Open mike 18/03/2020

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 18th, 2020 - 56 comments
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56 comments on “Open mike 18/03/2020 ”

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  1. David Mac 1
    18 March 2020 at 9:32 am

    Pull through headline on TV3 breakfast show this morning.

    KIWIFRUIT FARMERS MAY EMPLOY UNEMPLOYED LOCALS AS TOURIST NUMBERS DWINDLE

    I'm a bit confused as to how I feel about that "Gee, that's no good?" or "Won't that stimulate spending in that community?" or "Shouldn't we already be talking with local unemployed before we're bankrolling German 20 something scenic tours of NZ?"

    • David Mac 1.1
      18 March 2020 at 9:34 am

      Ahh I get it, people who find themselves unemployed in coming weeks will be able to find temp work picking kiwifruit, Yep, cool.

      • Kevin 1.1.1
        18 March 2020 at 3:38 pm

        So the kiwi workers are no longer 'too lazy' to pick fruit?

        Looks like the kickbacks will be drying up for a few contractors.

  3. aj 3
    18 March 2020 at 9:50 am

    Can someone explain this. We are meant to sneeze into the elbow area, then greet people by bumping elbows?!?

    Instant transmission of the virus from one persons garments to another, touch your elbow with your hands (e.g. folding arms) then touch your face and bingo! you are infected.

    • bwaghorn 3.1
      18 March 2020 at 9:57 am

      Yeah na we should just go for the good old kiwi raise of the eyebrows are up tilt of the head and chur bro .

    • Anne 3.2
      18 March 2020 at 10:05 am

      Easy to sort. Keep one elbow for polite greetings and the other elbow for sneezing into. The trick will be to remember which is which.

    • mikesh 3.3
      18 March 2020 at 10:16 am

      Blow nose with inside elbow, touch with outside. I can't touch my nose with my outside elbow anyway. I'm not made of rubber.

      • aj 3.3.1
        18 March 2020 at 11:05 am

        It's a cough or sneeze, uncontrolled, and particles are still likely to fly anywhere around the elbow.

        However – each to their own. If people are doing this, even though I don't think it's perfect, they are probably trying to be safe in other areas as well.

    • weka 3.4
      18 March 2020 at 12:42 pm

      Social distancing requires no body touching with someone who is coughing or sneezing. I don't know who is suggesting elbow bumping but please don't. The recommended distance is 2m. I think it's prudent to keep that distance for all interactions at the moment, unless closer is absolutely necessary. We should be doing 2m whether we have symptoms or not.

  4. OnceWasTim 4
    18 March 2020 at 10:17 am

    This virus will be a test of our national values

    (Dame Anne Salmond)

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120335043/this-virus-will-be-a-test-of-our-national-values

    Soimun has certainly shown us what his values are over the past 24 hours

  5. ianmac 5
    18 March 2020 at 11:33 am

    "Abortion referendum scrapped – public won't decide on law change."

    That is good if the Bill passes in the House as seems likely.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12317689

    • weka 5.1
      18 March 2020 at 12:43 pm

      Good.

    • Tiger Mountain 5.2
      18 March 2020 at 1:00 pm

      Good decision by MPs on this. 50% of the population should have legislated control over their own bodies and reproductive health, without “tyranny of the majority” type interventions such as NZ First’s proposed referendum. Much of society has moved on with this issue from the 70s, simple as that.

      • Alice Tectonite 5.2.1
        18 March 2020 at 4:17 pm

        Yes. Requiring lies about mental health is not on (especially given NZ's generally crap attitude to mental health issues)

  6. RedBaronCV 6
    18 March 2020 at 1:13 pm

    I'd like to think that the government doesn't wind up borrowing to support the well paid in the workforce. I see the business pages are starting to talk redundancy. Just looked at one company that pays it's 12 or so senior people around $20 million. These are all the employees over $1million – There is another significant bunch between $0.5 mill and $1 mill. Chop this down and 800 people could have $25k for 6 months – instead of redundancy and being pushed onto the dole and borrowings the taxpayer has to repay. Okay this is a company that has a lot of wider issues but it won't be alone.

    Time to put in place some rules around redundancies having to be signed off by the labour department (any rules around redundancy now are largely ignored) – which can only happen if the upper level has taken the big hit. Maybe also look at hefty tax increases for the well paid. And don't be sucked by the "we are earning it in a crisis" – the implication is that they don't really earn it the rest of the time?

    Lower level staff are going to get hammered as are a lot of investors through their kiwisavers etc – I can see any reason why some who are drawing large salaries can't share the pain.

    • gsays 6.1
      18 March 2020 at 1:31 pm

      Time for a maximum wage perhaps.

      Say no more than 12 times the lowest paid in the company.

    • Adam Ash 6.2
      18 March 2020 at 1:42 pm

      Classic Black Swan event eh! In accord with Parkinson's Law, those earning $1 mill will probably have mortgage and loan repayments of $900,000 and they will collapse just as fast, if not faster, than a household earning $60,000 a year paying $20k pa on their house. Almost everybody lives up to their means. It won't be pretty.

    • Ad 6.3
      18 March 2020 at 3:49 pm

      In Feb they announced borrowing $12billion for infrastructure projects.

      All those engineers and design teams are suitably recompensed. There's tens of thousands of subbies kept going from it as well.

    • Fireblade 7.1
      18 March 2020 at 1:40 pm

      Don't Panic!

    • McFlock 7.2
      18 March 2020 at 3:38 pm

      All recently returned from overseas.

      When the reverse-diaspora gets tallied, we'll see what happens. Got a colleague flying back into iso in a few days, actually.

  8. Andre 8
    18 March 2020 at 3:41 pm

    As expected, Biden wins Florida in a blowout and wins Illinois solidly. Arizona results expected to start coming in after 4pm out time.

    A special ray of sunshine in the safe Dem Illinois 3rd Congressional District, where solidly progressive Marie Newman appears to have successfully primaried the incumbent anti-abortion centrist Dan Lipinski.

    However, even in this safe Dem district, Biden is beating Sanders 3:2. Looks like progressive ideas are popular there but Sanders personally is not.

    • Bill 8.1
      18 March 2020 at 4:17 pm

      Looks like progressive ideas are popular there but Sanders personally is not.

      The power of homogenised propaganda coming in at people from all angles, no matter which way they turn, aye?

      Sanders was the most popular member of congress by far in polls over these past few years, no?

      You might remember how corporate media blanked him when they weren't discounting him before they got on to maligning him and back to blanking him (haven't seen much of him on msm of late being interviewed about topics of the day).

      It works.

      And when powerful corporate interests (that includes msm) have symbiotic relations with politicians then, y'know, it's pretty easy to bolster an anti-Sanders message by getting a slew of those politicians to say Biden is "the man", and have msm ignore the fact those self same politicians voiced very serious reservations about Biden's capabilities only a few months back.

      Shame Sanders doesn't have any "fuck you" attitude and, like Corbyn, seems to suffer from the middle class malaise of "reasonableness". He could have done far worse than photocopy a page from Trump's book when it comes to confronting vested interests. But no.

      "Let me tell you, Joe is a good friend of mine" 🙄

      • alwyn 8.1.1
        18 March 2020 at 7:03 pm

        "Sanders was the most popular member of congress".

        How do you come to that conclusion. What Polls are you relying on?

        • joe90 8.1.1.1
          18 March 2020 at 7:11 pm

          With voters in his own state.

          Sen. Bernie Sanders maintained his position as America’s most popular senator, with 64 percent of voters in his state approving of him. As he considers a second run for the presidency, the Vermont independent tops the list for the 11th quarter in a row

          https://morningconsult.com/2019/01/10/americas-most-and-least-popular-senators-q4-2018/

          • alwyn 8.1.1.1.1
            19 March 2020 at 10:33 am

            I wondered if that might have been the Poll that was being used. Bill hasn't confirmed it of course but replies to requests like mine for confirmation of claims are often ignored. Moderators sometimes miss people who don't attempt to justify there claims.

            The poll you quote seems an awfully thin reed to justify a claim that Sanders is "The most popular member of Congress" wouldn't you think? It covers only Senators. The majority of members of Congress are of course the members of the House of Representatives, who outnumber the Senators by 435 to 100. Do you know how popular the most liked of them are?

            It also assumes that only the single number of approvals being considered. Would you not think a number for net approvals might be more rational? Approval minus disapproval say?

            That would show that Bernie is the least popular Senator in his own State wouldn't it? Leahy on a net +39% is ahead of Bernie on +36%.

            However the point I would make is that a measure like this, looking only at the numbers for Senators in their home state is hardly relevant is it? We could make equally wide extrapolations to make claims like the following.

            "Jacinda Ardern is the least popular Prime Minister in New Zealand"

            "Donald Trump is the most popular President in the US"

            Just as true aren't they, and the supporting evidence is just as flimsy?

      • sumsuch 8.1.2
        18 March 2020 at 11:25 pm

        A great man of democracy.

    • AB 8.2
      18 March 2020 at 5:41 pm

      There is no reason to believe that Sanders is personally unpopular. The fact is that the 'electability' propaganda from the Democratic Party has been very successful. Paradoxically, Trump's awfulness has made it harder for Sanders to win – Democratic party voters have been persuaded to vote against the person who best represents their interests and opinons (Sanders) in order to get rid of Trump.

      God knows whether it will pan out that way. How bad do the effects of Covid-19 need to be before Trump loses? If the pandemic is still biting in November – whose voters won't turn up out of fear? Maybe the ones who know they'll have to queue for 5 hours due to Republican voter suppression tactics in poor neighbourhoods? Can Trump outflank Biden on the left with issues like NAFTA and the Iraq war, and win the mid-west swing states again? We have no idea.

      From here it looks like a terrible lost opportunity. It matters because the only global institution capable of stamping on corporate power and delivering a green new deal is the US federal government. And now the best we can hope for is Sleepy Joe – a very conservative democrat with a record of serving his corporate masters. Bad days for humanity and the planet.

      • Andre 8.2.1
        18 March 2020 at 5:59 pm

        Maybe popular wasn't the best word. Maybe "think Biden would do a better job as president to advance the things they want" might be a bit closer.

        I'm kinda relieved I voted for Warren before the choice narrowed to Biden or Sanders. I really don't know which way I'd choose. I really prefer the space where Bernie centres his ideas, but his record of actually achieving anything significant from his decades in Congress is negligible. Then when it comes to being a politician with a chance of winning the Electoral College, he frequently self-sabotages.

        Such as the way he torpedoed any chance of he may have had of winning Florida by doubling down on his "Castro done good" comments, rather than grab the opportunity to go after Trump for his cosying up to dictators for his personal benefit. Or when asked about responding to coronavirus, he defaulted to replaying his exact same message he's been playing for forty years with zero tailoring to the specific circumstances at hand. It comes across as old man yelling at the sky, rather than someone that can read a novel situation and has the cognitive adaptability to come up with an appropriate customised response.

        • Andre 8.2.1.1
          18 March 2020 at 6:26 pm

          btw, for any mods with itchy ban-hammers, the quote marks in the comment above indicate paraphrasing rather than literal direct quotes.

        • Bill 8.2.1.2
          18 March 2020 at 8:05 pm

          Hmm. Medicare for All is very popular and something people want advanced, yes? But your argument is that people will vote for the guy who says he'll veto Medicare for All if he's President, because he's the guy who will advance their interests.

          I kinda suspect a similar story would unfold for other popular "wants" of Americans.

          And maybe that's why, in spite of an unprecedented boost in the polls he got off the back of all the 'heavy wieght' brouhaha after he won S. Carolina, his poll numbers are already heading south. And maybe…just maybe…that soft support for Biden is why Perez stuck it to Democratic voters and ignored public health advice in order to get another three states under Biden's belt while the spell of Biden's "electability" lasts…just maybe.

      • The Al1en 8.2.2
        18 March 2020 at 6:43 pm

        the 'electability' propaganda from the Democratic Party has been very successful.

        This line of defence for Sanders tanking is wafer thin. If you haven't fallen for it, why should the actual democrat voters?

        • AB 8.2.2.1
          18 March 2020 at 7:43 pm

          I'm at the advantage of not actually living in the place where the thing is going on. I'm not subject to the same direct anxieties about Trump. I am absolutely not suggesting that my judgement is any better than theirs – though your seem to be insinuating that I am. And it isn't a 'defence', it's an observation, offered without the same snide absolutism of your response.

      • RedLogix 8.2.3
        18 March 2020 at 7:53 pm

        I do agree with your overall sentiment, but it's tempered by events today in the USA where the Trump administration has stepped up to the crisis in a dramatic fashion. Trump is the master of exploiting a crisis to his own benefit and I recall Ad writing a good post to that effect about a month ago.

        Too soon to tell which way it may go.

        • Bill 8.2.3.1
          18 March 2020 at 8:14 pm

          Dylan Ratigan was shitting on the irony of Trump getting a landslide campaigning on Medicare for All and a UBI 🙂

          What we do know is that his rhetoric will curve to Biden's left, just as it did with Clinton.

          • RedLogix 8.2.3.1.1
            18 March 2020 at 8:19 pm

            Exactly. A major part of his political genius is that he’s the least ideological POTUS I can ever recall and he’ll take whatever cards he’s dealt and play them win, whatever it takes.

            Here's another irony; the left loves bemoaning how the system has thrown up three old white guys, yet if you want to find out about the last woman standing in the race you will only hear about it from Tucker Carlson.

            • Andre 8.2.3.1.1.1
              18 March 2020 at 8:28 pm

              The difference is now the bilious fake-bronze baboon has a record of actual actions. Which are mostly incompetent renditions of bog-standard Repug priorities.

              It's not like 2016 where he could spout nonsense all over the entire ideological spectrum and fantasists would cherry-pick the one thing he said that met their desires and kid themselves that that was what he would do.

              • RedLogix …
                18 March 2020 at 10:37 pm

                Do me a favour and stop wasting the rabid rants on me. I know he's a total goat of a man, I personally can't stand even listening to him dribble on. But there is no question he's also done at least a dozen 'impossible things' from winning the 2016 nomination onward; it's worth understanding why.

                You know like the left is supposed to be bigly on social context.

  9. Ad 9
    18 March 2020 at 8:58 pm

    Anyone else's workplace going ridiculously HUT HUT HUT! over this whole thing?

    It just feels like a bunch of meaningless and largely pointless risk plans to make up and keep busy with.

    Fuck me if I have to lead another workshop on messaging and risk.

  10. sumsuch 10
    18 March 2020 at 11:15 pm

    The Stephen Mills Labour Party is over. An interventionist Govt for the people is needed. No more transferring power to the strong like what Labour believes since 1984. This activist govt is the model for climate change where 95 % can die unlike the small percent for this flu.

    Dominance over the powerful or they will impose their interests to the 95 %'s detriment.

    The best thing about Labour is the rich were never an ideal, just a stoppage they believed couldn't be passed. I'm sure Clark believes in the full recovery of the benefits Shipley cut.

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

    Kia Ora Newshub.

    Doctors using Skype to advise cancer patients who are most vulnerable to the virus is Ka pai.

    Ka kite Ano

  12. Eco Maori 12
    19 March 2020 at 6:51 pm

    Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.

    One of the New virus cases is in Rotorua.

    Our government redeployment program was needed.

    Gardening and self sestanable living is the way to go.

    Ka kite Ano

  13. Eco Maori 13
    20 March 2020 at 8:32 am

    Kia Ora The Am Show.

    The traffic jams are gone for now the road workers will be able to get more mahi achieved.

    I still seem to have a few cars around me.????. There is even a silver van with black windows that parks in front of me when I'm walking my dog and takes off when I get close to it been seeing it on the road constantly.?????

    Yes the Rangatahi need to take this virus seriously and do thing to minimise them selves from catching it and spreading it.

    That's is good the endangered Black Rinos population is rising.

    I have confidence that Aotearoa can control the virus.

    The difference between Climate change and the virus is the virus is short term deaster Climate change is long term.

    Ka kite Ano

  14. Eco Maori 14
    20 March 2020 at 6:30 pm

    Kia Ora Newshub.

    Air New Zealand getting a government bailout.

    One would think the police would go and talk to a person who didn't obey the law.???. about the virus.

    Ka kite Ano

  15. Eco Maori 15
    20 March 2020 at 6:49 pm

    Kia Ora Te Ao Maori News.

    That's good that Te Tairawhiti is getting 28 million to keep tangata in mahi. One doesn't sell the whare to keep a business going.

    Its good to see all the health packs being delivered to Tangata Whenua.

    Ka kite Ano