Open mike 16/05/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 16th, 2024 - 30 comments
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Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

30 comments on “Open mike 16/05/2024 ”

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  1. PsyclingLeft.Always 1
    16 May 2024 at 8:13 am

    PM Christopher Luxon speaks to business leaders ahead of Budget 2024

    "No bells. No whistles. Just the basics done brilliantly to rebuild the economy, to restore law and order, and to deliver better public services."

    Maybe some dog whistles ?

    And , Luxon opines, unsurprisingly..

    "We are not going to fix six years of economic vandalism in one Budget."

    Of course to a

    Chamber chief executive Simon Bridges – and former National leader – introduced the prime minister to the "sell-out crowd" and said he was impressed by Luxon's ambition for the country.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/516865/watch-pm-christopher-luxon-speaks-to-business-leaders-ahead-of-budget-2024

    meanwhile for the rest ( who voted for them? ) the buyers remorse will be kicking in…hard

  2. PsyclingLeft.Always 2
    16 May 2024 at 8:55 am

    NZTA board to determine Te Huia's fate

    RNZ asked for details about the board meeting but was told NZTA board meetings are not public.

    In comparison, Auckland Transport meeting are held publicly and agendas are published in advance.

    And of course the…the Anti Rail (they sure arent Pro Rail !)

    Prime Minister Christopher Luxon previously called Te Huia a "white elephant" while Transport Minister Simeon Brown has incorrectly said the service was one of the most heavily subsidised public transport service in the country.

    TRON local spokesperson Georgie Dansey said the government needed to commit to finishing the five-year trial so a fair assessment of the service could be made.

    "It deserves a fair go," Dansey said.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/516942/nzta-board-to-determine-te-huia-s-fate

    Support Te Huia and also fight for Rail in NZ

    https://thefutureisrail.org/

  3. Patricia Bremner 3
    16 May 2024 at 9:18 am

    "Lunch Budgets will hurt students", Opunake Principal says. Stuff Editor's Picks.( if someone can link for me I would be grateful.)

    That heading should say "Corporates take food production from the local Community."

    In an interesting summary of actions, the article indicates what will be lost along with variety and fresh food in school lunches.

    The loss of local supplies, work opportunities, community involvement and a sense of togetherness will go, to be replaced by an overseas corporate trucking in cold lunches, bypassing the locals, and having an unspoken "teachers will distribute" implied.

    As the current lunch programme has employed local people locally for local schools, it has created a pool of parents and others who take an active interest in the foods reception, and has led to variety and pupil participation at high levels.

    Act does not believe in Community or community building. Act believes in Corporates.

    Hence in its costs and budgets trumpeted widely, Act will not count the loss to local businesses or workers, to the surprise of some who possibly voted for one of the three parties.

    The unemployment, the loss of contracts to supply, a tipping point for many a local who may then not be able to pay their rent or mortgage, and may have to leave that community.

    That fallout will not appear on Act's spread sheets. Rather a tick in the box for Act funders.

    It is reduced to a mean scheme about money, not children or their community.

    Perhaps taking half a cold lunch from one child to give it to another child makes sense to them. They all "get" something which is better than nothing, but it is processed and lacks heart.

    False savings all round, lauded by Act as "We are saving the Lunch Programme", when really they are gutting a system that was working fine, so we have six months to show the real costs.

    • ianmac 3.1
      16 May 2024 at 9:26 am

      So soon? Have they been told already or is it that they are anticipating the downside of Seymour's folly?

      • Patricia Bremner 3.1.1
        16 May 2024 at 5:18 pm

        The current scheme is funded 'till the end of the year, @ $8 per hot lunch. Next year that is cut to $3 and corporates will supply… no more local input.

    • gsays 3.2
      16 May 2024 at 10:39 am

      It's so disheartening to read that but thanks Patricia.

      The intangible (at least on a balance sheet) good that comes from community organising and achieving is almost as fruitful as the children being fed.

      Kai, sharing, preparing and consuming is a fundamental, dare I say it spiritual act.

      To have it able to be demeaned because of economics (eg hospital food contracts) shows us how much we have lost.

      Neo-liberalism writ large.

    • AB 3.3
      16 May 2024 at 11:20 am

      Agree Patricia. Not much has been said about this aspect of it, but it strikes me as maybe the saddest and most destructive feature of the policy. It wrongly elevates a principle of secondary importance (efficiency and more narrowly cost efficiency) to a dominant position as the determining force of what our society looks like. When efficiency gets out of control in this way, it becomes an enemy of the common good.

      Someone with imagination might have viewed the community production of school lunches as a spark to start other sorts of community-building and local entrepreneurship. But the efficiency zealots have intervened.

      • aj 3.3.1
        16 May 2024 at 1:12 pm

        Well articulated points AB & Patricia. And the lack of community involvement sends all the wrong signals to children.

    • SPC 3.4
      16 May 2024 at 12:19 pm

      link

      https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350276178/school-business-counting-cost-slashed-lunch-budget

      For a government that claims to support more funding to local areas centralising supply (for those 11-18) it is is wrong on so many levels.

      Lower quality food will have health cost consequences.

      It undermines the local job market and community connection to the school.

  4. ianmac 4
    16 May 2024 at 9:23 am

    Where did my post go?

    Will Simeon Brown apologise for lying to the House or for incompetence?

    Marc Daalder reports: On Thursday afternoon, after the grid operator released a notice advising there was a risk of low power supply the next morning, Brown brought a chart to Parliament illustrating the increase in such notices in recent years. The graph started in 2012 and showed zero notices until 2019, followed by a sharp increase in 2021, 2022 and 2023….

    The only problem: Transpower first introduced the system of issuing low residual notices in 2019, meaning there can’t have been any prior to the implementation of the oil and gas ban.

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/05/15/transpower-takes-blame-for-simeon-browns-misleading-chart/?utm_source=Newsroom&utm_campaign=5cf7090b39-Daily_Briefing+16.05.2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_71de5c4b35-5cf7090b39-95522477&mc_cid=5cf7090b39&mc_eid=88a3081e75

    • Incognito 4.1
      16 May 2024 at 9:35 am

      Where did my post go?

      You started the comment, edited it, and then trashed it, according to the TS records in the back-end; you must have accidentally hit the wrong button. It’s sitting in the Trash folder.

  5. joe90 5
    16 May 2024 at 11:02 am

    Paywalled but the lede tells you all you need to know about these arseholes.

    /

    @marcdaalder

    New: Diplomats representing New Zealand at negotiations for a Pandemic Treaty have been told by the Government to focus on making sure New Zealand can opt out of international health rules rather than stopping future pandemics.

    https://x.com/marcdaalder/status/1790833218402570444

    • ianmac 5.1
      16 May 2024 at 12:24 pm

      The supporters of NZF demanded that the UN not be allowed to "dictate" what we should do. Expect that "the opt out" clause is to appease that minority group. (Growing respect for Marc Daalder eh?)

      • Kay 5.1.1
        16 May 2024 at 12:38 pm

        I realise that said supporters are completely beyond reasoning with now, but wouldn't it be lovely if they could just stop their grizzling for 5 minutes to appreciate that they're still alive to grizzle?

        • weka 5.1.1.1
          16 May 2024 at 1:14 pm

          I'd really like to know their thinking on an H5N1 bird flu outbreak* that has crossed to humans and has a 50% mortality rate in humans. I seem to remember raising such scenarios during the covid pandemic and people refusing to answer or sidestepping.

          *the one that's already in dairy cows as well as wild birds and factory farmed birds.

      • Incognito 5.1.2
        16 May 2024 at 1:03 pm

        The increased levels of populism by NZF and Winston Peters in particular are a concern for all policy-making by this coalition government because it often flies directly in the face of being evidence-based and rational; this includes the ideological bonfire of regulations and repeals.

        The focus on sovereignty in the mandate came despite a Cabinet paper noting there were no proposals to erode sovereignty.

        “None of the proposed reforms to the [International Health Regulations] or Pandemic Treaty contemplate giving up sovereignty to the WHO, which would be unacceptable to nearly all member states,” the paper said.

        New Zealand First leader and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters had, before the election, falsely alleged the rules would “take control of independent decision making away from sovereign countries and place control with the Director-General” of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Conspiracy theorists have pushed aggressively against the Pandemic Treaty and international health rules using similar faulty reasoning.

        To silence the critics who claim that NZ is (too) small to make a meaningful difference globally, e.g., with countering CC, this is absurd nonsense, as we’re being watched all the time for creating precedents that can and will be used as convenient escape clauses & excuses by other nations.

        The changed negotiating position comes after New Zealand was one of just four countries to reject technical amendments to international health rules late last year. Opting out of those changes was part of the National-New Zealand First coalition agreement but it prompted international consternation, Newsroom reported in January.

        “Some countries have also expressed concern about the knock-on effect it may have for countries not well disposed to amending the international pandemic prevention, preparedness and response frameworks,” officials advised Reti in December.

  6. Jimmy 6
    16 May 2024 at 11:02 am

    'Why do we have to pay huge salaries for a list MP (that no one voted for) when they aren't even working? I'm sure Darleen is hoping the enquiry drags on and on. Was supposed to take between 2 and 4 weeks and has now been 9!

    Seems like Greens may have already made their decision anyway as Darleen has not appeared on the Greens website for sometime now.

    Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has missed half of Parliament sittings in 2024, on full pay – NZ Herald

    • AB 6.1
      16 May 2024 at 11:38 am

      Pleased to see you support the principle of guilty until proven innocent. I wonder if the Herald has been so keen to feign horror over any non-female, non-brown, non-left-wing MPs in the past who have drawn a salary while temporarily suspended?

      Not that I intend wasting time poking round in that sewer to find out. As that lyrically gifted but deservedly out of fashion minor versifier A.E. Housman said, "of my three score years and ten, twenty many will not come again".

      • Jimmy 6.1.1
        16 May 2024 at 2:33 pm

        Seems like the Greens leadership may also support the "guilty until proven innocent" thing as well since she has already been removed from the website.

    • joe90 6.2
      16 May 2024 at 12:07 pm

      that no one voted for

      That whole party vote thing is a bit of a mystery, eh.

      /

  7. Reality 7
    16 May 2024 at 11:35 am

    Seymour wants pre-packaged sandwiches and muesli bars for school lunches. Not freshly made and same old same old. No hot meals it seems. Seeing he has raised the issue of waste, can't help but wonder if these will contribute to a lot of waste.

    I was speaking to someone who helps at her local primary school. The children all sit down together, learn to socialise and learn table manners. No hats are allowed. System works very well and the children are happy.

    • Matiri 7.1
      16 May 2024 at 12:09 pm

      Another positive anecdote about the value of hot school lunches from my local rural Area School newsletter. Are noodles woke food?? Garlic bread?

      Today we have a new lunch on the menu.

      Chicken Noodle Soup and Garlic Bread.

      Last year, what was then O class did a unit of work alongside Bs Cafe, where our students chose, planned and made some meals that they had created for potential school lunches as part of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako scheme.

      Today, after much work by Bs Cafe, the menu was passed as being more than acceptable, by the Ministry of Education.

      So- B, E and E have been helping make and deliver the meals to our students.

      I am led to believe it will be awesome.

      What a great partnership we have with our suppliers at Bs Cafe and the awesome work of these students and Mrs F.

  8. SPC 8
    16 May 2024 at 12:17 pm

    The birth rate – now around 1.5 per woman (we had been around 2 in recent decades – after the c1960 peak of 4). Freedom of choice related to poverty during fertility years (land – housing cost).

    We've done WFF tax credits, parental leave, pre school care subsidy, interest free tertiary loans (maybe repayment free for those in public service roles – education and health?), but the housing cost factor is still there.

    The death rate – 2019 6.87 and now 7.13 (peak 7.55 2022-2023 omicron comes for all variant and flu back in with the end of lockdown being factors).

    The continuing factor will be lack of access to primary care, including dental and poor public health policy (nutrition policy etc).

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/350275167/nz-politics-live-chris-hipkins-talks-school-lunches-programme-faces-changes

    • Kay 8.1
      16 May 2024 at 12:41 pm

      Just about all negative statistics in NZ can now be traced back to housing costs (or lack of housing).

  9. joe90 9
    16 May 2024 at 2:31 pm

    The attempted assassination of Slovakian PM Fico… curiouser and curiouser..

    Szabolcs Panyi

    @panyiszabolcs

    Wow. Looks like Slovak PM Robert Fico's reported assailant, writer Juraj Cintula, was associated with pro-Russian paramilitary group Slovenskí Branci (SB). Their leader was even trained by Russian ex-Spetsnaz soldiers. Read more on @VSquare_Project https://vsquare.org/slovenski-branci-uniformed-fools-or-an-armed-threat/

    https://x.com/panyiszabolcs/status/1790789652078526939