Science validates Trump: "analysis of the coronavirus by specialist biologists suggests that all available data shows it was taken into the market by someone already carrying the disease. They say they were "surprised" to find the virus was "already pre-adapted to human transmission"… The claims come as Beijing thwarts global efforts to establish the source of the virus. The news will fuel concerns over the Communist regime's cover-up".
"The new research is clear in its finding. "The publicly available genetic data does not point to cross-species transmission of the virus at the market," said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist, and Shing Zhan, an evolutionary biologist."
Since apparently I have not been following closely enough, can you point out what the stable genious said which has been validated and what statements by the authors of the study validate it?
It looks to me like you were clickbated by the Herald into a narrative carefully not made or excluded by the writer.
I doubt you're really that superficial! All over the global news in recent weeks, doesn't really matter which source to quote. However, the BBC gives this context from over a month ago:
Easy to see why the US, part-funding the lab research into batshit coronaviruses, feels partially responsible for the outcome. Hence tries to muscle China into sharing responsibility. As if it were a moral stance, y'know?
All the study concludes is that the virus samples from the wet market mutated less than a virus which just jumped species was understood to mutate. The implication is there was an earlier infected case who brought it into there.
It doesn't say anything about where that case jumped species. Just it wasn't at the market according to the evidence of the study (+ its hard to exclude anything based on our understanding of virus evolution).
It certainly doesn't validate Trumps conspiracy theories about the virus source.
The item comes across to me as a puerile attempt to somehow cast aspersions on China and give credence to Trump’s assumption it is part of a sinister Chinese plot. Further to that, it could have happened elsewhere in the world but it happened in China. So, the big lesson for them is to ban the bloody disease ridden wet markets for starters.
Note: this story is being touted by Fox News. That's enough to cast aspersions on the motivation.
Fox News reporting secondhand something Trump said doesn't count as evidence for the validation claim imo. The bit you quote isn't from Trump, it's from Fox.
Anne made the same point. I'm somewhat averse to Fox myself, of course, but I feel I ought to make a point about how news orgs operate (based on my ten years working in the TVNZ newsroom cutting news & current affairs stories).
Bias & professional standards go hand in hand: the former covert/tacit, the latter overt/explicit. So one must decode.
The key point is that I sourced it from the BBC. Do they routinely republish stuff from Fox? Not that I've noticed. So the editorial decision to do so was made on merit. Is the BBC right-wing? Since the early '70s, I've not seen anyone claim that (in those days all state media was `fascist'). To the contrary, it's been normal in right-wing circles to call the BBC socialist since the '80s.
So the news editor made the decision on newsworthiness. My take is that the code-word `multiple' triggered that decision. It implies more than several. So when a journo checks for confirmation from independent sources and encounters multiple, perception along the lines of `hell of a lot of smoke, must be a fire' happens.
So the BBC editor concurred with the Fox editor on that basis. Now you & Anne may feel Fox just invented the multiple sources. Having been equally cynical a very long time I can't be critical of that – just believe it is very unlikely based on my experience of broadcast practice.
that's all very interesting Dennis, but all I need is the actual quote from Trump so I can weigh it up against the claim that he was right.
If (according to the NZH link) Trump "claimed it emerged from a Wuhan laboratory working on bat-borne diseases", then where is the back up for that? Your quote says that someone carried it into a Wuhan market. That's not the same as it coming from a Chinese lab. It might be, but who knows?
The claim that "Science validates Trump" has yet to be demonstrated on both counts 🙂
Thus far it looks like clickbait (MSM and yourself) and politicbait (two macho countries).
Okay, I see where you're coming from. I think the Herald was simply recycling the common view that had formed over recent weeks based on what Trump and others in his cabinet had said.
I agree that I was painting with a broad brush without providing details. I had in mind the shaping of mass perceptions – along the lines of folks believing in climate change as opposed to lack of detailed proof. 😇
When you read “a report attributed to multiple unnamed sources” without any further evidence to corroborate the claims your alarm bells should go off like emergency sirens. A similar PR tool is ‘anecdotal evidence’. When the stakes are high, the burden of proof is high too. Until that time, it is all innuendo and hearsay. Didn’t think I had to lecture you on that!?
There are professional disciplines around scepticism/sources which the BBC editor would have applied. That person is part of management – not just a journalist. The ethics of protecting sources come into play.
Sure, you & I can be as sceptical as we like. Having spent a large part of my life making news stories for journos, I have ended up moderating my natural scepticism, balancing it against my informed view of how those people work.
You can bypass all that and cut it out from and avoid the clouding of your thinking if you focus on the science. Read the ‘landmark study’ and forget about the political framing by a broadcast company with strong and historical ties to political establishment. Don’t be lazy or a sheep, think for yourself.
Look, political outcomes are produced by media framing. Trying to ignore that defeats the point of political commentary. What matters is what determines the decision-making in the court of public opinion. Scientists seeming to validate Trump's stance does exactly that.
His poll ratings will not be effected by what is written in scientific papers unless media reports give it sufficient weight!
I do it to alert folks to the likely effect on mass perceptions. It is that effect which is most influential in (co-)creating political reality. I assumed you would understand that. Do you not??
And I note how you subtly misrepresented what I wrote by deleting "seeming". Naughty!
I love anecdotal evidence. It basically amounts to "I heard from Gladys down at the Four Square that Eunice Carlyle in number seven eats cats. That's why your Fluffy's been missing for six weeks."
Eric Trump reckons the virus is a hoax concocted by the Democrats to sabotage The Tangerine Abomination's election chances, probably because his old man told him so, so yeah, we can all rest easy.
Thats interesting Dennis. The western newspapers certainly took to the theory of the Wuhan market like a duck to water . Misleading videos of bat soup being drunk , and calls for the wet markets to be banned.
Now that much earllier( mid November) cases of covid 19 are being detected by re examining samples and chest xrays from unusual pneumonia cases in France , Italy and the US, we will eventually find patient zero
Wuhan may have been the first to identify the unknown novel virus(probably because they had the best virologists on hand)but that is not grounds for pinging it as the source. Wuhan is a large city with huge number s of annual visitors
A visitor could easily have carried the virus from elsewhere
Hindsight will be our teacher here
Entertain all the theories you like, but new information is gathering every day
If someone said yesterday that a person bought the virus into the market they would be labelled a conspiracy theorist. I find it interesting you're open to entertaining that theory now, but not the other lab source conspiracy…
New information is is becoming available.Thats why the rush to point the finger is so stupid
But really, would you not have considered that as a possibility?
As far as the lab source goes, there's no evidence.Several western colleagues of the Wuhan virologists who have knowledge of the lab and its research also declare the unlikelihood of an escape
I posted this link yesterday but you can lead a horse to water etc
Well if it was bought into the market, then the market is not the origin of the virus. Which makes all the "scientific" finger pointing at the market just an initial guess.
The vox article relies a lot on people who have a connection to the lab, and more so on Mr. Daszsak who I thought was leading project work there. Not a bad little PR exercise. If science/media wanted to rule out the lab, they would at least investigate the work being done there. Which is the sort of work Martenson has been doing…
There's a logic fail and a conceptual fail in your comments.
The logic fail is simple: accepting that there were cases before the market cluster is logically different to focusing on a particular potential source for that market clust (in this case the lab). Apparently there was a possible case in France in November that has been retrospectively identified. that means that not only is the lab connection a red herring, the entire focus on Wuhan might actually be a case of "Spanish Flu" all over again – the virus started somewhere completely different, wandered around the globe, but it clocked off in China for some reason.
The conceptual fail is the idea of the index patient. The earliest detected infection is not usually the source, it is simply the first case detected.
for example, the known index case for AIDS was almost certainly not the person to get it first.
Note that the Wuhan-Hu-1 isolate was taken in early December 2019 and the market samples in January 2020, according to ‘the new landmark study’. However, the original published paper states “a single patient who was a worker at the market and who was admitted to the Central Hospital of Wuhan on 26 December 2019 while experiencing a severe respiratory syndrome that included fever, dizziness and a cough”. Confusing, but it emphasises the close links, in space and in time, between Wuhan-Hu-1 and the market samples.
the virus started somewhere completely different, wandered around the globe, but it clocked off in China for some reason.
Logical fail right there.
What you selectively omit is the first known case in Wuhan is now dated on Nov 17. So we know it was present in the city on or before that date. What we don't know is in what numbers, or when the first human case really occurred, but it could easily have been sometime in October.
What we do know is the virus has a period where cases are low and mostly asymptomatic. But at some stage inside a month they inevitably take off, and that first happened in Wuhan in early December when the local hospitals started reporting unusual pneumonia's. At least four to six weeks earlier than anywhere else.
Logically this still places patient zero in Wuhan in the one city on planet earth where there is a BSL4 lab studying closely related virus's.
Sure other explanations are still going to be possible, but any serious investigation is going to have to start where the first known outbreak occurred. All else is wishful thinking for obviously political ends.
And in my link, there may have been cases in France at about the same time as the first known case in Wuhan.
Any serious investigation it going to start with confirming that the first known outbreak was in fact the first outbreak. A step you seem to frequently skip over in your obsession to build a case against your prime suspect.
Any serious investigation it going to start with confirming that the first known outbreak was in fact the first outbreak.
All the evidence from multiple countries in the past five months, is that it circulates at low, mostly undiagnosed levels in a population for 2-8 weeks, and then if no containment measures are in place, without exception the serious cases start arriving in the hospitals at an exponential rate. That first happened in Wuhan.
But hell you could be right. Xi Xinping looks like he's going to agree to an investigation.
well, no, not quite all the evidence. E.g. the possible French link. E.g. lack of a comprehensive review of retrospective tests from samples around the world, just to be reasonably sure that the first few cycles of infection didn't occur somewhere completely different to your preferred prime suspect.
But all the evidence you're prepared to consider conveniently points to a handy case of culpable concealment by an organisation you really dislike. Lucky, that.
But the earlier cases suggest that it could simply be trade-related, and the actual crossover occurred somewhere else: dude has cold, goes on trip, visits market (not even selling any animals or meat), infects a stallholder who infects their colleagues, dude goes back home and gets over the cold. Didn't infect anyone else because luck and the stallholder was their main contact (or just luck).And by the time that the dude has returned, the pig that got it from a bat and gave it to the dude has been cooked.
Alternatively, the evil communists covered up that their lab leaks like a seive, that the half dozen people who worked there all got colds in late October, and none of their colleagues from other countries noticed.
Your interpretation of the article and research is quite flawed. It has been obvious for a while that it wasn't a new species jump. The mutation rate was too low.
All that was said was that it was unlikely that this virus did the species jump in the market. Unlike SARS this one didn't show signs of immediate adaption to another host species. And it was likely that human brought the virus, already adapted, into the market and very likely into Wuhan.
My bet is that there is a population of humans around somewhere that has had the SARS (or something like it) virus endemic in their villages for quite a while, and trade has brought it to Wuhan.
Trump, being a mindless fool will of course prefer your explanation. The Chinese being rather paranoid at present will deny.
Net effect is that with all of the idiotic headline generated dick waving we're not going to get teams in to trace the actual source. Where there is one human adapted virus after a species jump there are likely to be a few.
I'll keep an open mind on the source. The main point is that the scientists cite genetic evidence that the source is unlikely to be from the raw meat market, and since Trump was suggesting the lab as a likely source, they are validating his stance. That's how it will seem to most media consumers. I realise you have some kind of experiential basis for your commentary and haven't found reason to disagree with your overall view, but it would be interesting to know what that basis is…
Whatever the understandings about overall view, your overall view is that Trump is right, 'science validates Trump' and that should be fed to media consumers.
It's the great sort of things for headline writers – 'Science backs Trump Wuhan picture.'
You know the picture, the blockbuster movie he wants us to believe, Chinese scientists beavering away trying to create some terrible disease to wipe out America and other parts of the world for their political and economic advantage.
I can imagine if Trump doesn't win in November. He'll have it that Obama used the American scientists in their work in projects with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help the Chinese plot and scheme to get rid of him and the coronavirus was the vehicle.
Peter: "your overall view is that Trump is right". Me: wrong conclusion. No evidence that he is. So I just pointed out that the scientists have validated his stance. Directing suspicion against the lab is a valid political strategy now that science is ruling out the "cross-species transmission of the virus at the market".
Science is a contestable discipline, so we await input from similar highly-qualified specialists. The research findings of the duo may turn out to be insufficiently robust. I do agree Trump will not scruple to use the plot scenario for re-election purposes if he feels the need.
I can imagine if Trump doesn't win in November. He'll have it that Obama used the American scientists in their work in projects with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help the Chinese plot and scheme to get rid of him and the coronavirus was the vehicle.
A prescient scenario. And since Biden is just Obama's puppet (Obama is the real president) then he is equally culpable. "Lock em both up for treason" will be the rallying cry. 🙄
You can play around with that. But essentially it looks like the number of genome sites that the virus has diverged has been pretty low (even now). That speaks to a virus that didn't just jump to humans. It has been used to humans for a while. We're talking years or even decades.
Most of the changes that are still extant worldwide were already present in Wuhan. It really doesn't seem like there are many mutations that aren't getting pruned by covid-19's own systems
Whereas if you looked at SARS, which was definitely a species that just jumped to humans. Killed a very high percentage of its hosts. Had a lot of variations even in its brief career.
The main point is that the scientists cite genetic evidence that the source is unlikely to be from the raw meat market, and since Trump was suggesting the lab as a likely source, they are validating his stance.
At a political level – yes of course. And the attitude of the Chinese about getting medical survey teams in isn't helping. They should just exclude all political appointees and go with actual known active virologists and plan to have them in-country for about a year chasing the source down.
Covid-19 will be just one of a range of human adapted viruses from whatever the original source is. Having Trump waving his dick around, apart from it being unhygenic and probably diseased, doesn't help in finding out what the next pandemic will be.
I only follow the general gist. I'm a physics graduate – ignorant of genetics. So did you study genetics at university? I just want to know if your analysis emerges from some kind of formal qualification. I can already tell you grasp the reasoning involved – I just need some kind of frame to put on that.
Which would be true if you assume a natural process. But routine lab procedure are exactly intended to force viral evolution, speeding up mutation rates in order to get to results within days or weeks, instead of having to wait decades.
Our problem here is that most of us are very unfamiliar with this whole area of science and it makes evaluating competing claims very difficult. Here is another informed view:
The flow chart for the above research is quite characteristic of the kind of work that gets done in BSL-4 labs. It may be summarized as follows:
• Find a nasty pathogen in nature, or create one by a bit of ordinary cloning.
• Test the pathogen’s ability to grow in vitro on various mammalian cells.
• Test the pathogen’s ability to cause illness in or death of live mammals, like mice.
• Try to figure out, from a number of well-established receptor proteins identified by legitimate laboratories, which human protein the pathogen might recognize.
• Try to neutralize the pathogen with antibodies in vitro.
• Check if the killed pathogen or a low number of the live pathogen will work as a vaccine in live mammals, like mice, and protect them in future encounters with the pathogen.
This is the identical flow chart that is probably followed for the development of bioweapons. In particular, if a vaccine can be raised against a pathogen, then this allows its creator to vaccinate himself and safely use the pathogen as a weapon against his imagined enemies. It is a banally evil path that is well trod by a particular kind of pedestrian scientist.
The sort of study where a scientist creates a pathogen is politely labeled gain-of-function research by biologists. It raises eyebrows in the scientific community whenever such work gets generously funded or prominently published, like the paper I just described, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine in 2015. Gain-of-function research continues to be funded, however, with no oversight from the public that finances it and is most likely to suffer from it. For the most part, this kind of research goes unpublished.
The whole article is quite readable and interesting. Our fundamental problem is that nothing can be ruled in or out at present. Apparently informed people are making claims that on examination that are based on circular reasoning, questionable presuppositions and selective accounts of the science.
My favourite scifi author Vernor Vinge wrote in his The Peace Wars series (published in the 80's) of how biologists would create diseases that devastated humanity, but no-one could ever get to the truth and no-one was ever held accountable. As a result in his somewhat dystopian future world, the bio-scientists had been deemed illegal, highly despised and driven deeply underground. Because there was no effective oversight mechanism, no-one trusted them, and the potential good they could also do was lost to humanity.
We are probably not quite there yet, but the path we are on could easily have this as a destination.
Yeah, but the problem is that evolutionary biowar pattern simply isn't that useful for slow plague spread – which is what this one does. That is why virtually all of the material published on biowar weapons was orientated towards contact, short incubation, and kill rather than population spread. Natural evolution strongly tends towards getting the host to breed viruses without killing the host. Biowar patterns are more like SARS or Ebola or dispersed spread anthrax than what covid-19 is.
So far no-one has managed to point to anything that indicates that this is engineered weapon. And the way that it operates indicates that it has had a significant evolution in bats, and quite a lot of time adapting to how to infect humans without killing too many of them.
Which the pattern you've pointed to doesn't allow without a butt load of deaths.
I suspect your aversion to the PRC is overcoming your common sense.
Don't think he's pointing to a deliberate release. Accidental, I reckon. The Hopkins covid tracker graph shows a classic linear increase. Not exponential. If it were malignant population elimination, you'd see exponential.
Also the daily rate stabilised weeks ago – we can see that by selecting the daily tab on that graph. So as contagions go, this looks rather moderate…
evolutionary biowar pattern simply isn't that useful for slow plague spread – which is what this one does.
Nowhere have I described this as a 'biowar' virus. It clearly doesn't fit the pattern of a conventional military tool. But that doesn't rule out other possible reasons why this virus could have been evolved within a lab setting.
For a start WIV is tightly linked to the PLA and in that context there is every reason to expect at least some research programs to be secret and unpublished. Assuming that every virus they had worked on was actually published is naive in the extreme.
Indeed the CCP has now been forced to admit they ordered the destruction of samples and work done at WIV early in January, further muddying the evidential trail.
And since late January all Chinese research must be passed through political control before being released.
Assuming you know anything accurate and sufficient to draw firm conclusions in this environment is optimistic at best.
So far no-one has managed to point to anything that indicates that this is engineered weapon.
The term 'weapon' implies malicious intent, but until we understand exactly how this virus arose we cannot determine intent. And I've been very careful not to go to that conclusion. That's twice in one comment you've pulled that straw man on me.
What I believe is necessary here is that until we have an independent, trusted and impartial investigation … free to the extent possible of either US or CCP political interference … then we will not get to the truth.
I suspect your aversion to the PRC is overcoming your common sense.
And content not with two strawmen, you pull a third. At no point have I attacked or denigrated in any fashion the people of China. As I've made it clear many times, I have close Chinese family and social connections. You may want to ask our old friend CV exactly which regular here at TS was the most generally supportive of him for many years. Bill's charges of 'idiot xenophobia' is wrong on the facts, intellectually lazy and downright irksome.
On the other hand the CCP is a different creature altogether … yes my dislike of them is real and well founded. Then again I'm not the only one to have concluded … before COVID … that the current Chinese government under Xi Xinping’s rule are a pack of genocidal, power-mad, information-suppressing, exploitative, ultra-nationalists.
Trump was of course for some months very supportive of the CCP effort in containing CV19; but now of course it turns out all of this was bullshit and it was already loose on the world, and Trump is now expressing considerable disappointment in what has happened … everyone is now idiotically acting as if the CCP is somehow lily-white and the innocent party.
Trump plastering his sticky mitts over this issue, for his own political purposes, makes him no-one's hero. Nothing he has to say now in May, has any relevance to what we need to know about what may have been happening at WIV last year. This event has already caused immense grief and hardship in just a few short months, and is on track to cause a great deal more.
Why is everyone so resistant to the idea that a full investigation, and if warranted a proper accountability, needs to happen? Hell if this was a coal mine explosion there would be no problem.
"that the current Chinese government under Xi Xinping’s rule are a pack of genocidal, power-mad, information-suppressing, exploitative, ultra-nationalists."
Hear hear!
I have Uyghur friends. Ask them what they think of the CCP.
That's interesting, Tony. Do they live here (immigrants)? Or have you travelled through their region?
I presume they see their ethnicity as being a target due to muslim religion but it would be interesting to know if the regime's policy is viewed as racist too (on a similar basis to their oppression of Tibetans, I mean).
I taught for a bit over 3 years in Urumqi, and travelled fairly widely in the region and the 'stans.'
There are few Uyghurs living in NZ and most are pretty guarded in their public criticism of the regime, having relatives back in Xinjiang. Their most frequent beef is about the oppression of their religion, though they have no general love for the Han.
Nowhere have I described this as a 'biowar' virus.
This may be correct, strictly speaking, but you did include it in your quote @ 1.3.2 and if you were simply trying to outline how forced evolution can be done in an appropriate lab and the corresponding workflow then you could have stopped the quote there and then. You didn’t and this is slightly confusing. See what I’m saying?
As long as political games are played over and on top of this, the chances of getting to bottom of it are nil. This was the point I tried to make with Dennis but he didn’t get it. Welcome next pandemic?
Yes I can see the possible confusion arising from my quotation, but the full article makes it clearer. The point is that the 'gain of function' procedures for developing vaccines are for all practical purposes indistinguishable from developing a biowar virus. You really cannot conclusively determine intent just by looking at the genetic sequence (unless the developer was especially clumsy) of the resulting virus. Which is why I've been careful all along to avoid ascribing intent behind SAR-COV-2.
As you say only an apolitical investigation will suffice to uncover the truth. Interestingly Xi Xingping last night seems to have agreed to such a thing, but then immediately undermined his bona fides by slapping an 80% tariff on Australian barley … and then has the bare faced gall to pretend it has nothing to do with Australia being the nation that lead the call for the investigation.
The CoV closest to SARS-CoV-2 is RaTG13 and even that one is a bit of a mystery, which makes SARS-CoV-2 and even bigger mystery as to where it came from, when, and where it first jumped to human if that is what actually happened. Without finding the missing link(s), we will never know. This could leave us less or under-prepared for the next pandemic, which is such a compelling argument, in my opinion, that one wonders why anybody would resist accepting it …
Sometime around 2001 I was working on a site on my own, and at dinner that night I was sat at the same table with another guy also on his own. He was a Scottish academic turned commercial, and his background was a rather unusual mix (for then) of computer science and genetics.
The one thing I clearly recall from the conversation that night was his description of how the work the team he was leading was going to enable genetic sequencing of full genomes within days or even hours. Keep in mind that the first full human genome project had only just been done, and had taken a huge collaborative effort to achieve. I was pretty impressed, only a few times in life do you get the chance to meet people you know will change our world.
Now less than 20 years later all of his predictions are come true, and we take them for granted. Our progress in this genetic biotech area is only just beginning; comparable to where the quantum mechanics era was in say the 1930's.
You are right, this will not be the last event of this kind to challenge us. Disease is our ancient enemy, it has deep roots in our behaviours and beliefs, and in many ways I suspect this new found power will prove more troublesome to our collective sanity than any before it.
We can only speculate why you started your framing comment with Trump.
The original but not yet peer-reviewed paper is your best source of scientific information without the distracting framing and other unhelpful baggage.
The paper is actually remarkably easy (!) to read, almost as if it was written with one eye on an audience of laypeople. I recommend it.
If you do read it, you’ll note the carefully worded conclusions and the many still-unanswered questions.
Obviously, the market was a factor in spreading the disease, through the food sold there but more likely predominantly through the people mingling there.
The media does have a habit of interpreting science, true. I guess I'm pragmatic in seeing political players using those media interpretations rather than actual scientific opinions (because they believe the public are influenced by the former way more than the latter).
Political commentary inevitably flows from framing used by politicians and media, in consequence of that influence on the balance of public opinion. So I'm no different from any other commentator in that respect.
I looked at the abstract & conclusion of the paper itself via your link, thanks, but see no reason for further comment on it at this stage.
You fell in the classic trap of letting the framing and interpretations by and from others influence your thinking and judgement about something that is primarily a scientific quest. Arguably, most commenters go ‘but Trump’, ‘but Putin’, ‘but her e-mails’, ‘but the CCP’, et cetera, rather than reading a scientific paper. If the horse doesn’t want to be led then it is likely a donkey, or an old goat … 😉
"A lot of well-meaning Australians get frustrated when any attempt to start a conversation about migration immediately attracts accusations of racism. This is particularly so for many Greens, whose white fragility prevents them from recognising how sustainability arguments for limiting immigration can be inherently racist."
"The hard truth is that in settler-colonial countries like Australia, you simply can’t talk sensibly about migration without talking about racism. The two topics are inextricably linked, and leaving race out of the conversation – like you’re some kind of ‘objective’ scientist neutrally discussing populations and carrying capacities without acknowledging past and ongoing systemic racism – just tacitly reinforces racist norms."
Interesting because it shows how willing the left are to divide on an esoteric basis. No need for the controllers to use `divide & rule' – the proles do it to themselves. Politically-correct posturing normally seems irrelevant – but the writer appears to be conscience-driven, so I'm responding to the sincerity.
I would say it's better to reference racism when talking about immigration and green issues because we have a culture of racism in NZ against certain ethnicities who make up a large part of our new migrants. Listening to the voices of those people helps us, it's not a hindrance.
Otoh, many on the left tend to reject any discussion about population and ecology/climate as classist, and any discussion of immigration and ecology/climate as racist, so the development of ideas in this area looks stalled to me.
Both sides taking a position of outright rejection of the other leaves us in a false binary, and these don't help.
Discussion of population is usually shut down as Malthusian anti-human oppression, or racist against Africans, who are on an unsustainable growth trajectory. There is a crazy dude on Twitter who advocates for a global one-child policy and he's got a point. At this point, human population growth means ecosystem destruction, and eventual catastrophe if we don't stop.
At this point, human population growth means ecosystem destruction, and eventual catastrophe if we don't stop.
In all the developed nations birth rates are now either below or close to replacement. In a number of European nations total population is already declining. Global growth rate is declining.
Only in a relative handful of very poor and/or dysfunctional nations do we still see uncontrolled birth rates.
NZ and Australia still growing at an alarming rate, addicted to that GDP juice, making things shittier all round for a lot of people, who are usually ignored or told to shut up, because the wealthy transnational prof classes are making bank and they consider themselves world citizens above the hoi polloi
NZ and Australia still growing at an alarming rate
Both countries have typically low birth rates similar to most other developed nations. Being well run countries they both remain attractive immigration destinations which account for the bulk of their population growth.
Auckland is about to run out of water. Our infrastructure is about 30 years behind population growth (because central govt didn't want to control it). Houses are completely unaffordable for essential workers like cops, teachers and nurses. This is not sustainable
As you can see there is no shortage of water. It is a constraint on treatment and pumping capacity that is the problem. The system was not designed to cope with such a dry year, but fixing that has nothing to do with population, and everything to do with some capital and engineering.
Don't misread me here; I'm no more a fan of an overcrowded NZ than you are. I grew up in an era when it was possible to go to a valley in the South Island and tramp in the area for weeks and have the entire place to yourself. Part of me is deeply attached to that.
NZ and Australia have a specific problem in that we are successful and well run nations that many people like to visit and migrate to. Managing that is a privilege of a problem really.
@Roblogic, yep, as soon as you start with the physical world (the environment) the whole thing looks completely different.
We're also exporting the remaining bank of our soil minerals etc via milk powder. And building housing on some of our best food growing land, because we're so fucking stupid that we think food is something that we can always buy (and so stupid to think that the housing crisis can be solved by having neoliberal developers build lots of houses)
I would phrase it more like "who are joining the 'first' world on an unsustainable growth trajectory'.
One child policy as a starting point is likely to cause problems, because in order for it to work in sustainability terms in a meaningful timeframe you'd have to enforce it, and that's going to play into the rising political authoritarianism. I also think that women would be disproportionately negatively affected. And you need lots of other legislation in place to prevent things like prioritising male foetuses.
My preference is to centre the discussion on ecology, and what developed countries should do. We cannot expect poor nations to not aspire to our standard of living. So if NZ were to look at how we could actually be sustainable, and then what population we could sustain within that, we can then look at our standard of living/consumption and where to position it. We can also do that in the context of our refugee policy, and our immigration settings (maybe we have less babies and allow more refugees on humanitarian grounds).
The big thing there that isn't being done is the auditing of what regenerative economy would look like in NZ. We do however know that we are well into overshoot, and are basically strip mining other ecologies and cultures to support our lifestyles. Lefties sure don't want to talk about that, not the liberals nor the class analysis crowd. For some reason that I don't understand, simple, applied physics goes out the window and people seem to think there are unlimited resources and space. Or they have this vague idea that there is still plenty available despite all the research show there isn't. I guess this is a very strong socialisation of the western mind.
Trump vs deep state, ongoing saga: ""There's a bureaucracy out there. And there's a lot of people in that bureaucracy who think that they got elected president, not Donald J. Trump," Navarro said… we've had tremendous problems with, you know, some people call it the 'deep state.' I think that's apt."" https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/china-responsible-us-economy-trump-economic-adviser/story?id=70723322
That's Trump's director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, speaking today. So the rebel thesis remains valid.
Nope, them are in Trump's cabinet. He described people in the bureaucracy as if they were actual bureaucrats, note. I know, you were just being disingenius…
He may think he was elected president Den, and so can spout any old shit that takes his fancy. He may be enraged that the virus wasn't let loose to lay waste his master's foes.
Good interview here on the recent final unravelling of Russiagate, of course the hard core conspiracy theorists out there will keep spinning their, well…conspiracy theories, but to all other thinking and sane citizens, Russiagate can now be consigned to history as one of the most odious large scale public manipulations in recent history, certainly rivaling in scale and scope anything that China has managed to pull off on it's own highly repressed citizens….just shows what can be achieved when you have a willing and compliant press acting on your behalf.
I think even Chomsky couldn't have envisioned the incredible scale along with such unquestioning and obedient buy in from the MSM and liberal intellectuals.
Just a headline I saw on Stuff, about new beneficiary parents saying they will be sending their kids to school hungry coz the benefit ain't enough, well I say "then you shouldn't have had kids then huh?" (sarc) … I would like to think people get a bit more empathic towards beneficiaries after this, how easy it is to lose your job, how punitive it is, how low the payments are.
I remember years ago they made it you couldn't go on benefit if you lived in places like Golden Bay, did they ever change that? Would like to see rural people, small town people able to get the benefit (just after seeing that Redneck post made me think wonder if they still can't get their benefits).
Not sure if they ever changed it but it was a group of very small places IIRC Blackball was also one where there were zero jobs and zero likely hood of jobs and there was no zeal to fund "lifestylers" to depart the job market forever. On the other hand the consumption footprint would also have been very low.
"I would like to think people get a bit more empathic towards beneficiaries after this, how easy it is to lose your job, how punitive it is, how low the payments are.
Until they find employment again and move back up the food chain and all will be forgotten. Hell, some of them will no doubt keep on voting National.
Anyone who outright rejects a UBI needs to sit in a room with the benefit calculation formulas and process entitlements for five beneficiaries from different situations. Best conversion tool for UBI support ever.
(I still favour a welfare/UBI hybrid that mends WINZ, including the complexity of rate calculation).
I still favour a welfare/UBI hybrid that mends WINZ.
And without any quibble on that general approach … which I broadly agree with … merely doing the dollar value comparison omits the big social value contribution that a UBI brings. All the research so far clearly shows the real positives come from an increased sense of personal worth and agency. From no longer being stigmatised (even when it's self imposed) or looked down on.
Everyone who has had to deal with WINZ long-term tends to reach for the phrase 'soul-destroying'. Well what is the worth of people with 'un-destroyed souls'? Quite a lot I'd imagine.
Yeah. Because it would have gone down a treat had they refused permission for the German, French, US, Canadian, British, Australian and other government's repatriation flights from Wuhan as the province went into lock-down…
I'm surprised they missed that opportunity to become the darlings of western propaganda. /sarc
When you are living with a senior Chinese academic (I can't be more specific for safety reasons) who is telling you first hand about the totalitarian power he is experiencing in his own life … you'd not be quite so quick to blurt out 'bollocks'.
Yeah nah…China, Russia, USA, UK etc etc there are no bloody saints in that lot but you (among many others) want to paint the Chinese government as the black hats..there are no white hats(in reality IMO) if it wasn't for their totalitarian inclinations Wuhan would still be a total clusterfuck rather than a success story.
China is good for entertainment. Not China itself but the entertainment provided by the multi-faceted ever-changing bizarre notions in New Zealanders.
We want to deal with China big time and to sell our goods to them but we don't want to deal with China. We want China to invest in New Zealand but we don't want them coming in here taking us over. We want New Zealand to take a strong position on China's human rights record but we don't want to say anything to upset them. We want to be independent and staunch and principled and stand for what's right but we should be totally deferential and not say anything to piss the Chinese off.
Today I see banner headlines on the Herald site that Matthew Hooton thinks Winston Peters should be sacked over 'Chinese controversy.' I think Peters should immediately take Hooton onto his staff. Hooton could sit in Peters' pocket and tell him what to do and travel all over the world advising on what's right for New Zealand.
Peters could take him out on all appropriate occasions to lick boots or to give Peters a clip around the ear if he dares say anything more than, "Yes Sir (or Ma'am.)
I wondered if it was time to reconsider land aggregation and break down some of these big farming operations into family sized units.
As to not being able to get staff – are they their own worse enemy- and are providing conditions so poor that the lure of residency is the only way they can get staff? This looks like a 10 hour day for how many days of the week? Time for overtime and penal rates again? How many of these jobs mean the worker is also dependent on other taxpayer supports like working for family's while the owners pocket the dough
"You might get up a bit earlier at around 5am, but on the other hand my staff go home for an hour at breakfast, an hour at lunch and they're home by 5pm.
Yeh be good to hear from the corporate farming sector about how they intend to correct these wider systemic flaws.
But no particular challenge from the news media to the farming lobby in that particular report – just the farming sob story largely verbatim. And the media wonder why they get poor “pass marks”
Farmers have long been given the right to set wage rates at a level that guarantees their profitability. If workers are not available at these rates, they want governments to admit foreign 'gastarbeiter' who will work at these rates. i.e. as capitalists, they seem to have an addiction to violating their own ideological commitment to free markets by enthusiastically intervening in the operation of the labour market. However, this only looks like a violation if you make the mistake of seeing capitalism and markets as the same thing. They aren't. As a locus of exchange, markets long pre-date capitalism – which is more about wealth extraction through ownership of all the 'plumbing' that facilitates production, exchange etc.
COVID potentially disrupts this by turning off the gastarbeiter tap. However in this environment no government is going to be seen jeopardising agriculture, food production, exporting, job creation and economic growth generally. Some other temporary solution will be found – probably via government subsidy to farmers to top up wages.
Yeah I figured Labour wouldn't do anything about farm wages. As far as I can see this problem has got steadily worse over the years since we repealed the land aggregation & settlement act 1920. Most of the family farms still seem to rely on limited labour it's this factory farming crowd doing it. Be interested to know how many of these have come in with an OIO exemption because they were going to create well paying jobs you know! Maybe some of these farms need to invest in robiotic milking so that they can provide well paying jobs.
Some I know was worked as a milker for a variety of farm owners, and they all were ratbags. For one, the house he got was literally full of mould. It was even growing the carpet. The next one, he could hardly do any thing right for him, always carrying on about how useless he was (though the house was a bit better). The next one let him go before the 90-day trial was up.
Not all farmers are like that, I will admit, but workers should really do a little due diligence before taking up farming.
TV3 (Newshub) has a poll out at 6 pm. They're already talking it up bigly but that's happened before, something "sensational" turns out to be a couple of percentage points.
A series of surveys during lockdown showed 80+% support for what the gov't has done. They weren't TV polls, so were largely overlooked. But they were consistent.
Of course National were not going to be in the lead, that would be pessimism way beyond reason.
Special post at 4:07pm so outside his regular posting slots. He highlights the bump in positive polling for leaders during a crisis, whether they have done a good job or not.
This preempts the Newshub poll tonight either to:
a) attempt to dampen any positive polling for Ardern and the government parties by saying all leaders get a bump or,
b) to set the scene for subsequent crowing if Ardern and the government parties don't poll better than other leaders who have mismanaged Covid-19 response resulting in horrific loss of life.
Farrar has been careful to put the numbers of recent poll bumps for Trump, Boris and Morrison more than once, and even Andrew Cuomo. If JA doesn't reach these numbers or only achieves modestly well against them he will go to town.
The post is so specific one wonders if he has been leaked the poll (highly likely given it is by Mediaworks), and is running his attack lines before it comes out. Incredibly dishonest if that is the case and he hasn't disclosed it.
He is always "leaked" the poll. The reason we see party leaders on the news is that they have given those interviews earlier in the day. Naturally the leaders talk to their advisers.
Nothing to do with Mediaworks, it happens every time there's a poll.
The above should have turned up in the conspiracy thread.
But seriously, evidence that bat viruses are anywhere, just look at the case of Steve Gurney the great Coast-to Coast athlete. On an event in SE Asia , Borneo I think) part of the run went through a cave filled with bats and Steve came very close to dying, was in a coma for quite a time and took a few years to recover. It was ascertained that his problem was contacted from a bat virus or suchlike.,
I would have thought our useless parroting media may have tried to get his view on our current situation.
Great in one sense (i.e. a hope for a more economically equitable future), but the Left is just as capable of being arseholes as the Right. So it's not particularly awesome for democracy.
Police are making threatening posts about "hate crimes", a concept which has no legal basis in NZ. Churches still can't hold Sunday services, but shopping malls and schools are a free-for-all.
Nobody with an ounce of sense thinks Labour will get 56% on election day. I wouldn't have been surprised if they were 60+ in this poll, and yet I won't be surprised if they need a support party to govern after the election. Let's hope it's the Greens.
Again, National never had the numbers in Parliament to govern alone. But in polls between elections, they had it dozens of times.
Green support still holding up, as previously discussed. Labour's numbers aren't unprecedented. National hit 60 under Key – but crucially, they got there by cannibalising.
Staying above 5% is a remarkable result for a near invisible party in a crisis, with their supporters making a clear Ardern/Labour distinction. Good on them.
If there's any enterprising medicinal cannabis operation who wants to go all in for expansion, here's the country's very last tobacco factory up for sale in Petone:
A shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was “release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there’s a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.
I'm reminded of the extremely amateurish attempt by Trump to alter a weather map to make it look like a cat. 5 cyclone was going to hit Alabama because he had previously claimed Alabama was going to be hit (can't read a weather map) and couldn't bear to be proved wrong.
This blog is beautiful foot-notery. Why Parliament is often distressing points of order. Semantics matter.
In my lifelong arguments with my brothers I expect in later years we put aside getting it over one another and self-govern enough to go to the essential. What matters most. Lest ye be captured in pig muck up to your neck.
Climate change and the neediest in my book matter most.
Climate change and the neediest in my book matter most.
Climate Change does not vote and the neediest tend to stay at home and not vote either.
One option is to vote for avoiding CC disaster and economic and social upheaval and against inequality and social injustice, for example.
Another option is to vote for growth, gains, increases in GDP and wages, possible Tax cuts, open borders with Free Trade and mass tourism, for example.
Which one do you think is the more likely vote winner?
Hi,Before we crack into today’s Webworm, I wanted to acknowledge the fact that Israel is pushing into Rafah. Over 100,000 Palestinians are now attempting to flee the one place that was deemed “safe”.Trouble is, the place they’re fleeing to is already destroyed. Total annihilation is the end goal here.“Israel is ...
‘It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.’ GoetheI was struck at a recent conference on equity for the elderly, how many presenters implicitly relied upon Statistics New Zealand. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveReporting on defence spending late last year, RNZ said the coalition government will have to make some tough calls this term to help the force address staff shortages and ageing infrastructure. “These are huge, huge amounts of government spending. It’s a significant proportion of the government’s ...
Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought NZ to the brink of economic and cultural chaos Chris Trotter writes – TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition ...
And why did the Crown not challenge the Tribunal’s jurisdiction? Gary Judd writes – Retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, has posted on his A Halflings View Substack an excellent summary of Justice Isacs’ judgment declining to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result?As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and ...
Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure ...
Buzz from the Beehive A new government agency will open for business on July 1 – the Social Investment Agency. As a new standalone central agency effective from 1 July, it will lead the development of social investment across Government, helping ministers understand who they need to invest in, what ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The ...
Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
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 ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
“Instead of following along countries that are investing in death and better ways of killing people faster, we need to invest in life and in making Aotearoa a fair, just and equitable place where everyone has what they need for a dignified life.” ...
MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI, TPM MP FOR TAI TOKERAU This Government will not waver in its mission to exterminate Māori. CHRISTOPHER LUXON Oh well look you know I don’t think that hard-working Kiwis want to hear language like that. It’s just really unhelpful rhetoric. My Government is genuinely committed to advancing outcomes ...
The body positivity movement started with women confronting the unrealistic expectations and unrepresentative portrayals of them in media and advertising. Men weren’t part of it … their bodies hadn’t been sexualised to the same extremes and they didn’t really need it. But now that’s changed. And in a warped sort ...
The New Zealand comedy legend takes us through her life in television, including the time she hugged Elton John and the unshakeable legacy of a girl named Lyn. In 1981, Ginette McDonald stood on the stage of Auckland’s St James Theatre and directly addressed Queen Elizabeth II. It was a ...
An essay by Lily Duval from the just-released anthology Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child adjacent.I was 22 when my friend Alice gave birth in the living room of our pokey Addington flat. She laboured in the blow-up pool for hours. Garish fish swam along the inflated ...
Ella Borrie on the best books about motherhood she’s come across so far. Over the past few years I’ve been drawn to books about motherhood. I’m fascinated by the joys and horrors of becoming a parent. The question of children also feels more pressing than it used to. It’s like ...
Out of gift ideas for mum? You can’t go wrong with a bottle of toilet cleaner and a new squeegee. Emily Writes is the writer and editor of Emily Writes Weekly. This week marks five years since I published a post on The Spinoff about Mother’s Day marketing titled ‘A ...
My husband is posted overseas for 12 months and I’m armed with an expensive, newfangled vibrator. Will I miss him? The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.A few days after my husband leaves, a new sex toy arrives at the front door. Nestled ...
Jaimie Baird’s new book Here Today Gone Tomorrow is a record of four decades of graffiti and street art in Wellington, told through more than 1,200 photographs. He spoke with Joel MacManus about what inspired the book. How did you first get interested in photographing street art? I remember ...
Editor Madeleine Chapman looks back at a busy week where food of all political leanings dominated. Sometimes you’re just going about your week thinking you’ve got a good handle on what might be coming as far as news topics and then someone (usually a politician) says something so ridiculous that ...
A banner notification alerts me to the fact that I’ve received an Instagram message from @felicity.loves. She always comments on my posts. I shouldn’t have opened the message, but clicked on the notification before rationalising this. OMG! Are you in Wellys? X I debate not replying, but Instagram will inform ...
In Melbourne’s hardscrabble western suburbs where AFL – Aussie rules football – is a state religion, Callum Donaldson has been quietly grafting away, four months into an odyssey that he hopes will take him to another promised land: the NRL. It was a solid 2023 for the softly spoken 20-year-old ...
In a week of cold rain and frost, the climate in courtroom four upstairs at the Invercargill courthouse was simmering with restrained indignation. At times it felt like the famous Mexican standoff scene from Reservoir Dogs, or, as someone watching the proceedings described it, there was so much throwing of ...
Pacific Media Watch Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News. She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tuesday’s budget will respond to the deepening public agitation over Australia’s housing shortages by pouring new money into crisis accommodation for women and children, social housing and infrastructure. A specially-convened national cabinet late Friday ticked ...
By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert. Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press ...
Aldora Itunu is back in the Black Ferns squad after a three-year absence. The last of her 24 internationals was an underwhelming loss to France (7-29) in Castres to conclude the disastrous 2021 Northern Tour. The powerhouse prop won a Rugby World Cup in 2017 and thought she was done. ...
The fight to control major transport policy and projects in Auckland has burst into the open again, with councillors rejecting Mayor Wayne Brown’s latest attempt to steer things more under his influence. Councillors from the left and right broke ranks on the mayor’s bid to control Auckland Transport more directly ...
Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October. From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II. The ceremony took place in the township on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
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 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
Its new building in Wellington will not be nearly big enough for all its records, and it has also run out of money to build its new storage facility in Levin. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
In 2021 the Public Interest Journalism Fund launched the Te Rito Journalism project, a $2.4 million initiative to boost diversity in New Zealand’s newsrooms. The initiative was in response to the decades-long shortage of Māori and Pacific journalists in the media industry. It was billed as New Zealand’s ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
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Successive governments have tried, and failed, to count Māori. But with the return of social investment, it’s more important than ever to get good data. The post Government looks for a better way to count Māori appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Experts in financing social investment initiatives say New Zealand is in a prime position to tackle social issues via a social investment approach The post What will Willis’ social investment fund look like? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Science validates Trump: "analysis of the coronavirus by specialist biologists suggests that all available data shows it was taken into the market by someone already carrying the disease. They say they were "surprised" to find the virus was "already pre-adapted to human transmission"… The claims come as Beijing thwarts global efforts to establish the source of the virus. The news will fuel concerns over the Communist regime's cover-up".
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12332538
"The new research is clear in its finding. "The publicly available genetic data does not point to cross-species transmission of the virus at the market," said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist, and Shing Zhan, an evolutionary biologist."
Since apparently I have not been following closely enough, can you point out what the stable genious said which has been validated and what statements by the authors of the study validate it?
It looks to me like you were clickbated by the Herald into a narrative carefully not made or excluded by the writer.
I doubt you're really that superficial! All over the global news in recent weeks, doesn't really matter which source to quote. However, the BBC gives this context from over a month ago:
"In a report attributed to multiple unnamed sources, Fox News said the coronavirus was a naturally occurring pathogen that leaked from a Wuhan facility because of lax safety protocols, infecting an intern, who then transmitted it to her boyfriend." https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-52305562/coronavirus-trump-says-we-ll-see-about-wuhan-lab-claims
The US "National Institutes of Health …gave a grant totaling $3.4 million, beginning in 2014, to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats. And EcoHealth distributed $600,000 of that total to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a collaborator on the project, pre-approved by NIH." https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/trump-spreads-distorted-claim-on-wuhan-lab-funding/
Easy to see why the US, part-funding the lab research into batshit coronaviruses, feels partially responsible for the outcome. Hence tries to muscle China into sharing responsibility. As if it were a moral stance, y'know?
All the study concludes is that the virus samples from the wet market mutated less than a virus which just jumped species was understood to mutate. The implication is there was an earlier infected case who brought it into there.
It doesn't say anything about where that case jumped species. Just it wasn't at the market according to the evidence of the study (+ its hard to exclude anything based on our understanding of virus evolution).
Exactly Nic the NZer.
It certainly doesn't validate Trumps conspiracy theories about the virus source.
The item comes across to me as a puerile attempt to somehow cast aspersions on China and give credence to Trump’s assumption it is part of a sinister Chinese plot. Further to that, it could have happened elsewhere in the world but it happened in China. So, the big lesson for them is to ban the bloody disease ridden wet markets for starters.
Note: this story is being touted by Fox News. That's enough to cast aspersions on the motivation.
only thing on fox thats true is the simpsons
lol.
Fox News reporting secondhand something Trump said doesn't count as evidence for the validation claim imo. The bit you quote isn't from Trump, it's from Fox.
Anne made the same point. I'm somewhat averse to Fox myself, of course, but I feel I ought to make a point about how news orgs operate (based on my ten years working in the TVNZ newsroom cutting news & current affairs stories).
Bias & professional standards go hand in hand: the former covert/tacit, the latter overt/explicit. So one must decode.
The key point is that I sourced it from the BBC. Do they routinely republish stuff from Fox? Not that I've noticed. So the editorial decision to do so was made on merit. Is the BBC right-wing? Since the early '70s, I've not seen anyone claim that (in those days all state media was `fascist'). To the contrary, it's been normal in right-wing circles to call the BBC socialist since the '80s.
So the news editor made the decision on newsworthiness. My take is that the code-word `multiple' triggered that decision. It implies more than several. So when a journo checks for confirmation from independent sources and encounters multiple, perception along the lines of `hell of a lot of smoke, must be a fire' happens.
So the BBC editor concurred with the Fox editor on that basis. Now you & Anne may feel Fox just invented the multiple sources. Having been equally cynical a very long time I can't be critical of that – just believe it is very unlikely based on my experience of broadcast practice.
that's all very interesting Dennis, but all I need is the actual quote from Trump so I can weigh it up against the claim that he was right.
If (according to the NZH link) Trump "claimed it emerged from a Wuhan laboratory working on bat-borne diseases", then where is the back up for that? Your quote says that someone carried it into a Wuhan market. That's not the same as it coming from a Chinese lab. It might be, but who knows?
The claim that "Science validates Trump" has yet to be demonstrated on both counts 🙂
Thus far it looks like clickbait (MSM and yourself) and politicbait (two macho countries).
Okay, I see where you're coming from. I think the Herald was simply recycling the common view that had formed over recent weeks based on what Trump and others in his cabinet had said.
I agree that I was painting with a broad brush without providing details. I had in mind the shaping of mass perceptions – along the lines of folks believing in climate change as opposed to lack of detailed proof. 😇
There was only one, just one, mention of Trump in the NZH article!?
When you read “a report attributed to multiple unnamed sources” without any further evidence to corroborate the claims your alarm bells should go off like emergency sirens. A similar PR tool is ‘anecdotal evidence’. When the stakes are high, the burden of proof is high too. Until that time, it is all innuendo and hearsay. Didn’t think I had to lecture you on that!?
There are professional disciplines around scepticism/sources which the BBC editor would have applied. That person is part of management – not just a journalist. The ethics of protecting sources come into play.
Sure, you & I can be as sceptical as we like. Having spent a large part of my life making news stories for journos, I have ended up moderating my natural scepticism, balancing it against my informed view of how those people work.
You can bypass all that and cut it out from and avoid the clouding of your thinking if you focus on the science. Read the ‘landmark study’ and forget about the political framing by a broadcast company with strong and historical ties to political establishment. Don’t be lazy or a sheep, think for yourself.
Look, political outcomes are produced by media framing. Trying to ignore that defeats the point of political commentary. What matters is what determines the decision-making in the court of public opinion. Scientists seeming to validate Trump's stance does exactly that.
His poll ratings will not be effected by what is written in scientific papers unless media reports give it sufficient weight!
There is so much wrong with this comment.
Scientists don’t validate Trump’s stance. His stance may or may not be consistent with the science.
I was talking about you commenting and framing, not the media or political spin doctors or others with invested interests in ‘the truth’.
You are the one here who is putting science into a different framework. I have pointed it out to you and yet you keep doing it!?
I do it to alert folks to the likely effect on mass perceptions. It is that effect which is most influential in (co-)creating political reality. I assumed you would understand that. Do you not??
And I note how you subtly misrepresented what I wrote by deleting "seeming". Naughty!
"His stance may or may not be consistent with the science."
In a stopped clock being right twice a day kind of way.
I love anecdotal evidence. It basically amounts to "I heard from Gladys down at the Four Square that Eunice Carlyle in number seven eats cats. That's why your Fluffy's been missing for six weeks."
Eric Trump reckons the virus is a hoax concocted by the Democrats to sabotage The Tangerine Abomination's election chances, probably because his old man told him so, so yeah, we can all rest easy.
That doesn't validate the chumpster Den, I doubt you're really that sly and disingenuous. In praxis.
Not to you, Gabs. Nor to me. But it does to a politically significant slice of observers. That's my point.
Sneaky Den, sneaky. It's just what ppl will think, it's not what I think guv, no not me.
Thats interesting Dennis. The western newspapers certainly took to the theory of the Wuhan market like a duck to water . Misleading videos of bat soup being drunk , and calls for the wet markets to be banned.
Now that much earllier( mid November) cases of covid 19 are being detected by re examining samples and chest xrays from unusual pneumonia cases in France , Italy and the US, we will eventually find patient zero
Wuhan may have been the first to identify the unknown novel virus(probably because they had the best virologists on hand)but that is not grounds for pinging it as the source. Wuhan is a large city with huge number s of annual visitors
A visitor could easily have carried the virus from elsewhere
Hindsight will be our teacher here
Entertain all the theories you like, but new information is gathering every day
If someone said yesterday that a person bought the virus into the market they would be labelled a conspiracy theorist. I find it interesting you're open to entertaining that theory now, but not the other lab source conspiracy…
New information is is becoming available.Thats why the rush to point the finger is so stupid
But really, would you not have considered that as a possibility?
As far as the lab source goes, there's no evidence.Several western colleagues of the Wuhan virologists who have knowledge of the lab and its research also declare the unlikelihood of an escape
I posted this link yesterday but you can lead a horse to water etc
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/23/21226484/wuhan-lab-coronavirus-china
Well if it was bought into the market, then the market is not the origin of the virus. Which makes all the "scientific" finger pointing at the market just an initial guess.
The vox article relies a lot on people who have a connection to the lab, and more so on Mr. Daszsak who I thought was leading project work there. Not a bad little PR exercise. If science/media wanted to rule out the lab, they would at least investigate the work being done there. Which is the sort of work Martenson has been doing…
There's a logic fail and a conceptual fail in your comments.
The logic fail is simple: accepting that there were cases before the market cluster is logically different to focusing on a particular potential source for that market clust (in this case the lab). Apparently there was a possible case in France in November that has been retrospectively identified. that means that not only is the lab connection a red herring, the entire focus on Wuhan might actually be a case of "Spanish Flu" all over again – the virus started somewhere completely different, wandered around the globe, but it clocked off in China for some reason.
The conceptual fail is the idea of the index patient. The earliest detected infection is not usually the source, it is simply the first case detected.
for example, the known index case for AIDS was almost certainly not the person to get it first.
Well put.
Note that the Wuhan-Hu-1 isolate was taken in early December 2019 and the market samples in January 2020, according to ‘the new landmark study’. However, the original published paper states “a single patient who was a worker at the market and who was admitted to the Central Hospital of Wuhan on 26 December 2019 while experiencing a severe respiratory syndrome that included fever, dizziness and a cough”. Confusing, but it emphasises the close links, in space and in time, between Wuhan-Hu-1 and the market samples.
the virus started somewhere completely different, wandered around the globe, but it clocked off in China for some reason.
Logical fail right there.
What you selectively omit is the first known case in Wuhan is now dated on Nov 17. So we know it was present in the city on or before that date. What we don't know is in what numbers, or when the first human case really occurred, but it could easily have been sometime in October.
What we do know is the virus has a period where cases are low and mostly asymptomatic. But at some stage inside a month they inevitably take off, and that first happened in Wuhan in early December when the local hospitals started reporting unusual pneumonia's. At least four to six weeks earlier than anywhere else.
Logically this still places patient zero in Wuhan in the one city on planet earth where there is a BSL4 lab studying closely related virus's.
Sure other explanations are still going to be possible, but any serious investigation is going to have to start where the first known outbreak occurred. All else is wishful thinking for obviously political ends.
And in my link, there may have been cases in France at about the same time as the first known case in Wuhan.
Any serious investigation it going to start with confirming that the first known outbreak was in fact the first outbreak. A step you seem to frequently skip over in your obsession to build a case against your prime suspect.
Any serious investigation it going to start with confirming that the first known outbreak was in fact the first outbreak.
All the evidence from multiple countries in the past five months, is that it circulates at low, mostly undiagnosed levels in a population for 2-8 weeks, and then if no containment measures are in place, without exception the serious cases start arriving in the hospitals at an exponential rate. That first happened in Wuhan.
But hell you could be right. Xi Xinping looks like he's going to agree to an investigation.
well, no, not quite all the evidence. E.g. the possible French link. E.g. lack of a comprehensive review of retrospective tests from samples around the world, just to be reasonably sure that the first few cycles of infection didn't occur somewhere completely different to your preferred prime suspect.
But all the evidence you're prepared to consider conveniently points to a handy case of culpable concealment by an organisation you really dislike. Lucky, that.
The first patient was admitted on 12 December IIRC.
Well it's hardly going to have magicked itself into existence in the market now is it.
It did it somewhere.
No reason why not in the market.
But the earlier cases suggest that it could simply be trade-related, and the actual crossover occurred somewhere else: dude has cold, goes on trip, visits market (not even selling any animals or meat), infects a stallholder who infects their colleagues, dude goes back home and gets over the cold. Didn't infect anyone else because luck and the stallholder was their main contact (or just luck).And by the time that the dude has returned, the pig that got it from a bat and gave it to the dude has been cooked.
Alternatively, the evil communists covered up that their lab leaks like a seive, that the half dozen people who worked there all got colds in late October, and none of their colleagues from other countries noticed.
Your interpretation of the article and research is quite flawed. It has been obvious for a while that it wasn't a new species jump. The mutation rate was too low.
All that was said was that it was unlikely that this virus did the species jump in the market. Unlike SARS this one didn't show signs of immediate adaption to another host species. And it was likely that human brought the virus, already adapted, into the market and very likely into Wuhan.
My bet is that there is a population of humans around somewhere that has had the SARS (or something like it) virus endemic in their villages for quite a while, and trade has brought it to Wuhan.
Trump, being a mindless fool will of course prefer your explanation. The Chinese being rather paranoid at present will deny.
Net effect is that with all of the idiotic headline generated dick waving we're not going to get teams in to trace the actual source. Where there is one human adapted virus after a species jump there are likely to be a few.
Welcome to the next pandemic…
I'll keep an open mind on the source. The main point is that the scientists cite genetic evidence that the source is unlikely to be from the raw meat market, and since Trump was suggesting the lab as a likely source, they are validating his stance. That's how it will seem to most media consumers. I realise you have some kind of experiential basis for your commentary and haven't found reason to disagree with your overall view, but it would be interesting to know what that basis is…
Whatever the understandings about overall view, your overall view is that Trump is right, 'science validates Trump' and that should be fed to media consumers.
It's the great sort of things for headline writers – 'Science backs Trump Wuhan picture.'
You know the picture, the blockbuster movie he wants us to believe, Chinese scientists beavering away trying to create some terrible disease to wipe out America and other parts of the world for their political and economic advantage.
I can imagine if Trump doesn't win in November. He'll have it that Obama used the American scientists in their work in projects with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to help the Chinese plot and scheme to get rid of him and the coronavirus was the vehicle.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-05-09/was-the-coronavirus-made-in-a-wuhan-lab-heres-what-the-genetic-evidence-shows
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-admin-pulls-nih-grant-coronavirus-research-ties/story?id=70418101
Peter: "your overall view is that Trump is right". Me: wrong conclusion. No evidence that he is. So I just pointed out that the scientists have validated his stance. Directing suspicion against the lab is a valid political strategy now that science is ruling out the "cross-species transmission of the virus at the market".
Science is a contestable discipline, so we await input from similar highly-qualified specialists. The research findings of the duo may turn out to be insufficiently robust. I do agree Trump will not scruple to use the plot scenario for re-election purposes if he feels the need.
You forgot to include “seeming” this time. Sloppy and naughty!
A prescient scenario. And since Biden is just Obama's puppet (Obama is the real president) then he is equally culpable. "Lock em both up for treason" will be the rallying cry. 🙄
Obama is the real president? Yes, and Helen Clark is the real prime minister of New Zealand.
Easily sorted out though, just get Obama and Clark to drive past G5 towers and Covid-5 will leap out and get them.
with bill gates driving a tesla . may as well get all the tin hatters here.
Don't have time to go into it now – have some code to finish, and I'm monitoring an bot attack on the site.
I commented on this about a month ago. There is a site that has a graph of the clades… Umm
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?c=clade_membership
You can play around with that. But essentially it looks like the number of genome sites that the virus has diverged has been pretty low (even now). That speaks to a virus that didn't just jump to humans. It has been used to humans for a while. We're talking years or even decades.
Most of the changes that are still extant worldwide were already present in Wuhan. It really doesn't seem like there are many mutations that aren't getting pruned by covid-19's own systems
Whereas if you looked at SARS, which was definitely a species that just jumped to humans. Killed a very high percentage of its hosts. Had a lot of variations even in its brief career.
At a political level – yes of course. And the attitude of the Chinese about getting medical survey teams in isn't helping. They should just exclude all political appointees and go with actual known active virologists and plan to have them in-country for about a year chasing the source down.
Covid-19 will be just one of a range of human adapted viruses from whatever the original source is. Having Trump waving his dick around, apart from it being unhygenic and probably diseased, doesn't help in finding out what the next pandemic will be.
I only follow the general gist. I'm a physics graduate – ignorant of genetics. So did you study genetics at university? I just want to know if your analysis emerges from some kind of formal qualification. I can already tell you grasp the reasoning involved – I just need some kind of frame to put on that.
The mutation rate was too low.
Which would be true if you assume a natural process. But routine lab procedure are exactly intended to force viral evolution, speeding up mutation rates in order to get to results within days or weeks, instead of having to wait decades.
Our problem here is that most of us are very unfamiliar with this whole area of science and it makes evaluating competing claims very difficult. Here is another informed view:
The whole article is quite readable and interesting. Our fundamental problem is that nothing can be ruled in or out at present. Apparently informed people are making claims that on examination that are based on circular reasoning, questionable presuppositions and selective accounts of the science.
My favourite scifi author Vernor Vinge wrote in his The Peace Wars series (published in the 80's) of how biologists would create diseases that devastated humanity, but no-one could ever get to the truth and no-one was ever held accountable. As a result in his somewhat dystopian future world, the bio-scientists had been deemed illegal, highly despised and driven deeply underground. Because there was no effective oversight mechanism, no-one trusted them, and the potential good they could also do was lost to humanity.
We are probably not quite there yet, but the path we are on could easily have this as a destination.
Yeah, but the problem is that evolutionary biowar pattern simply isn't that useful for slow plague spread – which is what this one does. That is why virtually all of the material published on biowar weapons was orientated towards contact, short incubation, and kill rather than population spread. Natural evolution strongly tends towards getting the host to breed viruses without killing the host. Biowar patterns are more like SARS or Ebola or dispersed spread anthrax than what covid-19 is.
So far no-one has managed to point to anything that indicates that this is engineered weapon. And the way that it operates indicates that it has had a significant evolution in bats, and quite a lot of time adapting to how to infect humans without killing too many of them.
Which the pattern you've pointed to doesn't allow without a butt load of deaths.
I suspect your aversion to the PRC is overcoming your common sense.
Don't think he's pointing to a deliberate release. Accidental, I reckon. The Hopkins covid tracker graph shows a classic linear increase. Not exponential. If it were malignant population elimination, you'd see exponential.
Also the daily rate stabilised weeks ago – we can see that by selecting the daily tab on that graph. So as contagions go, this looks rather moderate…
Huh?
He may have been bouncing off this from earlier in the year… https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2020/01/31/genie-from-a-war-lab.html
Huh??????
Are you referring to yourself in the third person? Anything after “[a]ccidental, I reckon” made no sense to me. It sounded like your reckons!?
evolutionary biowar pattern simply isn't that useful for slow plague spread – which is what this one does.
Nowhere have I described this as a 'biowar' virus. It clearly doesn't fit the pattern of a conventional military tool. But that doesn't rule out other possible reasons why this virus could have been evolved within a lab setting.
For a start WIV is tightly linked to the PLA and in that context there is every reason to expect at least some research programs to be secret and unpublished. Assuming that every virus they had worked on was actually published is naive in the extreme.
Indeed the CCP has now been forced to admit they ordered the destruction of samples and work done at WIV early in January, further muddying the evidential trail.
And since late January all Chinese research must be passed through political control before being released.
Assuming you know anything accurate and sufficient to draw firm conclusions in this environment is optimistic at best.
So far no-one has managed to point to anything that indicates that this is engineered weapon.
The term 'weapon' implies malicious intent, but until we understand exactly how this virus arose we cannot determine intent. And I've been very careful not to go to that conclusion. That's twice in one comment you've pulled that straw man on me.
What I believe is necessary here is that until we have an independent, trusted and impartial investigation … free to the extent possible of either US or CCP political interference … then we will not get to the truth.
Oh and not only me but 62 other nations.
I suspect your aversion to the PRC is overcoming your common sense.
And content not with two strawmen, you pull a third. At no point have I attacked or denigrated in any fashion the people of China. As I've made it clear many times, I have close Chinese family and social connections. You may want to ask our old friend CV exactly which regular here at TS was the most generally supportive of him for many years. Bill's charges of 'idiot xenophobia' is wrong on the facts, intellectually lazy and downright irksome.
On the other hand the CCP is a different creature altogether … yes my dislike of them is real and well founded. Then again I'm not the only one to have concluded … before COVID … that the current Chinese government under Xi Xinping’s rule are a pack of genocidal, power-mad, information-suppressing, exploitative, ultra-nationalists.
Trump was of course for some months very supportive of the CCP effort in containing CV19; but now of course it turns out all of this was bullshit and it was already loose on the world, and Trump is now expressing considerable disappointment in what has happened … everyone is now idiotically acting as if the CCP is somehow lily-white and the innocent party.
Trump plastering his sticky mitts over this issue, for his own political purposes, makes him no-one's hero. Nothing he has to say now in May, has any relevance to what we need to know about what may have been happening at WIV last year. This event has already caused immense grief and hardship in just a few short months, and is on track to cause a great deal more.
Why is everyone so resistant to the idea that a full investigation, and if warranted a proper accountability, needs to happen? Hell if this was a coal mine explosion there would be no problem.
"that the current Chinese government under Xi Xinping’s rule are a pack of genocidal, power-mad, information-suppressing, exploitative, ultra-nationalists."
Hear hear!
I have Uyghur friends. Ask them what they think of the CCP.
I have Uyghur friends
That's interesting, Tony. Do they live here (immigrants)? Or have you travelled through their region?
I presume they see their ethnicity as being a target due to muslim religion but it would be interesting to know if the regime's policy is viewed as racist too (on a similar basis to their oppression of Tibetans, I mean).
I taught for a bit over 3 years in Urumqi, and travelled fairly widely in the region and the 'stans.'
There are few Uyghurs living in NZ and most are pretty guarded in their public criticism of the regime, having relatives back in Xinjiang. Their most frequent beef is about the oppression of their religion, though they have no general love for the Han.
This may be correct, strictly speaking, but you did include it in your quote @ 1.3.2 and if you were simply trying to outline how forced evolution can be done in an appropriate lab and the corresponding workflow then you could have stopped the quote there and then. You didn’t and this is slightly confusing. See what I’m saying?
As long as political games are played over and on top of this, the chances of getting to bottom of it are nil. This was the point I tried to make with Dennis but he didn’t get it. Welcome next pandemic?
You didn’t and this is slightly confusing.
Yes I can see the possible confusion arising from my quotation, but the full article makes it clearer. The point is that the 'gain of function' procedures for developing vaccines are for all practical purposes indistinguishable from developing a biowar virus. You really cannot conclusively determine intent just by looking at the genetic sequence (unless the developer was especially clumsy) of the resulting virus. Which is why I've been careful all along to avoid ascribing intent behind SAR-COV-2.
As you say only an apolitical investigation will suffice to uncover the truth. Interestingly Xi Xingping last night seems to have agreed to such a thing, but then immediately undermined his bona fides by slapping an 80% tariff on Australian barley … and then has the bare faced gall to pretend it has nothing to do with Australia being the nation that lead the call for the investigation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-18/china-to-impose-tariffs-on-australian-barley/12261108
The CoV closest to SARS-CoV-2 is RaTG13 and even that one is a bit of a mystery, which makes SARS-CoV-2 and even bigger mystery as to where it came from, when, and where it first jumped to human if that is what actually happened. Without finding the missing link(s), we will never know. This could leave us less or under-prepared for the next pandemic, which is such a compelling argument, in my opinion, that one wonders why anybody would resist accepting it …
Indeed.
Sometime around 2001 I was working on a site on my own, and at dinner that night I was sat at the same table with another guy also on his own. He was a Scottish academic turned commercial, and his background was a rather unusual mix (for then) of computer science and genetics.
The one thing I clearly recall from the conversation that night was his description of how the work the team he was leading was going to enable genetic sequencing of full genomes within days or even hours. Keep in mind that the first full human genome project had only just been done, and had taken a huge collaborative effort to achieve. I was pretty impressed, only a few times in life do you get the chance to meet people you know will change our world.
Now less than 20 years later all of his predictions are come true, and we take them for granted. Our progress in this genetic biotech area is only just beginning; comparable to where the quantum mechanics era was in say the 1930's.
You are right, this will not be the last event of this kind to challenge us. Disease is our ancient enemy, it has deep roots in our behaviours and beliefs, and in many ways I suspect this new found power will prove more troublesome to our collective sanity than any before it.
It is another nuclear moment in human history 😉
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Yes it is; but the same knowledge that bought us Tsar Bomba also delivered the computers were are typing on.
We can only speculate why you started your
framingcomment with Trump.The original but not yet peer-reviewed paper is your best source of scientific information without the distracting framing and other unhelpful baggage.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1.full.pdf
The paper is actually remarkably easy (!) to read, almost as if it was written with one eye on an audience of laypeople. I recommend it.
If you do read it, you’ll note the carefully worded conclusions and the many still-unanswered questions.
Obviously, the market was a factor in spreading the disease, through the food sold there but more likely predominantly through the people mingling there.
As such, it does not answer the main questions.
The media does have a habit of interpreting science, true. I guess I'm pragmatic in seeing political players using those media interpretations rather than actual scientific opinions (because they believe the public are influenced by the former way more than the latter).
Political commentary inevitably flows from framing used by politicians and media, in consequence of that influence on the balance of public opinion. So I'm no different from any other commentator in that respect.
I looked at the abstract & conclusion of the paper itself via your link, thanks, but see no reason for further comment on it at this stage.
You fell in the classic trap of letting the framing and interpretations by and from others influence your thinking and judgement about something that is primarily a scientific quest. Arguably, most commenters go ‘but Trump’, ‘but Putin’, ‘but her e-mails’, ‘but the CCP’, et cetera, rather than reading a scientific paper. If the horse doesn’t want to be led then it is likely a donkey, or an old goat … 😉
Leftist Oz greenie rationalises personal angst into public policy via a critique of racist Labour immigration dog-whistling: https://greenagenda.org.au/2020/05/was-keneallys-migration-diatribe-fair-dinkum-racist/
"A lot of well-meaning Australians get frustrated when any attempt to start a conversation about migration immediately attracts accusations of racism. This is particularly so for many Greens, whose white fragility prevents them from recognising how sustainability arguments for limiting immigration can be inherently racist."
"The hard truth is that in settler-colonial countries like Australia, you simply can’t talk sensibly about migration without talking about racism. The two topics are inextricably linked, and leaving race out of the conversation – like you’re some kind of ‘objective’ scientist neutrally discussing populations and carrying capacities without acknowledging past and ongoing systemic racism – just tacitly reinforces racist norms."
Interesting because it shows how willing the left are to divide on an esoteric basis. No need for the controllers to use `divide & rule' – the proles do it to themselves. Politically-correct posturing normally seems irrelevant – but the writer appears to be conscience-driven, so I'm responding to the sincerity.
I would say it's better to reference racism when talking about immigration and green issues because we have a culture of racism in NZ against certain ethnicities who make up a large part of our new migrants. Listening to the voices of those people helps us, it's not a hindrance.
Otoh, many on the left tend to reject any discussion about population and ecology/climate as classist, and any discussion of immigration and ecology/climate as racist, so the development of ideas in this area looks stalled to me.
Both sides taking a position of outright rejection of the other leaves us in a false binary, and these don't help.
Then we have the "right" hypocritically crying "racism" whenever their supply of underpaid labour, or wealthy land buyers, looks threatened.
Discussion of population is usually shut down as Malthusian anti-human oppression, or racist against Africans, who are on an unsustainable growth trajectory. There is a crazy dude on Twitter who advocates for a global one-child policy and he's got a point. At this point, human population growth means ecosystem destruction, and eventual catastrophe if we don't stop.
At this point, human population growth means ecosystem destruction, and eventual catastrophe if we don't stop.
In all the developed nations birth rates are now either below or close to replacement. In a number of European nations total population is already declining. Global growth rate is declining.
Only in a relative handful of very poor and/or dysfunctional nations do we still see uncontrolled birth rates.
Malthus had it backwards, increased incomes actually decrease birth rates.
NZ and Australia still growing at an alarming rate, addicted to that GDP juice, making things shittier all round for a lot of people, who are usually ignored or told to shut up, because the wealthy transnational prof classes are making bank and they consider themselves world citizens above the hoi polloi
NZ and Australia still growing at an alarming rate
Both countries have typically low birth rates similar to most other developed nations. Being well run countries they both remain attractive immigration destinations which account for the bulk of their population growth.
New Zealand data for 2019 shows a fertility rate of 1.75 which is significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1. The only reason why our population is growing immigration and population momentum. (And for the time being NZ immigration is going to be confined to NZ ex-pats returning.)
But globally the era of dramatic population growth is over. The data is in, education, development and GDP all strongly correlate with dramatically lowering birth rates. Most projections now show that human population will peak at 11.5b by the end of the century and then drop quite rapidly after that; the vast majority of that growth coming from Africa and partly Asia.
Auckland is about to run out of water. Our infrastructure is about 30 years behind population growth (because central govt didn't want to control it). Houses are completely unaffordable for essential workers like cops, teachers and nurses. This is not sustainable
The Waikato River supplies about 33% of Auckland's total supply and has consents to go further to about 36%. That's around 136 million litres per day (or 136 MLD). The current consent limit is 150 MLD.
Today at Mercer the total river is running at about 210 m3/sec or 18,144 MLD.
As you can see there is no shortage of water. It is a constraint on treatment and pumping capacity that is the problem. The system was not designed to cope with such a dry year, but fixing that has nothing to do with population, and everything to do with some capital and engineering.
Don't misread me here; I'm no more a fan of an overcrowded NZ than you are. I grew up in an era when it was possible to go to a valley in the South Island and tramp in the area for weeks and have the entire place to yourself. Part of me is deeply attached to that.
NZ and Australia have a specific problem in that we are successful and well run nations that many people like to visit and migrate to. Managing that is a privilege of a problem really.
@Roblogic, yep, as soon as you start with the physical world (the environment) the whole thing looks completely different.
We're also exporting the remaining bank of our soil minerals etc via milk powder. And building housing on some of our best food growing land, because we're so fucking stupid that we think food is something that we can always buy (and so stupid to think that the housing crisis can be solved by having neoliberal developers build lots of houses)
Thank-you weka & Redlogix for the informative replies 🙂
"who are on an unsustainable growth trajectory."
I would phrase it more like "who are joining the 'first' world on an unsustainable growth trajectory'.
One child policy as a starting point is likely to cause problems, because in order for it to work in sustainability terms in a meaningful timeframe you'd have to enforce it, and that's going to play into the rising political authoritarianism. I also think that women would be disproportionately negatively affected. And you need lots of other legislation in place to prevent things like prioritising male foetuses.
My preference is to centre the discussion on ecology, and what developed countries should do. We cannot expect poor nations to not aspire to our standard of living. So if NZ were to look at how we could actually be sustainable, and then what population we could sustain within that, we can then look at our standard of living/consumption and where to position it. We can also do that in the context of our refugee policy, and our immigration settings (maybe we have less babies and allow more refugees on humanitarian grounds).
The big thing there that isn't being done is the auditing of what regenerative economy would look like in NZ. We do however know that we are well into overshoot, and are basically strip mining other ecologies and cultures to support our lifestyles. Lefties sure don't want to talk about that, not the liberals nor the class analysis crowd. For some reason that I don't understand, simple, applied physics goes out the window and people seem to think there are unlimited resources and space. Or they have this vague idea that there is still plenty available despite all the research show there isn't. I guess this is a very strong socialisation of the western mind.
I should do a post on this 🙂
A neocon would of course attempt to divide and rule while accusing others of it.
Trump vs deep state, ongoing saga: ""There's a bureaucracy out there. And there's a lot of people in that bureaucracy who think that they got elected president, not Donald J. Trump," Navarro said… we've had tremendous problems with, you know, some people call it the 'deep state.' I think that's apt."" https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/china-responsible-us-economy-trump-economic-adviser/story?id=70723322
That's Trump's director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, speaking today. So the rebel thesis remains valid.
He must be talking about Ponce, Pompedoodoo et al Den, though they appear to believe they were annointed, not elected.
Nope, them are in Trump's cabinet. He described people in the bureaucracy as if they were actual bureaucrats, note. I know, you were just being disingenius…
He may think he was elected president Den, and so can spout any old shit that takes his fancy. He may be enraged that the virus wasn't let loose to lay waste his master's foes.
Good interview here on the recent final unravelling of Russiagate, of course the hard core conspiracy theorists out there will keep spinning their, well…conspiracy theories, but to all other thinking and sane citizens, Russiagate can now be consigned to history as one of the most odious large scale public manipulations in recent history, certainly rivaling in scale and scope anything that China has managed to pull off on it's own highly repressed citizens….just shows what can be achieved when you have a willing and compliant press acting on your behalf.
I think even Chomsky couldn't have envisioned the incredible scale along with such unquestioning and obedient buy in from the MSM and liberal intellectuals.
I guess Chump and Pooty have just been shooting the breeze all this time.
Just a headline I saw on Stuff, about new beneficiary parents saying they will be sending their kids to school hungry coz the benefit ain't enough, well I say "then you shouldn't have had kids then huh?" (sarc) … I would like to think people get a bit more empathic towards beneficiaries after this, how easy it is to lose your job, how punitive it is, how low the payments are.
I remember years ago they made it you couldn't go on benefit if you lived in places like Golden Bay, did they ever change that? Would like to see rural people, small town people able to get the benefit (just after seeing that Redneck post made me think wonder if they still can't get their benefits).
Not sure if they ever changed it but it was a group of very small places IIRC Blackball was also one where there were zero jobs and zero likely hood of jobs and there was no zeal to fund "lifestylers" to depart the job market forever. On the other hand the consumption footprint would also have been very low.
Until they find employment again and move back up the food chain and all will be forgotten. Hell, some of them will no doubt keep on voting National.
Read the proposal and if you agree sign (and share) the petition
https://greenpeace.nz/z8vq0a
Thanks, been there now, done that. Never a Greenpeace fan, so good to see them doing something credible… 🤩
Signed too.
Likewise.
Anyone who outright rejects a UBI needs to sit in a room with the benefit calculation formulas and process entitlements for five beneficiaries from different situations. Best conversion tool for UBI support ever.
(I still favour a welfare/UBI hybrid that mends WINZ, including the complexity of rate calculation).
I still favour a welfare/UBI hybrid that mends WINZ.
And without any quibble on that general approach … which I broadly agree with … merely doing the dollar value comparison omits the big social value contribution that a UBI brings. All the research so far clearly shows the real positives come from an increased sense of personal worth and agency. From no longer being stigmatised (even when it's self imposed) or looked down on.
Everyone who has had to deal with WINZ long-term tends to reach for the phrase 'soul-destroying'. Well what is the worth of people with 'un-destroyed souls'? Quite a lot I'd imagine.
Where is Simon Bridges now on Australias Covid response 18 new cases .
9 new cases sorry.
He reckons the disease might be worse than the illness.
Hooton reckons we should be grovelling to China.After their failure to contain Covid 19 China needs a check on its totalitarian power.
After their failure to contain Covid 19
Yeah. Because it would have gone down a treat had they refused permission for the German, French, US, Canadian, British, Australian and other government's repatriation flights from Wuhan as the province went into lock-down…
I'm surprised they missed that opportunity to become the darlings of western propaganda. /sarc
"after their failure to contain Covid 19 China needs a check on its totalitarian power."
Bollocks
When you are living with a senior Chinese academic (I can't be more specific for safety reasons) who is telling you first hand about the totalitarian power he is experiencing in his own life … you'd not be quite so quick to blurt out 'bollocks'.
Yeah nah…China, Russia, USA, UK etc etc there are no bloody saints in that lot but you (among many others) want to paint the Chinese government as the black hats..there are no white hats(in reality IMO) if it wasn't for their totalitarian inclinations Wuhan would still be a total clusterfuck rather than a success story.
China is good for entertainment. Not China itself but the entertainment provided by the multi-faceted ever-changing bizarre notions in New Zealanders.
We want to deal with China big time and to sell our goods to them but we don't want to deal with China. We want China to invest in New Zealand but we don't want them coming in here taking us over. We want New Zealand to take a strong position on China's human rights record but we don't want to say anything to upset them. We want to be independent and staunch and principled and stand for what's right but we should be totally deferential and not say anything to piss the Chinese off.
Today I see banner headlines on the Herald site that Matthew Hooton thinks Winston Peters should be sacked over 'Chinese controversy.' I think Peters should immediately take Hooton onto his staff. Hooton could sit in Peters' pocket and tell him what to do and travel all over the world advising on what's right for New Zealand.
Peters could take him out on all appropriate occasions to lick boots or to give Peters a clip around the ear if he dares say anything more than, "Yes Sir (or Ma'am.)
Item on RNZ about the dairy industry needing workers
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/415766/dairy-sector-wants-new-zealanders-to-consider-farm-work-as-labour-shortage-looms
I wondered if it was time to reconsider land aggregation and break down some of these big farming operations into family sized units.
As to not being able to get staff – are they their own worse enemy- and are providing conditions so poor that the lure of residency is the only way they can get staff? This looks like a 10 hour day for how many days of the week? Time for overtime and penal rates again? How many of these jobs mean the worker is also dependent on other taxpayer supports like working for family's while the owners pocket the dough
"You might get up a bit earlier at around 5am, but on the other hand my staff go home for an hour at breakfast, an hour at lunch and they're home by 5pm.
In reality the time off very rarely happens especially at calving time.
Yeh be good to hear from the corporate farming sector about how they intend to correct these wider systemic flaws.
But no particular challenge from the news media to the farming lobby in that particular report – just the farming sob story largely verbatim. And the media wonder why they get poor “pass marks”
Farmers have long been given the right to set wage rates at a level that guarantees their profitability. If workers are not available at these rates, they want governments to admit foreign 'gastarbeiter' who will work at these rates. i.e. as capitalists, they seem to have an addiction to violating their own ideological commitment to free markets by enthusiastically intervening in the operation of the labour market. However, this only looks like a violation if you make the mistake of seeing capitalism and markets as the same thing. They aren't. As a locus of exchange, markets long pre-date capitalism – which is more about wealth extraction through ownership of all the 'plumbing' that facilitates production, exchange etc.
COVID potentially disrupts this by turning off the gastarbeiter tap. However in this environment no government is going to be seen jeopardising agriculture, food production, exporting, job creation and economic growth generally. Some other temporary solution will be found – probably via government subsidy to farmers to top up wages.
Yeah I figured Labour wouldn't do anything about farm wages. As far as I can see this problem has got steadily worse over the years since we repealed the land aggregation & settlement act 1920. Most of the family farms still seem to rely on limited labour it's this factory farming crowd doing it. Be interested to know how many of these have come in with an OIO exemption because they were going to create well paying jobs you know! Maybe some of these farms need to invest in robiotic milking so that they can provide well paying jobs.
You can't just confiscate a local's visa if s/he gets uppity.
Some I know was worked as a milker for a variety of farm owners, and they all were ratbags. For one, the house he got was literally full of mould. It was even growing the carpet. The next one, he could hardly do any thing right for him, always carrying on about how useless he was (though the house was a bit better). The next one let him go before the 90-day trial was up.
Not all farmers are like that, I will admit, but workers should really do a little due diligence before taking up farming.
It came from Alien Reptile Species Shifters, fuck, everybody knows that!.
Nah it was the reverse vampires I'm telling you
TV3 (Newshub) has a poll out at 6 pm. They're already talking it up bigly but that's happened before, something "sensational" turns out to be a couple of percentage points.
We'll see.
Saw a Facebook post with "some random numbers", 42, 32, 12, 4, 4, 2, 1, 1…
Oh crap.
If National are in the lead I will be disappointed, but not suprised.
Surprised? Flabbergasted more like.
A series of surveys during lockdown showed 80+% support for what the gov't has done. They weren't TV polls, so were largely overlooked. But they were consistent.
Of course National were not going to be in the lead, that would be pessimism way beyond reason.
Farrar watch:
Special post at 4:07pm so outside his regular posting slots. He highlights the bump in positive polling for leaders during a crisis, whether they have done a good job or not.
This preempts the Newshub poll tonight either to:
a) attempt to dampen any positive polling for Ardern and the government parties by saying all leaders get a bump or,
b) to set the scene for subsequent crowing if Ardern and the government parties don't poll better than other leaders who have mismanaged Covid-19 response resulting in horrific loss of life.
Farrar has been careful to put the numbers of recent poll bumps for Trump, Boris and Morrison more than once, and even Andrew Cuomo. If JA doesn't reach these numbers or only achieves modestly well against them he will go to town.
The post is so specific one wonders if he has been leaked the poll (highly likely given it is by Mediaworks), and is running his attack lines before it comes out. Incredibly dishonest if that is the case and he hasn't disclosed it.
Watch this space.
He is always "leaked" the poll. The reason we see party leaders on the news is that they have given those interviews earlier in the day. Naturally the leaders talk to their advisers.
Nothing to do with Mediaworks, it happens every time there's a poll.
Are you saying David Farrar is an advisor to Simon Bridges?
I hope that interest is declared in the proper fashion.
The above should have turned up in the conspiracy thread.
But seriously, evidence that bat viruses are anywhere, just look at the case of Steve Gurney the great Coast-to Coast athlete. On an event in SE Asia , Borneo I think) part of the run went through a cave filled with bats and Steve came very close to dying, was in a coma for quite a time and took a few years to recover. It was ascertained that his problem was contacted from a bat virus or suchlike.,
I would have thought our useless parroting media may have tried to get his view on our current situation.
Anybody asked Luxie what he rickns on the Air NZ refund issue? Has he asked not to be asked?
Hey checkpoint, aren't ppl in church in close proximity to other ppl for much longer than ppl in malls?
Slick's down to 4.5 and I feel no sympathy. What is wrong with me?
Labour: 56
National: 30
Greens 5
Yeah baby, one party state.
Great in one sense (i.e. a hope for a more economically equitable future), but the Left is just as capable of being arseholes as the Right. So it's not particularly awesome for democracy.
Police are making threatening posts about "hate crimes", a concept which has no legal basis in NZ. Churches still can't hold Sunday services, but shopping malls and schools are a free-for-all.
This is a potentially chilling moment
Nobody with an ounce of sense thinks Labour will get 56% on election day. I wouldn't have been surprised if they were 60+ in this poll, and yet I won't be surprised if they need a support party to govern after the election. Let's hope it's the Greens.
Again, National never had the numbers in Parliament to govern alone. But in polls between elections, they had it dozens of times.
A free for all? Really?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/05/newshub-reid-research-poll-jacinda-ardern-goes-stratospheric-simon-bridges-is-annihilated.html
Congratulations Jacinda. Your extraordinary hard work and superb leadership has been recognised and rewarded.
Green support still holding up, as previously discussed. Labour's numbers aren't unprecedented. National hit 60 under Key – but crucially, they got there by cannibalising.
Staying above 5% is a remarkable result for a near invisible party in a crisis, with their supporters making a clear Ardern/Labour distinction. Good on them.
Pompous Prince Shane may have to present Surpydur Tally with a trawler complete with undocumented crew on national tv if this keeps up.
If there's any enterprising medicinal cannabis operation who wants to go all in for expansion, here's the country's very last tobacco factory up for sale in Petone:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU2005/S00406/imperial-tobacco-premises-on-prime-petone-site-for-sale.htm
I think think the requirements for a medicinal cannabis manufacturing plant and a tobacco factory would be quite different.
Private contractors strike.
https://twitter.com/NoahShachtman/status/1262187628075585536
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1262187628075585536.html
A shocking report suggesting that the coronavirus was “release[d from] the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China is now circulating in U.S. military and intelligence circles and on Capitol Hill. But there’s a critical flaw in the report, a Daily Beast analysis reveals: Some of its most seemingly persuasive evidence is false—provably false.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-contractors-report-on-wuhan-lab-origins-of-coronavirus-is-bogus
I'm reminded of the extremely amateurish attempt by Trump to alter a weather map to make it look like a cat. 5 cyclone was going to hit Alabama because he had previously claimed Alabama was going to be hit (can't read a weather map) and couldn't bear to be proved wrong.
This blog is beautiful foot-notery. Why Parliament is often distressing points of order. Semantics matter.
In my lifelong arguments with my brothers I expect in later years we put aside getting it over one another and self-govern enough to go to the essential. What matters most. Lest ye be captured in pig muck up to your neck.
Climate change and the neediest in my book matter most.
Climate Change does not vote and the neediest tend to stay at home and not vote either.
One option is to vote for avoiding CC disaster and economic and social upheaval and against inequality and social injustice, for example.
Another option is to vote for growth, gains, increases in GDP and wages, possible Tax cuts, open borders with Free Trade and mass tourism, for example.
Which one do you think is the more likely vote winner?