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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, June 11th, 2022 - 87 comments
Categories: open mike -
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Good talk ? I really hope there is ACTION ! For far too long Our Earths Oceans, incl the Pacific, have been raped.
Best wishes for the Ocean Advocates
Once the government breaks the supermarket duopoly & New Zealand Food & Grocery Council is successful in gaining better conditions for its members. How will we spend the $1/week that we are told is being gouged by the industry. FFS $1/week is going to make any difference to everyone’s financial position. It’s about time even blind govt supporters started to expect REAL action and not some pathetic side issue in distraction.
I'd be keen to see the source and/or the reasoning behind the $1 per week claim.
I expect it is a rough (very) calculation based on the Consumer statement that supermarkets are making excess profits of 1 million per day….there are approx 1.85 million households in NZ.
https://campaigns.consumer.org.nz/supermarkets
I am very skeptical of the numbers I have seen on this. Here in Brisbane we do 98% of our grocery shopping at ALDIs. Our average weekly spend to fill a trolley for two of us is $120pw. This is after a recent round of price rises.
How does that compare to your experience in NZ?
Im not sure how they calculated the 'excess' profit, but 120 a week for 2 is slightly less than we spend…maybe by around the exchange rate.
It is probable however food inflation has some way to go given that the inputs to production have yet to work their way through….a lot of the stuff we are eating now will have been contracted some time ago and those contracts will be being reviewed as the new growing season approaches.
Interest nz has a comparative calculator with woolworths and countdown ,we come out slightly cheaper on same comparative baskets.
https://www.interest.co.nz/charts/prices/grocery-prices
i buy in bulk usually from the market gardeners for fruit and vege where most in season products are 99c kilo.eg spuds,onions,pumpkin apples.
Yes they do…and apparently the basket of goods works out cheaper here…that is of course a comparison involving Countdown, the result may be even more favourable if compared to Pak n Save, or worse if compared to New World…..and of course we dont have Aldi.
Reds 120 AUD a week is pretty much our 140 NZD that we spend
Aldi is more home brands (where you dont pay for the brands name)
Cold spell for Brisbane must limit seasonal goods, ( its warmer on the Chathams right now 16c vs Brisbane 13c)
Yes …I recall a few years ago Australia had very expensive bananas ($30 kg?) as to protect banana growers in Queensland they dont import and there was crop damage….an issue that will impact more and more markets worldwide as weather patterns become more erratic.
The peak of that coincided with a time when we had lots of Aussies in Queenstown and the local supermarkets did a loss leader on bananas, like a couple of dollars kg. Resulted in some seriously spun out Aussies
It’s well outside my area of expertise, but maybe not yours.
https://comcom.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/278403/Market-Study-into-the-retail-grocery-sector-Final-report-8-March-2022.pdf
Section 3.54: If the average ROACE was 5.5% (our central estimate of WACC), the major grocery retailers’ profits would reduce by approximately $430m per year.101
Footnote 101: If the major grocery retailers’ average ROACE was 6.6% (our higher WACC estimate), their profits would reduce by approximately $365m per year.
Lots of technical stuff on methodology and various approaches to make realistic comparisons, some of which were challenged, of course. However, the take-home message is quite clear. NB this is excess profit, i.e. above and beyond what might be considered ‘reasonable’.
600 odd pages is why I dont know how they arrived at their million a day…..I dont dispute it, indeed it is probably erring on the side of caution and in any case is subjective….like most our concern is the ability to meet the cost and we are fortunate we no longer have to feed a horde of teenagers…my sympathies for those who do is great and solutions few.
‘kay, I’d hoped you could help – it will take me way too long to get my little head around it. From the little I can gather they tried their best to come up with the best-possible and most realistic estimates of excessive profit by making comparisons within NZ and with overseas.
Of course, everything is subjective, but that’s a weird benchmark and yardstick to use in debates like this!?
Life has become a lot more expensive for me too recently and I don’t expect it to level off any time soon. The supermarket profiteering is merely a drop in the ocean but it has been going on many years and unless something is done about it will continue to add to our living costs every day of the week.
Im guessing they took an industry wide margin (possibly international) and applied it to turnover and determined they were operating at a higher margin here….as always there are potential market peculiarities that may be claimed.
Yes the cost of living is becoming increasingly problematic, but as the saying goes the cure for high prices is high prices….eventually something breaks….thats no help of course while we live through it….for some us, again.
Funny that nobody at the moment seems to be talking much anymore about the housing crisis or the skyrocketing rents.
A lot of the supermarket market share has increased at restricting competition in building complexes such as malls across a broad range of goods.
And predatory aquisition of adjacent property
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/122542884/former-tip-top-building-in-wellington-to-be-demolished-after-sitting-derelict-for-more-than-a-decade
"Funny that nobody at the moment seems to be talking much anymore about the housing crisis or the skyrocketing rent"
They are…and it has a much greater impact than even food or energy ….spend some time over at Interest.co and you will find that the economics of housing is the predominant topic of conversation….and for good reason, but it does get repetitive, you can only observe the obvious so many times before you begin to bore even yourself.
Yes, you’re quite right. I should visit interest & co more often but time …
Yet the way it has been conveyed in the media and the govt has framed it is that this questionable excess profit will not flow down to the consumer, the suppliers are also after a portion of this. As my original comment the benefits to the consumer are at best nominal. Inflation has been mentioned to add $150/ week to family budgets. And the govt brings out this distraction. Get REAL🤫
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/463870/households-facing-150-a-week-extra-in-costs-as-inflation-and-interest-rates-rise-asb-bank
Inflation goes up & down. The profiteering has been going on for years and is sucking about $400M out of our pockets each year, give or take. I’d like to this to change and improve and it is something that we/Government can influence and control, global inflation pressures we cannot. This is as REAL as it gets!
There are two of us. One vegetarian. I only eat chicken as the cheapest meat. We go to the open air market for veges (farmers market in NZ is an oxymoron as it’s essentially just artisanal items for the audi set). Our weekly shop is no less than $185. We usually have two of our frozen meals; soups, etc, to pad out the week. Its a false economy as have to buy more the following week to replace the frozen stuff used. It’s ridiculous.
Well we would have GST added to that. 15%, now allowing say 10% =$132 Plus a delivery fee of $20 fortnightly so $284 fortnightly + add wine and cat food to arrive at just over $320. (plus exchange) We do not garden anymore though we cook from scratch, freeze and make bulk meals and freeze bases.
When we stayed in Australia Aldi would save at least a third of our shop costs, and Warehouse Chemist was good for other health needs.
Apparently, according to our son, electricity insurance/Body corps have risen, and petrol has risen sharply.
Mine is $180-$200 p/week.
That includes feeding a growing teen, petfood and cleaning, etc. products as well as food.
Supplemented by $40-$50 at the local greengrocer (I don't like supermarket fruit/veggies – local is better price and better quality); and $20-30 at the bakery (we do like our fresh bread)
The supermarket shop does include some luxuries – could probably cut around $30-40 – or even more if we had to.
Buy mostly at Pak n Save – and reckon I save around $30 each trip, over New World/Countdown. As I buy house brands of most products, and stock up on specials when they have good deals — the sort of budgeting you can afford to do, if you have a reasonable income….
My average supermarket shop has increased by $20-$30 since January this year. And, I simply don't buy some products (not paying $4 for a tiny stalk of broccoli – I'll buy it frozen, instead; wait for cheese on special, rather than paying $20/kg, etc.). There are some really strangely uneven price increases, too: bizarrely, the price of organic chicken was the same as Tegel in my last shop.
Ours is about $300 for 2 including the $50 box of organic local vegetables, the organic retailers for most things, and a bit of New World for cleaning stuff and food and medication for the two 17 year old cats.
And that's with me working south on a big windfarm 1 week out of 2.
Damned if I know where it goes.
Supposedly $400m excess profits, supplies are we are told screwed so wat. Conservatively 1/3 of this going back leaves $270m and there are 5.5m pop in NZ equates to$50/person but that is sorting what the govt is using. Don’t worry it will go the same as the $0.30/l that fuel Coys are making over and above. I wonder when we can expect to see these cost savings?? Eh Prime Minister
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/minister-expects-to-see-fuel-prices-drop-18c-32c-a-litre-because-of-new-petrol-company-rules/7BVIJ65L54YLD4J66AGTDRCPEQ/
And for the savings in Australia they don’t have GST on all their grocery items like we do.
Thanks:, Herodotus. So its profits you are saying are $1 per head per week.
My father was a grocer. On some items he had a 6% mark-up, like butter (buy for 1/10 1/2, sell for 2/-). Other goods went for much higher mark-up. That mark-up went towards the profit, and after costs for rent, maintenance, staff wages, lighting, heating, refrigeration, phone, cleaning, tax, spoilage, and theft were deducted, there was the profit.
Let's say 5% of the cost of a sale is pure profit after all deductions, (I have no idea of the actua real figure), then the customer pays x20 the profit and the $1 per week per head becomes, TO THE CUSTOMER, $20 per head per week.
These are all rough figures, but the essence of your claim that it's only a $1 per head per week refers only to the absolute profit and the actual figure is several times that, depending on the ratio of profit to retail price.
Looking through the responses above engendered by your post at #2, the comment by Incognito at 2.1.1.1.1.2 above referring to ROACE might sum up what I've been trying to argue.
Incognito refers to a return on average capital expenditure is 5.5%, very close to my 5% pluck out of the air!
So, say the extra $1 profit for the supermarket comes from a $19 sale, meaning the consumer is paying $19 on a purchase to achieve that ROACE.
Muriel Newman has this to say…
[deleted]
[please stop using this site to drop random links with no commentary. You’ve done this enough times now for us to consider it spamming. We have an expectation that people will contribute to debate by using their own words (and those can be backed up with quotes and links). Here’s the test to see if you are spamming. You’re in premod. Next time I see you drop a link like this I will ban you. If you haven’t read this mod note it will tell me that you’re not here to engage. – weka]
mod note. This was your third strike.
You’re a fine prime example why we need a Three Strikes Law in NZ
Could you wipe all my posts and my name from this site please?
[Why should we? We keep a record, for future reference. People should be allowed to see what comes around and goes around here on TS. You should have thought about your actions before you started spamming the site here with your propaganda links – Incognito]
International support for Fair Pay Agreements here, as expected.
https://twitter.com/AotearoaSam/status/1535215066508775424
Thanks Sacha.
Ouch.
https://twitter.com/btlane/status/1535335524671823872
So this "doing nothing Government" has been "on song" after all. So we will have Workers Associations as well as Business Associations. Well done Labour. This was meant to attach to Sacha’s comment. We just have to get the legislation over the line now.
I believe the Nats will remove FPAs as soon as they get power again.
The term “soft power” has been bandied about recently. China trying to develop their relationships in the Pacific being local examples.
This article from The Guardian gives an explanation of how soft power, over a long period of time, can influence policy. Russian soft power influence in Africa being the example.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/08/the-congolese-student-fighting-with-pro-russia-separatists-in-ukraine?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Russia's indescriminate killing spree visualized.
https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1534470176292454400
Especially remarkable since they've been " running out of ammunition " for so long joe !!!
Cite?
You an i both know joe that this war is as much about propaganda as it is about the battles on the ground therefore the messages coming back from the conflict to us are in the main designed to obfuscate the true situations in order to promote one narrative or another and mostly in our neck of the woods that narrative is essentially pro ukrainian in nature so " the russians are losing " the russians are running out of missiles and ammunition " the russians are deserting " etc etc etc
Ive commented on these factors numerous times and ar'nt about to repeat myself further seems to me you"d have to have been living under a rock not to have heard the one about them running out of ammo .
For those wanting an up to date daily analysis Alexander Mercouris is hard to pass up .
You've got nothing so you made shit up. Henceforth, anything you pull out of your arse can be assumed to be a fucking lie.
Goodo
/
The Ukrainian Military are almost out of Artillery Rds for it's WarPac Era Artillery pieces
Some of the Western Supplied 155m Artillery pieces have almost shot out their barrels & need replacing.
Thence the need for Western Supplied MLRS atm, to take the pressure off its Artillery Gun Units.
[Please check and correct your user name in the next comment, thanks]
Mod note
Sorry, didn't realise I managed to mangled my user name.?
Mind you it got below 15deg overnight here in Darwin's Rural Area, so I had a few other things on my mind this morning 😂.
All good. Mods don’t mind too much, generally, but when they’re busy they want to avoid dying by a thousand minor ‘cuts’.
Get the fire going.
You may find Schindler's take enlightening. His politics are far from my own but he's an historian of note who knows his stuff.
For all their defects, which are legion, the Russian military understands the crushing power of gunnery. For centuries, artillery and lots of it, applied on a massive scale to pound the enemy into submission, has been their signature move. Stalin called such gunnery his “God of War,” yet Russian artillery acumen long predates the Bolsheviks.
https://topsecretumbra.substack.com/p/military-history-repeats-in-ukraine
https://twitter.com/20committee
Actually it was called the Red God.
Sorry to nit pick, also the Red God caused the German Army Centre to spectacularly collapse in 44 & cut off Army Group Nth.
Which also meant that Germans had to abandon Ukraine in the Sth which had a flow on effect with Germany's last remaining Axis Allies in Eastern Europe.
I can see you struggle with concepts like dates and the passage of time
French TV crew at one of the Mariupol region's cemeteries.
Thread.
We visited one of the cemeteries in #Marioupol last week. We saw there thousands of recent graves, surmounted by a number. On this side of the cemetery the numbers went beyond 3000
https://twitter.com/alexdalsbaek/status/1534897804186894338
.
On most tombs there is only a number written in felt-tip pen and which is already being erased. Who are 768? 739? 442? 834? How did these inhabitants of Mariupol die? Will they be identified? Where are their relatives? Did they survive?
.
Sometimes we can read a name and a first name like that of Janna Dozorets, number 1423, born in 1957 and died in Mariupol on April 14, 2022.
https://threadreaderapp-com.translate.goog/thread/1534897804186894338.html?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Rumour/innuendo to get Mr can't see me pants going.
https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-bodyguards-collect-his-poop-every-time-travels-abroad-report-2022-6
If I was Putin I'd say that's good progress and lock it in.
Given Tsar Poot's latest rambles, I think Tsar Poot's has locked it in Eddie.
Jane Clare Jones on form 🧵 🧵 on why gender critical feminists have their own politics separate from the right, and calling GC women nazis or accusing them of allying with the right is a massive ignorance.
https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1535207092331728896
Only approved people can read that account. All others see is the rather critical response.
Sometimes she locks her account overnight. Because gender critical feminists get targeted and harassed for saying things like biological sex matters, and women have a right to their own politics.
Ok, but you've linked to something most people can't read.
I think she locked it after I was looking at it. Or maybe I didn't see she had locked it. It will probably be visible tomorrow.
Her account is unlocked now.
That thread is 🔥🔥🔥. Phew! Good summary. A snippet:
Which he should know, but why bother being educated about politics when one can run lazy slurs instead.
True, but @janeclarejones merciless dissections are a public service.
and a delight! and such a relief.
I think calling GC women Nazis or associating them with the right is another way of avoiding the debate and trying to shut us up. What the left don’t realize is that in misrepresenting us in this way, it fractures and alienates many women from left wing politics where we have experienced solidarity.
The failure of the left and politicians within Labour and Greens not to critique the new gender ideology and pause before accepting and embracing it, leaves me mistrustful of them.
the uncritical acceptance of something referred to as gender identity is utterly baffling to me.
the term was first used by NZder Dr John Money (psychologist). His famous case was with twin boys, one of whom had had his penis irreversibly damaged during a botched circumcism. His suggestion to the parents was to bring this unfortunate child up as a girl. He saw the twins and part of his “therapy” was to get them to enact sex acts together. Both brothers committed suicide as young adults.
Yes, 10 years ago nobody was saying that of course some women have penises. Now we have men jumping on the bandwagon to mansplain who and what we are.https://thecritic.co.uk/mansplaining-womanhood
very good article, captures the film perfectly
Insteresting perspective. I think Matt Walsh meets a different audiencc. I understand the film has gained lots of exposure.
I think the interview with the gender studies lecturer shows up how incoherant the arguements are.
We’re not fond of NZME at TS, and Bryan Gould does ask a reasonable question here.
https://bryangould.com/nzme-and-trump/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nzme-and-trump
I doubt that an answer will ever be given.
Alternatively Gould is not particularly incisive and doesn't have a useful following.
Still, Gould could always come here and join the rest of the old irrelevant wets.
One need not be particularly incisive to notice Trump did his best to overthrow a valid electoral result.
The Stuff editor that acted to conceal the fact should lose his job – news media are to get the truth out, not to cover up crap like the capital riot. The occupy freaks are part of the same trash – fifty years ago they'd've been done for treason, and a good thing too.
Best turn to CNN for the actual Jan 6 coverage; incisive is not the word springing to mind describing Stuff.
If by occupy freaks you mean the anti-vaxxers not the Occupy lot from 2014, well, I'd have preferred to have seen them shown the respect of any political interest at all. Being a moron isn't yet treasonous.
They were threatening to hang the PM – that's near enough for treason – moron is a plea in mitigation.
Any National Party supporters that have purchased National branded tee-shirts will need to return them for a refund if their leader gets his wish of banning gang patches.
Your comment is really uncalled for. To firstly call another political party a gang is not only childish but really shows an increasingly desperate attempt to discredit other parties in a democratic country (it still is, isn't it?). Secondly, to minimize that NZ has become a literally lawless country with gang warfare going down the path like in South America is just pathethic. But then again not a surprise given that the labor government gave millions to the Mongrel Mob for drug prevention treatment. Oh well, that helped…sarc
Never let the facts get in the way of a good rant laden with hyperbole and BS. The irony of your own desperate childish comment is obviously lost on you.
But thanks for bringing up that very successful investment in that Mongrel Mob-run drug rehab programme in Central Hawke’s Bay. I’d say it has exceeded expectations in a positive sense.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/128728109/inside-kahukura-the-mongrel-mobled-drug-rehabilitation-programme
So, it has been working very well, which is a reason to celebrate and do more of this kind!
I think you need to ask every taxpayer for that – the polls right now do not show that wide support you espouse. Drugs and related crime is connected to gangs, always has. I don't believe that there are exceptions. And perhaps you need to talk to the families of those who are affected by these drive by shootings etc. and tell them that all of that is hyperbole. Ignorance is not bliss in that instance. And there is absolutely no excuse for it. no matter whose party, group etc. anybody belongs to.
Well, I don’t live in South America and I don’t speak Spanish or Portuguese, so that could be a bit of a problem.
What should I be asking every taxpayer? I mean every single one?? And do I need to talk all the families as well???
Please stop your absurdism here, thanks; your comments won’t be taken seriously as they stand.
The overwhelming majority of people are sensible, socially connected and decent….that fact is always worth remembering
Yeah, man. Since 1936.
//
I'd happily hold that bonfire of gang patches. Hell I'd invite everyone to Eden Park for it. Doesn't matter that it would make no difference to membership. The social contract has long broken with this government and Police and it will take a few theatrical moves to bring it back.
People get so worried about looking to Australia for models of policing about gangs. Both National and Labour are doing it already.
Politicians look to Australia for advice about how to curb gangs | Stuff.co.nz
A reporter who has covered gang violence for 15 years is clear that this is the worst he has seen it. It's quite unprecedented in West Auckland since 2020.
The Front Page: Inside New Zealand's fight against escalating gang violence – NZ Herald
A believable plank for National is that Labour as soft on crime and crime is out of control.
As in so many other policy areas, it's now going to be very hard to turn that perception around.
EDit: Bang on queue National unveils its anti-gang plan on tv tonight. He’s not a political moron.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300610874/we-need-action-against-gangs-right-now-chris-luxon-details-new-gang-plan
"I'd happily hold that bonfire of gang patches"
I on the other hand like it that I can easily identify undesirables out in public and can give them a wide berth.
To borrow one of Luxons overused tropes it's bumper sticker stuff to say he'll stop people from gathering, and I'm no lawyer.
I think I have pointed to the WA experience before. Wildly popular Labour State govt passed this legislation late last year:
Cheers yes. Probably deserves a post on itself now that National have put out fresh policy on it .
Has there been any measurable effect at WA, or is it too early?
I searched on that but not a lot to report that isn't behind a paywall. There do seem to have been a dozen or so arrests and charges brought using the new legislation.
This kind of legislation should not be measured in terms of Court appearances. It is best considered a tool that works best as a deterrent – like nuclear weapons best never used. But as with Ukraine, you find out what happens when you don't have them.
OMG what a way to go… Fact and Fiction combine – Augustus alive again
Defanging the viper
The conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, is what fuels his campaign to return to office.
If anyone can, Ivanka Trump, the ultimate insider in the Trump camp, may have the ability to kill this conspiracy off, or at least marginalise its supporters within the Republican Party hierarchy, pretty much ending Trump's chances of being selected as the Republican presidential candidate.
In my opinion Ivanka Trump's testimony has yet to have its full impact.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/us-canada/300610972/long-since-checked-out-ivanka-trumps-january-6-testimony-exposes-family-strain