Open mike 09/03/2020

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 9th, 2020 - 69 comments
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69 comments on “Open mike 09/03/2020 ”

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  1. Tony Veitch (not etc.) 1
    9 March 2020 at 7:45 am

    I have no doubt this has been said by other commentators on previous days, but I need to get it off my chest, so apologies for any repetition.

    I am getting royally pissed off by the blatant dishonesty of the National Party, in their unrelenting criticism of the Coalition government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

    We know from past experience (their slack handling of the cow disease – mico something or other) that their response to Covid-19 would have been almost identical to the Coalitions, only slower.

    Imagine the cries and whining from National if the Coalition had effectively sealed off our borders (as perhaps they should have done) to all countries as soon as it was apparent the virus was spreading in an uncontrollable way.

    Imagine the effect on all business in this country and how the Coalition would have got slammed for their actions.

    My fear, and I believe the Natz are doing this quite deliberately, is that this negativity will have some impact on the electorate. Their policy, to paraphrase Orwell’s Animal Farm is: before 2017, all good, after 2017 all bad. [Two legs bad, four legs good].

    This continued negativity, like water on a stone, will begin to leave an impression!

    [Fixed white spaces; it looked like a snowy Winter land]

    • Sacha 1.1
      9 March 2020 at 8:16 am

      Fair enough. You seem to have typed two spaces between each paragraph and few at the end for good measure. If you are pasting from somewhere else those can come along for the ride.

    • Sacha 1.2
      9 March 2020 at 8:35 am

      We are basically in the same situation now as a wartime government. Today the PM offered explictly in an interview with John Campbell on TVNZ's Breakfast show for the Nats to work cooperatively on NZ's pandemic response.

      Barking 'tax cuts' at passing cars starts to look really unfit for power..

    • ScottGN 1.3
      9 March 2020 at 8:48 am

      I don’t really think it’s working out quite the way National (and their proxies in the media) would like though.
      Aotearoa is still in Phase 1 of the epidemic curve (thanks Siouxsie Wiles for the explainer) and so far there’s no real sign of Phase 2 – a more widespread outbreak – that the Nats need to have happen if their narrative is going get traction.
      The fact that National (and their friends) are almost wishing for a pandemic as a way to attack the government in an election year is beyond belief really.

      • McFlock 1.3.1
        9 March 2020 at 12:47 pm

        It really looks like that is their plan – the worse we get it here, the more they can make political capital out of it regardless of whether there were any shortcomings in the NZ response.

        It would be cool if they could bring up specifics, but they have nothing.

      • KJT 1.3.2
        9 March 2020 at 4:23 pm

        A bonfire of the regulations restricting workers right to strike, the ones allowing police to taser the mentally ill, and the ones allowing security services to spy on anyone National doesn't like, would be great, but I don't think those are the ones National has in mind.

        More leaky homes and Pike Rivers, anyone?

    • Sacha 2.1
      9 March 2020 at 8:19 am

      Time to prepare the counter-arguments about the value of workplace protections in making sure workers come home to their families at the end of each day.

      Protection is the word to emphasise, not regulation. The Nats have a history of removing protections and it leads to things like Pike River.

    • Gosman 2.2
      9 March 2020 at 8:53 am

      If work place regulations are so effective why have work place deaths increased?

      [I don’t think anybody stated those words. You’re intelligent and could make at least an attempt to answer your own disingenuous question. Thus, it looks very much like you’re trolling us again, which is your MO here. You spray & walk away and usually add very little to the debate. Patience is wearing thin in election year and I have no patience for you wasting our time. Take a week off – Incognito]

    • weston 2.3
      9 March 2020 at 9:48 am

      Nationals promise to dump two regs for every new one brought in is bound to be a real vote catcher this election i reckon in fact were it not for a fairly deep seated distrust and general loathing for suit wearing slimeballs i'd be tempted to vote for them myself !

      • Sacha 2.3.1
        9 March 2020 at 10:06 am

        People just love having less protection. Why waste all that public money painting lines down the middle of the road? Think of the tax cuts we could have instead.

      • Peter 2.3.2
        9 March 2020 at 10:33 am

        No doubt the full page ads they put in the papers listing all those they're getting rid of will identify all the ones brought in under their governments.

        They'll probably also apologise for telling us they were right at the time they convinced us those regs were necessary when they came in came in but weren't really necessary.

    • bwaghorn 2.4
      9 March 2020 at 12:17 pm

      Can some reporter please ask bridges ,how many roofers have to break their back before scaffolding single story dwellings is economically worth it.

      • mac1 2.4.1
        9 March 2020 at 1:01 pm

        I worked on a farm as a handyman gardener for a while. I remember the leading maintenance man, a painter by trade, finishing painting a one storey building roof and then stepping back to admire the job. He hit the concrete below before he realised he'd stepped off the roof, and was very fortunately uninjured. That farm was a very unsafe place, exacerbated by a culture of drinking and very 'laddish' behaviour.

        When I think about some of what I observed- animal cruelty, guesswork used in estimating chemical usage, pranks like setting off detonators inside a wool-shed, turning up to drive tractors at 7.30 after drinking till 3, playing chicken with trucks, not properly obeying hand signals when using front end loaders to stack wool bales on the bed of a truck and pushing both man and bales off the side, alcoholic shepherds with stashes of booze around the farm, and finding a stick of weeping explosive in the toolbox mounted just behind the 35X tractor seat…………

        Now what was that about education and the need for safety regulations again?

  3. Sacha 3
    9 March 2020 at 8:31 am

    Dr Siouxsie Wiles writes clearly about the shape of NZ's public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including handy animated illustration by Toby Morris of 'flattening the epidemic curve': https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/09-03-2020/the-three-phases-of-covid-19-and-how-we-can-make-it-manageable/

    • RedLogix 3.1
      9 March 2020 at 9:52 am

      That's a good read. Here is a new 3Blue1Brown video on the underlying math. Quite easy to follow:



      • AB 3.1.1
        9 March 2020 at 1:28 pm

        Very interesting – thanks.. However I was disappointed to see that the model takes no account of how tax cuts will flatten the curve. Especially if targeted at the top marginal rate. A disqualifying oversight surely? /endpisstake

    • Poission 3.2
      9 March 2020 at 11:37 am

      Flattening the curve,is only achievable by containment ,here we are limited by technological constraints and have only one mechanism.

      https://twitter.com/trishankkarthik/status/1236468023827013637

      • McFlock 3.2.1
        9 March 2020 at 1:04 pm

        Well, no, that's not strictly true.

        We're already running trials on treatment efficacy with drugs our ancestors didn't dream of.

        Multiple teams are developing vaccines.

        There were multiple waves of the black death, each only slowed by isolation, each wave devastating. We're looking at a bad initial wave of a new disease, but after a year or two it probably won't be much of an issue.

        • Poission 3.2.1.1
          9 March 2020 at 1:17 pm

          Multiple teams are developing vaccines.

          For which strain

          https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1236117963712770050

            • Poission 3.2.1.1.1.1
              9 March 2020 at 1:40 pm

              Will it be as successful as other coronavirus vaccines such as the common cold?

              • McFlock …
                9 March 2020 at 1:51 pm

                Has anyone even bothered developing a vaccine for the entire selection of viruses that only cause 15% of the common cold?

                I have no idea.

                But I do know that we have a variety of treatments for cold symptoms that our ancestors never had – the best drugs being so awesome we're not even allowed to buy them here for fear we make something even more powerful.

                btw, I thought the link was pretty funny. It’s important to keep your sense of humour in times like these.

        • RedLogix 3.2.1.2
          9 March 2020 at 1:55 pm

          We're already running trials on treatment efficacy with drugs our ancestors didn't dream of.

          That's a reasonable possibility, but our track record with anti-virals is patchy at best.

          Multiple teams are developing vaccines.

          The good news here is that despite the emergence of multiple variants, most teams will be targeting highly conserved or stable parts of the RNA sequence. Hopefully one vaccine will rule them all. The bad news is that while development of candidate vaccines may well be remarkably fast, testing them to ensure they work and are safe for mass rollout across the whole human population is probably 18 months away.

          We're looking at a bad initial wave of a new disease, but after a year or two it probably won't be much of an issue.

          Initial reports suggest COVID 19 is somewhat more genetically stable than the common cold virus. This hopefully means that over time as more and more people develop natural antibodies from having got the illness, an increasing total herd immunity will dramatically slow down the growth rate.

          If it doesn't then we could see successive waves circle the globe for years. Also we don't yet fully understand how much damage a serious case of the illness causes, and whether it leaves an individual vulnerable to a subsequent infection.

          Still lots to learn about this 'devil virus' as the CCP described it. Personally I'm taking it very seriously and have already made significant changes in our plans taking into account the medical and systemic risks it poses. Everything from already avoiding crowds, touching anything in public, always wearing glasses, washing hands everytime we return home, etc … right through to thinking through the consequences of being stuck in Australia if trans-Tasman travel is shut down,

          • McFlock 3.2.1.2.1
            9 March 2020 at 2:17 pm

            I'm basically thinking only a few months ahead – longer term repercussions are too up in the air. But there might be some upcoming travel and events that need to be cancelled, impacts on business, that sort of thing in that timeframe.

            I was already a bit germ-phobic about door handles etc, my fear of covid-19 was preceded by my fear of gastroenteritis lol

            The successive waves of similar severity is basically the worst possible scenario, and frankly unlikely. More likely than NZ having zero fatalities, but we have more than prayer and isolation to rely on.

            Bear in mind that even though we don't have actual disease cures, we do have a lot of symptom treatments.

          • Bruce 3.2.1.2.2
            9 March 2020 at 4:29 pm

            'but our track record with anti-virals is patchy at best.' You haven't seen the work of the esteemed Ed Gane.

            https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/news-events-and-notices/news/news-2017/02/new-zealander-of-the-year-honours-for-academic-and-graduate.html

            “Thanks to Professor Gane and his international colleagues’ innovative work and perseverance, almost everyone with Hepatitis C can now be cured with a short course of tablets. The World Health Organisation recently announced that more than one million people have already been cured with these new drugs and that global eradication of Hepatitis C should now be achievable within the next 30 years.”

  4. esoteric pineapples 4
    9 March 2020 at 8:37 am

    An excellent interview that gives an Iranian professor's perspective on Syria



    • Brigid 4.1
      9 March 2020 at 12:45 pm

      Thanks.

      That's an excellent interview. In an hour Mohammad Marandi has described the Syrian War as no MSM outlet ever could or would ever dare.

  5. observer 5
    9 March 2020 at 10:35 am

    Simon Bridges continues to borrow (or rather, steal) from his blue buddies overseas. Nothing he says is original, not even the language he uses.

    If you want a laugh, just Google "bonfire of red tape [regulations]".

    National: copy and paste.

    • tc 5.1
      9 March 2020 at 12:21 pm

      With a compliant MSM willing to act as your echo chamber further scaring the punters and sowing dissent instead of providing balance why change

    • Chris 5.2
      9 March 2020 at 12:54 pm

      I'd like to say the hypocrisy is astounding but it's not because that's what we expect from Bridges and the current bunch of nats. National introduced the current Social Security Act 2018 (which the current government embraced and passed at the end of last year) which is riddled with reliance upon regulations which weren't there before, putting the lie to the rhetoric that the new legislation was both policy neutral and would simplify things. Of course what Bridges says doesn't matter because beneficiaries don't count.

  6. Adrian 6
    9 March 2020 at 12:43 pm

    I spoke to a relative this morning who lives in Italy and posited the perfect place for a flu -like outbreak is cold wet inland China and Italy's Po valley. cold, damp, foggy etc. He added another one and in his opinion the principal reason for the Italian outbreak is that Chinese companies have established very large factories in Italy assembling Chinese goods so that they can be marketed as EU and Italian made and they are staffed exclusively by Chinese workers most of whom went home for Chinese New Year and then left there early when the disease became known and were let back into Italy because the Italians are particularily slack when it comes to observing regulations etc.

    An interesting observation on the map of the outbreaks is that there is very little spread in the southern hemisphere which is currently at the end of summer . I'll take a wild quess and bet that like SARS which it apparently shares about 97% similarity that Covid-9 will dry up and fade dramaticly when some heat and drying returns up north.

    heres hoping.

    • Adrian 6.1
      9 March 2020 at 12:52 pm

      There are also very large numbers of Chinese workers in Iran as Iran is seen as the hub for the Belt and Road expansion. China has poured billions into Iranian construction and factories in the last few years. Ironic considering the CCPs treatment of it's own muslim communities.

      • RedLogix 6.1.1
        9 March 2020 at 2:10 pm

        Ironic considering the CCPs treatment of it's own muslim communities.

        It's a bit of a paradox isn't it. The deeper explanation is that the Uighurs are culturally Turkic in origin and much of the rest of the Muslim world just doesn't give a shit.

  7. Reality 7
    9 March 2020 at 12:51 pm

    Soimon wants renters to live in cold damp houses because landlords shouldn’t have to provide heaters. He’s got a heart of gold (oops, meant a heart of ice). Such a lovely man.

    • RedLogix 7.1
      9 March 2020 at 2:04 pm

      I don't mind providing good insulation and dampness management in our units; it keeps tenants happy and makes good business sense. And these are are typically fixed assets that are hard to mess with. But the first set of heat pumps I installed over 10 years ago all got either stolen or broken by tenants. Much less encouraging.

      I'd love to see NZ have a housing stock that is modern, warm and dry … but we just don't. Many rentals are houses that are in the last 20% of their economic life, houses that very few people want to live in as their own home. And houses this old were built in an era where they were often very badly oriented to the sun, and were completely devoid of any details we would take for granted in a modern building. For this reason they're actually quite expensive to effectively get them up to a modern standard. Sure you can stuff in insulation to your heart's content … but they'll never really perform.

      If building costs in NZ were more aligned with those in Australia, I'd be a lot keener to simply knock over these end of life units and build new.

      • Adrian 7.1.1
        9 March 2020 at 3:02 pm

        Building costs!!!!!! I just priced a 5 metre length of 100mm x 12mm skirting board made out of recyled cardboard, MDF to you and it was $37 fucking dollars a metre or $185 a length, I only need 1.5 metres but Placemakers dont cut to length.

        I'm going to use flattened gold bars in future, they are cheaper and have better residual value. Fucking thieving arseholes.

  8. Muttonbird 8
    9 March 2020 at 2:03 pm

    Farrar watch:

    In a post based on a rant by far right-wing ex-convict Damien Grant, and in a feat of staggering hypocrisy, DFP fights what he calls "cancel culture" with – wait for it – a boycott campaign.

  9. SPC 9
    9 March 2020 at 2:55 pm

    The drum is beating for the RB Governor to reduce the OCR down from 1 to .5% – if only to match cuts made by others so the dollar does not rise in value while exporters (loss of revenue) and importers (lack of new supply) are struggling. The problem is this will further fuel the property market.

    Maybe it is time to consider Bollards idea of a mortgage surcharge – there would still be a OCR fall but the property market would be constrained by a mortgage surcharge (start at 0.25%, maybe rising to 0.5%).

    The mortgage surcharge would also bring in revenue for wage subsidies and interest free loans to businesses so they can meet loan repayments during the downturn.

    • Incognito 9.1
      9 March 2020 at 3:04 pm

      That might only happen if the banks pass on any cut in full, which is doubtful. While people are stocking up on toilet paper their minds might not be on investing in the property market either.

      • McFlock 9.1.1
        9 March 2020 at 4:43 pm

        Seems to me that the purpose of the rate decrease is to stimulate the economy via corporate betting.

        Thing is, the issue isn't corporate confidence in their psychological betting game, it's an actual lowering of personal consumption due to isolation and lowered incomes.

        So a better way to inject money into that area would be for the govt to borrow from the RB at the lower rate (not offered to banks) and give boosts to recipients of government transfers. They're the ones who will keep the retail sector alive.

    • Nic the NZer 9.2
      9 March 2020 at 5:13 pm

      Interest rates largely don't fuel the property market. Yes, I am aware its a widely held belief but look at the actual evidence like rate of property price increase vs prevailing interest rates and you would conclude its not strongly correlated.

  10. Andre 10
    9 March 2020 at 5:27 pm

    Hands up if you had "I'm Nero" on your Drumpf Batshittery Bingo card.

    No? Too much? Me neither.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-nero-meme_n_5e658685c5b68d61645632c2

  11. Eco Maori 11
    10 March 2020 at 6:54 pm

    Kia Te Ao Maori News.

    Rangitane Iwi lost heaps of whenua hope the crown does the correct thing.

    I think there should be more architectural mahi done on old Maori sites before they lost forever.

    That's the way American indigenous Wahine ambassador championing their cultures plight from their system.

    Kia Kaha to all the Wahine around the world and in Mexico for there protest on Sunday.

    Ka kite Ano

  12. Eco Maori 12
    11 March 2020 at 8:29 am

    Kia Ora The Am Show.

    if people get more putea they can spend more in business so in my view the mimimum wage increase is a win win???

    If the walk is only 10 minutes I can't see what's wrong with that exercise and lowering ones negative impact on the future by walking to mahi.

    Music to my ears all these song being translated into Te reo Maori.

    Good to see you again Rawdon.

    Ka kite Ano.

  13. Eco Maori 13
    11 March 2020 at 6:30 pm

    Kia Ora Newshub.

    There is another subject Eco Maori has had a win on but Te kaumara never tells how sweet it is.

    Ka kite Ano

  14. Eco Maori 14
    11 March 2020 at 6:54 pm

    Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.

    I say our government is doing great mahi with the virus.

    Take me to the Awa is going to be sung in Te reo Māori Ka pai.

    Good to see the Marae including their church in their new Carving.

    Mana Wahine that's the way Wahine Shearing Sheep.

    Awsome that university celebrateing the difference cultures they have their in Hawaii

    Ka kite Ano

  15. Eco Maori 15
    12 March 2020 at 8:42 am

    Kia Ora Newshub.

    That's is cool the 2 million dollars of government tau toko for farmers affected by the droughts in Aotearoa.

    There you go he is picking on people who can't defend themselves tipical right neck move.

    The way I see it is a person can only handle so much toxic substances so the more that is consumed the faster the negative effects will start ie diabetes.

    If you look around the world and see how badly Wahine are treated the #Metoo movement is overdue kia kaha.

    Yes absolutely power corupts.?????.

    Ka kite Ano

  18. Eco Maori 18
    12 March 2020 at 6:29 pm

    Kia Ora Newshub.

    I put my Kiwisaver into low risk funds a little while ago.

    Our government helping our farmers who are the back bone of Aotearoa is great during this drought.

    Ka kite Ano

  19. Eco Maori 19
    12 March 2020 at 6:47 pm

    Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.

    Kia Kaha Pahui hope fully tangata will give heaps to your givealittle page.

    Festpack in Hawaii looked like the event would have been awesome mate wa.

    Some tangata pay rates and get little returns from the charges

    That's is awesome Ahurri Treaty Settlement bill being passed by the government.

    Ka kite Ano

  20. Eco Maori 20
    13 March 2020 at 8:41 am

    Kia Ora The Am Show.

    Big NO things have not changed still people using bulling and intimidating tactics on .

    Online extremism how does one know who these people are and who they work for.????.

    Prejudice is still a big part of Aotearoa SYSTEM.

    Cash is King.

    I userly have a good vegetable garden can you guess why I don't any more.

    Ka kite Ano