ‘There will be consequences’, says the quote by Radio El Destape.
Verbitsky stated that Bolsonaro acts as ‘a monarch without effective power’ and that General Walter Braga Netto of the Civil House is now in charge of the country.
Military website defesanet.com.br, considered the most important news page in the areas of defense, strategy, intelligence and security in Latin America, also confirmed that Braga Neto will be in charge of directing and centralizing all government administration, at least while the crisis lasts due to the Covid-19.
https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=54219&SEO=brazilian-media-reports-armed-forces-may-have-named-new-president