The f-wits of the week award has to go to the organizers and participants in yesterday's Right to Life "Death March" in Christchurch as reported on RNZ this morning. Big deal – the thousand who attended 'obeyed the law' by being in groups of 100. Tell that to the health workers if they all have to be tested because only one carried the Vovid-19 virus. More importantly, which of the self-entitled wankers will apologise to the team on 1.5 million in Auckland for their insensitivity or the thousands of rugby fans who were unable to attend the final match of the season, even though they could have 'obeyed the law' by being in groups of 100. No doubt the small trucking firm owner in Tauranga whose drivers are all having to self-isolate because they were at the border on legitimate business would love to offer some words of advice to the marchers on how to be part of the team of 5 million.
Were there a mass protests by BLM in NZ yesterday as well? If so was their concerned about the racist a**eholes who felt they should get on their keyboards and slag off the family who picked up Covid from a source that some of the best researchers in the country have still not been able to identify?
There will be interest on any unpaid student loans until you die, and while you may not choose to euthenasia, our let the coronavirus spread policy will leave you trapped in your home scared to get either assisted care in an old age facility or visit a doctor.
Given the number of Doctors dying from Covid 19.Doctors visits could be a thing of the past.we will have to use technology to interact with health care providers to prevent collapse of our health system.
Sure. The problem then is the net connectivity of some of the aged – some are/were not even able to order food on-line.
Then there are the many academics with tenure who are refusing to take classes in person this semester in the USA. On-line teaching is going to develop a lot further.
I fear this will happen. I enjoy a friendly as well as reliable relationship with the pair of doctors where I go. That is part of the value of the treatment.
In the situation of there being no doctors we could use the services of the highly qualified know everything keyboard experts who wanted life to carry on as usual right from the beginning of the virus. They knew so much and would have had no interventions past "You've got this new flu thing, go to the doctor."
we will have to use technology to interact with health care providers
That's not actually a bad thing.
I have a watch that measures my heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygenation. Throw in an app that records that info and asks questions about how you feel and sends that to the doctor and then a doctor/nurse can determine if you need to see the doctor or not.
Even without covid this would be a good system to implement.
Remarkable as these watches can be…we have a reasonably expensive smart watch that also does these things but it records steps..that haven't been taken. Which means it may also record blood pressure that may not be accurate and heart rates that are probably a bit off as well.
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Was he one of the world's last Waffen-SS soldiers per se ? or one of the world's last Waffen-SS soldiers specifically in Geraldine ? … if the latter then it sounds like the South Canterbury Township might have been a more popular bolthole for Nazis than the whole of South America.
By my reckoning, that leaves just 6 remaining SS, 4 Gestapo & 2 SD Stormtroopers left in the secret Geraldine refuge-hideaway … along with 3 remaining Mussolini Blackshirts in the nearby Italian Fascist stronghold of Temuka.
There’s a plausible theory that Hitler & Von Ribbentrop are still holed up in Gore with a bottle of whisky & a couple cyanide pills. But if it’s ac hoice between Gore & suicide you’d think they would’ve gone for the latter.
Ha – it's like the opposite of an Easter Egg hunt. The trouble is that we have a different sort of diseased person that afflicts our souls, sort of passe' trying to eliminate these old germs, when there is a new lot of people as diseased in the mind circulating everywhere.
Brighten up with Crosby SNY Southern Cross – maybe we can sail away from the bad old world to something good leaving the dirty dealers streaked behind us like a comet trail burning up in our wake.
Some good words from Southern Cross for those seeking the real New Zealand.
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day
Visited a week ago, great meal at a local restaurant then went to a NZIFF screening of Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band at the St James theatre. More class and culture there than long standing mythology would lead anyone to believe.
Good country music comes from around Gore and they have an interesting art collection. I know those things about Gore. Don't think it's Ruddygore as Gilbert and Sullivan put it.
To divert. This is Ruddigore from the Minack Theatre. Amazing
Anyone read Derek Tangye's stories about his Cornwall time there with wife Jean? Delightful, a very loving relationship in a picturesque setting, growing flowers mainly for the London market.
On Google about Derek – Derek Tangye was educated at Harrow and subsequently worked as a journalist on national newspapers. During the war and afterwards he was a member of MI5, before he and Jeannie moved to Minack. Jeannie died in 1986 and Derek in 1996.
But as I look through the info about them, I find them outed as spies to Russia!! (It isn't amazing that people believe conspiracy theories as we live the White Queen's situation of believing six impossible things before breakfast.)
But in 1949, to the total astonishment of friends and colleagues, including stars Danny Kaye, Noel Coward, Tyrone Power and Bing Crosby, the Tangyes suddenly abandoned their life as one of London's most glamorous couples and moved to a broken-down cottage in Cornwall.
The revelation that they were spying for the Soviets suggests they may have been living in fear of exposure and quit London before their treachery was discovered.
And while they were feeding the Russians (bosh or borscht?) they may have been providing a service for MI5 – we must not forget the double-switch with 'watchers'. My money would be on that, a valuable but easy to refute way of maintaining some sort of intelligence balance. Intelligent? Could be.
It is not cluster or hotspot to the best of my knowledge. I don't come from Gore, and I shouldn't react to unjustified cheapshots but someone has to stand up for the place. Yes, I know it’s satire but I don’t joke about suicides. Other than that I love Swordfish's posts 🙂
Poor old Denis Glover – was he thinking of this when he wrote sardonically:
"I dream of what may yet be seen / in Johnsonville and Geraldine"
Is Herman Goering in Johnsonville? It is part of the Ohariu electorate and Herman was known as something of a dandy. (Now scanning the photographic archive for any images of him wearing a bow tie, bouffant hairdo etc..)
That was quite an impressive diversion, from a post expressing disgust about us harbouring and delivering glowing whitewashed obituaries for an actual Nazi, turning it into a slagfest on Gore.
Yet the left gives safe harbour to any number of openly unapologetic marxists. Even here at TS they're either indulged as 'harmless' relics, or we leave unchallenged their endless weasel excuses about why every actual marxist state has been a humiliating, dangerous and miserable failure.
It's cheap and rewarding to do outrage at right wing fascists and race supremacists, but the willful hypocrisy of also remaining blind to those who go too far on the left does rather invite a some pointed mockery IMHO.
"Yet the left gives safe harbour to any number of openly unapologetic marxists"..what is even more surprising around here is the number of unapologetic free market liberals who still have the gall to call themselves Left.
"It must be tough, being "the only leftie in the village".
No it isn't… though it is quite sad seeing so many good people being first blinded then turned by the greed mechanism that is inbuilt into the very heart of the ideology of liberalism… witnessing them abandoning bit by bit their core principles and critical thinking abilities to justify to their inner being the reason that they now follow an ideology that they know deep inside is one of insatiable and ultimately suicidal endless growth regardless of the consequences to humans or the planet….that part is a bit hard at times Tbh.
But I consol myself by just being grateful that I haven’t succumbed to the undeniable allure of that short term free market liberalism trap….that will leave most of our children and grandchildren never owning their own home and without long term job security etc and so forth.
If that's an attempt to segue into another crack at BLM for being marxist, I think you're a long way off the mark on that one. This Politico piece explains why and delves into the background of how that "BLM is marxist " thing came about as a Repug attempt to damp down the heat they were getting over it.
What I find funny is that "Marxist" covers everything from Stalinism to Democratic Socialism and a few more mild flavours at that. I can understand why the yanks shit a brick at the mere word, but anyone with a glancing knowl;edge of the history of the NZLP should know better.
It's foolishness of barely undergraduate level – probably inspired by Jordan Peterson. If I can blame Marx for Stalinism, can I also blame Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition and Nietzsche for the Holocaust?
It is, however, convenient for people whose real issue is with the name of the movement but can't express that without coming across as more than a bit racist.
AB Your argument seems to be logical. But who am I to attempt my individual understanding when there are so many learned people here. Perhaps there could be a hold on ordinary transmission of political theoretical jibes until after the election. Does anyone know whether there is going to be an attempt by Nats and JC to bring the Court into delaying the election? Please correct me severely if that has been discussed elsewhere and direct me to it. Thanks.
I read Gulag Archipelago shortly after it was first published, and my first trip to Russia was 20 years ago. That was the one when I got to visit the Gulag Museum at Perm. Peterson merely puts the case, a case I had long believed, far more eloquently than I could.
As for your 'undergraduate foolishness' crack, I can only note that it was the so-called intellectual left in Europe and America who were most completely sucked in by Stalin for decades, obdurately refusing to acknowledge the undeniable and inescapable suffering of those who died by the tens of millions in his Marxist utopia.
And now the truth cannot be whitewashed away, they pretend "it wasn't real marxism". After my experiences I read that with the same gut reaction as if someone tried to defend National Socialism by claiming "Hitler wasn't a real nazi'.
I've previously linked to the 2015 video where one of the two co-founders openly and unambiguously describes both of themselves as "trained marxists" and links this training to their motivation and vision for the organisation they were creating.
Bravo, scintillating and convincing argument there.
Many millions of people who have visited the Holocaust memorial's at Auschwitz come away from the experience with not only a deep emotional impact, but a much broader understanding of exactly what happened. In one sense it opens their minds and hearts, and in another it creates a determination to draw a line in the political sands, a boundary that says fascism and race supremacy theories are unquestionably off limits.
I never really planned to go to Perm, it was a spur of the moment decision based on a chance conversation I had while on the train returning from a work trip. It's the same experience as Auschwitz, but one that's far less accessible to most Westerners, and it's spare grim horror remains a chill memory.
And again the more recent trip to Magadan was another work trip commissioning a gold processing plant at Polyus. The highway you travel on to get from Magadan to site (it's a long trip) is known as the "Road of Bones". You have to be oblivious to history not to feel something of the past slipping into your soul, while riding on that bus.
Whether these experiences (and others) opened my mind to marxism, or closed it off, is a semantic debate you are free to have with yourself.
There is obviously no point in trying to argue with you. You have made up your mind that Marxist equals Holocaust, as you demonstrate again. Others here have an education.
And here you make a foolish undergraduate mistake in drawing an equivalence between two things in different categories. Marxism is a political theory, the Holocaust was an event. They cannot be logically compared.
On the other hand I am drawing an explicit equivalence between marxism and fascism, and if you wish between the stalags and the gulags.
I was kinda hoping someone else that actually wanted the argument today was going to pick up on this other aspect of that comment about "the left" and TS harbouring marxists: it's a helluva false equivalence between disgust at the idea of harbouring a former actual serving nazi, and allowing keyboard warriors to express their opinions and desires without feeling the need to pull them up by their shorts every time they do, no matter how loony-left or marxist or maoist or stalinist they may be.
One writer claimed that Adolf died in 1964 in Patagonia. It has always been suspicious that the Russians won't allow anyone access to his alleged corpse.
Looks like he was part of the 2nd Waffen SS Division Das Reich, judging by where he said he fought, that Div. gained a pretty brutal record of atrocities in France and who knows what the fuck they got up to in Russia! They also earned themselves an extremely formidable combat record as well.
Not sure if you can condemn all members of the Waffen SS outright, most were just plain combat troops like the troops of other nations, though maybe more ideological, especially during the first few years of the war…even Gunter Grass ended up as a member.
The Waffen SS demanded a bit more loyalty then the regular conscript into the Wehrmacht.
As for his claim 'i did not know' fuck him, There is enough photographic evidence to point out his lying, both as for the atrocities committed against Russians, Poles, Jews and anyone else in between but also of the hanging of conscripted Germans on the road side trees for cowardice and treason.
(A local National Party official has written to leader Judith Collins with an impassioned plea for the party to oppose Covid-19 restrictions.)
“This election, more than ever, National has nothing to lose. We need to sack the media-doting risk-averse PR-"guru" advisors and pollsters we have relied on for too long, who focus on only only that portion of Kiwis with an overblown sense of trust in a media that is driven by and feeds human anxieties more than facts and truth,” Chesswas wrote.
He said National should align itself with the New Conservatives, who are arguing against the new lockdown, and the New Zealand Public Party, whose co-leader has suggested the “plandemic” is a bioweapon.
Allan Chesswas, chair of the Stratford branch, wrote to Collins, party president Peter Goodfellow, and several other MPs late on Thursday night asking the party oppose Covid-19 lockdown and stop buying into what he called the “overblown drama” surrounding the virus."
So, not surprised. As to the last question, I'd hate to speculate.
So the pressure this disease has provided, shows clearly that we have small but quite deranged groups of people who do not believe in community. Forewarned is forearmed.
Many have outed themselves as not community minded win at any cost and bring the government into disrepute and practicing the dark art of Dirty Politics.
These people have no power so sabotaging the 5 millions effort blackmailing NZers.for their pathetic 15 mins of fame.
These people should be treated as terrorist's as they are putting everyone's health at risk,likely to lead to unnecessary deaths overloading and damaging our health system.
So the pressure this disease has provided, shows clearly that we have small but quite deranged groups of people who do not believe in community.
Its not just that they don't believe in community but that they also believe that they are more important than anyone else and that their reckons are gospel.
Jack Tame is giving Judith Collins a grilling on TV 1. She has obviously had some PR training and is keeping her voice low and speech slow ; not lurching into her usual fish wife style of conversation.
I know a lot of fishermen's wives. None of them are remotely as nasty or dishonorable as Judith Collins.
Back in the days of the Bolger/Shipley maladministration, Winston Peters used to abuse fishwives in order to make a point. Whenever the late great Whanganui M.P. Jill Pettis interjected during one of his speeches, he'd say: "It's market day."
Covid- 19 seems to have some people in an understandable "What The Hec" mode. "We are condemned forever". We have to wash our hands. Keep a distance. Get Check ups. Avoid Transmission. Oh Poor us. tch tch tch
I dont think we are in great difficulty. 102 days without any Trouble. Currently much much less today.
Strangely enough, the main worriers are the so called people who keep the Economy going. They are bleeding at the corners of their eyes and heart and every other little doggy bit.
Month after month the wealthy are nagging "What about the Economy" ? night and day.
The Vaccines are not yet available. As happens with Viruses. For Virus are living things and they keep a deep control on their living structures.
Equally, we humans have learnt over time how to cope with the Virus enemy. Right back from the Spanish Collapse and dreadful other Viruses.
We, the Simple People, are following our wonderful Leaders – Jacinda Ardern, Doctor Bloomfield, Chris Hipkins, Testing staff. And the Sciences.
Our economy is working if our Foreign Banks allow. If all of us follow our Leaders. And if the Wealthy get off their comforts and stop nagging.
The very Elderly, will do as they do day in and day out. They will thank Mother Earth on their death bed. For they are robust Kiwi and Whenua and Family.
"The reality of New Zealand’s primary production exports is that the natural resource set is already close to fully used, with environmental sustainability issues already of major importance. There will still be some technological advances that can contribute to improved production and productivity, but it is going to be hard work.
In relation to population issues, the bottom line has to be that if New Zealand’s population continues to track upwards at rates similar to the last decade, then land-based exports can only decline on a per capita basis. Where will the new exports come from to pay for imports items for which New Zealand is poorly positioned? That issue has to be brought forward into any immigration debate"
Its said we currently produce enough food for 20 million people and as Keith Woodford notes we are pretty much at maximum output, difficult improvement aside….with primary production and migration of our two pronged approach to non NZD earnings and one prong badly blunted for the foreseeable (if not permanently) then simple arithmetic suggests any increase in population will provide a corresponding decrease in offshore purchasing power and consequently a loss of national wealth and living standards regardless of distribution issues or demographics
Ah, someone's finally starting to notice the actual economics of our nation and not just the delusional finances that has been the bedrock of government policy for decades.
Tina Ngata says many of the conspiracy theories circulating online find their genesis in the alt-right, particularly in the United States, and are promoted by white supremacist movements wanting to destabilise centrist governments.
Health officials trying to stamp out rumours as well as COVID-19 – Hipkins She says New Zealand's history of colonisation and poor treatment of tangata whenua means some sectors of Māori society are particularly susceptible to these conspiracies. "They take advantage of people who have a natural distrust of authority and so it finds very fertile soil in the minds of communities that have been oppressed in the past."
Māori sociologist Dr Tahu Kukutai agrees. She says there are specific conditions that lead to conspiracy theories being adopted by disadvantaged communities such as economic insecurity, inequality and feeling disempowered and COVID-19 has created a perfect storm of these factors.
Which is why Maori should do some work in their community to prevent this, because when MOH is accused of racism for moving to quarantine people infected in the community (only when brown skinned people are the ones being infected) it invites resistance to public safety policy. Seeking a working relationship with MOH cuts both ways.
They are. Doing work in their own community. Some are reminding their people about the 1918 pandemic & the cost to Maori, not all Maori are conspiracy nutters, in fact the 'protest' in Whangarei was pathetically attended, it's just the keyboard fantasists stirring shit that makes them more prominent than they are. Of course, as we see in the USA this shit is dangerous, the qAnon Republican candidate in Georgia is utterly terrifying. WTF is going on? As if there isn't enough crap to deal with right now.
I'm worried that Big Brown hasn't drawn attention to the unusual delay in announcing the Lotto results. It's interesting is all I'm saying. Does Big Brown know something?
It's really really spooky eh @ Gabs. In a similar 'vein' I'd really really like to know what Billy TK senior thinks of his junior. The disenfranchised of course are open to "draining the swanp" more than most, and its unfortunate that Labour hasn't picked up on this in any useful sort of way (in this space, going forward) – pragmatic incrementalism and all I 'spose prevents it and there's a heap of consultants, media analYsts, ditherers and various other hangers-on that need their tickets to be clipped.
I guess we'll see in the fullness of time. Of course the senior naturally loves the produce of his loins – and of course he always was a better guitarist.
Ordinarily, he claims to know nuffink, but here he's implying he knows everyfink, but won't say nuffink and that listeners are free to make up anyfink they want, so long that it hurts Jacinda's reputation. Big Brown then, appears to be a fink!
Sorry Weka, was skyping elderly friends on the Sunshine Coast.
The groups are varied. Out Doors Group which seems to have a vocal American voice shouting "Freedom" slogans, Billy Te Kahika with his conspiracy theory party, Facebook users abusing the current covid victims, Gerry Brownlee firing his bosses DP bullets, among others. There are good people in National, and many are onboard with the Health requirements to contain this virus. What we do regarding the dangerous minority is hard to know. Positions are hardening imo
It’s not clear what set off the police chase, but Slyman appears to have been convinced by QAnon theories that the government was out to kidnap his children. Inspired by videos he had watched online, Slyman warned his children during the chase that the police were coming to abduct them—or maybe just shoot them in a staged killing. In return, they begged him to pull over. His daughter even tried to grab the wheel of the minivan and drive it off the road after he accused her and his wife, who had dived out of the vehicle at the start of the chase, of being agents of the nefarious cabal that QAnon believers say controls the world.
“They want to make us crazy,” Slyman said, “but I’m not crazy. My wife and my daughter were a part of it.”
"If you buy something and it's not delivered, you wouldn't buy it again. Right?
Not, it seems, if you're the UK government and one of your mates or top donors is selling it.
We've just uncovered how two giant firms – Serco and Sitel – have landed lucrative deals to continue running NHS Track and Trace, despite major failures.
Serco and Sitel are reaching less than half of the people they're supposed to be contacting. They're charging £900 per person traced. Experts have branded it a 'disaster'.
Yet now they're getting up to £520 million to carry on – while councils mopping up their failures get no extra cash. Why?"
National is to release their Covid Policy later this week according to Collins.
They could claim impossible restrictions because they don't have to action their policy. Things like testing every "frontline staff" weekly. Firing every staff member who slips up. Publishing every bit of information that is not now being published. Demanding that any virus carrier be exposed and named as a carrier. Demanding that the frontline team declares exactly where an infection came from. Compulsory masks. Compulsory everything.
Demanding that Dr Reti follows Collins position on virus and fire him if he acts in a reasoned manner against the greater Collins knowledge.
There are snags when it comes to testing, waiting for the result, being a close contact with a negative result, time isolating and front line testing.
Getting the who, when, why and how tested is important?
Throw the politics away as they are mudding the waters. The priority is elimination and for every political party to strive for this. The country will know when elimination cannot be achieved.
1. Am I correct that if a contact of a cluster a person has to stay home until the result is known and even if a negative result the person has to isolate for a total of 14 days?
2. Am I correct that if no symptoms and not a close contact and you had a test that you do not need to stay at home?
3. Or if no test done and a contact from a cluster then you need to isolate for 14 days?
4. I expect that if a negative result and then you become unwell that you can get retested.
The same thoughts when posting the story. The idea that examples of selflessness might become more scarce as the past's ' heroes' from all walks disappear and the outlook if societies become driven by self first attitudes is concerning.
Winston has read my comment on here yesterday, and is now calling for Oct 17 as the election date. Presumably he's doing a Bridges, and trying to score points by calling for something he already expects to be announced.
Safe prediction: PM will announce the delay at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and we'll have a silly game of "told you so" by various politicians.
It will make no difference to the election outcome, which is all that matters.
He's also trying to distract from the indirect lashing he got from Chippie this afternoon regarding the spreading of fake news.
He's claiming the GG "should know" the majority of Parliament don't support a Sept 19 election date but since when has it been Parliament's decision? And how on earth does he know a majority of Parliament supports a delay?
We’re still no closer to knowing what that was all about. Peters wants election delayed, but won’t speculate on whether he’ll pull the lever he has at his disposal to delay it.
Peters is inferring a majority for the latest date possible means a later date should be chosen.
That would not influence a GG, the Electoral Commission is the body repsonsible for the election once the date is decided and the writ issued automatically afterward.
With parliament no longer standing Peters cannot propose a no confience motion to form an election date coalition (Seymour Peters Collins in no particular order),
Its mere electioneering. If for example there was another outbreak in November parliament would have to recovence to authorise by 2/3 majority an election next year.
The PM is still quite free to decide.
For mine, she could extend the date out 2-4 weeks (longer to cover uncertainty about how long it will take to close this down), and allow a longer period of early voting at level 2 and a slower campaign at Level 2
(presumption Auckland will go to Level 2 for 2 weeks after the 2 at Level3)
It willl still be the Electoral Commission who decide if it can be held on the day. I'm not sure what happens if they do not hold it in the day and early voting has already begun. Just keep early voting available until a Saturday can be used?
Despite me not wanting to hear much from experts, here's a good Skegg article on RNZ. He says of a Hong Kong colleague involved with SARS 1:
The Hong Kong professor (said) there are three essential components to dealing with these pandemics and they were physical distancing, including mass masking, testing and rapid contact tracing, and border controls.
He said if you relax any one of those three, you better make sure you really tighten the other two.
I'm in Auckland and there's not a lot of mask wearing. I don't wear one outside but I do whenever I go inside with the rest of the unwashed. I'd say mask wearing in Auckland indoor public places is still only 30-40%.
I think the mask wearing request is starting to get through in Auckland. I’ve just been to the Mt Eden Countdown and I’d say 80% of the queue were masked. I always have mine with me but I don’t wear it if I’m out walking alone and not getting within 2 metres of anyone. I use it for crowded pavements and shops and will presumably use it on the bus when we go back to work.
Rimmer wants 4 weeks at L1 before the election date.
But here's the thing, L1 didn't really work.
L1 gives us a false sense of security so we shouldn't really be going back to L1 until there's a vaccine, or at least better treatment and testing, and better compliance.
Curious Rimmer is now on board with levels and such after rubbishing the entire government approach in favour of throwing the vulnerable under the Covid bus.
Also, I would have thought Rimmer would want an election asap as his stock has never been higher.
Level 1 is fine. It stops worry fatigue, and lets the country exist as normally as possible.
We have a single cluster. Big deal. We've adjusted our conditions to match the threat. When that cluster is eliminated, we'll go back to level 1. When the vaccine comes and is distributed, we'll go back to level zero.
I'd like to see better direction under L1 next time. The Nats and Barry Soper whinged about Covid info being broadcast as a way to keep the populace under Ardern's control!
The mistake we made at level 1 was that people were complacent about testing for COV2 because they presumed it would be cold or flu. Such self isolation is not good enough because of family contact spread and delay in finding out it is back.
That's true. It's also another reason to delay (for a short period).
It's a sad certainty that when gov't announces a reduction in the level, PM will be accused of politicking, she'll say it was on DG's advice, opposition will insinuate DG is biased, etc, etc.
Better if that doesn't happen a week before the election.
If we delayed an election until the country was at Level 1, we could be leading the world into an era without elections for 1-2 years. With the US election coming up, its an example Trump would cite again and again.
Rimmer wants 4 weeks at L1 before the election date.
Can somebody please ask him when the whole of the country will be back at L1? Or should we ask the virus?
Can they please also ask him what should happen if there’s another step-up in Alert Levels somewhere in the country?
If extra time and a delay will play in the hands of National, will it also benefit ACT?
I’d think that voters want some sense of clarity and certainty. Shifting election dates is ‘shifty’ behaviour, politically speaking. However, voters also like fairness and possibly care less about legitimacy. So, what’s fair and what’s legitimate?
When the PM writes the writ, how might that affect any possible step-ups in Alert Levels between now and Election Day? The election campaigns of political parties should not take precedent over or come at the expense of measures to keep all of us safe.
And of course it's the government that decides levels.
"New poll out, Labour down, announce return to level 2".
Just get Seymour to sign a document saying "I hereby declare election null and void in the event of a single positive case of the virus, within one month of scheduled election. Until then government rules indefinitely, with my blessing". That should shut him up.
Seymour is all about freedom, which means freedom from responsibility, and he’ll never sign a document that will put the weight of the nation on his shoulders. He’s all show and only good for show, on TV. Bunch of self-serving nihilists 🙁
Exactly! It’s no way to plan the Election or govern the country. Might as well read the tealeaves, if we were to follow Seymour’s ‘lead’.
We already have too much uncertainty due to lockdowns, and the overall effects of the closed border, et cetera. Businesses are facing going belly-up and people are in fear of losing their jobs. School students are looking at 2020 as a very disruptive year, one that will follow them for years to come.
I wish the current crop of MPs would stop thinking about themselves, less about their own interests, and more about the five million people in this country, many of who have it much tougher than any MP.
"Ardern’s political style rests on her personal appeal, but it has also been criticised as superficial – or, as Bill English put it, “stardust”."
Bill "Fence Post" English. Respected authority on Dipton, sheep, dipping sheep and double-dipping, reckons the Prime Minister's essential quality is "stardust". We are stardust, Bill, as Joni Mitchell so elegantly sang.
"and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."
Great song, beautifully sung, and the science of the words “we are stardust” is so far advanced in its grasp of the universe.
Then the reference above, (following the line ‘we are stardust, we are golden”), which I read as meaning getting back to simplicity and back to what is important, a vital message post-Covid 19.
It's to draw attention to the high danger around the many level crossings in this country, and to the impact near misses have on train drivers' mental health.
Lotto seems to have fallen off its perch of trust.
Doesn't sound like it. Just sounds like their computers got swamped as more people than expected signed in to buy online rather than going to the store.
"National Australia Bank Ltd on Friday urged customers at high risk of default on their loans to sell their properties sooner rather than later, as it reported ballooning credit impairment charges during the quarter."
Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealanders recently learned about a new feature film. It will be about former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – and taxpayers will subsidise it to the tune of NZ$800,000. Ardern had nothing personally to do with either the film or the subsidy. But her government’s ...
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above that was recorded yesterday afternoon above between and The Kākā’s climate correspondent : An independent review panel into the emergency response to Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bayconcluded “that ...
There are now only a few days left to give feedback on the Draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport 2024-34 (see our earlier post this week on GPS submission guides). As we’ve reported, the GPS is a disaster for Local Government, so we were particularly interested to hear ...
Willis has pledged to go ahead with the debt-funded tax cuts, despite growing opposition from her own supporters worried about appearing fiscally irresponsible. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for ...
Open access notables A survey of interventions to actively conserve the frozen North, van Wijngaarden et al., Climatic Change:The frozen elements of the high North are thawing as the region warms much faster than the global mean. The dangers of sea level rise due to melting glacier ice, increased ...
Bryce Edwards writes – New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure. The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On ...
In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
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Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
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Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
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I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
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The latest attempt to use clever editing to try and make some sense of Grampa Rage Nappies' noises still doesn't come out making any sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oKYK1MPwhM
The f-wits of the week award has to go to the organizers and participants in yesterday's Right to Life "Death March" in Christchurch as reported on RNZ this morning. Big deal – the thousand who attended 'obeyed the law' by being in groups of 100. Tell that to the health workers if they all have to be tested because only one carried the Vovid-19 virus. More importantly, which of the self-entitled wankers will apologise to the team on 1.5 million in Auckland for their insensitivity or the thousands of rugby fans who were unable to attend the final match of the season, even though they could have 'obeyed the law' by being in groups of 100. No doubt the small trucking firm owner in Tauranga whose drivers are all having to self-isolate because they were at the border on legitimate business would love to offer some words of advice to the marchers on how to be part of the team of 5 million.
Aom- did you have the same criticism of the BLM protests?
What about you Lukas? If you didn't support the BLMs right to protest, do you now support these recent ones?
Were there a mass protests by BLM in NZ yesterday as well? If so was their concerned about the racist a**eholes who felt they should get on their keyboards and slag off the family who picked up Covid from a source that some of the best researchers in the country have still not been able to identify?
BLM protestors tend to have high mask compliance and maintain individual distancing where possible. Links a month or two old didn't find any covid spikes attributable to BLM protests, unlike the anti-mask rallies in the states.
Your whataboutism doesn't even seem to be relevant.
Are you saying that people in L2 should behave in a certain way to support people in L3?
Who was the interview with? I can't find anything on RNZ's website.
Weka – 7:00am RNZ News. There is also a report on Scoop: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2008/S00353/cantabrians-march-to-defend-the-right-to-life.htm.
thanks, appreciate the link.
Murdock cartoon. Cruel an funny
Make sure to note the inscription on the scythe!!!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/94869389/sharon-murdoch-cartoons
ACT
There will be interest on any unpaid student loans until you die, and while you may not choose to euthenasia, our let the coronavirus spread policy will leave you trapped in your home scared to get either assisted care in an old age facility or visit a doctor.
Given the number of Doctors dying from Covid 19.Doctors visits could be a thing of the past.we will have to use technology to interact with health care providers to prevent collapse of our health system.
Sure. The problem then is the net connectivity of some of the aged – some are/were not even able to order food on-line.
Then there are the many academics with tenure who are refusing to take classes in person this semester in the USA. On-line teaching is going to develop a lot further.
I fear this will happen. I enjoy a friendly as well as reliable relationship with the pair of doctors where I go. That is part of the value of the treatment.
In the situation of there being no doctors we could use the services of the highly qualified know everything keyboard experts who wanted life to carry on as usual right from the beginning of the virus. They knew so much and would have had no interventions past "You've got this new flu thing, go to the doctor."
I think that you are attributing too much understanding and empathy to Trump. His tweets have never said “go to the doctor”.
I suspect that they would have said something more like “it is Obama’s fault”.
/sarc
That's not actually a bad thing.
I have a watch that measures my heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygenation. Throw in an app that records that info and asks questions about how you feel and sends that to the doctor and then a doctor/nurse can determine if you need to see the doctor or not.
Even without covid this would be a good system to implement.
I'd supply these to all rest home workers – esp if it includes temperature.
Remarkable as these watches can be…we have a reasonably expensive smart watch that also does these things but it records steps..that haven't been taken. Which means it may also record blood pressure that may not be accurate and heart rates that are probably a bit off as well.
I did read up on the devices. The blood pressure and oxgenisation seems to be reasonably accurate.
The heart rate, not so much. I've ended up doing three readings in sequence and then averaging them.
The long term record would be most important but the devices do need to become more accurate as far as heart rate go.
And the steps are way out and not to be taken seriously.
I found the death notice of one of the world's last Waffen-SS soldiers in Geraldine pretty yuck.
How many more of these types did we have here?
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/south-canterbury/former-waffen-ss-officer-dies-96-geraldine
.
Was he one of the world's last Waffen-SS soldiers per se ? or one of the world's last Waffen-SS soldiers specifically in Geraldine ? … if the latter then it sounds like the South Canterbury Township might have been a more popular bolthole for Nazis than the whole of South America.
By my reckoning, that leaves just 6 remaining SS, 4 Gestapo & 2 SD Stormtroopers left in the secret Geraldine refuge-hideaway … along with 3 remaining Mussolini Blackshirts in the nearby Italian Fascist stronghold of Temuka.
There’s a plausible theory that Hitler & Von Ribbentrop are still holed up in Gore with a bottle of whisky & a couple cyanide pills. But if it’s ac hoice between Gore & suicide you’d think they would’ve gone for the latter.
LMAO
Ha – it's like the opposite of an Easter Egg hunt. The trouble is that we have a different sort of diseased person that afflicts our souls, sort of passe' trying to eliminate these old germs, when there is a new lot of people as diseased in the mind circulating everywhere.
Brighten up with Crosby SNY Southern Cross – maybe we can sail away from the bad old world to something good leaving the dirty dealers streaked behind us like a comet trail burning up in our wake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw9gLjEGJrw
Some good words from Southern Cross for those seeking the real New Zealand.
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day
From someone who has never visited Gore, I'd guess
gold
Visited a week ago, great meal at a local restaurant then went to a NZIFF screening of Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band at the St James theatre. More class and culture there than long standing mythology would lead anyone to believe.
Good country music comes from around Gore and they have an interesting art collection. I know those things about Gore. Don't think it's Ruddygore as Gilbert and Sullivan put it.
To divert. This is Ruddigore from the Minack Theatre. Amazing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minack_Theatre
(https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5gcGcxREA71uJW7vR5at7P2M5Pwk_8_5
And further:
Anyone read Derek Tangye's stories about his Cornwall time there with wife Jean? Delightful, a very loving relationship in a picturesque setting, growing flowers mainly for the London market.
(https://www.pinterest.es/pin/384987468144984988/
https://alchetron.com/Derek-Tangye
On Google about Derek – Derek Tangye was educated at Harrow and subsequently worked as a journalist on national newspapers. During the war and afterwards he was a member of MI5, before he and Jeannie moved to Minack. Jeannie died in 1986 and Derek in 1996.
But as I look through the info about them, I find them outed as spies to Russia!! (It isn't amazing that people believe conspiracy theories as we live the White Queen's situation of believing six impossible things before breakfast.)
But in 1949, to the total astonishment of friends and colleagues, including stars Danny Kaye, Noel Coward, Tyrone Power and Bing Crosby, the Tangyes suddenly abandoned their life as one of London's most glamorous couples and moved to a broken-down cottage in Cornwall.
The revelation that they were spying for the Soviets suggests they may have been living in fear of exposure and quit London before their treachery was discovered.
According to the secret Soviet file, they continued spying long after their self-imposed 'retirement', maintaining many valuable connections vital for Moscow but keeping out of the way of MI5 spycatchers. http://not4attribution.blogspot.com/2014/05/spies-princess-margarets-butler-and-top.html
And while they were feeding the Russians (bosh or borscht?) they may have been providing a service for MI5 – we must not forget the double-switch with 'watchers'. My money would be on that, a valuable but easy to refute way of maintaining some sort of intelligence balance. Intelligent? Could be.
Tell me more of what you know about the suicide rate in Gore.
It is not cluster or hotspot to the best of my knowledge. I don't come from Gore, and I shouldn't react to unjustified cheapshots but someone has to stand up for the place. Yes, I know it’s satire but I don’t joke about suicides. Other than that I love Swordfish's posts 🙂
Poor old Denis Glover – was he thinking of this when he wrote sardonically:
"I dream of what may yet be seen / in Johnsonville and Geraldine"
Is Herman Goering in Johnsonville? It is part of the Ohariu electorate and Herman was known as something of a dandy. (Now scanning the photographic archive for any images of him wearing a bow tie, bouffant hairdo etc..)
That was quite an impressive diversion, from a post expressing disgust about us harbouring and delivering glowing whitewashed obituaries for an actual Nazi, turning it into a slagfest on Gore.
Yet the left gives safe harbour to any number of openly unapologetic marxists. Even here at TS they're either indulged as 'harmless' relics, or we leave unchallenged their endless weasel excuses about why every actual marxist state has been a humiliating, dangerous and miserable failure.
It's cheap and rewarding to do outrage at right wing fascists and race supremacists, but the willful hypocrisy of also remaining blind to those who go too far on the left does rather invite a some pointed mockery IMHO.
"Yet the left gives safe harbour to any number of openly unapologetic marxists"..what is even more surprising around here is the number of unapologetic free market liberals who still have the gall to call themselves Left.
It must be tough, being "the only leftie in the village".
"It must be tough, being "the only leftie in the village".
No it isn't… though it is quite sad seeing so many good people being first blinded then turned by the greed mechanism that is inbuilt into the very heart of the ideology of liberalism… witnessing them abandoning bit by bit their core principles and critical thinking abilities to justify to their inner being the reason that they now follow an ideology that they know deep inside is one of insatiable and ultimately suicidal endless growth regardless of the consequences to humans or the planet….that part is a bit hard at times Tbh.
But I consol myself by just being grateful that I haven’t succumbed to the undeniable allure of that short term free market liberalism trap….that will leave most of our children and grandchildren never owning their own home and without long term job security etc and so forth.
If that's an attempt to segue into another crack at BLM for being marxist, I think you're a long way off the mark on that one. This Politico piece explains why and delves into the background of how that "BLM is marxist " thing came about as a Repug attempt to damp down the heat they were getting over it.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/10/elections-republicans-black-lives-matterbacklash-389906
What I find funny is that "Marxist" covers everything from Stalinism to Democratic Socialism and a few more mild flavours at that. I can understand why the yanks shit a brick at the mere word, but anyone with a glancing knowl;edge of the history of the NZLP should know better.
It's foolishness of barely undergraduate level – probably inspired by Jordan Peterson. If I can blame Marx for Stalinism, can I also blame Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition and Nietzsche for the Holocaust?
It is, however, convenient for people whose real issue is with the name of the movement but can't express that without coming across as more than a bit racist.
AB Your argument seems to be logical. But who am I to attempt my individual understanding when there are so many learned people here. Perhaps there could be a hold on ordinary transmission of political theoretical jibes until after the election. Does anyone know whether there is going to be an attempt by Nats and JC to bring the Court into delaying the election? Please correct me severely if that has been discussed elsewhere and direct me to it. Thanks.
probably inspired by Jordan Peterson.
I read Gulag Archipelago shortly after it was first published, and my first trip to Russia was 20 years ago. That was the one when I got to visit the Gulag Museum at Perm. Peterson merely puts the case, a case I had long believed, far more eloquently than I could.
As for your 'undergraduate foolishness' crack, I can only note that it was the so-called intellectual left in Europe and America who were most completely sucked in by Stalin for decades, obdurately refusing to acknowledge the undeniable and inescapable suffering of those who died by the tens of millions in his Marxist utopia.
And now the truth cannot be whitewashed away, they pretend "it wasn't real marxism". After my experiences I read that with the same gut reaction as if someone tried to defend National Socialism by claiming "Hitler wasn't a real nazi'.
I've previously linked to the 2015 video where one of the two co-founders openly and unambiguously describes both of themselves as "trained marxists" and links this training to their motivation and vision for the organisation they were creating.
Case closed.
Mind closed.
Bravo, scintillating and convincing argument there.
Many millions of people who have visited the Holocaust memorial's at Auschwitz come away from the experience with not only a deep emotional impact, but a much broader understanding of exactly what happened. In one sense it opens their minds and hearts, and in another it creates a determination to draw a line in the political sands, a boundary that says fascism and race supremacy theories are unquestionably off limits.
I never really planned to go to Perm, it was a spur of the moment decision based on a chance conversation I had while on the train returning from a work trip. It's the same experience as Auschwitz, but one that's far less accessible to most Westerners, and it's spare grim horror remains a chill memory.
And again the more recent trip to Magadan was another work trip commissioning a gold processing plant at Polyus. The highway you travel on to get from Magadan to site (it's a long trip) is known as the "Road of Bones". You have to be oblivious to history not to feel something of the past slipping into your soul, while riding on that bus.
Whether these experiences (and others) opened my mind to marxism, or closed it off, is a semantic debate you are free to have with yourself.
There is obviously no point in trying to argue with you. You have made up your mind that Marxist equals Holocaust, as you demonstrate again. Others here have an education.
It was the 'educated' left wing intellectual elites of Europe and America who were sucked in by Stalin for decades.
As any conman will tell you, their lies only succeed because their victims want them to be true.
Marxist equals Holocaust
And here you make a foolish undergraduate mistake in drawing an equivalence between two things in different categories. Marxism is a political theory, the Holocaust was an event. They cannot be logically compared.
On the other hand I am drawing an explicit equivalence between marxism and fascism, and if you wish between the stalags and the gulags.
yawn.
I was kinda hoping someone else that actually wanted the argument today was going to pick up on this other aspect of that comment about "the left" and TS harbouring marxists: it's a helluva false equivalence between disgust at the idea of harbouring a former actual serving nazi, and allowing keyboard warriors to express their opinions and desires without feeling the need to pull them up by their shorts every time they do, no matter how loony-left or marxist or maoist or stalinist they may be.
Because they weren't Marxist. This has been explained – in excruciating detail.
No true Scotsman …
That applies until it doesn't. After all, you really can't call a dog a cat.
One writer claimed that Adolf died in 1964 in Patagonia. It has always been suspicious that the Russians won't allow anyone access to his alleged corpse.
Looks like he was part of the 2nd Waffen SS Division Das Reich, judging by where he said he fought, that Div. gained a pretty brutal record of atrocities in France and who knows what the fuck they got up to in Russia! They also earned themselves an extremely formidable combat record as well.
Not sure if you can condemn all members of the Waffen SS outright, most were just plain combat troops like the troops of other nations, though maybe more ideological, especially during the first few years of the war…even Gunter Grass ended up as a member.
The Waffen SS demanded a bit more loyalty then the regular conscript into the Wehrmacht.
As for his claim 'i did not know' fuck him, There is enough photographic evidence to point out his lying, both as for the atrocities committed against Russians, Poles, Jews and anyone else in between but also of the hanging of conscripted Germans on the road side trees for cowardice and treason.
He seems to have kept the rallies to a tolerable minimum.
The Chesswas Letter
(A local National Party official has written to leader Judith Collins with an impassioned plea for the party to oppose Covid-19 restrictions.)
“This election, more than ever, National has nothing to lose. We need to sack the media-doting risk-averse PR-"guru" advisors and pollsters we have relied on for too long, who focus on only only that portion of Kiwis with an overblown sense of trust in a media that is driven by and feeds human anxieties more than facts and truth,” Chesswas wrote.
He said National should align itself with the New Conservatives, who are arguing against the new lockdown, and the New Zealand Public Party, whose co-leader has suggested the “plandemic” is a bioweapon.
Experts have condemned the New Zealand Public Party for spreading this theory, which does not have a basis in fact.
”We needs to start sounding like the principled freedom loving right wing Kiwis that are the backbone of our party,” Chesswas wrote."
Assuming that Cheswas is for real, are we surprised? Would Cheswas applaud another outbreak of infection?
Oops! Forgot the link, sorry:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300082468/coronavirus-national-party-local-official-urges-party-to-oppose-lockdowns-as-breach-of-human-rights
"
Allan Chesswas, chair of the Stratford branch, wrote to Collins, party president Peter Goodfellow, and several other MPs late on Thursday night asking the party oppose Covid-19 lockdown and stop buying into what he called the “overblown drama” surrounding the virus."
So, not surprised. As to the last question, I'd hate to speculate.
Obviously a prime candidate to replace the recently departed 'Merv'.
There's no end of them, apparently…
So the pressure this disease has provided, shows clearly that we have small but quite deranged groups of people who do not believe in community. Forewarned is forearmed.
Many have outed themselves as not community minded win at any cost and bring the government into disrepute and practicing the dark art of Dirty Politics.
We are getting a clear picture of who to trust.
These people have no power so sabotaging the 5 millions effort blackmailing NZers.for their pathetic 15 mins of fame.
These people should be treated as terrorist's as they are putting everyone's health at risk,likely to lead to unnecessary deaths overloading and damaging our health system.
Media Watch on NZR has just dealt with the huge growth of the Conspiracy theories which is muddying the Covid waters. Very tricky.
I think it was this one.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/mediawatch/audio/2018759504/covid-19-confronting-the-deluge-of-conspiracies-over-the-latest-lockdown
who are you talking about Patricia? The National Party?
Patricia said "small but quite deranged" – so it could be National. "Small, but perfectly deranged" would be ACT.
ab 631
Its not just that they don't believe in community but that they also believe that they are more important than anyone else and that their reckons are gospel.
Jack Tame is giving Judith Collins a grilling on TV 1. She has obviously had some PR training and is keeping her voice low and speech slow ; not lurching into her usual fish wife style of conversation.
Judith's eyebrows were up, too.
She doesn’t know which one is up and which one is down so the default position is both up. Just watch for the smug semi-smirk.
her usual fish wife style
????
I know a lot of fishermen's wives. None of them are remotely as nasty or dishonorable as Judith Collins.
Back in the days of the Bolger/Shipley maladministration, Winston Peters used to abuse fishwives in order to make a point. Whenever the late great Whanganui M.P. Jill Pettis interjected during one of his speeches, he'd say: "It's market day."
Heh, that's Impedimenta isn't it (Vitalstatistix wife)? Greatest (if very un PC) name. I love those books!
Don't forget Getafix!
“Getafix (or, in some translations, Magigamix, French: Panoramix) ”
https://asterix.fandom.com/wiki/Getafix
I have a soft spot for Dogmatix.
Yes – the dog pun makes it even better than the French original (Idéefix).
That is a synonym for dogmatique, and many French people learnt at school the English word dog… A very clever comic book series.
Simplicity – the Winner
Covid- 19 seems to have some people in an understandable "What The Hec" mode. "We are condemned forever". We have to wash our hands. Keep a distance. Get Check ups. Avoid Transmission. Oh Poor us. tch tch tch
I dont think we are in great difficulty. 102 days without any Trouble. Currently much much less today.
Strangely enough, the main worriers are the so called people who keep the Economy going. They are bleeding at the corners of their eyes and heart and every other little doggy bit.
Month after month the wealthy are nagging "What about the Economy" ? night and day.
The Vaccines are not yet available. As happens with Viruses. For Virus are living things and they keep a deep control on their living structures.
Equally, we humans have learnt over time how to cope with the Virus enemy. Right back from the Spanish Collapse and dreadful other Viruses.
We, the Simple People, are following our wonderful Leaders – Jacinda Ardern, Doctor Bloomfield, Chris Hipkins, Testing staff. And the Sciences.
Our economy is working if our Foreign Banks allow. If all of us follow our Leaders. And if the Wealthy get off their comforts and stop nagging.
The very Elderly, will do as they do day in and day out. They will thank Mother Earth on their death bed. For they are robust Kiwi and Whenua and Family.
My heart sobs for those who have plenty and that they are being restricted by a pandemic in increasing their wealth.
Losing money may as well be a disease to those with enough who are complaining.
The population question (for NZ)
"The reality of New Zealand’s primary production exports is that the natural resource set is already close to fully used, with environmental sustainability issues already of major importance. There will still be some technological advances that can contribute to improved production and productivity, but it is going to be hard work.
In relation to population issues, the bottom line has to be that if New Zealand’s population continues to track upwards at rates similar to the last decade, then land-based exports can only decline on a per capita basis. Where will the new exports come from to pay for imports items for which New Zealand is poorly positioned? That issue has to be brought forward into any immigration debate"
https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/106554/any-debate-immigration-has-consider-fixed-natural-resources-have-be-spread-across
Its said we currently produce enough food for 20 million people and as Keith Woodford notes we are pretty much at maximum output, difficult improvement aside….with primary production and migration of our two pronged approach to non NZD earnings and one prong badly blunted for the foreseeable (if not permanently) then simple arithmetic suggests any increase in population will provide a corresponding decrease in offshore purchasing power and consequently a loss of national wealth and living standards regardless of distribution issues or demographics
Interesting facts that keep breaking through the fog of other considerations. The most important get pushed aside.
Pat, quite right and not to mention that the best land for growing food is used for housing. Stupidity has no bounds.
Short term growth through population increase is no more sustainable than the carbon economy.
Ah, someone's finally starting to notice the actual economics of our nation and not just the delusional finances that has been the bedrock of government policy for decades.
Which is why Maori should do some work in their community to prevent this, because when MOH is accused of racism for moving to quarantine people infected in the community (only when brown skinned people are the ones being infected) it invites resistance to public safety policy. Seeking a working relationship with MOH cuts both ways.
They are. Doing work in their own community. Some are reminding their people about the 1918 pandemic & the cost to Maori, not all Maori are conspiracy nutters, in fact the 'protest' in Whangarei was pathetically attended, it's just the keyboard fantasists stirring shit that makes them more prominent than they are. Of course, as we see in the USA this shit is dangerous, the qAnon Republican candidate in Georgia is utterly terrifying. WTF is going on? As if there isn't enough crap to deal with right now.
You have a Moderation note waiting for you here: https://thestandard.org.nz/daily-review-14-08-2020/#comment-1741513. Please respond, thanks.
I'm worried that Big Brown hasn't drawn attention to the unusual delay in announcing the Lotto results. It's interesting is all I'm saying. Does Big Brown know something?
It is all very convenient isn't it Gabby? That's all I'll say but someone should resign over this, where's that RW journo when you need him.
It's really really spooky eh @ Gabs. In a similar 'vein' I'd really really like to know what Billy TK senior thinks of his junior. The disenfranchised of course are open to "draining the swanp" more than most, and its unfortunate that Labour hasn't picked up on this in any useful sort of way (in this space, going forward) – pragmatic incrementalism and all I 'spose prevents it and there's a heap of consultants, media analYsts, ditherers and various other hangers-on that need their tickets to be clipped.
I guess we'll see in the fullness of time. Of course the senior naturally loves the produce of his loins – and of course he always was a better guitarist.
" Does Big Brown know something?"
Ordinarily, he claims to know nuffink, but here he's implying he knows everyfink, but won't say nuffink and that listeners are free to make up anyfink they want, so long that it hurts Jacinda's reputation. Big Brown then, appears to be a fink!
"Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion."
– Barry Lopez
Sorry Weka, was skyping elderly friends on the Sunshine Coast.
The groups are varied. Out Doors Group which seems to have a vocal American voice shouting "Freedom" slogans, Billy Te Kahika with his conspiracy theory party, Facebook users abusing the current covid victims, Gerry Brownlee firing his bosses DP bullets, among others. There are good people in National, and many are onboard with the Health requirements to contain this virus. What we do regarding the dangerous minority is hard to know. Positions are hardening imo
It gets worse.
It’s not clear what set off the police chase, but Slyman appears to have been convinced by QAnon theories that the government was out to kidnap his children. Inspired by videos he had watched online, Slyman warned his children during the chase that the police were coming to abduct them—or maybe just shoot them in a staged killing. In return, they begged him to pull over. His daughter even tried to grab the wheel of the minivan and drive it off the road after he accused her and his wife, who had dived out of the vehicle at the start of the chase, of being agents of the nefarious cabal that QAnon believers say controls the world.
“They want to make us crazy,” Slyman said, “but I’m not crazy. My wife and my daughter were a part of it.”
http://archive.li/hXVPH (dailybeast)
I still can not get my reply button to work. Lenovo on vodafone.
From openDemocracy
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/government-u-turning-on-the-u-turn-on-local-covid-contact-tracing/
"If you buy something and it's not delivered, you wouldn't buy it again. Right?
Not, it seems, if you're the UK government and one of your mates or top donors is selling it.
We've just uncovered how two giant firms – Serco and Sitel – have landed lucrative deals to continue running NHS Track and Trace, despite major failures.
Serco and Sitel are reaching less than half of the people they're supposed to be contacting. They're charging £900 per person traced. Experts have branded it a 'disaster'.
Yet now they're getting up to £520 million to carry on – while councils mopping up their failures get no extra cash. Why?"
Cui bono?
Sounds like a Right Royal jackup.
National is to release their Covid Policy later this week according to Collins.
They could claim impossible restrictions because they don't have to action their policy. Things like testing every "frontline staff" weekly. Firing every staff member who slips up. Publishing every bit of information that is not now being published. Demanding that any virus carrier be exposed and named as a carrier. Demanding that the frontline team declares exactly where an infection came from. Compulsory masks. Compulsory everything.
Demanding that Dr Reti follows Collins position on virus and fire him if he acts in a reasoned manner against the greater Collins knowledge.
There are snags when it comes to testing, waiting for the result, being a close contact with a negative result, time isolating and front line testing.
Getting the who, when, why and how tested is important?
Throw the politics away as they are mudding the waters. The priority is elimination and for every political party to strive for this. The country will know when elimination cannot be achieved.
1. Am I correct that if a contact of a cluster a person has to stay home until the result is known and even if a negative result the person has to isolate for a total of 14 days?
2. Am I correct that if no symptoms and not a close contact and you had a test that you do not need to stay at home?
3. Or if no test done and a contact from a cluster then you need to isolate for 14 days?
4. I expect that if a negative result and then you become unwell that you can get retested.
Monique Hanotte: The teenage Belgian spy who walked 140 airmen to freedom.
Monique (Henriette) turns 100 years old with an inspiring story of courage and selflessness as a young woman assisting the Comet Line.
" With the benefit of 75 years of hindsight, Monique remains insistent that she didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. "
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/monique-hanotte-teenage-belgian-spy-walked-140-airmen-freedom/
PaddyOT, @ 19 Monique was working for the greater good, so she sees herself as a small cog in a big wheel
Currently we have too many thinking their own good is important, and they are happy to jam the wheel of greater good with self interest
The same thoughts when posting the story. The idea that examples of selflessness might become more scarce as the past's ' heroes' from all walks disappear and the outlook if societies become driven by self first attitudes is concerning.
Winston has read my comment on here yesterday, and is now calling for Oct 17 as the election date. Presumably he's doing a Bridges, and trying to score points by calling for something he already expects to be announced.
Safe prediction: PM will announce the delay at 10 a.m. tomorrow, and we'll have a silly game of "told you so" by various politicians.
It will make no difference to the election outcome, which is all that matters.
He's also trying to distract from the indirect lashing he got from Chippie this afternoon regarding the spreading of fake news.
He's claiming the GG "should know" the majority of Parliament don't support a Sept 19 election date but since when has it been Parliament's decision? And how on earth does he know a majority of Parliament supports a delay?
It says everything about NZF's irrelevance now, that he is giving a press conference and nobody is bothering to carry it live.
Unbelievable he's trying to strong-arm the Governor General. He knows he's finished.
Thomas Coughlan is as bewildered as the rest of us.
It's apparently automatic for the GG to issue the writ as soon as the PM decides on the date.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12356049
Peters is inferring a majority for the latest date possible means a later date should be chosen.
That would not influence a GG, the Electoral Commission is the body repsonsible for the election once the date is decided and the writ issued automatically afterward.
With parliament no longer standing Peters cannot propose a no confience motion to form an election date coalition (Seymour Peters Collins in no particular order),
Its mere electioneering. If for example there was another outbreak in November parliament would have to recovence to authorise by 2/3 majority an election next year.
The PM is still quite free to decide.
For mine, she could extend the date out 2-4 weeks (longer to cover uncertainty about how long it will take to close this down), and allow a longer period of early voting at level 2 and a slower campaign at Level 2
(presumption Auckland will go to Level 2 for 2 weeks after the 2 at Level3)
It willl still be the Electoral Commission who decide if it can be held on the day. I'm not sure what happens if they do not hold it in the day and early voting has already begun. Just keep early voting available until a Saturday can be used?
Winston's your fanboy following your posts, awww jealous !
Despite me not wanting to hear much from experts, here's a good Skegg article on RNZ. He says of a Hong Kong colleague involved with SARS 1:
I'm in Auckland and there's not a lot of mask wearing. I don't wear one outside but I do whenever I go inside with the rest of the unwashed. I'd say mask wearing in Auckland indoor public places is still only 30-40%.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/423630/covid-19-how-new-zealand-can-avoid-lockdowns-in-the-future
I think the mask wearing request is starting to get through in Auckland. I’ve just been to the Mt Eden Countdown and I’d say 80% of the queue were masked. I always have mine with me but I don’t wear it if I’m out walking alone and not getting within 2 metres of anyone. I use it for crowded pavements and shops and will presumably use it on the bus when we go back to work.
Hope you are right. I still see a lot of people in close contact situations not doing it.
National Party voters.
Rimmer wants 4 weeks at L1 before the election date.
But here's the thing, L1 didn't really work.
L1 gives us a false sense of security so we shouldn't really be going back to L1 until there's a vaccine, or at least better treatment and testing, and better compliance.
Curious Rimmer is now on board with levels and such after rubbishing the entire government approach in favour of throwing the vulnerable under the Covid bus.
Also, I would have thought Rimmer would want an election asap as his stock has never been higher.
Level 1 is fine. It stops worry fatigue, and lets the country exist as normally as possible.
We have a single cluster. Big deal. We've adjusted our conditions to match the threat. When that cluster is eliminated, we'll go back to level 1. When the vaccine comes and is distributed, we'll go back to level zero.
I'd like to see better direction under L1 next time. The Nats and Barry Soper whinged about Covid info being broadcast as a way to keep the populace under Ardern's control!
But it's clear lots of people need reminding.
The mistake we made at was, people
Not able to edit.
The mistake we made at level 1 was that people were complacent about testing for COV2 because they presumed it would be cold or flu. Such self isolation is not good enough because of family contact spread and delay in finding out it is back.
That's true. It's also another reason to delay (for a short period).
It's a sad certainty that when gov't announces a reduction in the level, PM will be accused of politicking, she'll say it was on DG's advice, opposition will insinuate DG is biased, etc, etc.
Better if that doesn't happen a week before the election.
What has it got to do with election timing? Maybe L3 will be an issue, but if it's back to L2/1 by september, no worries
If we delayed an election until the country was at Level 1, we could be leading the world into an era without elections for 1-2 years. With the US election coming up, its an example Trump would cite again and again.
Come on, Trump (and his potential voters) don't know or care what happens in a small European country near Germany called Noo Zeeland.
lol the number of yanks and brits who were sudden twitter experts on our nation beg to differ.
Can somebody please ask him when the whole of the country will be back at L1? Or should we ask the virus?
Can they please also ask him what should happen if there’s another step-up in Alert Levels somewhere in the country?
If extra time and a delay will play in the hands of National, will it also benefit ACT?
I’d think that voters want some sense of clarity and certainty. Shifting election dates is ‘shifty’ behaviour, politically speaking. However, voters also like fairness and possibly care less about legitimacy. So, what’s fair and what’s legitimate?
When the PM writes the writ, how might that affect any possible step-ups in Alert Levels between now and Election Day? The election campaigns of political parties should not take precedent over or come at the expense of measures to keep all of us safe.
And of course it's the government that decides levels.
"New poll out, Labour down, announce return to level 2".
Just get Seymour to sign a document saying "I hereby declare election null and void in the event of a single positive case of the virus, within one month of scheduled election. Until then government rules indefinitely, with my blessing". That should shut him up.
Seymour is all about freedom, which means freedom from responsibility, and he’ll never sign a document that will put the weight of the nation on his shoulders. He’s all show and only good for show, on TV. Bunch of self-serving nihilists 🙁
+1. I meant to add that Seymour's approach is entirely dependent on what the virus does rather than what people can take control of.
Exactly! It’s no way to plan the Election or govern the country. Might as well read the tealeaves, if we were to follow Seymour’s ‘lead’.
We already have too much uncertainty due to lockdowns, and the overall effects of the closed border, et cetera. Businesses are facing going belly-up and people are in fear of losing their jobs. School students are looking at 2020 as a very disruptive year, one that will follow them for years to come.
I wish the current crop of MPs would stop thinking about themselves, less about their own interests, and more about the five million people in this country, many of who have it much tougher than any MP.
Only 5 out of 17 households on Arden Street, Gate Pa vote National/ACT.
Look at that, 29%.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/122422822/ardern-family-plea-after-46year-promise-to-correct-a-tauranga-street-typo-unfulfilled
Now imagine what it might be like for Māori, who don't just have 1 misspelled place name, but likely thousands dotted around the country.
Short thread on the Lebanon/Hezbollah snafu.
https://twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/1293624764322414592
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1293624764322414592.html
The problem with that thread is that it assumes that FDI is necessary and is thus the reason for the reform that the author wants.
"Ardern’s political style rests on her personal appeal, but it has also been criticised as superficial – or, as Bill English put it, “stardust”."
Bill "Fence Post" English. Respected authority on Dipton, sheep, dipping sheep and double-dipping, reckons the Prime Minister's essential quality is "stardust". We are stardust, Bill, as Joni Mitchell so elegantly sang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRjQCvfcXn0
"and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden."
Great song, beautifully sung, and the science of the words “we are stardust” is so far advanced in its grasp of the universe.
Then the reference above, (following the line ‘we are stardust, we are golden”), which I read as meaning getting back to simplicity and back to what is important, a vital message post-Covid 19.
Incredible song. I take that line to be about that generation taping into the potential spirit of humanity. We've lost so much since then.
I agree about the simplicity message, and what is needed how.
Bills just Jealous cos he was a 3 times bridesmaid, PM 3 times but was never ever, ever, ever, voted into the position by the people of NZ.
Bill knows that, but still wonders why
Powerful Kiwirail campaign here.
https://www.nearmisses.co.nz
Can't figure that M. What does it say? Looks about crossing smashes.
It's to draw attention to the high danger around the many level crossings in this country, and to the impact near misses have on train drivers' mental health.
Lotto seems to have fallen off its perch of trust.
Proud anti-gambler in all its forms here and I think funding of community sports etc needs to be revisited.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12356935
Doesn't sound like it. Just sounds like their computers got swamped as more people than expected signed in to buy online rather than going to the store.
FDA approved fast and cheap saliva test .
twitter thread makes for interesting reading
https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1294654256763609090
that's very cool, and was a great read thanks.
"National Australia Bank Ltd on Friday urged customers at high risk of default on their loans to sell their properties sooner rather than later, as it reported ballooning credit impairment charges during the quarter."
https://www.reuters.com/article/nab-results/update-2-australias-nab-urges-high-risk-clients-to-sell-homes-soon-idUSL4N2FG06O
whither Australia goes NZ follows