Apprento is engaged by a company to assist not only in recruitment, but in training, and motivating frontline sales staff throughout their time in their new job.
…
Candidates complete a virtual assessment to identify their potential, before being matched with companies to employ them directly.
“We then stick around for 12-months to provide training and education to these sales and customer focused stuff. This includes ongoing online modules, interactive 'peer-to-peer support' sessions and access to experienced mentors,” says Freeman.
Freeman partnered with B2B sales specialist Alex McNaughten in 2020 to build the office-based apprenticeship, which is similar to models that have proved successful in the UK, USA, and Australia.
Very concerned about how the ministry of arts and culture have run roughshod over the locals, residents and other users of the Parnell Rose Gardens with their decision to erect a memorial to flight Te 901 in the middle of this haven. There is no pathway to understand how this decision was and who by. The plan showss a ghastly concrete and stainless steel monstrosity imposed upon a gentle and peaceful haven for no good reason except the bawling of some relatives of the boozers and junketeers who want more recognition than a busload of weekend boozers who bought the farm. This ghastly imposition is no more than a childish demand in the usual kiwi mawkish way to have the rest of the country involv ed in what should be a private matter. Phill Goff needs his head read for allowing this.
[I’ve changed your user name back to the one the system has stored]
the boozers and junketeers who want more recognition than a busload of weekend boozers who bought the farm.
Jesus that's ugly. In one short phrase you've convinced me you're not worth listening to and now I'm perfectly happy to see this monument built. (And yes I know the Rose Garden well, it's the perfect spot in my view.)
It's said that virtually every family in NZ knew someone on that plane – in our case my brother had just gotten some work done on his car by a panelbeater who he knew quite well. My brother said they'd talked about the flight and how much he was looking forward to something completely different and unique from his usual workday routine.
In short – fuck off. The bigger and flashier the monument the better in my book.
It sits quietly at one side of the reserve allowing the families, friends of those killed to reflect on their loss while looking over the beautiful harbour and inner gulf. It's the perfect place for such a memorial and will ensure the tragedy and its shameful aftermath is never forgotten.
Not only did 257 crew and passengers die in terrible circumstances but those who were left behind – and their supporters – had to endure a vendetta led by a former prime minister and some of his Air NZ lackeys.
The rose bedding out the front of the garden is rather ugly – too many modern hybrid teas in harsh colours planted en masse. Looks very dated actually. The use of old roses in the Nancy Steen garden behind the path is really wonderful, worth visiting for its own sake through spring/early summer. Sneak in the side gate to avoid having to avert your eyes from the ugly bedding roses – save your retinas. The grass slope down to the water is nice too, and I'm sure the monument will be sympathetically implemented and accepted over time. Hell, we Orks have even come to quite like an absurdity like the Sky Tower. And insulting dead people doesn't usually advance an argument.
to: R.P Mcmurphy…
Firstly–Thats not very nice. My friendly neighbour when I was a school kid was one on the ill fated flight, wife of a hard working builder who got her a special present.
Secondly–due process has been held. The memorial is tasteful and fits well, going by the artwork, in its proposed site in Dove Myer Robinson Park. I know the area personally and it is the city’s, not just Parnell residents territory.
Dr John Campbell has been a relentlessly calm and reasoned voice throughout the entire COVID debacle and was talking about the potential role of Vitamin D 12 months ago.
Well finally a (Edit: Link updated) well powered RCD trial is in pre-publish and the results are unequivocal. Campbell does an executive summary in the first few minutes so there in no need to watch the whole thing. In short once you have landed in hospital the correct dose of calcifediol (the fast acting metabolite of Vitamin D) will reduce your chances of landing up in ICU and/or dying by around a factor of 3 – 4.
(And this study does not include the now well demonstrated fact that adequate levels of VitD will reduce your chance of arriving at hospital by at least another factor of 2 in the first place.)
Critically he states that a failure by govt and medical authorities to act now must amount to a "breach of duty of care".
Yes. It's been very interesting watching the increasing frustration of 'Dr. John' as he presents yet another scrupulously scrutinized piece of research. He's a very conventional and middle of the road type chappy who strives to present the technicalities in plain and unemotional tones.
Seen him get a little rattled on a couple of occasions. Over Vitamin D and the complete denial/dismissal/disregard of health authorities of the positive impact of high dose Vitamin D on Covid outcomes, and the day he presented the research regarding similar for Ivermectin.
….and this was well worth a listen to.
If the anti vaccine hesitant brigade(you know who you are) want to find one of the root causes of distrust in the very new and novel and largely untested (in any meaningful way) vaccines it is because a vaccine has from day one been presented as the ONLY hope for those vulnerable to this virus. There Is No Treatment!!! has been the constant and consistent narrative and anyone presenting any alternative view has been written off as an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.
My 'vulnerable' partner has been on the Vit D3 since this time last year (as an adjunct to his usual zinc and Vit C) as chemo 10 years ago left him very prone to sunburn. I have been taking it for the past month or so since its been simply too hot to be out in the sun.
Been recommending same to dark skinned friends.
Damn to hell our Ministry of Health who persists in failing to recommend/fund supplements considering…
Around 5% of adults in New Zealand are deficient in vitamin D (Adult Nutrition Survey 2008/09). A further 27% are below the recommended blood level of vitamin D.
And the official recommended levels are usually pretty low. From my reading the desirable range is 30 – 80 ng/l. Anything less than 20 can be considered deficient and less than 30 suboptimal. This seems a well balanced article on the topic.
I got my levels checked a few weeks back after taking 4000 IU (the upper limit I'd regard as reasonable) for almost a year (and working outdoors a fair bit) and came back at 50ng/l. Because everyone does vary a fair bit I'd recommend to be on the safe side to ask for a VitD test to be included when you have the opportunity – it's free here in Aus, but I don't know about NZ.
One of the big factors I didn't realise until recently is that as we age the efficiency of the UVB/skin route drops quite a lot. And given that older people tend to avoid outdoor skin exposure for all sorts of reasons – it makes sense to start compensating with supplements at our age. (Then there are all the other good reasons around bone and muscle health that fully justify it.)
There Is No Treatment!!! has been the constant and consistent narrative and anyone presenting any alternative view has been written off as an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.
Yes. Personally I'll line up for my shot (I hope to be able to choose the J&J version) when the time comes – but I agree the official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope is not only wrong, but possibly unrealistic as well.
The number of MSM reports and articles on a wide range of potential treatments for the prevention and/or minimisation of Covid-19 symptoms must number in the thousands – actually probably more like tens of thousands.
The contention that information about potential Covid-19 treatments has been suppressed is incredible.
I’d be really interested in any evidence suggesting that there was/is an “official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope”. In the absence of evidence, such a suggestion is at best mischievous, and could actually undermine confidence in public health initiatives. Not what’s needed right now, imho.
I’d be really interested in any evidence suggesting that there was/is an “official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope”.
Well if nothing else it's the only narrative you seem to support – where did that come from do you think? You’ve certainly been very consistently taking the position that discussion of anything else other than vaccines is something you’re going to challenge. And I'm fairly sure you regard yourself as a defender of the conventional wisdom in this regard.
And here in Australia for example if there is any media discussion on treatment options, it's completely overwhelmed by the far greater attention given to the prospect of vaccine herd immunity.
And concerning that blood test I got a few weeks back, my doc thought 4000IU per day a bit high at the first appointment so I asked him what he'd consider the right dose. He said around 2 – 3000 per day is what he is taking – and then he said "but I'm not allowed to officially recommend that".
So far COVID has claimed around 2.4m lives globally – even in the worst case interpretation of the data we've seen so far – if universal and effective VitD supplementation could have reduced that death toll by even just 10 – 20% that would have amounted to a hell of lot of lives saved.
It's not like any of this is complicated, yet for some reason you think even discussing this is mischievous.
I’d be really interested in any evidence suggesting that there was/is an “official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope”.
Well if nothing else it's the only narrative you seem to support – where did that come from do you think?
Dear RL – so you've got nothingother than your fabrication that the only narrative I seem to support is that Covid-19 vaccines are/were the only hope.
What you forget (rather conveniently imho) is that not so long ago we were on the same page in questioning just how effective Covid-19 vaccination initiatives might be.
Your response ("Well if nothing else…") also dodges my query, so I'll ask one more time, without any real expectation of a straight answer.
I’d be really interested in any evidence suggesting that there was/is an “official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope”.
In touting various potential treatments for Covid-19 infections/symptoms, the very least you could do would be to acknowledge that these treatments are all well known to frontline medical professionals treating Covid-19 patients, rather than insinuating some sort of conspiracy to deprive patients of effective treatments – a silly stance, ihmo.
Looks promising, but one study is very small and the other does not appear to be blind in any way whatsoever (while still being fairly small).
And this "vitamin D and the immune system" also sounds a lot like "vitamin C and the immune system" – a certain level of truth taken well beyond any experimental or boilogically-plausible extent.
Might it work? Might it work as well as advertisied? Sure.
Do we have the evidence for it as a standard treatment, let alone a prophylactic? Nope. And youtube videos should not bypass medical assessment boards.
Looks promising, but one study is very small and the other does not appear to be blind in any way whatsoever (while still being fairly small).
The first pilot study with 76 participants has been published for months, and the p values were so extraordinarily strong there was every justification to commit to larger and more powerful trials.
Now we have the outcome of at least one these larger trials – and with 930 participants it has more than enough statistical power to safely draw strong conclusions. I think we can safely assume that if Campbell has looked at the paper and says it's "well designed" then I'd need more than your reckons to change my mind.
If the paper passes peer review – again Campbell thinks this is highly likely – then I think we can safely assume your question is answered.
Medical science works within a framework of differing levels of evidence. For example the connection between smoking and lung cancer was not established by a gold standard RCT double blind trial.
You don't get to arbitrarily require the very highest level of evidence to be the only threshold you will accept.
I think we can safely assume that even though you have linked to the paper and can therefore read it in its entirety, the answer to my question was not immediately obvious to you. So that's one revision a reviewerr might request.
Funny you bring up lung cancer and smoking. The first big link was demonstrated in a study of 40,000 participants. Since then many longitudinal studies have repeated the observation. Experimental studies with animal models have replicated the resulsts at an individual level. Biochemistry has established a reasonable theory for biological plausibility.
If vitamin D and covid has that level of robust examination, you wouldn't be getting your advice for it off youtube.
The first big link was demonstrated in a study of 40,000 participants. Since then many longitudinal studies have repeated the observation.
Exactly – but absolutely not RCT double blind studies, which is the level of methodology you are demanding here.
In fact there have already been quite a number of metastudies on the relationship between COVID and VitD – some with very large numbers – and the vast majority of them confirm a positive role.
There is copious evidence that vitamin D3 dampens overactive immune responses and also protects brain cells, particularly for people like me with MS. High doses are becoming the standard of care for PwMS based on many research studies.
Same applies to other auto immune diseases, and there are more and more research studies into the effect vitamin D levels have on recovery/survival of covid-19 infections. In short, the higher the vit D, the better your chances are!
Not even saying that it won't eventually be a treatment for covid-type conditions.
Just saying that a few small studies are nowhere near enough to accuse governments across the world of a "breach of duty of care".
Also, according to his channel blurb, he's not actually a medical doctor. He's in the medical sector, sure, but as he puts it "My PhD focused on the development of open learning resources for nurses nationally and internationally."
FFS now you're reduced to smearing the messenger. His almost daily output on COVID this past year arguably makes him one of the more highly informed people on the planet.
Yet you want to quibble his paper qualifications as a medical educator – well my response who the fuck do you think trains all the doctors and nurses?
If output equalled expertise, trump would be a fucking genius.
It wasn't a smear, just pointing out that this doctor is not a specialist in the field about which he is producing youtube videos. So I wouldn't go accusing people of negligence on his say-so, no matter how awesome you might think a single study might be.
It's not one study – first we had the pilot study and now this larger follow up. These two alone strongly confirm each other – and that's before any consideration of the numerous other studies of various standards which already point in the same direction.
Besides it's not as if I'm proposing a dangerous, high risk, untested treatment – this is boring old Vitamin D that our own bodies manufacture and has been safely taken as a supplement by millions of people for decades. Exactly what are you objecting to here?
The waste in resources if popscience fools actually manage to affect the purchasing decisions of medical systems that are already under extreme stress, for one thing.
The fixation upon a few small studies as some sort of magic bullet.
The confirmation bias inherent in picking a youtube channel one agrees with, rather than also actively looking for studies that might not match one's preferred result.
I mean, you can't even say how or whether the less small study was double-blind, but you're obssessed with defending it and the youtube guy who introduced you to it. And you think I'm the one with the problem because I’m unconvinced by two studies and your reckons.
If you think calling a guy on you-tube a "you-tube guy" is denigration, you don't want to know my opinion of fools who think governments and medics should be accused of a "breach of a duty of care" on the basis of a small study that didn't even fully describe its methodology.
If you're going to persist in characterising an RCT study with 930 patients and extremely strong p-values as 'small' – then I think there is no point is discussing this with you further.
That linked study is 76 patients. First published online in August last year. All patients were given hydroxychloroquine (which is now known to actually increase the risk of negative outcomes) and azithromycin. Some also got viamin D.
76 patients is orders of magnitude too small a sample for meaningful conclusions.
That all patients were given hydroxychloroquine, which is now known to be harmful, interferes with the outcomes to such an extent that it would be foolish to take any conclusions from this.
There are good reasons to believe that vitamin D levels are much more a marker of lifestyle, diet, genetic, and general factors that affect risk of negative covid outcomes, as opposed to the idea that vitamin D levels in isolation are a key factor. If that is the case, then supplementing with vitamin D will achieve nothing except a false sense of security with respect to covid risk.
Plenty of published articles point to this view, as well as hearing privately the views if my cousin and her husband that are doctors desperately trying to help covid patients and keeping closely on top of all the available information.
But in reasonable doses, there's no evidence to suggest vitamin D supplements may be harmful (unlike, say, hydroxychloroquine), so there hasn't been a pushback against vitamin D misinformation. It won't harm, there's a very small chance it might help with covid, and there's a good chance it will help reduce/prevent other illnesses.
Given the known benefits for other conditions, and the off chance it may help with covid, apparently the UK government has been making vitamin D supplements available free to vulnerable populations.
You got the wrong study – the one Campbell is highlighting is much more recent and involves 930 participants.
Try watching the first 4 minutes of the video and this will be clear.
That all patients were given hydroxychloroquine, which is now known to be harmful, interferes with the outcomes to such an extent that it would be foolish to take any conclusions from this.
HCQ is a drug that has been administered for decades to treat malaria in vast numbers with absolutely minimal concerns around harm. (Hell I was required to carry some with me when working in Latin America and my travel doctor dished it out like aspirin.) Why it suddenly became a 'harmful' when used in the context of COVID seems quite bizzaro to me.
The entire HCQ debate was poisoned right at the outset by rank political considerations that I think have no useful place in a science question.
I'm really not interested in watching a clickbait artist on youtube. The way youtube has given an income stream to anyone with the ability to sucker a following, while applying zero quality control, means as an information source anyone that is only on youtube has less than zero credibility as far as I'm concerned.
If anyone has a link to a written article on the actual study, I'm interested. But I'm not interested in watching someone who has a history of promoting misinformation (ivermectin anyone?) who is likely trying to monetise my eyeball time by at best cherry-picking factoids out of context.
Thanks. From the link in the short summary to a fuller report, there's:
Clinical samples for SARS-CoV-2 testing were obtained and analysed according to WHO guidelines [Laboratory testing for 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in suspected human cases: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/10665-331501 (Interim guidance 17th January 2020)]. All hospitalized patients received the same standard therapy, consisting in hydroxychloroquine 400 mg/24h first day and 200 mg/24h 4 days with azithromycin 500 mg/24h 3 days, plus ceftriaxone 1 or 2 g/24h 7 days when there was bacterial superinfection. Patients with severe or critical conditions of pulmonary inflammation or clinical suspicion of cytokine storm were additionally treated with dexamethasone bolus (20 mg/day x 4 days) according to hospital guidelines.
So they were still actively harming their patients by giving all of them hydroxychloroquine, and then giving some of them vitamin D as well. It may be just that the vitamin D was countering the harm of the hydroxychloroquine.
The study tells us nothing about the effects of vitamin D alone, or in combination with other therapies known to actually be beneficial.
So they were still actively harming their patients by giving all of them hydroxychloroquine,
Nonsense. HCQ has been used for decades to treat malaria with very well understood side effects – are you suggesting that it's now so dangerous that it should be withdrawn from that use?
Besides if your premise was true – it in no manner explains the differences in outcome between the treatment and control groups.
You're just resorting to smear by association – which is not an argument.
Very well understood side effects including high risk of cardiac problems and other serious issues, it was used because just letting malaria run its course was much worse.
On covid patients, the effects of hydroxychloroquine include:
July 1, 2020 Update: A summary of the FDA review of safety issues with the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat hospitalized patients with COVID-19 is now available. This includes reports of serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.
it was used because just letting malaria run its course was much worse.
So why does the same logic not apply to COVID?
And quit hyping the side effects – almost no-one is 'actively harmed' by HCQ. The worst of the serious effects are heart arrythmia's which are generally not a dangerous problem. Or may not even be a problem at all.
Hydroxychloroquine is a relatively well tolerated medicine. The most common adverse reactions reported are stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and headache. These side effects can often be lessened by taking hydroxychloroquine with food. Hydroxychloroquine may also cause itching in some people
…
CDC has no limits on the use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. When hydroxychloroquine is used at higher doses for many years, a rare eye condition called retinopathy has occurred. People who take hydroxychloroquine for more than five years should get regular eye exams.
However my original comment in this thread makes absolutely no reference to HCQ – despite the huge amount of controversy on this drug – much of it motivated by rank politics in my view – and many contradictory studies, I've never highlighted it as a potential treatment and remain agnostic on it.
Yup, they are dissecting that study and it raises so many questions. I think there’s more to it than ‘lost in translation’. I’d call this positivist peer review 😉
I read the entire thread and was reminded of the climate denial movement – opinionated critics loudly demanding perfect evidence when the real world rarely delivers such.
The distinguishing characteristic of such people is they rarely, if ever, do research or hands-on field work themselves.
I read the other link (i.e. the previous one in your comment @ 3) this morning but I did not have time to comment. It also raised all sorts of issues with me. Now this ‘RCT’ by the same investigators is raising many concerns too with others. Something doesn’t add up here.
Campbell is no clickbait artist – and you demean yourself if that's the low standard of argument you have. If you cannot be bothered watching a few minutes of video to address the point accurately – then you really don't have any business commenting on this thread do you?
Besides I'm pretty sure YT demonitised all COVID related videos ages ago.
If anyone has a link to a written article on the actual study, I'm interested.
Campbell promoted ivermectin, tapping into the same false idea that there's some cheap widely available treatment already out there that is effective against covid, but nefarious actors (government and/or Big Pharma) are ignoring or suppressing it. Ivermectin has been trialled in a number of places, and it doesn't do shit against covid. Campbell was just plain wrong, but hoo boy he got loads of clicks and eyeball time from it.
Generating outrage is great for clickbait, but it's crap for actual information.
You want to check your assertion about covid videos being de-monetised? As far as I can tell, that lasted about a week as a blanket policy. Now, there are some topics that will cause a video to get demonetised, and those videos will get flagged with little yellow icons. But as far as I can tell, Campbell is currently getting the full wodge of moolah from all the eyeball time he can sucker attract.
Because if you actually dig a little deeper you'll find he is roundly criticised by some for not using his popular and stable platform to promote this drug.
Vitamin D3 otoh he shamelessly promotes. In fact, he considers it an ethical duty to inform and educate.
Searches for John Campbell ivermectin has plenty of hits. The thumbnails and blurbs for the vids suggest Campbell had a positive view of ivermectin for treating covid, and I sat through a couple minutes each of a couple of the vids (all I could stomach), and he seemed to be talking it up. If he's presented nuance and caveats that require sitting through a whole twenty minutes of a video, then that just further illustrates the failings of video as a medium for transferring information.
If he's presented nuance and caveats that require sitting through a whole twenty minutes of a video, then that just further illustrates the failings of video as a medium for transferring information.
So what – just because you cannot be bothered doesn't mean shit for anyone else. And it certainly doesn't speak to the content especially when you've just admitted you haven’t seen it.
And that you get a visceral reaction – 'all I could stomach' – well it's called 'cognitive dissonance'.
The thumbnails and blurbs for the vids suggest Campbell had a positive view of ivermectin for treating covid, and I sat through a couple minutes each of a couple of the vids (all I could stomach), and he seemed to be talking it up.
Links please. And time stamps where he is actually "talking it up."
Ivermectin has been trialled in a number of places, and it doesn't do shit against covid.
Really? It may not be a very strong treatment – but it was certainly worth investigating and again it's a well understood and highly tolerated drug.
Campbell promoted ivermectin …
Interesting – suddenly you know lots more about this 'youtube clickbait artist' you've been pretending was beneath your attention. Well here is the actual video – note that I've been linking to all my claims so far – and anyone else can see for themselves that what Campbell is doing is giving careful and measured reviews of published studies as he almost always does.
But as far as I can tell, Campbell is currently getting the full wodge of moolah …
God forbid someone might make a living from producing educational material that converts medical and statistical jargon into plain language. And incidentally, Campbell has been doing these videos since well before Covid was a thing.
Andre, pray tell how you feel about Pfizer's profit forecast? They are frantically pushing aside the piles in their coffers to make room for the expected $4billion profit from the vaccine.
Nice to think of Australia in terms other than its extra squirrily politicians !.For anyone needing some comedic relief from the madness id recommend Rake on netflix first episodes a bit slow but definitely worth persevering in my view .
Yup we watched the entire series on ABC a few years back. Absolute gold – there's a scene at a pedestrian crossing we still act out for the sheer fun of it
I've just been looking at the hook (sorry meant to put book, but hook is applicable!) The Third Way by Anthony Giddens. He seems to have been prolific throughout his career, and has arrived at our present pig's muddle of incompatible ideas in this book of his.
He seems to have thought that by having achieved welfare provisions that we have balanced the negativities that unbridled capitalism brings, and so abandoned intervention along practical straightforward means to assist citizens cope in the fevered world of commerce that we have.
…[Giddens] accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social-democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxist claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism as a mode of production. In 2009, Blair publicly declared support for a "new capitalism"…
The Third Way supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities and productive endowments
while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. It emphasises commitment to –
1 balanced budgets,
2 providing equal opportunity which is combined with
3 an emphasis on personal responsibility,
4 the decentralisation of government power to the lowest level possible,
5 encouragement and promotion of public–private partnerships,
6 improving labour supply,
7 investment in human development,
8 preserving of social capital and
9 protection of the environment.
(The Wikipedia page has numerous links explaining terms – very informative). The above points seem to encompass what we have seen brought about here in NZ. Each of these above points can bring about a small revolution in society, together they have been a tsunami. This guy deserves to have his trousers pulled down and have to run around naked for a day finding out just what it is like to be a vulnerable human in a society with fading compassion and lack of empathy for others that he erected a signpost to. He can keep his erections, the smart-alec. It seems macro overview in its objectives with little if any thought from bottom up, the micro view, of where people are in their lives and in this era, and what is needed for an informed, engaged, busy, contented, sustainable, morally attuned, positively active society.
Incidentally there is a book called A Third Way – Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection which could be of even greater effect than The Third Way.
In A Third Way, Hillary Hoffmann and Monte Mills detail the history, context, and future of the ongoing legal fight to protect indigenous cultures. At the federal level, this fight is shaped by the assumptions that led to current federal cultural protection laws, which many tribes and their allies are now reframing to better meet their cultural and sovereign priorities. At the state level, centuries of antipathy toward tribes are beginning to give way to collaborative and cooperative efforts that better reflect indigenous interests. Most critically, tribes themselves are building laws and legal structures that reflect and invigorate their own cultural values. Taken together, and evidenced by the recent worldwide support for indigenous cultural movements, events of the last decade signal a new era for indigenous cultural protection. This important work should be read by anyone interested in the legal reforms that will guide progress toward that future. Zookal Textbooks – NZ.
The first figures of 2021 don't bode well for those who talk up the affordability of homes and the prevalence of homeownership:
House prices show no sign of slowing at the start of the year.
Real Estate Institute New Zealand (REINZ) figures for January showed the median price rose a seasonally adjusted 2 percent on the month before.
REINZ's house price index hit a record high, with the annual gain more than 19 percent, the biggest annual rise since mid-2004.
…
REINZ chief executive Bindi Norwell said prices typically eased in January as the residential property market slowed over the holiday season.
"The first month of 2021 was anything but normal as house prices across the country have continued to rise, with January seeing four regions reach new record median house prices and one region equal its December record."
The four regions to hit records were Bay of Plenty, Hawke's Bay, Taranaki, and Nelson, while Manawatū/Wanganui matched its December record.
"The Auckland market saw a slight cooling off in prices when compared to the record high we saw in December 2020, which is what we would expect at this time of the year," said REINZ chief executive Bindi Norwell.
"Interestingly, when we look at the data from a seasonally adjusted perspective, house prices were actually higher than we would normally expect at this time of the year" Norwell said, referring to price rises on the North Shore and Rodney.
"There is still strong competition for good properties in the region," she said.
This story is based on the same interview with REINZ but with a specific focus on Auckland, it doesn't refute anything from the RNZ article, nor does it demonstrate a reversal of the trends.
I realise this refers specifically to Auckland, but that market is by far the largest in NZ.
A decreasing sales volume, in any market, is usually a forerunner of falling sales prices. That's how I would read the future based on the facts. And as we slide into Autumn and winter, prices historically tend to drop (in real terms at the very least).
Probably yes. In general, RE agents are poorly educated and their experience is usually limited only to selling. They have a vested interest in spinning a story.
I have spent my working life as a chartered accountant in Public practice, company accountanting from small to huge, auditing, lecturing, running my own business both in NZ and overseas. I would consider my experience and expertise in economics and markets and business far in excess of that of most people.
Moral of the story? Ask and learn, before you make comments and judgements that betray your abysmal and negative attitudes Arkie.
Will have to delve into that one a bit deeper myself – seems rather optimistic given the proportion of disabled people who are unemployed or underemployed.
I wonder how they include all the disabled people being supported by their spouses, with nary a smidgen of support – no benefit or tax abatement , no support for Kiwisaver – one income means that it isn't affordable for either.
It's interesting how as the move to individualism has occurred that there are specific remnants of being treated as a couple remain that seem purely political.
It easy to simply say this is about government but it isn't – it is about society. When I first started working banks for instance would pay an allowance for married men who had a partner who wasn't working until their salary reached a certain level. They knew the cost of a couple, and children, on one income wasn't sufficient and recognised this. The state also recognised this in allowing you to claim rebates on your tax for a non-working spouse.
What the removal of such supports by both the private and public sector meant was a further disadvantage for women and those with disabilities. Add to that the other group of predominantly women that care for disabled children who also didn't work due to needing to care for and be available for their children with disabilities you start to see quite a large group with little economic security.
The non-working , non-benefit disabled group are quite invisible in research. I wonder how large this group actually is.
Currently, a person on Jobseeker Support can earn up to $90 a week before their benefit starts to reduce with sole parents and people on Supported Living Payment being able to earn up to $115 a week.
The changes mean people can earn up to $160 a week before their benefit starts to be affected.
Wow, Jacinda has flexed her international star power to give Hosking's hero Scomo an absolute serve – has an NZ PM ever spoken to the Aussies in such strong terms publicly before?
"…Ardern said she was most concerned for the two small children. the woman was detained with.
"I think New Zealand, frankly, is tired of having Australia export its problems. But now there are two children involved so we have to resolve this issue with those two children in mind."
Legally the woman's citizenship sits with New Zealand currently but Ardern said she would continue to raise the issue with Australia.
Ardern warned Morrison when he told her Australia had revoked the woman's passport that she would "speak very strongly on New Zealand's view" publicly.
"He has been forewarned of that continuously. So this morning I did the same, I reminded him that I would be raising this issue very strongly."
Ardern said she wanted to work through the issues bilaterally with Australia.
"I never think that the right response was to simply have a race to revoke people's citizenships – that is just not the right thing to do.
"We will put our hands up when we need to own a situation – we would expect the same from Australia. They did not act in good faith…"
NZ is clearly growing very tired of the 504 deportees and now this. I wonder what we can do next? I’d charge airlines NZ$1,000,000 for every 504 deportee they transport here. See how long they’ll keep carrying them.
Perhaps in future, Ardern won't be quite so quick to take a stand for Morrison when he gets dorked by another lowly Chinese official and loses his s**t. The new mantra should be, 'Don't come crying to me Scotty!'
As for Brownlee, it looks as though the last syllable of his name should be 'nose'.
Would there be any legal impediment to sending the Australian citizen who committed the mosque murders back to Australia? The cost of his imprisonment should be met by Australia. Fanciful maybe, but charter a private plane, fly the Tasman, land, unload him and say, "here he is, he's yours", fly back across the Tasman.
We've done that once before with the Rainbow Warrior bombers and had their home country (France) release them astoundingly early. Based on the ‘mickey mousing’ they have done with some of the 504s and the recent arrested former Aus/NZ dual citizen in Syria I would not trust the Aussie Govt to keep this guy in prison for the length of his NZ prison sentence.
there was / is a difference between the Rainbow Warrior terrorists and the shooter of CHCH. The first lot were employed by the French government and thus released early. The latter is a white supremacist wanna be fuckwit whom not even OZ would want to roam freely about the land.
Charter a private plane, fly the Tasman, land, unload him and say, "here he is, he's yours"?
They wouldn't let you land. You might have to open the door and drop him in on them. Have a Givealittle to raise money for the flight? And a parachute?
I can't remember where I read this but as I recall a New Zealand lawyer commented on this as being that if we deported him Australia would have to release him as he hadn't committed, or been found guilty of any crime in Australia.
Ah here it is Bill Hodge from the Auckland Law School
"He told First Up a new law would be required here – but more importantly, a new law would be needed in Australia.
"Because if he's deported now, gets on a plane and goes over to Sydney, he can just walk free because there is no statutory authority, no power to enforce the New Zealand sentence in Australia at the moment."
The lass has stepped outside CV/ focus group land for the first time. Not for the silently screaming in our rich-favouring political regime, rather Oz stepped on her toes one too many times. Anyway , this is a good I encourage.
Now looking up at the comments, thanks for/criticise the footnotery. Fusty self-immergence. The queen has broke out of the 'rulebook for success and personal happiness'.
The only happiness is rooted in 1935 social democracy, or a strong people's party who the strong have to deal with. Nowt about.
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.It was another ‘SHOCK! HORROR!’ headline from a media increasingly venturing into tabloid-style journalism:Andrea Vance’s article seemed to focus on the "million dollar sums from the Government as the country grapples with a housing ...
Dr Brian Easton writes: It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. Here is my guess at some ...
What Was the Prime Minister Reading in the Runup to Election Year?It’s the summer break. Everyone settles down with family, books, the sun and some fishing. But the Prime Minister has a pile of briefing papers prepared just before Christmas, which have to be worked through. I haven’t seen them. ...
In case you hadn't noticed, FYI, the public OIA request site, has been used to conduct a significant excavation into New Zealand's intelligence agencies, with requests made for assorted policies and procedures. Yesterday in response to one of these requests the GCSB released its policy on New Zealand Purpose and ...
Farming leaders are watching closely whether Damien O’Connor keeps the key portfolios of Agriculture and Trade when Prime Minister Chris Hipkins restructures his Cabinet. O’Connor has been one of the few ministers during Labour’s term in office who has won broad support for what he has done ...
South Islands farmers are whining about another drought, the third in three years. If only we knew what was causing this! If only someone had warned them that they faced a drying climate! But we do know what is causing it: climate change. And they have been warned, repeatedly, for ...
Ok, there’s good news and bad news in this week’s inflation figures, but bad > good. Our inflation rate held steady but hey, at a level below the inflation rate in Australia. The main reason for the so/so result here? A fall in petrol prices of 7.2% offset the really ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet ...
Since her shock resignation announcement, Jacinda Ardern has been at pains to point out that she isn’t leaving because of the toxicity directed at her on social media and elsewhere, rebutting journalists who suggested misogyny and hate may have driven her from office. Yet there have been dozens of columns ...
The Clinical Magus: Of particular relevance to New Zealanders struggling to come to terms with the sudden departure of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is Jung’s concept of the anima. Much more than what others have called the feminine principle, the anima is what the human male has made out ...
The Select Committee, considering the proposed RNZ-TVNZ merger, has come back with a report conceding many of the criticisms that were made of the original legislation. In what is one of the most comprehensive demolitions of a Bill submitted to a Select Committee, the Economic Development, Science and Innovation ...
Such are the 2020s, the age when no-one, it seems, actually respects the basic underpinnings of democracy. Even in New Zealand. This week, I stumbled across a pair of lengthy and genuinely serious articles, that basically argue that Something is Rotten in the state of New Zealand democracy. One ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hurrah. Today we found something fresh on the Beehive website, Beehive.govt.nz, which claims to be the best place to find Government initiatives, policies and Ministerial information. It wasn’t from Finance Minister Grant Robertson, whose reaction to the latest inflation figures would have been appreciated. So, too, ...
Smiling And Waiving A Golden Opportunity: Chris Hipkins knew that the day at Ratana would be Jacinda’s day – her final opportunity to bask in the unalloyed love and support of her followers. He simply could not afford to be seen to overshadow this last chance for his former boss ...
Extremism Consumes Itself: The plot of “Act of Oblivion” concerns the relentless pursuit of the “regicides” Edward Whalley and William Goffe – two of the fifty-nine signatories to King Charles I’s death warrant. As with his many other works of historical fiction, Robert Harris’s novel brings to life a period ...
To challenge the Government’s promotion of co-governance, to share power between Maori and public authorities and agencies, is to invite accusations of racism. An example: this article by Martyn Bradbury on The Daily Blog headed Luxon’s race baiting hypocrisy at Ratana. The article was triggered by National leader Christopher Luxon, ...
A very informative video discussion: Are we getting the whole story about Ukraine? | Robert Wright & Ivan Katchanovski Getting objective information on the situation in Ukraine and the cause of this current war is not easy. There is the current censorship and blatant mainstream media bias – which ...
Yesterday the Herald ran an op-ed from Mayor Wayne Brown titled “The case for light rail is lighter than ever” and a few things stood out. However, it’s getting more and more tricky to make a strong economic case for spending up to $29 billion on a single route of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Samantha Harrington Imagine it’s a cold February night and your furnace breaks. You want to replace it with an electric heat pump because you’ve heard that tax credits will help pay for the switch. And you know that heat pumps can reduce ...
In 2005, then-National Party leader based his entire election campaign on racism, with his infamous racist Orewa speech and racist iwi/kiwi billboards. Now, Christopher Luxon seems to want to do it all again: Fresh off using his platform at this week's Rātana celebrations to criticise the government's approach to ...
Inflation is showing little sign of slowing down, posing a problem for freshly minted PM Chris Hipkins. According to that old campaigner Richard Prebble, Hipkins should call a snap election. If he waits till October, he risks being swept away. The dilemma for the new leader is that fighting an election ...
Buzz from the Beehive A great deal has happened since January 19. Among other things, a new Prime Minister and deputy have been sworn in and our leaders (past, present and aspiring) have delivered speeches at Ratana. Newshub reported that politicians of all stripes had descended upon Rātana for the ...
It’s a big day for New Zealand; our 41st Prime Minister has taken office and the new, “Chippy” era of politics is underway. Or, on the other hand, the Labour Party continues to govern with an overall majority and much the same leadership team in place. Life goes on and ...
New Zealand has another Prime Minister who does not have a basic grasp of the three articles of the Treaty of Waitangi. THOMAS CRANMER writes: It is simply astonishing that New Zealand’s next Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, is unable to give even a brief explanation of the three articles ...
A statue of a semi-naked Nick Smith puts the misogyny debate into perspective. GRAHAM ADAMS writes … In the wake of Ardern’s abrupt resignation, the mainstream media are determined to convince us she was hounded from office mainly because she is a woman and had to fall on her sword ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is ...
An editorial in the NZ Herald last week, titled “Nimbyism goes bananas as housing intensifies“, introduced Herald readers to a couple of acronyms that go along with the now-familiar NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard): “bananas” (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone) “cave” dwellers (citizens against virtually everything). The editorial ...
Back in the dark autumn of 2020, when the prospect of Covid was freaking the country out, Finance Minister Grant Robertson set himself and Treasury a series of questions about what a post-Covid economy might look like. Those were fearful days, and the questions in part reflected a series ...
Buzz from the Beehive Yet another day has passed without Ministers of the Crown posting something to show they are still working for us on the Beehive website. Nothing new has been posted since January 17. Perhaps the ministers are all engaged in the bemusing annual excursion ...
Incoming Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has already indicated he intends making the tax system “fairer”. That points to the route a government facing an election could take to tilt the odds towards winning in its favour, given Labour’s support in the last months of the Ardern era had been ...
NewsHub has a poll on the cost-of-living crisis, which has an interesting finding: the vast majority of kiwis prefer wage rises to tax cuts: When asked whether income has kept up with the cost of living, 54.8 percent of people surveyed said no and according to 58.6 percent of ...
Labour has begun 2023 with the centre-left bloc behind in the polls and losing ground. That being so, did his colleagues choose Chris Hipkins as the replacement for Jacinda Ardern because they think he has a realistic shot at leading them to victory this year, or because he‘s the best ...
Two Flags, Two Masters? Just as it required a full-scale military effort to destroy the first attempt at Māori self-government in the 1850s and 60s (an effort that divided Maoridom itself into supporters and opponents of the Crown) any second attempt to establish tino rangatiratanga, based on the confiscatory policies ...
The first of Kiwirail’s big network shutdowns to fix the foundations on our tracks is now well underway with the Southern Line closed between Otahuhu and Newmarket. This is following on from the network wide Christmas/New Year shutdown, during which Kiwirail say that nearly 1,300 people working across 69 different ...
This is a re-post from the Citizens' Climate Lobby blogIn last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Congress included about $20 billion earmarked for natural climate solutions. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is responsible for deciding how those funds should be allocated to meet the climate ...
You’ve really got to wonder at the introspection, or lack thereof, from much of the mainstream media post Jacinda Ardern stepping down. Some so-called journalists haven’t even taken a breath before once again putting the boot in, which clearly shows their inherent bias and lack of any misgivings about fueling ...
Over the weekend I was interviewed by a media outlet about the threats that Jacinda Ardern and her family have received while she has been PM and what can be expected now that she has resigned. I noted that the level of threat she has been exposed to is unprecedented ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: The days of the Labour Government being associated with middle class social liberalism look to be numbered. Soon-to-be Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni are heralding a major shift in emphasis away from the constituencies and ideologies of liberal Grey ...
A Different Kind Of Vibe: In the days and weeks ahead, as the Hipkins ministry takes shape, the only question that matters is whether New Zealand’s new prime minister possesses both the wisdom and the courage to correct his party’s currently suicidal political course. If Chris “Chippy” Hipkins is able to steer ...
The days of the Labour Government being associated with middle class social liberalism look to be numbered. Soon-to-be Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni are heralding a major shift in emphasis away from the constituencies and ideologies of liberal Grey Lynn and Wellington Central towards the ...
Following the surprise resignation of Jacinda Ardern last week, her replacement, Chis Hipkins, has said: Over the coming week, Cabinet will be making decisions on reining in some programs and projects that aren’t essential right now That messaging is similar to what Jacinda Ardern said late last year and as ...
Much of what will mark the early days of Chris Hipkins’ Prime Ministership would have happened anyway. By December, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister were making it clear the summer break and early days of this year were going to be spent on a reset of government policy. ...
Going to try to get into the blogging thing again (ha!) what with an election coming up and all that. So today I thought I'd start small and simple, by merely tackling the world's (second) richest man.I'm no fan of Elon Musk. You don't want to know why, but I'll ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 15, 2023 thru Sat, Jan 21, 2023. Story of the Week State of the climate: How the world warmed in 2022With a new year underway, most of the climate data for ...
Well, that was a disappointment. As of today, the New Zealand Labour Caucus opted for Chris Hipkins as our new Prime Minister, and I cannot help but let loose a cynical cackle. ...
Get ready for a major political reset once Chris Hipkins is sworn in as Prime Minister this week. Labour’s new leader is likely to push the Government to the right economically, and do his best to jettison the damaging perceptions that Labour has become “too woke” on social issues. Overall, ...
Things have gone sideways… and it’s only the third week of January? It was political earthquake time. For some the Prime Minister made a truly significant announcement. For others – did you have this on your bingo card? – a body double did so (sit tight, you’ll understand later, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Because our hard-working Ministers of the Crown are engaged in Labour Party caucus stuff in Napier, no doubt jockeying to ensure they keep their jobs or get a better one, Point of Order was not surprised to find no fresh news on the Beehive website this ...
By the end of 2019, Jacinda Ardern was a political superstar heading towards an election defeat. She was an icon, internationally beloved, on track to be an ex-prime minister before the age of forty. It was the year of the Christchurch terror attack when Ardern’s response to the atrocity saw ...
People complain about their jobs being meaningless. Does it matter?David Graeber, author of Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It, would have smiled at Elon Musk’s sacking half the Twitter workforce. Musk seems to be confirming the main thesis of the book, that ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes: Should New Zealand have a snap election? That’s one of the questions arising out of the chaos of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation. There’s an increased realisation that everything has changed, and the old plans and assumptions for election year have suddenly evaporated. ...
Should New Zealand have a snap election? That’s one of the questions arising out of the chaos of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation. There’s an increased realisation that everything has changed, and the old plans and assumptions for election year have suddenly evaporated. So, although Ardern has named an ...
I warned about the trap of virtue signaling in my article Virtue signaling over Ukraine. This video is still relevant – but have we moved on since then? The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was universally condemned at the time. Or was it? Certainly, the political atmosphere ...
Earlier this week Point of Order carried a post by Geoffrey Miller on how Japan under a new security blueprint is doubling its defence spending. The plans see Japan buying up advanced weaponry – including long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US – and spending more on ...
Anyone else suffering back-to-work-blues? We’re battling, but still upright. Haere tonu! Today’s cover image is of sunset over Tirohanga Whānui Bridge, sourced from Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland On Monday, Jolisa pondered the fate of AT’s ‘Statements of Imagination’. Tuesday’s post was a guest post by Grady ...
Open access notables Bad news delivered by an all-star cast of familiar researchers: Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans. From the abstract: In 2022, the world’s oceans, as given by OHC, were again the hottest in the historical record and exceeded the previous 2021 record maximum. According to IAP/CAS data, ...
The resignation of Jacinda Ardern has already made more global headlines than you might expect for that of the PM of a small commonwealth nation like say Sierra Leone (population 6.5 million) or Singapore (population 5.5 million). But international observers might not be too surprised by Ardern’s announcement that ...
One of my earliest political memories is the resignation of Prime Minister David Lange in August 1989. I remember this because of a brown felt-tipped pen drawing I did of the Beehive, the building that houses the Executive of the New Zealand Government. More than thirty years later, we ...
Buzz from the Beehive Hard on the heels of our Buzz from the Beehive earlier today, the PM has made two announcements – the 2023 general election will be held on Saturday 14 October and she will not be campaigning to win a third term as Prime Minister. She will ...
Jacinda Ardern had an outsized impact on New Zealand’s international relations. While all Prime Ministers travel internationally, Ardern’s calendar was fuller than most. Ardern’s first major foreign trip came within weeks of her election in 2017, to the APEC summit in Vietnam. The meeting gave Ardern her first in-person encounter ...
She gave it her all. No New Zealand Prime Minister has ever dominated the political scene at home as she has done, or has established an international profile to match hers. No New Zealand Prime Minister has had to confront such a sequence of domestic and international catastrophes – from ...
Jacinda Ardern's shock resignation announcement today has left a lot of us with a lot of complicated feelings. In my case, while I've been highly critical of Ardern's government, I'm still sorry to see her go. We've had far too many terrible things happen during her term as Prime Minister ...
The decision by Jacinda Ardern to end her term as Prime Minister on February 7 has come as a stunning surprise. It turns the task of a centre-left government winning re-election this year from difficult to nigh on impossible. No-one else among the Labour caucus has Ardern’s ability to explain ...
Jacinda Ardern’s first press conference as Labour leader in August 2017 was a defining moment in the past decade of New Zealand politics. A young woman (by the standards of politics) who had long been tipped for higher office, she had underperformed as a minister and Andrew Little’s noble resignation ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Members of Parliament for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand have today written to Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Khamenei to condemn the ongoing violence and killing of women’s rights and democracy protesters, and to call on him to intervene immediately. ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
The Government is making an initial contribution of $150,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Tairāwhiti following ex-Tropical Cyclone Hale, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “While Cyclone Hale has caused widespread heavy rain, flooding and high winds across many parts of the North Island, Tairāwhiti ...
Rural Communities Minister Damien O’Connor has classified this week’s Cyclone Hale that caused significant flood damage across the Tairāwhiti/Gisborne District as a medium-scale adverse event, unlocking Government support for farmers and growers. “We’re making up to $100,000 available to help coordinate efforts as farmers and growers recover from the heavy ...
A vaccine for people at risk of mpox (Monkeypox) will be available if prescribed by a medical practitioner to people who meet eligibility criteria from Monday 16 January, says Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall. 5,000 vials of the vaccine have been obtained, enough for up to 20,000 ...
RNZ News Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has acknowledged the way Aucklanders have come together and opened their homes to those in need, with the New Zealand government focused on providing the resources needed to get the city back up and running. The new prime minister — just four days into ...
RNZ News Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty has asked for communication on support after the severe thunderstorm in Auckland to be stepped up. It comes after a Civil Defence warning text failed to be sent out, and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown told RNZ they will be reviewing the response, ...
RNZ News Three people are dead and at least one person is missing following the flooding overnight in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. About 1000 people were still stranded today after Auckland Airport was closed last night because of flooding of the arrival and departure foyers. Flights were cancelled for ...
Wayne Brown has doubled down on his decision last night to shun the media until close to midnight and only order a state of emergency at 9.30pm. In a defensive display to the media this afternoon, the Auckland mayor was questioned on comments other councillors made last night, including some ...
Prime minister Chris Hipkins has confirmed there are three deaths linked to the extreme weather event in Auckland over the past 24 hours. There is also at least one person missing. Speaking at a press conference in Auckland, Hipkins said the priority was to make sure Aucklanders were safe, housed ...
*This story was first published on The Conversation and is republished with permission*Until New Zealand's stormwater drain system adapts to our rising climate, it will never be able to cope with the level of flooding seen in Auckland on Friday night, writes James Renwick The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced ...
Chris Hipkins has experienced his first major event as prime minister, just days into his tenure. He’s spent the day in Auckland alongside emergency services, surveying the damage and assessing next steps. He’s due to speak at 3.15pm alongside Auckland mayor Wayne Brown. Thanks to Stuff, here is a livestream. ...
Due to the “unprecedented weather event” in Auckland, organisers have confirmed the “heartbreaking decision” to cancel this year’s Laneway Festival. “We were so excited to deliver this show to our biggest crowd ever in New Zealand, our team has been working around the clock to do everything they can to ...
With the rain easing for a moment, many will be beginning the arduous task of cleaning out their flooded property. Auckland council has release advice for cleaning up after a flood. Cleaning up after a flood It is important to clean and dry your house and everything in it. Floodwater ...
Air New Zealand Chief Operational Integrity and Safety Officer Captain David Morgan says the airline’s domestic flights in and out of Auckland resumed from 12pm today as Auckland Airport re-opens. But he said with a backlog of flights and customers, the priority is those who need to travel urgently. “Those ...
Festival-goers holding on hope for Laneway, set to take place at Western Springs on Monday, will have to wait a bit longer for an official update. A brief post on Facebook this afternoon stated: “Safety is Laneway Festival’s number one priority. With the large weather event Auckland is currently experiencing, ...
Wayne Brown has defended the timing of a declaration of a state of emergency last night following record rainfall in Auckland. “The state of emergency is a prescribed process, it’s quite formal, and I had to wait until I had the official request from the emergency management centre. The moment ...
After the 11th hour cancellation last night, Elton John has cancelled the second concert of his farewell tour at Mt Smart, which had been scheduled for this evening. In a statement, John said: “Following the instruction of the emergency services, we have no option but to cancel tonight’s show in ...
The member of parliament for Mt Albert, Jacinda Ardern, has posted a message on Facebook following the flooding in Auckland. “I’m very conscious that it’s been a while since I posted, and there have been a few big things happening. But today the most important thing is everyone’s wellbeing and ...
Flooding of the runway, the check-in and arrivals areas on the ground floor and surrounding roads has disrupted operations at Auckland International, halting all departures until at least 5pm today, with no arrivals before 4:30am tomorrow. “People are asked not to come to the International Terminal at this time for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Victoria Park near the Auckland CBD on January 27.Getty Images The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced on the night of January 27, the eve of the ...
New Zealand’s largest insurance group, IAG, says it is on track to receive more than 1,100 claims from Aucklanders by lunchtime after the city was deluged in the wettest day on record. Those claims, said the group which includes AMI, State and NZI Insurance, span property damage to homes and ...
The rampant flooding in Auckland didn’t just detonate its provincial public holiday weekend – it coincided with the biggest weekend of the year to date for live events. A pair of Elton John concerts at Mt Smart stadium had a combined capacity of over 80,000, while both Laneway at Western ...
Auckland is beginning a clean-up after its wettest day since records began. “Auckland was clobbered on Friday,” said emergency management duty controller Andrew Clark. “We won’t start to get a good idea of numbers affected until later today and, even then, this will take time, with information still coming in ...
The prime minister, Chris Hipkins, is travelling to Auckland after devastating floods hit the city overnight. With the airport out of operation until at least midday, he is landing at Whenuapai air base on a New Zealand Defence Force Hercules aircraft from Wellington. ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has arrived in Auckland for a daylong visit to the city following its catastrophic flood on Friday night. Flying in an Air Force Hercules to Whenuapai, Hipkins will spend roughly three hours on the ground assessing flood damage in the city before returning. He will receive ...
A quirk of timing left all Auckland’s institutions on the back foot. But social media, particularly TikTok, graphically showed just how bad the situation was. Late afternoon on a Friday is known as time to quietly drop bad news. You have the plausible deniability of it happening during work hours, ...
It’s a common sight during summer. It’s also a recipe for disaster.I recently drove with my family from New Plymouth to Tāmaki Makaurau and, just like how I lost count of how many cows I saw on the way, I lost count of how many cars had a passenger ...
Opinion - Election year has begun with a bang, and already the punditry and speculation are ramping up, but Grant Duncan warns not to treat polls as gospel. ...
New Zealand’s new prime minister, Chris Hipkins, is formally facing down an emergency just a few days after being sworn in, summoning the National Crisis Management Centre to the Beehive. The Beehive Bunker is being stood up to help with coordination of the emergency response in Auckland. I’ve asked ...
Analysis - Jacinda Ardern is one of New Zealand's most historically significant leaders. But she did not achieve the grand vision for Aotearoa her outsized rhetoric promised. ...
Brits abroad can be an asset to Aotearoa - but only if we make an effort to engage with te ao Māori, writes Scottish expat Fran Barclay Earlier this week, the UK High Commissioner signalled a promising intention to address the barriers facing young Māori and Pasifika who aspire to ...
"They want the Māoris out": provincial life in NZShe hadn’t learned to shut her mouth. Howard was tired of Councillor Kemp harping on and on and on. He pushed himself deeper into the boardroom chair and leaned back as far as he could force it. This woman had ranted ...
Positive affirmation quotes often aren’t helpful for tāngata whai ora. But taking the piss out of them can be. Early in January, on the first day of what would be a week of staying in bed with the curtains pulled, I put a disappointingaffirmations Instagram post up on my stories. ...
Ellen Rykers visits Mahakirau Forest Estate, ‘a crown jewel in the Coromandel Range’, where pest control is serious business.This is an excerpt from our weekly environment newsletter Future Proof – sign up here. The Mahakirau Forest Estate is not your average subdivision. Enter through its tall ...
As Auckland tackles severe floods and the city’s airport emerges from a deluge on both the runway and in terminals, Air New Zealand has confirmed that no flights will leave or arrive before noon on Saturday at the earliest. In a statement, the airline said anyone booked for a flight ...
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Very concerned about how the ministry of arts and culture have run roughshod over the locals, residents and other users of the Parnell Rose Gardens with their decision to erect a memorial to flight Te 901 in the middle of this haven. There is no pathway to understand how this decision was and who by. The plan showss a ghastly concrete and stainless steel monstrosity imposed upon a gentle and peaceful haven for no good reason except the bawling of some relatives of the boozers and junketeers who want more recognition than a busload of weekend boozers who bought the farm. This ghastly imposition is no more than a childish demand in the usual kiwi mawkish way to have the rest of the country involv ed in what should be a private matter. Phill Goff needs his head read for allowing this.
[I’ve changed your user name back to the one the system has stored]
Please read my Moderation note.
the boozers and junketeers who want more recognition than a busload of weekend boozers who bought the farm.
Jesus that's ugly. In one short phrase you've convinced me you're not worth listening to and now I'm perfectly happy to see this monument built. (And yes I know the Rose Garden well, it's the perfect spot in my view.)
It's said that virtually every family in NZ knew someone on that plane – in our case my brother had just gotten some work done on his car by a panelbeater who he knew quite well. My brother said they'd talked about the flight and how much he was looking forward to something completely different and unique from his usual workday routine.
In short – fuck off. The bigger and flashier the monument the better in my book.
You piece of sociopathic shit!
https://mch.govt.nz/Erebus-Memorial
It sits quietly at one side of the reserve allowing the families, friends of those killed to reflect on their loss while looking over the beautiful harbour and inner gulf. It's the perfect place for such a memorial and will ensure the tragedy and its shameful aftermath is never forgotten.
Not only did 257 crew and passengers die in terrible circumstances but those who were left behind – and their supporters – had to endure a vendetta led by a former prime minister and some of his Air NZ lackeys.
Shame that a I’m more important mentality exists through the location of a monument.
The rose bedding out the front of the garden is rather ugly – too many modern hybrid teas in harsh colours planted en masse. Looks very dated actually. The use of old roses in the Nancy Steen garden behind the path is really wonderful, worth visiting for its own sake through spring/early summer. Sneak in the side gate to avoid having to avert your eyes from the ugly bedding roses – save your retinas. The grass slope down to the water is nice too, and I'm sure the monument will be sympathetically implemented and accepted over time. Hell, we Orks have even come to quite like an absurdity like the Sky Tower. And insulting dead people doesn't usually advance an argument.
It's a wonderful memorial, and very fitting.
Thank you to all who contributed to this.
to: R.P Mcmurphy…
Firstly–Thats not very nice. My friendly neighbour when I was a school kid was one on the ill fated flight, wife of a hard working builder who got her a special present.
Secondly–due process has been held. The memorial is tasteful and fits well, going by the artwork, in its proposed site in Dove Myer Robinson Park. I know the area personally and it is the city’s, not just Parnell residents territory.
Take your damn Vitamin D.
Dr John Campbell has been a relentlessly calm and reasoned voice throughout the entire COVID debacle and was talking about the potential role of Vitamin D 12 months ago.
Well finally a (Edit: Link updated) well powered RCD trial is in pre-publish and the results are unequivocal. Campbell does an executive summary in the first few minutes so there in no need to watch the whole thing. In short once you have landed in hospital the correct dose of calcifediol (the fast acting metabolite of Vitamin D) will reduce your chances of landing up in ICU and/or dying by around a factor of 3 – 4.
(And this study does not include the now well demonstrated fact that adequate levels of VitD will reduce your chance of arriving at hospital by at least another factor of 2 in the first place.)
Critically he states that a failure by govt and medical authorities to act now must amount to a "breach of duty of care".
Yes. It's been very interesting watching the increasing frustration of 'Dr. John' as he presents yet another scrupulously scrutinized piece of research. He's a very conventional and middle of the road type chappy who strives to present the technicalities in plain and unemotional tones.
Seen him get a little rattled on a couple of occasions. Over Vitamin D and the complete denial/dismissal/disregard of health authorities of the positive impact of high dose Vitamin D on Covid outcomes, and the day he presented the research regarding similar for Ivermectin.
….and this was well worth a listen to.
If the anti vaccine hesitant brigade(you know who you are) want to find one of the root causes of distrust in the very new and novel and largely untested (in any meaningful way) vaccines it is because a vaccine has from day one been presented as the ONLY hope for those vulnerable to this virus. There Is No Treatment!!! has been the constant and consistent narrative and anyone presenting any alternative view has been written off as an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.
My 'vulnerable' partner has been on the Vit D3 since this time last year (as an adjunct to his usual zinc and Vit C) as chemo 10 years ago left him very prone to sunburn. I have been taking it for the past month or so since its been simply too hot to be out in the sun.
Been recommending same to dark skinned friends.
Damn to hell our Ministry of Health who persists in failing to recommend/fund supplements considering…
Around 5% of adults in New Zealand are deficient in vitamin D (Adult Nutrition Survey 2008/09). A further 27% are below the recommended blood level of vitamin D.
https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/food-activity-and-sleep/healthy-eating/vitamin-d
And the official recommended levels are usually pretty low. From my reading the desirable range is 30 – 80 ng/l. Anything less than 20 can be considered deficient and less than 30 suboptimal. This seems a well balanced article on the topic.
I got my levels checked a few weeks back after taking 4000 IU (the upper limit I'd regard as reasonable) for almost a year (and working outdoors a fair bit) and came back at 50ng/l. Because everyone does vary a fair bit I'd recommend to be on the safe side to ask for a VitD test to be included when you have the opportunity – it's free here in Aus, but I don't know about NZ.
One of the big factors I didn't realise until recently is that as we age the efficiency of the UVB/skin route drops quite a lot. And given that older people tend to avoid outdoor skin exposure for all sorts of reasons – it makes sense to start compensating with supplements at our age. (Then there are all the other good reasons around bone and muscle health that fully justify it.)
There Is No Treatment!!! has been the constant and consistent narrative and anyone presenting any alternative view has been written off as an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.
Yes. Personally I'll line up for my shot (I hope to be able to choose the J&J version) when the time comes – but I agree the official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope is not only wrong, but possibly unrealistic as well.
The number of MSM reports and articles on a wide range of potential treatments for the prevention and/or minimisation of Covid-19 symptoms must number in the thousands – actually probably more like tens of thousands.
The contention that information about potential Covid-19 treatments has been suppressed is incredible.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/treatments-for-covid-19
I’d be really interested in any evidence suggesting that there was/is an “official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope”. In the absence of evidence, such a suggestion is at best mischievous, and could actually undermine confidence in public health initiatives. Not what’s needed right now, imho.
I’d be really interested in any evidence suggesting that there was/is an “official narrative that the vaccines were the only hope”.
Well if nothing else it's the only narrative you seem to support – where did that come from do you think? You’ve certainly been very consistently taking the position that discussion of anything else other than vaccines is something you’re going to challenge. And I'm fairly sure you regard yourself as a defender of the conventional wisdom in this regard.
And here in Australia for example if there is any media discussion on treatment options, it's completely overwhelmed by the far greater attention given to the prospect of vaccine herd immunity.
And concerning that blood test I got a few weeks back, my doc thought 4000IU per day a bit high at the first appointment so I asked him what he'd consider the right dose. He said around 2 – 3000 per day is what he is taking – and then he said "but I'm not allowed to officially recommend that".
So far COVID has claimed around 2.4m lives globally – even in the worst case interpretation of the data we've seen so far – if universal and effective VitD supplementation could have reduced that death toll by even just 10 – 20% that would have amounted to a hell of lot of lives saved.
It's not like any of this is complicated, yet for some reason you think even discussing this is mischievous.
Dear RL – so you've got nothing other than your fabrication that the only narrative I seem to support is that Covid-19 vaccines are/were the only hope.
What you forget (rather conveniently imho) is that not so long ago we were on the same page in questioning just how effective Covid-19 vaccination initiatives might be.
Your response ("Well if nothing else…") also dodges my query, so I'll ask one more time, without any real expectation of a straight answer.
In touting various potential treatments for Covid-19 infections/symptoms, the very least you could do would be to acknowledge that these treatments are all well known to frontline medical professionals treating Covid-19 patients, rather than insinuating some sort of conspiracy to deprive patients of effective treatments – a silly stance, ihmo.
meh.
Looks promising, but one study is very small and the other does not appear to be blind in any way whatsoever (while still being fairly small).
And this "vitamin D and the immune system" also sounds a lot like "vitamin C and the immune system" – a certain level of truth taken well beyond any experimental or boilogically-plausible extent.
Might it work? Might it work as well as advertisied? Sure.
Do we have the evidence for it as a standard treatment, let alone a prophylactic? Nope. And youtube videos should not bypass medical assessment boards.
Looks promising, but one study is very small and the other does not appear to be blind in any way whatsoever (while still being fairly small).
The first pilot study with 76 participants has been published for months, and the p values were so extraordinarily strong there was every justification to commit to larger and more powerful trials.
Now we have the outcome of at least one these larger trials – and with 930 participants it has more than enough statistical power to safely draw strong conclusions. I think we can safely assume that if Campbell has looked at the paper and says it's "well designed" then I'd need more than your reckons to change my mind.
Ok.
How did they assign treatment regimes to specific wards while keeping it double-blind?
If the paper passes peer review – again Campbell thinks this is highly likely – then I think we can safely assume your question is answered.
Medical science works within a framework of differing levels of evidence. For example the connection between smoking and lung cancer was not established by a gold standard RCT double blind trial.
You don't get to arbitrarily require the very highest level of evidence to be the only threshold you will accept.
I think we can safely assume that even though you have linked to the paper and can therefore read it in its entirety, the answer to my question was not immediately obvious to you. So that's one revision a reviewerr might request.
Funny you bring up lung cancer and smoking. The first big link was demonstrated in a study of 40,000 participants. Since then many longitudinal studies have repeated the observation. Experimental studies with animal models have replicated the resulsts at an individual level. Biochemistry has established a reasonable theory for biological plausibility.
If vitamin D and covid has that level of robust examination, you wouldn't be getting your advice for it off youtube.
The first big link was demonstrated in a study of 40,000 participants. Since then many longitudinal studies have repeated the observation.
Exactly – but absolutely not RCT double blind studies, which is the level of methodology you are demanding here.
In fact there have already been quite a number of metastudies on the relationship between COVID and VitD – some with very large numbers – and the vast majority of them confirm a positive role.
Dude, the pilot study you accidentally linked to managed it.
No McFlock.
There is copious evidence that vitamin D3 dampens overactive immune responses and also protects brain cells, particularly for people like me with MS. High doses are becoming the standard of care for PwMS based on many research studies.
Same applies to other auto immune diseases, and there are more and more research studies into the effect vitamin D levels have on recovery/survival of covid-19 infections. In short, the higher the vit D, the better your chances are!
Not saying it's not a treatment for other things.
Not even saying that it won't eventually be a treatment for covid-type conditions.
Just saying that a few small studies are nowhere near enough to accuse governments across the world of a "breach of duty of care".
Also, according to his channel blurb, he's not actually a medical doctor. He's in the medical sector, sure, but as he puts it "My PhD focused on the development of open learning resources for nurses nationally and internationally."
FFS now you're reduced to smearing the messenger. His almost daily output on COVID this past year arguably makes him one of the more highly informed people on the planet.
Yet you want to quibble his paper qualifications as a medical educator – well my response who the fuck do you think trains all the doctors and nurses?
If output equalled expertise, trump would be a fucking genius.
It wasn't a smear, just pointing out that this doctor is not a specialist in the field about which he is producing youtube videos. So I wouldn't go accusing people of negligence on his say-so, no matter how awesome you might think a single study might be.
If output equalled expertise, trump would be a fucking genius.
Irrelevant logical propositional fallacy.
It's not one study – first we had the pilot study and now this larger follow up. These two alone strongly confirm each other – and that's before any consideration of the numerous other studies of various standards which already point in the same direction.
Besides it's not as if I'm proposing a dangerous, high risk, untested treatment – this is boring old Vitamin D that our own bodies manufacture and has been safely taken as a supplement by millions of people for decades. Exactly what are you objecting to here?
What am I objecting to?
The waste in resources if popscience fools actually manage to affect the purchasing decisions of medical systems that are already under extreme stress, for one thing.
The fixation upon a few small studies as some sort of magic bullet.
The confirmation bias inherent in picking a youtube channel one agrees with, rather than also actively looking for studies that might not match one's preferred result.
I mean, you can't even say how or whether the less small study was double-blind, but you're obssessed with defending it and the youtube guy who introduced you to it. And you think I'm the one with the problem because I’m unconvinced by two studies and your reckons.
Vitamin D is cheap and highly available. Exactly why do you think it's a stretch to simply make it a strong recommendation?
As for denigrating someone as a 'youtube guy' just because they're on the internet – well the same logic applies to you or anyone else.
Congratulations you've just cancelled the entire internet. Must be proud of yourself.
"Cancelled"? Nah. Just can't-sell to me.
If you think calling a guy on you-tube a "you-tube guy" is denigration, you don't want to know my opinion of fools who think governments and medics should be accused of a "breach of a duty of care" on the basis of a small study that didn't even fully describe its methodology.
If you're going to persist in characterising an RCT study with 930 patients and extremely strong p-values as 'small' – then I think there is no point is discussing this with you further.
40 times smaller than the british doctors study, at any rate.
Sigh
That linked study is 76 patients. First published online in August last year. All patients were given hydroxychloroquine (which is now known to actually increase the risk of negative outcomes) and azithromycin. Some also got viamin D.
76 patients is orders of magnitude too small a sample for meaningful conclusions.
That all patients were given hydroxychloroquine, which is now known to be harmful, interferes with the outcomes to such an extent that it would be foolish to take any conclusions from this.
There are good reasons to believe that vitamin D levels are much more a marker of lifestyle, diet, genetic, and general factors that affect risk of negative covid outcomes, as opposed to the idea that vitamin D levels in isolation are a key factor. If that is the case, then supplementing with vitamin D will achieve nothing except a false sense of security with respect to covid risk.
Plenty of published articles point to this view, as well as hearing privately the views if my cousin and her husband that are doctors desperately trying to help covid patients and keeping closely on top of all the available information.
But in reasonable doses, there's no evidence to suggest vitamin D supplements may be harmful (unlike, say, hydroxychloroquine), so there hasn't been a pushback against vitamin D misinformation. It won't harm, there's a very small chance it might help with covid, and there's a good chance it will help reduce/prevent other illnesses.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(21)00003-6/fulltext#articleInformation
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/research-varies-on-whether-vitamin-d-could-provide-benefits-during-covid-19-pandemic
Given the known benefits for other conditions, and the off chance it may help with covid, apparently the UK government has been making vitamin D supplements available free to vulnerable populations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55108613
You got the wrong study – the one Campbell is highlighting is much more recent and involves 930 participants.
Try watching the first 4 minutes of the video and this will be clear.
That all patients were given hydroxychloroquine, which is now known to be harmful, interferes with the outcomes to such an extent that it would be foolish to take any conclusions from this.
HCQ is a drug that has been administered for decades to treat malaria in vast numbers with absolutely minimal concerns around harm. (Hell I was required to carry some with me when working in Latin America and my travel doctor dished it out like aspirin.) Why it suddenly became a 'harmful' when used in the context of COVID seems quite bizzaro to me.
The entire HCQ debate was poisoned right at the outset by rank political considerations that I think have no useful place in a science question.
you linked to "the wrong study".
The two studies mentioned in the video are linked in the blurb of the vid, the pilot you linked to and the <1k one you are touting.
Also, HCQ has had known severe side effects for decades, but it’s effects were still an improvement over the malaria it effectively treats.
I'm really not interested in watching a clickbait artist on youtube. The way youtube has given an income stream to anyone with the ability to sucker a following, while applying zero quality control, means as an information source anyone that is only on youtube has less than zero credibility as far as I'm concerned.
If anyone has a link to a written article on the actual study, I'm interested. But I'm not interested in watching someone who has a history of promoting misinformation (ivermectin anyone?) who is likely trying to monetise my eyeball time by at best cherry-picking factoids out of context.
This should be the 930 one.
It's interesting, but there are methodological issues.
Be interesting to see if other studies get similar results.
Thanks. From the link in the short summary to a fuller report, there's:
So they were still actively harming their patients by giving all of them hydroxychloroquine, and then giving some of them vitamin D as well. It may be just that the vitamin D was countering the harm of the hydroxychloroquine.
The study tells us nothing about the effects of vitamin D alone, or in combination with other therapies known to actually be beneficial.
So they were still actively harming their patients by giving all of them hydroxychloroquine,
Nonsense. HCQ has been used for decades to treat malaria with very well understood side effects – are you suggesting that it's now so dangerous that it should be withdrawn from that use?
Besides if your premise was true – it in no manner explains the differences in outcome between the treatment and control groups.
You're just resorting to smear by association – which is not an argument.
Very well understood side effects including high risk of cardiac problems and other serious issues, it was used because just letting malaria run its course was much worse.
On covid patients, the effects of hydroxychloroquine include:
it was used because just letting malaria run its course was much worse.
So why does the same logic not apply to COVID?
And quit hyping the side effects – almost no-one is 'actively harmed' by HCQ. The worst of the serious effects are heart arrythmia's which are generally not a dangerous problem. Or may not even be a problem at all.
Or here is the CDC's own recommendation on HCQ and malaria :
However my original comment in this thread makes absolutely no reference to HCQ – despite the huge amount of controversy on this drug – much of it motivated by rank politics in my view – and many contradictory studies, I've never highlighted it as a potential treatment and remain agnostic on it.
Actual experts discussing the methodological problems with the study:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/DAF3DFA9C4DE6D1B7047E91B1766F0
Yup, they are dissecting that study and it raises so many questions. I think there’s more to it than ‘lost in translation’. I’d call this positivist peer review 😉
It should not be published in its current state.
I read the entire thread and was reminded of the climate denial movement – opinionated critics loudly demanding perfect evidence when the real world rarely delivers such.
The distinguishing characteristic of such people is they rarely, if ever, do research or hands-on field work themselves.
If you’re referring to this thread, I think you may want to read it again:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/DAF3DFA9C4DE6D1B7047E91B1766F0
I read the other link (i.e. the previous one in your comment @ 3) this morning but I did not have time to comment. It also raised all sorts of issues with me. Now this ‘RCT’ by the same investigators is raising many concerns too with others. Something doesn’t add up here.
Campbell is no clickbait artist – and you demean yourself if that's the low standard of argument you have. If you cannot be bothered watching a few minutes of video to address the point accurately – then you really don't have any business commenting on this thread do you?
Besides I'm pretty sure YT demonitised all COVID related videos ages ago.
If anyone has a link to a written article on the actual study, I'm interested.
It was in the description of the linked video:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3771318
Campbell promoted ivermectin, tapping into the same false idea that there's some cheap widely available treatment already out there that is effective against covid, but nefarious actors (government and/or Big Pharma) are ignoring or suppressing it. Ivermectin has been trialled in a number of places, and it doesn't do shit against covid. Campbell was just plain wrong, but hoo boy he got loads of clicks and eyeball time from it.
Generating outrage is great for clickbait, but it's crap for actual information.
You want to check your assertion about covid videos being de-monetised? As far as I can tell, that lasted about a week as a blanket policy. Now, there are some topics that will cause a video to get demonetised, and those videos will get flagged with little yellow icons. But as far as I can tell, Campbell is currently getting the full wodge of moolah from all the eyeball time he can
suckerattract.https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9803260?hl=en
Update on when youtube re-monetised covid.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/11/youtube-will-now-allow-creators-to-monetize-videos-about-coronavirus-and-covid-19/
Campbell promoted ivermectin,
Where? Exactly where did he "promote" Ivermectin?
Because if you actually dig a little deeper you'll find he is roundly criticised by some for not using his popular and stable platform to promote this drug.
Vitamin D3 otoh he shamelessly promotes. In fact, he considers it an ethical duty to inform and educate.
Searches for John Campbell ivermectin has plenty of hits. The thumbnails and blurbs for the vids suggest Campbell had a positive view of ivermectin for treating covid, and I sat through a couple minutes each of a couple of the vids (all I could stomach), and he seemed to be talking it up. If he's presented nuance and caveats that require sitting through a whole twenty minutes of a video, then that just further illustrates the failings of video as a medium for transferring information.
If he's presented nuance and caveats that require sitting through a whole twenty minutes of a video, then that just further illustrates the failings of video as a medium for transferring information.
So what – just because you cannot be bothered doesn't mean shit for anyone else. And it certainly doesn't speak to the content especially when you've just admitted you haven’t seen it.
And that you get a visceral reaction – 'all I could stomach' – well it's called 'cognitive dissonance'.
The thumbnails and blurbs for the vids suggest Campbell had a positive view of ivermectin for treating covid, and I sat through a couple minutes each of a couple of the vids (all I could stomach), and he seemed to be talking it up.
Links please. And time stamps where he is actually "talking it up."
Ivermectin has been trialled in a number of places, and it doesn't do shit against covid.
Really? It may not be a very strong treatment – but it was certainly worth investigating and again it's a well understood and highly tolerated drug.
Campbell promoted ivermectin …
Interesting – suddenly you know lots more about this 'youtube clickbait artist' you've been pretending was beneath your attention. Well here is the actual video – note that I've been linking to all my claims so far – and anyone else can see for themselves that what Campbell is doing is giving careful and measured reviews of published studies as he almost always does.
But as far as I can tell, Campbell is currently getting the full wodge of moolah …
God forbid someone might make a living from producing educational material that converts medical and statistical jargon into plain language. And incidentally, Campbell has been doing these videos since well before Covid was a thing.
Andre, pray tell how you feel about Pfizer's profit forecast? They are frantically pushing aside the piles in their coffers to make room for the expected $4billion profit from the vaccine.
https://www.ft.com/content/0f1ab138-401d-40ff-824f-f6879704f10e
You have touched on a question I am interested in the answer to.
We are constantly being told the free vaccine is coming.
It is not free. How much are we paying for the vaccination roll out?
Edit: Someone who seems to care a lot more about money than I do is asking the same question and others.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/300223064/noone-knows-how-much-the-nz-government-paid-for-our-vaccines-and-noone-seems-to-be-asking
Do you believe our govt should say: 'No, not worth it'?
No, I reckon should say how much they are paying for it.
Not how our meds-buying system works though, is it.
You may want to indicate that you corrected and edited that link.
Nice to think of Australia in terms other than its extra squirrily politicians !.For anyone needing some comedic relief from the madness id recommend Rake on netflix first episodes a bit slow but definitely worth persevering in my view .
Yup we watched the entire series on ABC a few years back. Absolute gold – there's a scene at a pedestrian crossing we still act out for the sheer fun of it
Such smart writing, eh.
I've just been looking at the hook (sorry meant to put book, but hook is applicable!) The Third Way by Anthony Giddens. He seems to have been prolific throughout his career, and has arrived at our present pig's muddle of incompatible ideas in this book of his.
He seems to have thought that by having achieved welfare provisions that we have balanced the negativities that unbridled capitalism brings, and so abandoned intervention along practical straightforward means to assist citizens cope in the fevered world of commerce that we have.
…[Giddens] accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social-democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxist claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism as a mode of production. In 2009, Blair publicly declared support for a "new capitalism"…
The Third Way supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities and productive endowments
while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. It emphasises commitment to –
1 balanced budgets,
2 providing equal opportunity which is combined with
3 an emphasis on personal responsibility,
4 the decentralisation of government power to the lowest level possible,
5 encouragement and promotion of public–private partnerships,
6 improving labour supply,
7 investment in human development,
8 preserving of social capital and
9 protection of the environment.
(The Wikipedia page has numerous links explaining terms – very informative). The above points seem to encompass what we have seen brought about here in NZ. Each of these above points can bring about a small revolution in society, together they have been a tsunami. This guy deserves to have his trousers pulled down and have to run around naked for a day finding out just what it is like to be a vulnerable human in a society with fading compassion and lack of empathy for others that he erected a signpost to. He can keep his erections, the smart-alec. It seems macro overview in its objectives with little if any thought from bottom up, the micro view, of where people are in their lives and in this era, and what is needed for an informed, engaged, busy, contented, sustainable, morally attuned, positively active society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens
Incidentally there is a book called A Third Way – Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection which could be of even greater effect than The Third Way.
In A Third Way, Hillary Hoffmann and Monte Mills detail the history, context, and future of the ongoing legal fight to protect indigenous cultures. At the federal level, this fight is shaped by the assumptions that led to current federal cultural protection laws, which many tribes and their allies are now reframing to better meet their cultural and sovereign priorities. At the state level, centuries of antipathy toward tribes are beginning to give way to collaborative and cooperative efforts that better reflect indigenous interests. Most critically, tribes themselves are building laws and legal structures that reflect and invigorate their own cultural values. Taken together, and evidenced by the recent worldwide support for indigenous cultural movements, events of the last decade signal a new era for indigenous cultural protection. This important work should be read by anyone interested in the legal reforms that will guide progress toward that future. Zookal Textbooks – NZ.
The first figures of 2021 don't bode well for those who talk up the affordability of homes and the prevalence of homeownership:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/436496/median-house-price-goes-up-2-percent-reinz
And yet……
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/reinz-data-auckland-house-prices-drop-25000-sales-fall-46/Z5FKCEW3MJ2F2NFI42XR6QTW4Q/
Moralof the story? Never believe anything a real estate agent says. Somehow its always the ideal time to buy/sell/hold/rent.
This story is based on the same interview with REINZ but with a specific focus on Auckland, it doesn't refute anything from the RNZ article, nor does it demonstrate a reversal of the trends.
I realise this refers specifically to Auckland, but that market is by far the largest in NZ.
A decreasing sales volume, in any market, is usually a forerunner of falling sales prices. That's how I would read the future based on the facts. And as we slide into Autumn and winter, prices historically tend to drop (in real terms at the very least).
Moral of the story? We should believe your prognostications but not the REINZ's figures.
Probably yes. In general, RE agents are poorly educated and their experience is usually limited only to selling. They have a vested interest in spinning a story.
I have spent my working life as a chartered accountant in Public practice, company accountanting from small to huge, auditing, lecturing, running my own business both in NZ and overseas. I would consider my experience and expertise in economics and markets and business far in excess of that of most people.
Moral of the story? Ask and learn, before you make comments and judgements that betray your abysmal and negative attitudes Arkie.
Lol
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/124257882/household-income-was-up-but-so-were-housing-costs-before-covid19-stats-nz
Will have to delve into that one a bit deeper myself – seems rather optimistic given the proportion of disabled people who are unemployed or underemployed.
I wonder how they include all the disabled people being supported by their spouses, with nary a smidgen of support – no benefit or tax abatement , no support for Kiwisaver – one income means that it isn't affordable for either.
It's interesting how as the move to individualism has occurred that there are specific remnants of being treated as a couple remain that seem purely political.
It easy to simply say this is about government but it isn't – it is about society. When I first started working banks for instance would pay an allowance for married men who had a partner who wasn't working until their salary reached a certain level. They knew the cost of a couple, and children, on one income wasn't sufficient and recognised this. The state also recognised this in allowing you to claim rebates on your tax for a non-working spouse.
What the removal of such supports by both the private and public sector meant was a further disadvantage for women and those with disabilities. Add to that the other group of predominantly women that care for disabled children who also didn't work due to needing to care for and be available for their children with disabilities you start to see quite a large group with little economic security.
The non-working , non-benefit disabled group are quite invisible in research. I wonder how large this group actually is.
Yes, the way society quietly pushes the costs of ongoing support onto women and families is shocking.
Same story mentions benefit abatement threshholds changing from 1 April this year. Govt media release on that: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2102/S00076/government-delivers-on-promise-to-working-low-income-families.htm
Wow, Jacinda has flexed her international star power to give Hosking's hero Scomo an absolute serve – has an NZ PM ever spoken to the Aussies in such strong terms publicly before?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/pm-responds-to-nz-aus-woman-arrested-at-syria-turkey-border/QJLYJQWBCPCVC5GA3XAVXDT22A/
"…Ardern said she was most concerned for the two small children. the woman was detained with.
"I think New Zealand, frankly, is tired of having Australia export its problems. But now there are two children involved so we have to resolve this issue with those two children in mind."
Legally the woman's citizenship sits with New Zealand currently but Ardern said she would continue to raise the issue with Australia.
Ardern warned Morrison when he told her Australia had revoked the woman's passport that she would "speak very strongly on New Zealand's view" publicly.
"He has been forewarned of that continuously. So this morning I did the same, I reminded him that I would be raising this issue very strongly."
Ardern said she wanted to work through the issues bilaterally with Australia.
"I never think that the right response was to simply have a race to revoke people's citizenships – that is just not the right thing to do.
"We will put our hands up when we need to own a situation – we would expect the same from Australia. They did not act in good faith…"
NZ is clearly growing very tired of the 504 deportees and now this. I wonder what we can do next? I’d charge airlines NZ$1,000,000 for every 504 deportee they transport here. See how long they’ll keep carrying them.
Perhaps in future, Ardern won't be quite so quick to take a stand for Morrison when he gets dorked by another lowly Chinese official and loses his s**t. The new mantra should be, 'Don't come crying to me Scotty!'
As for Brownlee, it looks as though the last syllable of his name should be 'nose'.
Would there be any legal impediment to sending the Australian citizen who committed the mosque murders back to Australia? The cost of his imprisonment should be met by Australia. Fanciful maybe, but charter a private plane, fly the Tasman, land, unload him and say, "here he is, he's yours", fly back across the Tasman.
We've done that once before with the Rainbow Warrior bombers and had their home country (France) release them astoundingly early. Based on the ‘mickey mousing’ they have done with some of the 504s and the recent arrested former Aus/NZ dual citizen in Syria I would not trust the Aussie Govt to keep this guy in prison for the length of his NZ prison sentence.
there was / is a difference between the Rainbow Warrior terrorists and the shooter of CHCH. The first lot were employed by the French government and thus released early. The latter is a white supremacist wanna be fuckwit whom not even OZ would want to roam freely about the land.
She is no longer an Australian citizen…and therein lies the problem
Charter a private plane, fly the Tasman, land, unload him and say, "here he is, he's yours"?
They wouldn't let you land. You might have to open the door and drop him in on them. Have a Givealittle to raise money for the flight? And a parachute?
I can't remember where I read this but as I recall a New Zealand lawyer commented on this as being that if we deported him Australia would have to release him as he hadn't committed, or been found guilty of any crime in Australia.
Ah here it is Bill Hodge from the Auckland Law School
"He told First Up a new law would be required here – but more importantly, a new law would be needed in Australia.
"Because if he's deported now, gets on a plane and goes over to Sydney, he can just walk free because there is no statutory authority, no power to enforce the New Zealand sentence in Australia at the moment."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/424677/no-guarantee-mass-killer-would-serve-full-jail-term-in-australia
An xkcd for everything.
https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2425:_mRNA_Vaccine
The lass has stepped outside CV/ focus group land for the first time. Not for the silently screaming in our rich-favouring political regime, rather Oz stepped on her toes one too many times. Anyway , this is a good I encourage.
Now looking up at the comments, thanks for/criticise the footnotery. Fusty self-immergence. The queen has broke out of the 'rulebook for success and personal happiness'.
The only happiness is rooted in 1935 social democracy, or a strong people's party who the strong have to deal with. Nowt about.
Thinking it is time for harsher penalties and a ongoing PR campaign
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/illegal-fishing-net-in-auckland-marine-reserve-caught-pied-shag-sharks-and-eagle-rays-doc-investigating/BDALRZUIGUHFNMYY57HSFTOXBQ/