There are quite a few regular commentators on here who, frankly, are beginning to piss me off.
I excuse the usual right wing idiots – like the Natz, they’ll criticise because, you know, Labour – enough said. I could name them, but you know who I’m referring to.
No, it’s the so-called lefties who are getting my goat.
NZ has probably had the best covid response in the world – the facts speak for themselves – 188th in the world in terms of cases, only just over 1000 cases during the whole pandemic per 1 million and only five deaths (per million).
There has been no playbook for this crisis – the government is literally making it up as they go along – yet these Captain Hindsights all preach about what should have been done 18 months ago.
Or they rabbit on about their rights being curtailed, as if they had no responsibilities. As if individual rights pre-empted collective responsibilities.
Then they go on about how the Labour government is not doing enough (which I can agree with for I too have been generally disappointed by the lack of radical progress in many areas) but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??
A moment’s reflection should convince them that, on the evidence of right-wing governments world wide, covid would have been a fucking disaster under a Natz government.
But do they reflect? No, they bag the government. Well, they have a ‘right’ to do so, but reading their comments is getting a little tedious. And if someone does call them out, as happened yesterday, they get dumped on with abusive language.
I, for one, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at the moment.
Nor would I. I agree re the likelihood that things would be significantly worse if we had a National govt.
The thing that irritates me is Labour's tolerance of obfuscation. Either the public health officials know how Delta is being spread, or they don't. If they know, they ought to tell us. If they don't they ought to say so.
Instead we just get the number of unlinked cases dangled in front of us daily as if it were some kind of totem to be gazed at with fascination. Seems more like a bullshit scheme to me – and I have generally approved their performance.
Yeah, probably, but it doesn't change my view as expressed. I see no valid excuse for their failure to inform the public of the contagion pattern that they have discerned. If we were all the wiser after being thus informed, we'd be on board with the policy implementation strategy. We wouldn't have this growing loss of trust in their strategy.
Honestly, I think people's nervousness is due to Labour and MoH not being god. This is a really hard situation, they've not had a break in 18 months. People are understandably stressed, it's a really stressful situation. Who would you rather was running the response other than Labour?
I don't have a problem with Hipkins. He seems to be on the ball. I think the PM ought to be somewhat more so: she ought to explain the nature of the contgagion pattern. Causal thinking is hard-wired into us from our evolutionary past. I appreciate that pandemics are inherently mystifying, but getting a grip on how they work is always in our common interests.
As I mentioned below, could be that political correctness is defeating our common interest by getting in the way of the truth…
You have admitted that you havn't been listening to the briefings, just the media interpretations,.
The information has often been in the briefings and Government statements.
Whereas I wonder if most of the media has even been there. Certainly not listening. They mis-interprete and even lie about what was said so often.
As for question time, after the briefings, I just turn it off. The partisan ignorance, and lack of basic comprehension, of the so called "Journalists" is both depressing and irritating. .
Over the last couple of weeks we have been told (Govt sources or answers at the ‘pressers’
a) families of over 10 people in each family are getting together
b ) families/groups are getting together inside instead of being outside
c) we are given locations of interest that seem to be suburbs in South Auckland & now west Auckland
I suspect some churches are 'hiding' by having bible study or services inside family homes and with larger groupings, but being less obvious than seeing a pile of people or cars outside a church. Last outbreak we had a couple of instances like this come to light.
For me the contagion pattern is in South Auckland, mainly, spread by groups or families of over 10 people who are largely meeting inside.
Looking at the demographics from MOH you can see the ages are mostly 0-59 years. Children are highly represented
0-9 350
9-19 401
Maori 599 and Pasifika 989 people are over represented. Hospitlaisation is 43 cases for Maori and 107 for Pasifika.
Vaccination status when reported as a case is also on that site total 2005.
1132 not vaccinated 138 hospitalised
409 less than 12 years old and therefore not vaccinated 7 hospitalised
Judging by the difficulty of tracking some contacts, as my dad would say, I would 'hazard a guess' that some are involved in criminal or antisocial enterprises
That's an extremely comprehensive picture you've painted there. I suspect journos are too paranoid to report the ethnic problem: pc inhibiting their desire to report the truth. Delta getting the kids to that extent shows how different it is to the original contagion last year which had minimal effect on kids as far as I could tell. Thanks for the effort, which I reckon will clarify the view of plenty of others, not just me.
Unlinked cases are interesting because they suggest there are unknown cases out there. And unknown cases are the danger because they can spread unknowlingly (or knowingly but uncaringly).
But unlinked cases can turn into linked cases once all the places where that person has gone is worked through or they can link through studying the virus genome.
As someone that used to be in logistics I can easily say that this should not be a difficult question to answer
The main reason we have low numbers is mainly down to luck ie location, surrounded by water, low population so it seems reasonable to question the government given they've had over a year to sort things out
The main reason we have low numbers is that Labour went hard early on in the pandemic and eliminated covid from the community until fairly recently. Geography didn't make that happen, and as delta is showing us, Auckland is a population dense city not a low population once.
We could in fact say we've had two pandemics in NZ, covid, followed closely by delta. Our strategy for the first was very successful. Our strategy for the second is still being worked out because it is new.
l. It is not necessary to close borders while Level 4-3 lock downs are going on (or when the local population is vaxxed up and its the vaccinated coming in).
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals to support the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out.
4. We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff and supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses (I would prefer we imported some pandemic experienced staff from OE into airbnb and maintained surgeries myself).
You do not need to close borders while lock downs are going on.
Yes you do.
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals before the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out fades.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
4.We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff we have supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses
We don't have enough if the s**t hits the fan. The government has had over a year and should have been prioritising this (no thats not hindsight, thats obvious)
We don't have enough if the s**t hits the fan. The government has had over a year and should have been prioritising this (no thats not hindsight, thats obvious)
Waiting and watching was wise, the AZ antibody roll out to the unvaxxed and the Merck anti-viral treatment will reduce need for ICU care.
Prisoner of the Right you have Obsessive Conservative Disorder
PCR tests are far more accurate than the Quick Saliva tests.
Delta can easily missed even after 3 quick tests didn't show any infection a PCR test showed that person had asymptomatic covid.in a recent news article.
Your like a kid who doesn't get his own way having a tantrum today.
I wonder how you would treat one of your charges at work who was displaying this behaviour.
They did order vaccines while we had Level 1 elimination.
Sure they expected to complete vaccination first and then open up (and bring in rapid testing for this then), so yes they were caught out by not being able to realise elimination with the latest outbreak …
– why didn't they get in early and order vaccines before they were out of trials
they did
– why did they order untested vaccines, knowing some might fail trials
or:
– why didn't they order saliva tests of undetermined or insufficient reliability
they did
-why did they waste money on substandard tests
PR isn't even the worst one. There are a few tories who would have been charged with treason if they'd exhibited similar behaviour in WW2, providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
These days, they don't even breach broadcasting standards because that minute of ranting was "opinion" not "news content".
It was the travel bubble remember that gave us the joy of the Delta virus. And in that, despite having all the info we waited 3 weeks for the border to shut. This is like peeing in an swimming pool.
We had over a year to get everybody vaccinated and prepared to open the boarders. Pfizer offered but no, we are special, so special.
If my memory doesn't fail me, the first deliveries of vaccines were reserved for the elderly and Maori/Pacifica. This was months ago and I hear constantly the government failed them. Absolutely not.
The actual outbreak in August came via a person who came into managed isolation from Sydney after the travel bubble closed.
There will be more than one case of spread after we open up borders with vaccination at c90%. The spread rate now would be higher and nationwide if we had vaccinated earlier.
"Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?"
General incompetence and the wrong people being put in charge but really it was just another reason as to my arguement why its more luck than good management
Funny, because one of neoliberalism's first moves was to replace clinical managers with non-clinical managers from other sectors. Maybe it's not just a logistical provisioning thing, and having long years of experience working as a clinical manager would have given an advantage in knowing how to keep the system adaptable.
Then there is the health system undermined by neoliberalism, understaffing, and budget cuts. For decades.
Next you'll be telling me that the market will provide enough ICU nurses.
lol, the problems with the health system are on both National and Labour and predate this particular government by a long way. Those problems didn't arise out of thin air. If you replace clinical managers with managers whose purpose is to run a hospital like a business, then this is exactly the kind of stupid outcome you get.
I would guess because wards can become ICU wards or not depending on demand. And more beds can be put into an ICU ward if absolutely needed. Staffing is always a revolving target as people come and go, change departments, etc etc.
Geography was always the most important factor. We might like to imagine a scenario where the UK was so well managed that they could have implemented MIQ like NZ. Heres why that doesn't work…
First of all the UK needs to implement a successful elimination, by early lockdowns. This could never have happened but lets imagine it did. The UK population is 10x NZ population and much more integrated with Europe and Ireland in terms of trade routes. So we infer that the UKs MIQ needs to handle (very conservatively) only 10x as many people as NZ. NZ had a covid case escape MIQ roughly every 4 months. This lead to regional lockdowns for weeks or months. So in the UK the equivalent is some part of the UK will be locked down due to a MIQ escape almost continuously (or somehow UK MIQ works more than 10x better than NZ MIQ).
The regional lockdowns will hardly be eliminated in weeks as the population density is much higher. In fact the UK has been locked down for significant lengths of time but never has got close to eliminating the alpha variant regionally afaik, let alone nationally.
Finally elimination may have been possible around when there were hundreds of cases in the UK. From estimates this was around January 2020, before there was even widespread knowledge of the virus.
This is not to say the UK reaction was particularly good, there were more than a few mistakes made, but its mostly geography driving how the pandemic would work out.
Looks to me like each place needed its own solutions and systems. However, the values that we start with dictated how pandemic responses were developed in addition to the geography. Geography didn't make Labour go hard early, their health advisors and Labour's (and I'm sure Ardern's) values did.
Likewise, if we'd had FJK in charge (or Collins 🙄🤡), I think it's likely we would have gone down a similar path as the UK and the US, because of values.
PR is trying to argue that Labour didn't do anything good and just got lucky. While we have had luck as well, PR's position is plainly partisan nonsense.
Its certainly plausible that National in govt would have handled it much worse. Australia did similarly however with a conservative government so I wouldn't assume thats a certainty (again being somewhat remote geographically helped). But I have had conversations where people overseas suggested that NZs success was mostly about the political aspects and thats not intellectually justifiable. If NZ was in the middle of Europe we would have had a large outbreak even with the same policies in place and wouldn't have got to elimination.
Politics, hubris, incompetence and a bit of financial skullduggery are better explanations than geography.
You're right though, a comparison with New Zealand isn't fair. The UK's response needs to be compared with other small, densly population nations with regional roles in highly populated nearby areas. Measuring the UK's response against East Asian nations, which are far more geographically similar is a better way to judge what could be.
at a guess, part of the issue with the ICU figures is whether one is counting infrastructure or staffing. My understanding is that it's trained nurses on the payroll that determine what a 'bed' is, not the bed itself.
I see this is pretty much what Watkins is saying. Also,
The Society points out that the numbers can fluctuate widely depending on staffing, while some district health boards conflate staffed ICU, high dependency, and coronary care beds.
To me it just looks like the normal outcome of neoliberalisation of the health system over the past 40 years. What did we expect?
This is a matter of simple logisitics. For example you take all the factors that make up a complete ICU ready bed and then go to the hospitals and get the information from them
Its really not that difficult
EG 200 beds and 150 nurses = 150 ICU ready beds (or however you want to call them) however Labour just can't seem to help themselves when it comes to spinning so they'd say 200 beds which is factually correct but obviously wrong
But then lets face it you had Clark as minister of health, which worked out really well, and now you have a union lawyer so is it really a surprise no one knows whats going on?
Each ICU bed requires 3 specially trained nurses, round the clock and dedicated to that ICU bed. So 200 beds = 600 nurses if none of them take leave or are sick.
Assuming the nurses are going to have 2 days off per week, along with public holidays (either on the days or as alternative holidays later), annual leave and sick leave (and bereavement, parental and other leave), not to mention professional development/training and any similar reasons for time off, a more likely number of nurses is 6 per bed, so 200 beds = 1200 nurses who require 4 years of training after they graduate as nurses.
Also, hospitals with ICUs are usually close to capacity as part of the staffing and funding model, so additional capacity comes at the cost of capacity somewhere else, or a few years to physically build more capacity at a time when building labour and material supply are quite constrained.
Exactly. Then you have the ongoing process of not knowing how many nurses are on the cusp of getting qualified for that setting, and how many are set to look at the time to come and find other work. Then there are the beds: the maintenance schedules of every single machine around each bed, and whether one machine being actually used in another ward means that bed is no longer ICU-standard (but could be if needs be).
Across twenty different organisations which might each have a couple different sub-units (aka "hospitals") and management structures long-trained to gaming the system (e.g. fudging ED admissions in the 1990s-2000s), and it's a substantially more complex logistics issue than PR thinks.
A moment’s reflection should convince them that, on the evidence of right-wing governments world wide, covid would have been a fucking disaster under a Natz government.
Well said – a characteristic of many right-wing govts is their weak pretense of governing for society as a whole, while giving COVID a helping hand to take the hindmost.
No, it’s the so-called lefties who are getting my goat.
We may get on your goat, but in a functioning democracy I believe it is our duty to critique the government at every turn.
So many people treat politics like sport. We cheer on our side, and so long as we are beating the Nats, then everything is apparently awesome. There is a general obsession from some to almost have a daily post about National, which is just plain weird in my view. They are irrelevant.
You can be broadly in support of the government's response to COVID, while at the same time being critical of certain aspects of that response. That is healthy for good decsion making. Its not treason to criticise.
I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere other than New Zealand over the past two years, and I'm very glad National wasn't in government. But that shouldn't discourage lefties from calling out the government when they deserve it.
Its kind of like when you're driving through terrible weather and you can hardly see 5 metres in front of you, but your driver carefully navigates through the stormy weather, while some of your neighbours are reckless and crash.
Then you come to a lull in the weather and the driver rightly congratualtes themself for getting eveyone to that point safely.
Meanwhile your reckless neighbours upgrade their cars with urgency to protect them in the storm as they are still stuck in the middle of it.
The passenger sees darker scarier storm clouds on the horizon and suggests to the driver that maybe we should also upgrade the car before the second storm gets here. The driver says, no urgency as I have got you through the storm and we don't need that upgrade like our neighbours.
Then, predictably, but without warning, the storm hits.
Upgrading the car mid journey is exactly what we are doing now.
It's a completely different set-up to what we were driving in April 2020. I know some people just want to go back and do what we did then as it worked. But the storm has evolved and so to does our car need to.
See you are proving my point. Crticism isn't anti-government.
We're taking different routes – miq vs "open border but isolate at home", L4 early instead of wishful thinking.
And this is a discussion. As opposed to what is possible with government – unless we have 5 million comms staff all responding to each others bullshit concerns.
And then some tories would just complain about too many comms staff.
And then there's your false equivalence between an (albeit asymmetric rather than face to face, where you know I receive your message as soon as you finish talking) comment:response format between a small number of people where both are ostensibly commenting in good faith, vs some fucking opinionator in an editorial spreading alarm and despondency, with no possibility of timely response to a similar audience because "comments on this article have now closed".
Don't compare a disagreement here with anything Juco says, for example.
I think we ended up going down quite a long rabbit hole McFlock, and I'm not quite sure why.
My initial comment was in response to Tony who took issues with lefties being critical. The old view that if don't support us on everything, you must be a Nat. Bat shit crazy thinking.
I took it as meaning not all criticism of the government's covid response is fair, constructive, accurate, useful, or particularly warranted given the state of the rest of the world.
In fact, most of it is "none of the above". It doesn't matter who is doing the backseat driving, if it's "none of the above" then they're doing nothing other than distracting the driver.
It's interesting hearing from so-called commentators about "rights" when in comes to covid restrictions and requirements. Yet it's difficult to see where these "rights" come from. The Human Rights Act lists 13 grounds of discrimination. I can't see which one or more of these could be relied upon to trump anything the government might do in the way of requirements around safety in respect to the potential spread of covid. Nor can the NZBORA provide anything similar. In any case it only applies to things done by the government or Crown-related outfits, and then only in relation to their statutory functions. It's telling that Russell McVeigh, one of the largest law firms in the country, has announced it's policy of requiring everyone visiting their offices to be vaccinated, including all staff. Surely if anyone's risk-analysis of such a requirement was going to stand up to a HRA or NZBORA critique it'd be theirs.
In terms of the NZBORA and Covid restrictions, it would be the rights to refuse medical treatment, freedom of movement, association and peaceful assembly. I think the restrictions come under justified limitations (also in the NZBORA) myself and that has been the findings of courts to date, but obviously others have a differing view.
Yes, I'm sure Russell McVeigh's position would be that the restrictions are justified limitations. I'm not so sure about the right to refuse medical treatment, though. I'd say the right is still intact because people can still refuse vaccination.
Currently, but if you're a nurse or teacher (for example), NZ work might be hard to find after the order comes through, which could be seen as compulsion. Agree that it's more tenuous than hired goons actually forcing the vaccination.
"but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??"
And many of us lefties aren't Labour supporters either. although I do think they have done a very good job of managing the pandemic until they opened the Oz bubble. Since then they have been putting out fires.
As a traveller stuck in QLD I suggest the following with regard to travel back to the motherland:
I have been in Brisbane since July 8 and there are zero cases of COVID-19 in QLD. (I was unable to travel back in the five-day window)
I do not have COVID-19 nor have I ever had it.
I have not been in an area that has COVID-19
There is absolutely no risk to New Zealand if I was to travel as I have been double vaccinated with Astra Zeneca but not Pfizer.
There is way more chance of me contracting COVID if I return to Auckland anyway.
It has to be my choice if I want to travel NOT the NZ Government if I am virus free.
Many Aucklanders are not even following the quarantine measures in place so you have no chance of controlling the spread of the disease while you have so many anti-vaxers and disrupters. Sooner or later, just as NSW and Victoria and ACT have done you are going to have to accept it exists and manage the cases for those who won't vaccinate.
There is an even bigger chance of catching COVID if I have to quarantine in a hotel room that is :
Not fit for purpose
Does not have sealed ventilation or pressurised ventilation systems
Is not designed nor fit for purpose
Is not available to anyone until well into 2022 anyway
I am perfectly capable of self-quarantine at a suitable location if I have to.
What I would want to ask the Minister is how could a competent Minister let this disastrous state of affairs continue and the debacle that is MIQ, operate for so long with absolutely no leadership on this issue.
There is absolutely no risk to New Zealand if I was to travel as I have been double vaccinated with Astra Zeneca but not Pfizer.
Nope.
The Pfizer–BioNTech and Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are effective against the highly infectious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 — but their protection drops away over time, a study of infections in the United Kingdom has concluded.
…
The vaccine developed by Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in Cambridge, UK, was 69% effective against a high viral load 14 days after the second dose, falling to 61% by 90 days.
The vaccines are tools to help limit spread and reduce risk to individuals. They're not a panacea. The helping limit spread thing needs multiple tools, including controls on borders, periodic lockdowns, MiQ, mask wearing, hand washing, distancing etc.
Tony, I just ask the complainers exactly how many mates and matesses they were prepared to bury in the last 18 months. There is no comfortable reply.
And Dennis, maybe you haven’t been listening but it is emphasised every time Ardern et al has been asked, transmission has NOT been happening at work, shopping or out walking but at indoor mixing amongst family and friends groups. That’s what the contact tracers do.
Thanks Adrian – it's true that I don't watch those govt pr events, I just go by media reportage & commentary here.
So based on the above logic, Tamaki was right. Did the govt admit that?? And what exactly has the amendment of levels done to control that indoor mixing? The scenario you point to suggests to me that public health policy fails to solve the problem.
Irony. His apparent assumption that mass gatherings outside are okay. If delta isn't detectably spreading in them – which is what Adrian's reporting of Ardern's messaging suggests – then he was right in his assumption.
Tamaki wasn't ok. Small outside gatherings are less risky, not free of risk. That's why there are still rules for outside gatherings. Tamaki's mass event broke pretty much all of those rules.
If any cases get connected to an event he held, I hope he gets done for something in the order of negligence or some other reckless-endangering-causing-injury offense.
That was him thumbing his nose. His ant-vax sentiments are dangerous, Apostle #@*-$ believes his rubbish and spreads it. He is a parasite who may
through that kill the host.
"you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences"
That pretty much sums up your and other right wing wanky attitudes.
Most people delight in the consequences and we should be working to make that a good outcome for all people and all children so no-one would have to suffer.
Reminder in the 70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock and 40% within 9 months of getting married.
The right wing – trying to make reality in their own self-indulgent image since forever.
I don't believe you. Can you provide a source for this claim. I can offer you the following. In the middle of the 70s it gives the percentage of births out of wedlock as being about 16%. This rose to more like 50% in recent years.
Vaccinate or don't, isolate as much as possible or don't, mask up or don't
Thats how it should be.
How does that work for people who have illnesses that increase their risk of catching covid and increase the risk of very poor outcomes, and who will have to share spaces with the the people who don't vaccinate?
The outcomes for them don't sound conservative at all, in fact they sound pretty radical.
The flu is a seasonal illness. The Flu vaccine prevents the flu. The flu, even without the vaccine is less likely to be transmitted than covid, less likely to cause death and less likely to fill up our hospitals.
Covid is an all year illness. Rather than fully preventing the disease, the Covid vaccine more accurately reduces the spread of the disease and the impact of covid for people – not necessarily for those unfortunates "underlying conditions"
My mind is struggling to envisage how you think that would work withing the structure of a family – maybe sen the unfortunates off to some form of MIQ? It's still sounding pretty radical to me.
They think maybe Covid is seasonal, but they don't quite know how, def less seasonal in the tropics, maybe in countries with cold winters … Southland might be ok in the summertime ay?
Don't know if I am the only one but I am getting a bit sick of kung flu, China flu & the like. These and like names were Trumpian ways of either downplaying the effects of the virus or smearing countries. Now he is gone it is a blessed relief not to be hearing them again……until the last few days.
PR is there some reason why you are following this pattern of dismissing the virus by not calling it by its correct name.
A difference is that the flu is hard to vaccinate against while Delta isn't. Delta is approximately as bad as Polio on the numbers (similar R0, slightly faster serial interval, similar-higher death rate), and is quite a bit worse than the flu.
The flu is not hard to vaccinate against. Thousands get a vaccine each year that is tweaked for NZ by assessing the dominant strains in the Northern hemisphere.
Many people have had a longer exposure and thus immunities to the flu strains. Vaccines are advised for those who would be at risk if they develop influenza. It is not a matter of hard to develop but of need to have.
Hard to vaccinate against in the sense that flu is caused by collection of viruses which mutate a lot and sometimes the vaccines miss a circulating strain, and effectiveness against hospitalisation is not nearly as high as for Delta (Min Health website has it at 61% for adults 18-64 and similar numbers for other groups reported).
Dictionaries are ever so 19th century. Just explain that the net is wide enough to include businesses, he'll get it. He likely knows right-wing doctrine says that govt bail-outs are anathema to a market-driven ideologue.
Problem is, we have marginalised, impoverished, abused and undervalued broad swathes of society for decades. To expect everyone to suddenly make informed and enlightened decisions (or not be in a gang or whatever) isn't realistic. It takes consistent prosocial and supportive policies to create a cohesive, healthy and cooperative community. Neoliberal austerity and the worship of wealth has predictable negative outcomes which are not undone overnight.
Although age was linked with poorer outcomes in the outbreak last year this does not seem, to me, to be as strong with Delta.
The main risk factor for Covid is being unvaccinated. As Biden says it is a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'. The NZ figures show a significant number of children who are not yet eligible for a vaccine are getting Covid
I am concerned that the 'old age' and 'elderly' trope is (still) being used currently and the net effect is to mislead people as to the seriousness of Delta for younger age groups. Of course, the younger you are the longer you may potentially suffer from the effects of Long Covid.
If there are too many affected then their future and the country's future does not look rosy.
sure, but it's trade off right? It's not like we get to go back to how things were before. So which freedoms should we give up in order to not have lockdowns? (or have less of them)
At the point there are enough vaccines for the population and a reasonable amount of saliva testing kits (with an automatic resupply) we can open up.
Make it mandatory that you can prove you're wuhan flu free before you get on a flight to NZ (or you don't get on at all) and get tested again when you land (positive test = equals getting on the next plane back from where you cam from)
how can someone prove they're covid free before getting on a flight? If they get a test 2 days before, that's 2 days in which they can get infected and the lag between infection and infection being detectable is longer than a plane flight.
Everything we are doing is fallible, so we're talking about risk and harm minimisation. Hence my question about what restrictions do you want to trade for greater freedom.
(and putting people with covid on a plane is a sure way to infect others. All sorts of worker rights issues there in addition to public health ones).
Sure but at what point do we stop severely disadvantaging children to protect the elderly, like climate change they are the cohort which will carry the consequences in the future. .. Social Isolation, Educational deficit all have very long term consequences
any argument that says kids vs elderly is on shaky ground right from the start. We need to envisions solutions that uphold the mana and wellbeing of all groups of people.
At the moment kids in Auckland are paying a disproportionately high price, not hearing much from govt about how they plan to alleviate that…
Online school isnt great to begin with and then there's a bunch of access issues for many with regards internet and devices etc. I had to buy an extra laptop so we could work from home and access school. All this shit is being glossed over its a big problem.
Sure but at what point do we stop severely disadvantaging children to protect the elderly, like climate change they are the cohort which will carry the consequences in the future
-You're protecting doctors and nurses from burn out
-You're protecting people who may need emergency care but won't be able to get it because of beds blocked by covid patients
-You're also protecting thousands of kids mums and dads who have compromised immune systems, not just the kids' grandparents (we've been told just today that 2 doses isn't protective enough for these people)
-who knows if delta gets away on us that it won't mutate again and affect more children? Delta itself is more dangerous for younger age groups than the original Covid-19
Absolutely, if this goes on for longer we need to pay attention to how we'll work with social isolation and education to ensure kids get some benefits from this. But kids' concerns aren't necessarily that different from adults . For some, spending time with family, having time to explore and try new things, not spending hours being driven to school, activities etc. are positive. They know enough that allowing grannie and gramps to die from a disease that they feel they could have done something to prevent could be even more traumatising than missing a few months school (cross fingers that's all it is for Auckland kids).
Of course, it can't last forever. But as you imply with climate change, a new normal has to be found. This pandemic could be a stepping stone to a better future if we stopped dreaming about an imperfect past and found a way to move forward in a way that's better for kids and the planet.
The consequence of your decision may be yours but they are not yours alone. With covid-19, a person's bad choices effects everyone they pass the disease to. The disease can pass to people even when they take all the right precautions and even when they have never physically met or even seen each other.
Unfortunately, many people suffer the consequences of having sex without a condom when it was never their choice to have sex at all.
The Barker family started with next to nothing when they bought this badly run down castle .I was one of the first to go through the castle in 1967 when the Barkers first opened the castle 50cents for a tour the money going to its restoration.
43 rooms is a gross misrepresentation it is only a very small castle about 12 rooms the other rooms are motel rooms added later.Sophie is a very nice person .Always trying to do her best to make Dunedin a better place.
It wasn't quite a Cargill's Castle-level ruin when the family moved in, but they sure took a proerty that was falling apart and made it one of Dunedin's prime landmarks. Back when that was still possible without millions in the back pocket.
In its early days, under Rod Donald’s and Jeanette Fitzsimons’ leadership, the party made a positive fetish out of its openness to the news media and interested members of the public. Over the course of the last decade, however, this openness has decreased to the point where, at the party’s latest AGM, no part of the proceedings (apart from set-piece speeches from the co-leaders and a final media conference) were open to the news media.
What are they trying to hide?
Perhaps it is this sense that the Greens have changed, that they are not what they were, that lies behind their 3-point loss of support.
Could be. More likely its simply the general impression of cluelessness that the leftist Greenies who control the party are embedding in the public mind. James soldiers on resolutely in advancing his govt portfolio agenda. Marama does what exactly? Hard to tell. There seems a total lack of Green leadership emanating from the GP.
Perhaps it is all with The Greens, or maybe the media and it's style if reporting has something to do with it
As an example, Checkpoint on RNZ, seems to be looking for the outrage.
The government draws a line for a border near Auckland and they interview someone on the 'wrong' side of the border. Government announces residency/citizenship (i forgot which) to migrants working and they interview the one who has left hospo and gone studying ECE, therefore inelligible.
TBF the Greens support for BDMR/ Gender Self ID, is causing dissent too.
It depends on how one sees the function of a conference. The formulation and discussion of truly new policy is sensitive and involves false starts and disagreements. However much our cynical media might like to harvest that for clickbait, doing so does no service to the party, nor to the causes it was created to further.
Love/hate? He often reminds us he's a Green voter. Tbf, the dichotomy between the Green movement & the Green Party will always loom in the psyche of those of us motivated by the difference between what is & what ought to be…
The unrelieved media adoration of ACT, in the absence of an even remotely plausible National, has done wonders for ACT's polling. The same sugar hit would have done as much for the Greens, had it occurred.
Still, Green schools and revisionist rainbow Mexicans will only take one so far – when the environment takes a back seat, its supporters lose interest in the remains of the party.
They tend to see it as bedrock, eh? Building on bedrock is sensible. Too bad they continue to shirk the task of doing the actual building.
Since I'm the one who showed them how to make consensus politics work 30 years ago, I always wonder what part of extending consensus is ever so hard for these turkeys to grasp.
Good point. I expect Ardern to win through this period of difficulty though. It's not as if Nat/Act seems a viable alternative to anyone with half a brain.
Your logic does work on the basis of sheeple psychology, however. Depends how ephemeral the drift back across the center line really is. Trouble with polls is that they merely indicate mass sentiment at the time.
There us also the chance that we'll end up through the worst of Covid and well into the coming financial maelstrom which could well see the tide shift very quickly as soft Labour voters switch back.
If the Nats put up a freindly face as leader wont take much…
Good point. That looming economic storm currently on the media horizon could come our way too eventually, but seems likely to break in China first. Globalised markets could provide a tsunami sloshing around for a while.
Not could, it will… inflation isnt going away for a start price increases are coming through daily, so the RB starts shifting interest rates which will be a hit on floating rates but once fixed term mortgages etc are reset will suck big chunk of disposable income from the economy to service the debt… that and people will stop using their home equity to spend so a pretty stiff belt tightening which will set off a chain reaction that will be very hard to do much about…. and if shit hits the fan overseas first we'll feel it pretty quick.
We’re already seeing market distortions that are pretty decent indicators of incoming problems… bit like Angora goats and Deer… except its more tied up in housing, art and collectibles like of all kinds look at NFTs or whatever theyre called.
Called even add billionaire space race to that list…
The Greens polled better than the polls predicted at the last election.
This government is Labour-no Greens are around the cabinet table. This parliamentary term has been dominated by the Covid response. This gives the Greens' ideas very little oxygen.
In 2 years time at the election all this will look different. NZ will have 3000 Covid cases a day and 12 deaths, but this will be the accepted reality and it will hit Labour in the polls.
The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue. Swarbrick will hold Akl Central, but the Greens won't need it to be in parliament and become part of a new coalition with Labour, but this time around the cabinet table.
BG you say "The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue."
I fear that is wishful thinking going by the Greens performance in this term. Their mojo is missing and they seem to be forever side-tracked into woke issues. I watch with dread as their support tumbles. It appears that somethings have become unstuck in their management and discipline because their embarrassing gaffs can't be solely blamed on the media gotcha moments.
Dennis, watching the 1 or 4 pms is a way of getting the direct info not stuff that has been filtered through the reckons of the likes of Malpas and Cooke and Cheng and Tova. They have a tendency to leave out the reasonings and clarifications.
Yes that is why I watch them too. I turn off at question time so I don't have to listen to the opinionated, and gotchas from the media. If I want to catch up on these I look at the written feeds that s come through at the same time as the questions.
You can always watch the live version at a time to suit.
JA has shown incredible patience with what passes for media in this country.
Still not keen to watch the questions again after spending many half an hours of my life during the first outbreak going 'OMG', 'are you for real', 'she's just said that………'
The only bright light was the questions from a reporter from one of the Maori media outlets, but to wait for his questions, which are usually on point and actually useful/helpful/in depth (judging from the responses he gets from those he is asking questions) means I have to listen to an 'awful lots of frogs'. The old joke about finding the handsome prince and how you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs in the process.
Auckland wants a target or a number? Some certainty. Some direction. The magic number to 'open up' or go to L2 ? It looks like Covid is spreading right across all of Auckland. Those numbers are not going to come. At some point the decision will be made using the dartboard system, blindfolded. The dartboard will be a calendar.
How about a target like Level 1 on the 1st of December for the whole country. That gives everyone a chance to get their first jab this week and 3-4 weeks later their second jab.
A little surprised new case numbers aren't bigger. Contact tracers must be working overtime. Expecting case numbers to explode soon and 'open up' targets will be distant dream. The mutinous mobs will be blissfully ignorant.
But why should the recalcitrants hold back the rest of Auckland and for how long? If Auckland's vaccination rate is say, 87% on the 21st of December, do we remain in level three for a further two weeks/month over new years?
Jimmy wasn't saying that recalcitrants would get vaccinated Robert. He was saying that would have had the chance to do so. If they haven't done so that is their choice. It doesn't mean that the rest of New Zealand should have to remain in confinement just because a bunch of idiots refuse to take protective measures.
There are a few people in New Zealand who cannot safely have a Pfizer vaccination. IIRC I heard Bloonfield say a couple of weeks ago that it was less than 100. I don't have a source though and I may have misheard it. However, cruel as it might sound I don't believe that we can remain shutdown for them. For those who can be vaccinated but won't they are going to have to take their chances.
We know the recalcitrants won't though, don't we Alwyn, so we'll consign them to the scrap-heap/ICU? They could pull themselves up by their boot-straps, right? Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for and I guess that's a weigh-heart-against-feather sort of issue. Gonna be ugly!
I prefer to think of all the people now overseas who can't exercise their right to return to their own country.
Or the people now here who cannot travel overseas to see a parent before the parent dies. They can't go because they can't get a place in the MIQ jungle when they try and return.
Or the people who can't get an elective operation and struggle on with the pain of a hip that needs replacing but which they cannot be operated on because the beds have to be saved for the selfish people who don't get vaccinated and therefore will get a much more serious and long lasting hospital stay for their Covid.
Or the people whose business, and all the work they did to build it, is being dumped on the scrapheap because they are locked down to protect the bums who won't make any attempt to protect their own health.
Or the hundred billion or so dollars that is being wasted because the Government would rather pay out benefits than let people work. And the young people who are going to have to pay off the borrowing in the future.
But they don't matter do they? Far better to allow a few people to refuse a vaccination that will protect them and make every socially minded person suffer for the few's selfishness.
I know people who are vaccinated who would die if they catch covid-19. Them being vaccinated is not for their own safety but to improve the safety of those who may come into contact with them.
How about letting my double vaxed Swiss national best mate of the last 17 yrs , my essential worker, my financial partner, back in NZ along with the kiwis for Xmas. Our farm is a perfect MIQ and I have been double vaxed since mid August. The work is piling up and the farm projects have been on hold for 18 mths now. I am not a superwoman, just a 73 yr old woman holding the fort.
Oz has moved to allow their citizens to return (first NSW and Victoria) to home isolation. Other states as their vax rates get up and they allow inter-state activity. We'll do Auckland first.
Their PM said no to foreign tourists in the meantime.
This does raise the issue about use of the managed isolation for incoming workers (or worker placement to onsite work places – orchards/vineyards and farms) before tourism.
He does not come as a "foreign tourist" He is as important to me and the farm as "Kiwis coming home for Xmas" are to their families and he will stay much longer than most of them.
Managed isolation facilities (hotels) are usually used by tourists – they are currently used for returning citizens and under a quota some workers.
But some workers (for example, later this year PI seasonal workers) are isolating where they will live while working.
So while there will soon be more spots for incoming workers in these hotels, some are already being allowed to isolate where they will live and work – such as on a farm.
You should seek advice about the process for bringing in a farm worker – if the person qualified then they would either come in through the hotel MI system or to the farm.
Yes thank you for your advice. I have already been down the Humanitarian road but declined due to the fact, I think, that we are not a married couple! ( Who would want to get married again at our age!) ) No the PM is saying no to foreign tourists. The way it is going , I think I will have to take my situation to my MP because we are going to miss another summer season – of long planned development work on the farm- some of it waiting half finished for 18mths.
and, by the way, seasonal workers coming into Switzerland from other parts of Europe have been isolating for two weeks at their places of work for about 6 months now.
First he has to get a visa …. Switzerland used to be Visa waiver country but not right now. NZ Immigration have already declined granting him visa after he applied recently.
They won't go back to Level 1 nationwide (they have sort of ruled out going back to either Level 1 or Level 4 – unless they really have to).
It'll be a move to the traffic light system in 2022.
The hope would be Level 2 in Auckland by 1 December, the reality will more likely a move from Level 3 lite (now) to Level 3 lighter, then to Level 3 lightest and onto Level 2 later in December.
The border might remain, albeit allowing those with vaccination passports to come and go (making it difficult to come in and then leave without a certificate).
OK. So the response for anyone who doesn't get vaccinated is "let 'em die".
What about vaxxed folk who need medical attention but the unvaxxed spread it to enough vaxxed people that all the beds are full even if we throw the unvaxxed straight in the bin?
If your Auckland business happens to be a hairdresser, then "Yes, it is worth a fucking haircut!"
So the response to the million or so that have been vaccinated is "Sorry, no travel out of Auckland for you as we have a few people that don't want the vaccination. Sorry about Labour weekend, Halloween and Christmas and new years….there's always next year" It's like a teacher making the whole class stay late due to one naughty child.
Such a shame that the tory brain can't compute that some of the people dying will have had their vaccinations but just be in the unlucky 10%.
The cult of individual responsibility refuses to believe that our individual choices might have repercussions upon others that can't be mitigated by their individual choices.
but fuck actual facts when you want to hate Tories right?
lockdown fanbois obviously don’t get the situation on the ground. As outlined way above in this post, the problem is south auckland. Lock that down and hard. Let the good people north and west who’ve had the jab get on with life. Kids at school developing. Adults letting their kids see their grandparents.
fuckfaces like you forget the human side of this pandemic in your quest to eliminate (not eradicate)
I said that some of the people who die will be in the group of people who got vaccinated but it was less effective for them.
100% – 90% effective = 10%.
None of the 90% will die, because the vaccine will be effective for them.
Clear enough?
Lockdown stress sucks. So does the stress of having friends and loved ones die, or long-term disabled (remember long covid?). Your experience isn't the entirety of the human cost of this pandemic.
If I thought I had read and heard the range of silly or ill-informed comments about Covid vaccines, new ones keep emerging. Pembroke Bird came out with this gem explaining why he and others won't get the Pfizer jab
"Overseas data shows that other vaccines have performed better in Israel, the USA and Africa. We've seen this and it's a good thing. We choose that option," Bird said.
What vaccines do you think the US has used? That's right, overwhelmingly Pfizer and Moderna,both exactly the same technology as we have available here. To a far lesser extent the Janssen vaccine, which is good but not as effective as the other 2.
How about Israel? Yup, same as the US. Pfizer and Moderna. Now giving a third shot of either to the more fragile.
So lets talk about Africa. That continent is desperate to get whatever it can. Egypt is leaning heavily on the Sinovac vaccine, which whilst it is decent at keeping you alive and suffering the worst effects of covid, isn't a stellar performer. South Africa has relied on the Janssen vaccine, Many other countries have no choice other than to take what they get – AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, whatever gets delivered.
Maybe that's the option Pem Bird says he is choosing, the wait and see what gets delivered into his letterbox, vaccine surprise, whilst hoping covid doesn't get to him first.
Moderna 2 doses provides the longest high level of antibodies (Pfizers immunity fades a little earlier). Of those in the UK, Pfizer two doses provides the most antibodies, but it's the AZ Pfizer combo that provides the most T cell response.
Just had a conversation with an ECE teacher in L2 and are fully vaccinated. 5 staff are away due to a virus and coughing. The person cannot go to work due to coughing.
I asked has anyone had a Covid test?
A person has to stay home until the test result is known.
No sick leave entitlement yet.
I then said, you need to find out if the government will cover your wages while waiting for a Covid test result. Also you would not want to be known as the teacher who exposed Covid to the under 5 year olds if you were positive for Covid.
People who work with children cannot ignore the possibility of being exposed to Covid. Some ECE teachers also have young children or primary school age children.
When schools reopen in Auckland some sort of mobile testing unit would be helpful to do the rounds at schools.
We need rapid saliva tests, and we need them fast.
My partner gets his brain tickled once a week just to be on the safe side as he travels a lot and has a huge territory. It wears thin after the 15th tickle, believe me.
Really what needs to happen is for people to start acting as if the virus was everywhere, as if everyone is at risk of infection at any time and behave accordingly, masking always, social distance always, keep bubbles small and managable, avoid big crowds (can we please stop the nonsense with big outdoor concerts for 22), and test test test.
Covid transmission cannot be taken for granted. In time I am hopeful that a better saliva test not requiring a lot of spit will be available and is as accurate as a PCR test. Needs to be affordable.
I am having to dodge a lot of discarded masks at the supermarket carpark and verge on the foot path. Lazy and inconsiderate people who dump them, I have seen them left in trollies. Mask disposal bins are required as masks are essential.
Mask disposal bins would be excellent. They should be handled/treated as bio hazard.
There are a saliva tests out there and they are used widely.
It would be in the best interest of all if we could each get these as easily as buying a pack of coldral in the supermarket. if and only if this test shows a positive then follow up with the brain tickle test. Not perfect, but better then nothing. I guess that having hte world be a testing tube for us is comfortable, but at some stage we also need to accept that these are the tools we have now, and while not perfect they still help.
Were a mask bin available it would need to be designed so people cannot retrieve the masks unless they are maintenance. Other bio waste is a risk as well, discarded cigarette butts. I also try and avoid stepping on spit.
I personally do what i can to keep myself safe as far as that is possible with an essential worker at home. I simply live life as if the plague was here, and as if i could catch it at any moment. And maybe we all need to do that, rather then wait for someone else to do the right thing. Also please keep in mind that there will be still people who will not be able to vaccinate due to age or health restrictions.
But we can also just continue to cry about spilled beans.
Yes 300.000 of them to some select businesses. I want them in super markets at a cheap and affordable price. So again, nothing more then a trickle where we need a flood. But again, this too is better then nothing.
The COVID-19 Short-Term Absence Payment is available for businesses, including self-employed people, to help pay their employees who cannot work from home while they wait for a COVID-19 test result.
Good to see this. Onsite here several years ago I got surprising push-back when I pointed to the residual patriarchy. After the initial eye-roll about leftists being thick again, I figured that denial was a wall to bulldoze thro so I adopted the policy of repeating that pointing on every suitable occasion to wear the buggers down.
There's a female Green economist who has been part of the solution a hell of a long time: Hazel Henderson.
One of her famous aphorisms compares the occidental economic model to a cake with four levels, with glass on the top: the first level is nature, the second level is the subsistence economy, the third level is the public and private economy, and the last level is finance.
Agreed – what's the use of targets plucked from people's backsides that provide an illusion of certainty but turn out to be wrong because circumstances change? Of course it would play beautifully into the Tova O'Brien school of confessional journalism – where every interviewee would confess their missed target and resign on the spot or disembowel themselves on-screen with a samurai sword.
The problem here is not really lack of plans, or communication or certainty. It's an economic system that leaves so many people precarious and therefore potentially devastated by any shock. Including minor capitalists who own small businesses.
It was suppose to be my day off on the Standard. Anyone else planning a circuit breaker and impulse getting the better of them? The number of comments on TS have been picking up.
Inflation at 4.9%, people will cut back on some of the treats. This will have an impact on business. Once the decision is made to pull the plug on the business or to keep talking to the bank, (fight or flight) other possibilities will be explored. Business people have a creative gene, they might need to step back, recuperate and then proceed.
Businesses should be allowed to fail over the coming months because, if the country is not pursuing an elimination strategy for Covid-19, it does not make sense to try to save every one, one economist says.
Have been saying that since last year. In fact it would be really really great if the good minds in government could come up with a way for people to close down shop without breaking commercial leases and being forced into bankruptcy and / or breaking existing laws. Many many businesses are still there simply for the leases they have signed well before Covid was even a thing.
Having a business partner instead of a sole owner.
Lease agreements are a huge stress. Predicting the quartely revenue is hard, along comes Covid and not knowing if the business can operate fully, partially or not at all and for how long, is a lot upon ones shoulders.
If a business dies, then given the laws of the market economy another business will take its place. You will still be able to buy your coffee from the corner cafe, the restaurant will still serve yummy food, and your favourite menswear retailer may well stock a better range.
A government would be liable for the survival of a business during a pandemic if there had been payment of pandemic insurance by the company to the government.
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls.
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
– Because the government is responsible for the lock down
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
– When did I say no lock down, I did say with all the information available, if theres enough time and vaccines for the population then yes we should open up.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls
– They are bad but I'm glad you've got that off your chest
No different from a war, earthquake or extra rain in winter.
As a general principle however, one of the reasons to pay taxes is for mutual insurance against mis-fortunes such as pandemics.
I.E. Socialism.
There is no Capitalist justification for bailing out businesses that cannot survive the "slings and arrows" etc. Despite the rather nonsensicle claim, that the Government is fiscally responsible to individual businesses, for taking necessary measures to keep the country viable during a pandemic.
I’m sure that the irony, of the same people that complain about paying taxes or “Government interference” now complainimg about not enough Government help, is obvious to most of us.
Some are dying, some have pivoted, some are growing.
Pre-lockdown there were 152,502 jobs in the accommodation and food sector. End of Maty 2021 151,303. Overall it has rebounded pretty well. The spread maybe uneven but overall it doesn't seem quite as bad as all the doom and gloom merchants suggest.
Overall jobs are up on pre=-lockdown. Building industry well up. Transport is in a worse state.
Anyway what is the right wing mantra – don't like it get a better job, adapt, pivot, be flexible, get qualified etc. Why is some pithiness not applicable now.
I think this week they should announce the decisions they're going to make on December 1st. Based on circumstances now.
Then when they change their minds by December 1st because circumstances have changed, everyone can call them liars, say they're all over the shop with decision making and call them indecisive.
That's how it works doesn't it. Next years budget is going to be really important. Grant Robertson has probably made up his mind about some general approaches.
Why haven't we heard Lisa Owen on air haranguing Robertson, "Yes Minister, but if you have decisions now, why can't you tell us?" And some mention of transparency of course.
You are a one! Thanks chris T for the best laugh of my day so far. What's the point of telling us what it's "likely to be", when it might turn out to be something else. Or do you want the PM to give odds?
Ever been told by a teenager "that's too much information" when you have tried to explain something important?
The PM has to reduce being cross examined due to time restraints. She has to know what her ministers are reporting as well, and has the responsibility of managing the country.
It's a chance for the political pundits to share their/our wisdom over a weekend pint. A Friday night pint for the Week That Was, another for the Week To Be, one for the weekend footie and one more because that last tasted bloody good.
They must have some really bad news to release. It isn't just a Friday. It is also the day before a long weekend. That makes it a double-dump-the-trash day of course.
Bearing in mind the pre-disposition of many of those in hospo to complain about anything and everything about the actions of the Govt from wages, to levels, to not enough time to get our sh*t together to talk to you, giving them time to feed back ideas, assess them and formulate policy around them this seems to be worth waiting for.
Because at the start of the pandemic someone leaked that Lombardy was going to be locked down in 48 hours (they needed to mobilise and deploy folk to enforce it), so a whole bunch of infected Lombards went throughout Italy and Europe.
RNZ News just now reporting on radio a bipartisan housing announcement: Megan Woods & Judith Collins, with associates. Excellent start down a new path…
National and the government have worked together to design new housing density rules that would allow three homes three storeys tall without a consent.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, Labour government ministers Megan Woods and David Parker shared the podium with National's leader Judith Collins and housing spokesperson Nicola Willis to announce the changes at midday.
The parties worked together on a new Bill to amend the Resource Management Act, making it easier to build houses.
The obvious losers are rabid partisans of the left & right. Consensus politics can be made to work: where there's a will, there's a way. This clever move proves that point!
I was spitting nails when i read that. 3 story crappily build houses to appear everywhere and every one will just have to live with it!
but hey, who says that National and Labour can't find common ground. I am sure Grant boy is happy that hte govt real estate holdings will increases even further. Surplus! yei!
While there's life, there's hope, as the old saying goes. This initiative embeds centrist political ethos in Aotearoa for the forseeable future. It may even improve JC's poll rating! Scepticism is reasonable, nonetheless, so it will be up to the Nat/Lab leaders to ensure that delivery matches rhetoric.
The new default will be three dwellings per section, or an apartment up to three stories high, without the need for resource consent. District plans typically currently only allow for one home of up to two storeys.
Lifestyle block values will boom.
A great day for disaster capitalism – a lot of houses will be destroyed, to make way for the new (maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?).
maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?
Good thinking! I'd mandate that if I were the cabinet minister rolling out policy. Perhaps a prudent precaution would be around the costing of the home removal/relocation – a three-way split tween developer, buyer & taxpayer?
So much for our need to be more self sufficient in the future. I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do. No wonder they're going stir crazy! I'd be lost without my garden, and proximity to a large reserve during these times of lockdown.
There's no planning for social infrastructure in this rush to ruin more and more sections and I can only foresee more cheap and nasty NZ ballsups.
I'm with you on that. Have the old quarter-acre first time in five house ownerships (sequentially) and am a keen gardener.
Chinese immigrants seem partial to shoebox apartments – probably due to it being the norm in their past. My final full-time job in Ak a decade ago was supervising the dressing for sale (homestaging) and I got to see how tiny they can be. Think that design got lodged in the heads of Ak planners & developers like a mental virus back in the '90s.
Sorry, but I think you are both wrong. The idea of the quarter-acre paradise was supreme while NZ's population was small enough, but those days are gone.
In the late 1970s -early 1980s I lived very happily in apartments in Cologne (West Germany) and Lyon (France). They were among the best years of my life; I never felt that I was living in an era of social decline, and was able to jog, take pleasant walks in parks/green zones as I wished. I kept fit and enjoyed a good life-style.
What you are now demanding as a birthright will condemn our over-populated country (controversial?) to years more of evil urban sprawl, eating up valuable agricultural land, creating future mayhem.
Sorry, but NZ needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century – or even the late 19th – when most other countries learned that house/garden, house/garden throughout the land was unsustainable.
If our population growth is to continue, our cities have to go upwards, not outwards. We just need to do it right. France and Germany did where I was back then.
But we didn't make that demand. I've been citified all my life & have no issue with better urban design. Permaculture does that and I have a permaculture design certificate. However lots of folk prefer to be closer to nature if they can & I'm just fortunate enough late in life to enjoy having the old settler bit of both.
In Australia, the three level walk up apartments are common.
Single houses fill a whole block(section) and then you get stand alone smaller homes 3 to a block, another combination is 4 units in two sets, or six units in a walk up 1 whole floor of one half as an apartment. Then small and large high rises with 1 bedroom 2 bedroom 3 or 4 bedrooms. This gives a variety of types for purchase, and stock for rentals.
Our problem is the 4 bed and office 2/3 bathroom homes being built. They are out of reach of most. So variety is needed, near transport hubs.
" I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do."
Depends how much accessible open space there is incorporated into the planning rules, and social mixing in public housing, and public transport
Can we do this please, rather than putting houses and roads over good farmland and regenerating bush?
A livable city is a city where people live because they want to, not because they have to,” Vassilakou said. That translates into an emphasis on children and families, and making sure that the city can accommodate their needs: “A city that is good for children is good for everybody.”
About half the city is reserved for green space*, she said, and 62 percent of the population, including a broad middle class, lives in social housing.
*I'm pretty sure development of recreational space along the banks of the River Danube account for a lot of this. The Vienna woods are also on the the city outskirts.
The housing part of Vienna’s livability story in complemented by another important factor—the ease and affordability of transportation. Residents are served by one of Europe’s more comprehensive public transit systems, a network of subway, buses, and trams that residents can access for a flat annual fee of €365. And most do. “Close your eyes and imagine that, for one euro a day, you could go anywhere you want, as often as you want to, using public transit”
Exactly. 20 years ago we bought a two bedroom unit 1 of 2 on a cross lease. Friends thought we were mad at the time. We own it do not have a body corp and they are all paying mega bucks to move into retirement villages, and a hefty weekly fee.
This morning at Mataharehare, contractors arrived to begin work on the proposed National Erebus Monument. After a stand-off with protestors and police, the contractors left.
The Ministry of Arts and Culture are pressing ahead with this project despite widespread public opposition, opposition from local mana whenua and many of the Erebus families, a rahui having been placed on the site, and an active Ombudsman's investigation. The Ombudsman has written to the Ministry asking them to cease work until his investigation has been finalised. They have refused.
Dame Naida Glavish has published her communication with the PM, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other local and central government bodies on this issue, setting out the alleged misrepresentation and inadequate consultation around this issue. For anyone concerned about democracy her communications are a chilling read.
Here's an insight into the proposed works, from Dame Naida:
"The Ministry proposes 534sqm of earthworks on the Pā s a d clud g directly to the
north of the Tupuna Pōhu u awa ha s as old as Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It proposes to insert tonnes of concrete and steel directly in front of this great Rakau and into its roots that reach down toward te Waitematā."
Unfortunately, this is firmly at the feet of the PM. She made a promise to "a couple of" Erebus families that the memorial would be sited at that location. Apparently she now can't/won't back down.
A Kiwi PM that won't back down eh – extraordinary.
Mind you, NZ's political history is littered with PMs not backing down; think Key (public asset sales and the flag referendum), Key/Clark (unpopular anti-smacking legislation), Clark (foreshore and seabed), Bolger and Ruthanasia, Lange (anti-nuclear stance), Muldoon (pro-tour; at least we know where he stood), Kirk (cancelled the 1973 Springbok tour and opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific) et al.
You've got to know when to hold 'em [Ardern] Know when to fold 'em [Key] Know when to walk away [English] And know when to run [Muller] You never count your money [Bridges] When you're sittin' at the table [Collins] There'll be time enough for countin' When the dealin's done [Luxon]
There is nothing in this that reflects well on the PM, no matter how you spin it. She's made a promise she had no right to make, and a significant Auckland landmark is going to be detrimentally affected as a result.
Only in response to your attempt to paint this as something noble. My first comment didn’t attach any criticism to the PM. In fact it’s possible that initially she was simply ill informed, but now she’s digging in, and that’s not reflecting well on her.
Only in response to your attempt to paint this as something noble.
Bollocks. I listed several examples of former PMs not backing down; some “noble” and some not, imho.
My first comment didn’t attach any criticism to the PM.
Really?
Dame Naida Glavish has published her communication with the PM, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other local and central government bodies on this issue, setting out the alleged misrepresentation and inadequate consultation around this issue. For anyone concerned about democracy her communications are a chilling read.
As I said, your 'concern' is noted – keep digging for those "nothing in this that reflects well on the PM" stories, and mind the dirt.
now she’s digging in, and that’s not reflecting well on her.
How is my comment a criticism of the PM? The PM was Minister of Arts and Culture when this got underway. Dame Naida’s communications are critical of processes undertaken by that ministry specifically. Have you read them? Do you think those processes are ok?
As far as not reflecting well on the PM, that is evident. She made promises to a very small number of families that overrode the wishes of the majority, that defied the advice of the governments own commissioned report, and that defied the survey of families conducted to assess a location. As I said, she may have been misinformed at the time. But now that all of the misinformation and poor process has been uncovered, she has an opportunity to put this right.
I joined the dots and thought you were suggesting that Dame Naida Glavish's “communication with the PM” formed part of "a chilling read". Apologies for getting that wrong, and/or possibly misinterpreting "a chilling read" as criticism. Thanks for making your intentions clear.
Are you sure it is not a few in opposition to the memorial, that are overriding the wishes of the families and community because they got their noses out of joint?
The line you're hearing is wrong, but I don't blame you for that. There has been a huge misinformation campaign from the Ministry around that. Just on mana whenua involvement, here are some examples of how this process lacked genuine support and consultation:
It was local iwi representatives (from Ngatiu Whatua Orakei) who placed the rahui on the site.
The shortlisted designs were finalised without any input from mana whenua.
In August 2019, Ngati Whanaunga raised concerns that the Ministry had falsely claimed the support of man whenua, and requested a whole of mana whenua review. This was declined.
When the archaeological assessment of the site was conducted, the assessors wrote that their review “does not include an assessment of Maori cultural values. Such assessments should only be made by the tangata whenua”. The Ministry ignored this recomendation.
There's lots more. This has been a shabby process, with mana whenua and the majority of families sidelined by a deceptive ministry.
1. Colmar Brunton were commissioned to conduct a survey of Erebus families to get feedback on a suitable location. Based on the results of that survey, Mataharehare is totally unsuitable.
2. The Boffa Miskell report, commissioned by the Ministry, highlighted a number of problems with the site, and recomended a location closer to Auckland Airport.
3. Following the CM survey and the BM report, Auckland Council invited Ministry officials to Auckland to view alternate sites. The Ministry rejected that offer on 20 August 2018, and wrote that staff would “come to Auckland (earlier the better) to discuss how we square things away with council on confirming the site and to visit the site with a couple of the family members we have a close relationship with”.
"A couple of families". Does this not smell to you?
The hospitality industry amuses me, no type of business even in the best of times fails anywhere as much as cafes and bars and restaurants, probably mainly because anybody who can burn a cheese toastie thinks they are a chef and those who can’t give you a drink at a party without spilling it over everyone in sight thinks they would make a great bartender. The ones that have failed would have fallen over without Covid help.
The hospitality industry, the tourism industry, the retail industry, all and any front facing other industries……….they would have all failed even without covid.
So a business that, through no fault of it's own, suddenly has no customers, and yet has to still pay most of it's fixed costs, "would have fallen over anyway, without Covid's help"?
So a cafe or bar in Auckland that has been forced to close for 10 weeks due to no fault of their own, and seen their turnover drop say between 90% (as they can now do a few takeaway coffees) – 100%, would have failed anyway?
Do you actually think about what you type before you type it or sense check it?
You have obviously never run a business (or shouldn't).
If we are going to let them fail as suggested, first we would need to legislate away personal guarantees on the lease or we're gonna have a helluvalot more homless families. Banks and landowners can share some pain.
from todays update and maybe we can stop that Maori bashing in regards to vaccination.
Only 66 per cent of Māori nationwide have had one dose and 45 per cent have had two doses, far lower than the national averages of 85 per cent and 66 per cent.
Yesterday Ardern said crowd-funding for a mobile vaccination clinic in Tairāwhiti shouldn't be necessary, though she conceded that communication between DHBs and Maori health providers wasn't always perfect.
The Government's rollout has been accused of being implicitly inequitable, and Cabinet rejected expert health advice to prioritise Māori and Pasifika aged 50 to 64.
A larger proportion of Māori were also not eligible for the vaccine until later because Māori are on average much younger.
According to Statistics NZ, the median ages for Māori males and females are 25 and 27 years old respectively, much lower than the national median ages of 36.4 and 38.5 years old.
It's also more common for Māori to live in harder-to-reach areas.
Whanau Ora providers sent a proposal to DHBs and the Ministry of Health in February with a plan to reach such areas, including using vaccination buses
On a completely unrelated note I love this movie, I really do. Its always in my top 5 action movies of all time
You have one of the best heroes of all time being a complete bad ass and its a woman and no one batted an eye because the set up of her character, the writing, the performance, the chemistry all contributed to a strong, flawed yet courageous, believable character carrying out the heroes journey to perfection
The thing is Alien is a horror sci fi classic but its horror first and foremost and very well done but Aliens is action sci fi with horror elements so yeah if you're wanting a retread of Alien you'll be disappointed but if you're one of the greatest action movies ever made you'll be happy
Quite similar to Terminator vs Terminator 2 really
Level 1 won't happen fullstop until children under 12 are vaccinated 1/3 of new cases are children.
Level 2 is a good short term solution until we get the future of NZ vaccinated.
It looks like the FDA might give approval by Dec 1 in the US.
If we can get that cohort vaccinated by the end of February then we should go to Level 1 .with masks with vaccination passports.by the end of 2022 with new antiviral medicines becoming available .We should be back to near normal.
Provided Covid doesn't mutate to a degree where vaccines don't provide protection.
Modelling this is going to get tough (one has to profile the infectious and their associates accurately) (we need the infectious to prefer the company of the double vaxxed).
This might get too high for comfort by 1 November (rising towards 200 and contact tracing capacity will end chance of any easing in November).
The data on the infected (no vaccination or one dose or within 2 weeks of a second dose or two doses 6 months ago) will be telling.
tbf … Bayernis one of the Great Clubs of Europe … Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Sepp Maier, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Lothar Matthäus, Jürgen Klinsmann, Thomas Müller … and Bavaria is one of the prettiest regions of Europe … socially & politically conservative ? yes … but let’s be fair about this … outrageouslygorgeous with it.
Have to say, we're better off here when there are some RWNJs around, much more interesting. You just need to up your game to the leftie level of political argument Chris and PR 😈😛
I've started a post, because he gives two very clear examples of SW influence: Scottish govt removing the word mother from its maternity leave policy, and the BBC changing its news style guide so that homosexuality means same gender attracted rather than same sex. I assume both of those are covered in the podcasts?
Found the first couple of episodes to be basic outlines.
Skipped Ep 4 as my download was corrupted, Ep 5 and 6 giving good specific information of the unquestioning acquiesce of government departments and institutions to Stonewall 'recommendations'.
Full and Frank discussions like the Puckish Christ Rogue test it might get up your nose but for democracy to survive we need to able to question both sides to get a better outcome.
Make a submission to the Emissions Reduction Plan! The pressure needs to be put on the Govt to make climate action a priority, please take the time to make a submission.
Right now, the Government is creating the most comprehensive climate action plan to date – the Emissions Reduction Plan.
It’s a big deal. It will set out exactly how we plan to reduce emissions over the next 15 years and it’s crucial we get it right.
Now is your opportunity to tell our elected members what things you support in the draft plan, and if anything is missing or needs to be strengthened.
…
The ERP will be one of the most important, most comprehensive plans this Government creates. It will set out exactly how each Minister across Government plans to reduce climate pollution to meet our emissions targets and address the climate crisis. If done right, it will set us firmly on the path to a low emissions future.
We know our kids and our grandkids need this plan to be as ambitious as possible. Help us show Government Ministers that there is overwhelming public pressure for ambitious climate action by making a submission.
Australia has by and large contained the virus within states. We could create some more borders and do the same. They say it's hard to put one around the Waikato but surely not as hard as having another outbreak. Containers would do a good job of blocking roads.
Many would think some jail time would be appropriate for the likes of the North Shore party ratbags.
I mean, technically as an isolation violation there's probably already the potential to detain them on health grounds. But then you'd need temporary facilities set up – stadiums are traditional – and everything goes downhill from there.
Unless you give them enough vodka and dope that they don't realise they're in isolation for a fortnight lol
As good as you'll get from the guy – still adamant that everything he said was accurate about a member of a specific gang doing a specific thing, but admitting that the specific gang member wasn't Harry Tam.
5 minutes to spare, and no sign of having worked with Tam or Mansfield in crafting his response (but good to see the complete text of the lawyer letter). May be just enough to get Peters off the hook though. Still if there was a gang associate present in Northland, then you'd expect them show up on CCTV footage…
The Mongrel Mob may be bad news, but as far as I'm aware, are not actual vampires!
It's not data they have had stats on so far (but obviously it is the sort of information any modeller would want to know if they were to make useful forecasts).
Pingao below was able to point me to a very helpful RNZ link.
It's a couple of days out of date, but it's showing 2005 total cases.
1541 of those are unvaccinated (of those 409 are under 12), of the 1132 unvaccinated eligible adults, 138 are hospitalised
91 of the cases are fully vaccinated, of which 3 are hospital.
There's also various categories of partially vaccinated. Make what you will of whether just one dose provides substantial protection.
Of those 409 cases in kids, 7 are hospitalised. That to me is a very good argument for why we should also be vaccinating kids as soon as we reasonably can, contra those agin vaccinating our kids.
What will inform on the under 7's, is if ICU care is needed for any of the cases (and how they respond to treatments available – such as monoclonal antibodies).
It's not that encouraging
as you note no great improvement from the first dose in outcomes over the unvaccinated (hopefully those with one dose avoid need for ICU care).
it's actually a little higher than 10% from infection to hospitalisation for those not double vaxxed (presumably for monitoring and treatments, as few are in ICU).
3 out of 91 is over 3% of the double vaxxed into hospital – we had hoped more like 1%. This maybe why they are looking at over the phone nursing with supply of the oxygen monitoring device.
A positive is that the low numbers of the double vaxxed being infected.
Another positive is that most of those being infected are not the older and vulnerable to more serious outcomes (thus low ICU demand so far).
Reply to Andre at 26. Try Radio NZ "Covid-19 data visualisations: NZ in numbers". Scroll down to "vaccination status of cases … "
Overall the website "visualisations" are not necessarily entirely accurate/up-to-date as I've seen other figures relating to say, DHB vaccination numbers on the MOH but it is probably a good guide.
Sorry – I've given up on trying to paste links as it doesn't seem to work anymore on my mobile.
Those unvaccinated vs vaccinated case rates and hospitalisation rates could probably do with being much more widely publicised. They really are that dramatic.
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
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It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
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Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The thing about life’s little victories is that they can be followed by a defeat.Reader Darryl told me on Monday night:Test again Dave. My “head cold” last week became COVID within 24 hours, and is still with me. I hear the new variants take a bit longer to show up ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Angus Deaton on rethinking his economics IMFLocal scoop: The people behind Tamarind, the firm that left a $500m cleanup bill for taxpayers at Taranaki’s Tui oil well, are back operating in Taranaki under a different company name. Jonathan ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
Today marks a tragic milestone for New Zealanders as the Coalition Government side with big tobacco to repeal the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
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The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
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There are quite a few regular commentators on here who, frankly, are beginning to piss me off.
I excuse the usual right wing idiots – like the Natz, they’ll criticise because, you know, Labour – enough said. I could name them, but you know who I’m referring to.
No, it’s the so-called lefties who are getting my goat.
NZ has probably had the best covid response in the world – the facts speak for themselves – 188th in the world in terms of cases, only just over 1000 cases during the whole pandemic per 1 million and only five deaths (per million).
There has been no playbook for this crisis – the government is literally making it up as they go along – yet these Captain Hindsights all preach about what should have been done 18 months ago.
Or they rabbit on about their rights being curtailed, as if they had no responsibilities. As if individual rights pre-empted collective responsibilities.
Then they go on about how the Labour government is not doing enough (which I can agree with for I too have been generally disappointed by the lack of radical progress in many areas) but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??
A moment’s reflection should convince them that, on the evidence of right-wing governments world wide, covid would have been a fucking disaster under a Natz government.
But do they reflect? No, they bag the government. Well, they have a ‘right’ to do so, but reading their comments is getting a little tedious. And if someone does call them out, as happened yesterday, they get dumped on with abusive language.
I, for one, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world at the moment.
Nor would I. I agree re the likelihood that things would be significantly worse if we had a National govt.
The thing that irritates me is Labour's tolerance of obfuscation. Either the public health officials know how Delta is being spread, or they don't. If they know, they ought to tell us. If they don't they ought to say so.
Instead we just get the number of unlinked cases dangled in front of us daily as if it were some kind of totem to be gazed at with fascination. Seems more like a bullshit scheme to me – and I have generally approved their performance.
Isn't it that they know how some of it is being spread, but not all of it?
Yeah, probably, but it doesn't change my view as expressed. I see no valid excuse for their failure to inform the public of the contagion pattern that they have discerned. If we were all the wiser after being thus informed, we'd be on board with the policy implementation strategy. We wouldn't have this growing loss of trust in their strategy.
Honestly, I think people's nervousness is due to Labour and MoH not being god. This is a really hard situation, they've not had a break in 18 months. People are understandably stressed, it's a really stressful situation. Who would you rather was running the response other than Labour?
I don't have a problem with Hipkins. He seems to be on the ball. I think the PM ought to be somewhat more so: she ought to explain the nature of the contgagion pattern. Causal thinking is hard-wired into us from our evolutionary past. I appreciate that pandemics are inherently mystifying, but getting a grip on how they work is always in our common interests.
As I mentioned below, could be that political correctness is defeating our common interest by getting in the way of the truth…
You have admitted that you havn't been listening to the briefings, just the media interpretations,.
The information has often been in the briefings and Government statements.
Whereas I wonder if most of the media has even been there. Certainly not listening. They mis-interprete and even lie about what was said so often.
As for question time, after the briefings, I just turn it off. The partisan ignorance, and lack of basic comprehension, of the so called "Journalists" is both depressing and irritating. .
Hmm, fair comment. See below for my take. I agree that the dichotomy tween briefings & reportage is a significant problem.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been told (Govt sources or answers at the ‘pressers’
a) families of over 10 people in each family are getting together
b ) families/groups are getting together inside instead of being outside
c) we are given locations of interest that seem to be suburbs in South Auckland & now west Auckland
I suspect some churches are 'hiding' by having bible study or services inside family homes and with larger groupings, but being less obvious than seeing a pile of people or cars outside a church. Last outbreak we had a couple of instances like this come to light.
For me the contagion pattern is in South Auckland, mainly, spread by groups or families of over 10 people who are largely meeting inside.
Looking at the demographics from MOH you can see the ages are mostly 0-59 years. Children are highly represented
0-9 350
9-19 401
Maori 599 and Pasifika 989 people are over represented. Hospitlaisation is 43 cases for Maori and 107 for Pasifika.
Vaccination status when reported as a case is also on that site total 2005.
1132 not vaccinated 138 hospitalised
409 less than 12 years old and therefore not vaccinated 7 hospitalised
going down to
fully vaccinated 91 and 3 of those hospitalised.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics
Judging by the difficulty of tracking some contacts, as my dad would say, I would 'hazard a guess' that some are involved in criminal or antisocial enterprises
That's an extremely comprehensive picture you've painted there. I suspect journos are too paranoid to report the ethnic problem: pc inhibiting their desire to report the truth. Delta getting the kids to that extent shows how different it is to the original contagion last year which had minimal effect on kids as far as I could tell. Thanks for the effort, which I reckon will clarify the view of plenty of others, not just me.
Thanks for a concise list.
Unlinked cases are interesting because they suggest there are unknown cases out there. And unknown cases are the danger because they can spread unknowlingly (or knowingly but uncaringly).
But unlinked cases can turn into linked cases once all the places where that person has gone is worked through or they can link through studying the virus genome.
Unlinked cases are the canary in the coalmine.
Well said Tony. You are not on your own.
I have learnt, pre Covid, to scroll on by one or two commenters. This has certainly paid dividends recently.
We need to look at what we have to be grateful for, what to give thanks for. Connect with nature, try a new hobby via University Tube, meditation…
100% concur with your sentiments gsays (1.2).
Well maybe if we got answers to reasonably simple questions:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/300431939/covid19-what-the-everchanging-icu-bed-numbers-tell-us
As someone that used to be in logistics I can easily say that this should not be a difficult question to answer
The main reason we have low numbers is mainly down to luck ie location, surrounded by water, low population so it seems reasonable to question the government given they've had over a year to sort things out
The main reason we have low numbers is that Labour went hard early on in the pandemic and eliminated covid from the community until fairly recently. Geography didn't make that happen, and as delta is showing us, Auckland is a population dense city not a low population once.
We could in fact say we've had two pandemics in NZ, covid, followed closely by delta. Our strategy for the first was very successful. Our strategy for the second is still being worked out because it is new.
No Weka, NZ and Labour got lucky.
When NZs population went into lockdown why wern't the borders closed?
How long did it take before border workers were tested?
Why did the government take so long to order the vaccines?
Why was there a delay in the vaccine rollout?
Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?
Is it easier for the government to just say lockdown?
l. It is not necessary to close borders while Level 4-3 lock downs are going on (or when the local population is vaxxed up and its the vaccinated coming in).
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals to support the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out.
4. We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff and supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses (I would prefer we imported some pandemic experienced staff from OE into airbnb and maintained surgeries myself).
Yes you do.
2. Level 1 was sweet and it was unknown whether the vaccine would prevent transmission (it does not) – if it did a lot more ICU would not be needed.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
3. Delay has allowed us to know the vaccination will not end the pandemic and to appreciate that its important to have the AZ antibody cocktail and Merck anti-viral available in our hospitals before the protection provided by this Pfizer vaccine roll out fades.
You do not delay when a vaccine is available. It is better to have it and not need it then need it and not have it.
4.We have ICU beds and trained and experienced ICU staff we have supplementary beds with trained up surgical nurses
We don't have enough if the s**t hits the fan. The government has had over a year and should have been prioritising this (no thats not hindsight, thats obvious)
We allowed Kiwi to return to their homes in 2020 – during Level 4 and 3 lock downs.
So your reckon vs the record of history – we eliminated.
We had elimination and Level 1 – we did not need it (there was no COVID free world to rejoin to).
Most of us will regard 2021, as better than 2022 (albeit some will enjoy the easier come and go).
'We had elimination and Level 1 – we did not need it (there was no COVID free world to rejoin to).'
You are, again, incorrect. We needed it because it was clear by then covid is not going away.
We gave up personal freedoms and delayed the inevitable and the government squandered that time
Your reckons are not credible. What has “its not going away” to do with creating a safe zone and waiting to identify the future best course?
The many were better off with level 1 elimination in 2021.
The inevitable being pandemic spread and more death … . The choice to delay means in 2022 we will have treatments to save lives.
Waiting and watching was wise, the AZ antibody roll out to the unvaxxed and the Merck anti-viral treatment will reduce need for ICU care.
Watching yes, waiting no.
If there was a vaccine available, a booster available, testing swabs whatever then the purchase order should have gone in sooner.
I order firewood in Summer (cheaper that way), I don't need it in Summer (good insulation) but I know I'll need it in Winter
I don't wait until Winter happens, I order before hand in case of a back log of other people ordering, in which case I might have to wait
People would have died in 2021 if we had opened with earlier vaxxing. There will now be better medical protection with the delay.
Its not one or the other
You can have lock downs and order vaccines. You can wait and watch and order saliva testing kits.
I know its a hard concept for the average Labour politician but you can do one than one thing at a time
Prisoner of the Right you have Obsessive Conservative Disorder
PCR tests are far more accurate than the Quick Saliva tests.
Delta can easily missed even after 3 quick tests didn't show any infection a PCR test showed that person had asymptomatic covid.in a recent news article.
Your like a kid who doesn't get his own way having a tantrum today.
I wonder how you would treat one of your charges at work who was displaying this behaviour.
They did order vaccines while we had Level 1 elimination.
Sure they expected to complete vaccination first and then open up (and bring in rapid testing for this then), so yes they were caught out by not being able to realise elimination with the latest outbreak …
Do you get paid for taking part in PR's revisionist history?
'I wonder how you would treat one of your charges at work who was displaying this behaviour.'
A damn sight better than people with opposing views are treated on here
You're not getting the game:
– why didn't they get in early and order vaccines before they were out of trials
they did
– why did they order untested vaccines, knowing some might fail trials
or:
– why didn't they order saliva tests of undetermined or insufficient reliability
they did
-why did they waste money on substandard tests
PR isn't even the worst one. There are a few tories who would have been charged with treason if they'd exhibited similar behaviour in WW2, providing aid and comfort to the enemy.
These days, they don't even breach broadcasting standards because that minute of ranting was "opinion" not "news content".
Repeating bollocks over and over, Seymour and National's technique, doesn't make it true!
It was the travel bubble remember that gave us the joy of the Delta virus. And in that, despite having all the info we waited 3 weeks for the border to shut. This is like peeing in an swimming pool.
We had over a year to get everybody vaccinated and prepared to open the boarders. Pfizer offered but no, we are special, so special.
If my memory doesn't fail me, the first deliveries of vaccines were reserved for the elderly and Maori/Pacifica. This was months ago and I hear constantly the government failed them. Absolutely not.
The actual outbreak in August came via a person who came into managed isolation from Sydney after the travel bubble closed.
There will be more than one case of spread after we open up borders with vaccination at c90%. The spread rate now would be higher and nationwide if we had vaccinated earlier.
Most of the elderly are already vaccinated.
It may have been the Olympics/Paralympics that did it.
Yes, NZ and Labour got lucky as well. But it's pretty obvious that our values-base approach worked up until delta.
"Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?"
You just posted an article that explains this.
"Why does no one seem to know how many ICU beds and staff we have?"
General incompetence and the wrong people being put in charge but really it was just another reason as to my arguement why its more luck than good management
Funny, because one of neoliberalism's first moves was to replace clinical managers with non-clinical managers from other sectors. Maybe it's not just a logistical provisioning thing, and having long years of experience working as a clinical manager would have given an advantage in knowing how to keep the system adaptable.
Then there is the health system undermined by neoliberalism, understaffing, and budget cuts. For decades.
Next you'll be telling me that the market will provide enough ICU nurses.
Neoliberalism is a convenient scapegoat isn't it.
We haven't done this because of (cue deep, forboding voice) Neoliberalism dun dun dun, we can't do this because dun, dun, dun Neoliberalism
At some point you'll have to accept that Labour has been in power since 2017 and, unbridled power, since 2020 and that Neoliberalism is an excuse
lol, the problems with the health system are on both National and Labour and predate this particular government by a long way. Those problems didn't arise out of thin air. If you replace clinical managers with managers whose purpose is to run a hospital like a business, then this is exactly the kind of stupid outcome you get.
I would guess because wards can become ICU wards or not depending on demand. And more beds can be put into an ICU ward if absolutely needed. Staffing is always a revolving target as people come and go, change departments, etc etc.
Geography was always the most important factor. We might like to imagine a scenario where the UK was so well managed that they could have implemented MIQ like NZ. Heres why that doesn't work…
First of all the UK needs to implement a successful elimination, by early lockdowns. This could never have happened but lets imagine it did. The UK population is 10x NZ population and much more integrated with Europe and Ireland in terms of trade routes. So we infer that the UKs MIQ needs to handle (very conservatively) only 10x as many people as NZ. NZ had a covid case escape MIQ roughly every 4 months. This lead to regional lockdowns for weeks or months. So in the UK the equivalent is some part of the UK will be locked down due to a MIQ escape almost continuously (or somehow UK MIQ works more than 10x better than NZ MIQ).
The regional lockdowns will hardly be eliminated in weeks as the population density is much higher. In fact the UK has been locked down for significant lengths of time but never has got close to eliminating the alpha variant regionally afaik, let alone nationally.
Finally elimination may have been possible around when there were hundreds of cases in the UK. From estimates this was around January 2020, before there was even widespread knowledge of the virus.
This is not to say the UK reaction was particularly good, there were more than a few mistakes made, but its mostly geography driving how the pandemic would work out.
Looks to me like each place needed its own solutions and systems. However, the values that we start with dictated how pandemic responses were developed in addition to the geography. Geography didn't make Labour go hard early, their health advisors and Labour's (and I'm sure Ardern's) values did.
Likewise, if we'd had FJK in charge (or Collins 🙄🤡), I think it's likely we would have gone down a similar path as the UK and the US, because of values.
PR is trying to argue that Labour didn't do anything good and just got lucky. While we have had luck as well, PR's position is plainly partisan nonsense.
Its certainly plausible that National in govt would have handled it much worse. Australia did similarly however with a conservative government so I wouldn't assume thats a certainty (again being somewhat remote geographically helped). But I have had conversations where people overseas suggested that NZs success was mostly about the political aspects and thats not intellectually justifiable. If NZ was in the middle of Europe we would have had a large outbreak even with the same policies in place and wouldn't have got to elimination.
Which is WHY we have gone for unique NZ solution – because we’re not in Europe, & we CAN.
We are still running an evolving, unique NZ system.
This is not to say the UK reaction was particularly good
It's not that their response wasn't very good. It was dire. Their own reviews say as much https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/oct/12/covid-response-one-of-uks-worst-ever-public-health-failures
Politics, hubris, incompetence and a bit of financial skullduggery are better explanations than geography.
You're right though, a comparison with New Zealand isn't fair. The UK's response needs to be compared with other small, densly population nations with regional roles in highly populated nearby areas. Measuring the UK's response against East Asian nations, which are far more geographically similar is a better way to judge what could be.
at a guess, part of the issue with the ICU figures is whether one is counting infrastructure or staffing. My understanding is that it's trained nurses on the payroll that determine what a 'bed' is, not the bed itself.
I see this is pretty much what Watkins is saying. Also,
To me it just looks like the normal outcome of neoliberalisation of the health system over the past 40 years. What did we expect?
No it is not.
This is a matter of simple logisitics. For example you take all the factors that make up a complete ICU ready bed and then go to the hospitals and get the information from them
Its really not that difficult
EG 200 beds and 150 nurses = 150 ICU ready beds (or however you want to call them) however Labour just can't seem to help themselves when it comes to spinning so they'd say 200 beds which is factually correct but obviously wrong
But then lets face it you had Clark as minister of health, which worked out really well, and now you have a union lawyer so is it really a surprise no one knows whats going on?
Emphasising because you seem to have missed this.
Each ICU bed requires 3 specially trained nurses, round the clock and dedicated to that ICU bed. So 200 beds = 600 nurses if none of them take leave or are sick.
Each ICU bed costs $1 million a year.
(Thanks for, where did you get those stats from?)
Should be more than enough in this lot for a few more beds then:
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/budgets/covid-19-funding-allocation-expenditure#:~:text=The%20Government%20has%20signalled%20%2462.1,and%20Recovery%20Fund%20(CRRF).
The Government has signalled $62.1 billion of funding to support the COVID-19 response and recovery:
how many more?
Here you go Puckish Rogue
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/podcast-the-detail/upping-our-intensive-care
Assuming the nurses are going to have 2 days off per week, along with public holidays (either on the days or as alternative holidays later), annual leave and sick leave (and bereavement, parental and other leave), not to mention professional development/training and any similar reasons for time off, a more likely number of nurses is 6 per bed, so 200 beds = 1200 nurses who require 4 years of training after they graduate as nurses.
Also, hospitals with ICUs are usually close to capacity as part of the staffing and funding model, so additional capacity comes at the cost of capacity somewhere else, or a few years to physically build more capacity at a time when building labour and material supply are quite constrained.
Exactly. Then you have the ongoing process of not knowing how many nurses are on the cusp of getting qualified for that setting, and how many are set to look at the time to come and find other work. Then there are the beds: the maintenance schedules of every single machine around each bed, and whether one machine being actually used in another ward means that bed is no longer ICU-standard (but could be if needs be).
Across twenty different organisations which might each have a couple different sub-units (aka "hospitals") and management structures long-trained to gaming the system (e.g. fudging ED admissions in the 1990s-2000s), and it's a substantially more complex logistics issue than PR thinks.
Well said – a characteristic of many right-wing govts is their weak pretense of governing for society as a whole, while giving COVID a helping hand to take the hindmost.
If National had been in government Bill English would have been PM.
We may get on your goat, but in a functioning democracy I believe it is our duty to critique the government at every turn.
So many people treat politics like sport. We cheer on our side, and so long as we are beating the Nats, then everything is apparently awesome. There is a general obsession from some to almost have a daily post about National, which is just plain weird in my view. They are irrelevant.
You can be broadly in support of the government's response to COVID, while at the same time being critical of certain aspects of that response. That is healthy for good decsion making. Its not treason to criticise.
I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere other than New Zealand over the past two years, and I'm very glad National wasn't in government. But that shouldn't discourage lefties from calling out the government when they deserve it.
seriously – try driving a car with a passenger who critiques you at every turn.
Now do it with someone who only critiques to when there is a safety issue or you are going in completely the wrong direction.
Now imagine you're driving a station wagon with five million kids in the back.
I'm gobsmacked Ardern hasn't dropped at least one "fuck all y'all", flipped a double bird, and walked out of a single press briefing.
Especially the "Are we there yet?" or "We want to know what's going to happen"
Or the real pearler "Give us certainty" in a Pandemic.
Its kind of like when you're driving through terrible weather and you can hardly see 5 metres in front of you, but your driver carefully navigates through the stormy weather, while some of your neighbours are reckless and crash.
Then you come to a lull in the weather and the driver rightly congratualtes themself for getting eveyone to that point safely.
Meanwhile your reckless neighbours upgrade their cars with urgency to protect them in the storm as they are still stuck in the middle of it.
The passenger sees darker scarier storm clouds on the horizon and suggests to the driver that maybe we should also upgrade the car before the second storm gets here. The driver says, no urgency as I have got you through the storm and we don't need that upgrade like our neighbours.
Then, predictably, but without warning, the storm hits.
The passenger says didn't I tell you so.
The passenger is still your mate. Don't hate him.
Upgrade a car midjourney?
Seems easy enough. We'll just increase the wheelbase with a spanner, shall we? I'm sure everyone in the backseat knows how to do that /sarc
Upgrading the car mid journey is exactly what we are doing now.
It's a completely different set-up to what we were driving in April 2020. I know some people just want to go back and do what we did then as it worked. But the storm has evolved and so to does our car need to.
See you are proving my point. Crticism isn't anti-government.
Cheer leading is a bigger issue in my view.
Yeah, nah.
We're taking different routes – miq vs "open border but isolate at home", L4 early instead of wishful thinking.
And this is a discussion. As opposed to what is possible with government – unless we have 5 million comms staff all responding to each others bullshit concerns.
And then some tories would just complain about too many comms staff.
And then there's your false equivalence between an (albeit asymmetric rather than face to face, where you know I receive your message as soon as you finish talking) comment:response format between a small number of people where both are ostensibly commenting in good faith, vs some fucking opinionator in an editorial spreading alarm and despondency, with no possibility of timely response to a similar audience because "comments on this article have now closed".
Don't compare a disagreement here with anything Juco says, for example.
I think we ended up going down quite a long rabbit hole McFlock, and I'm not quite sure why.
My initial comment was in response to Tony who took issues with lefties being critical. The old view that if don't support us on everything, you must be a Nat. Bat shit crazy thinking.
Anyway have a good day.
I took it as meaning not all criticism of the government's covid response is fair, constructive, accurate, useful, or particularly warranted given the state of the rest of the world.
In fact, most of it is "none of the above". It doesn't matter who is doing the backseat driving, if it's "none of the above" then they're doing nothing other than distracting the driver.
The team's Covid journey has been relatively good so far. Hoping against hope that we don't soon find out just how 'lucky' we’ve been.
The Government is doing well with Covid. Not so great in most other measures. "The Nats would be worse" is a very low bar.
Child Poverty
Inflation/ Cost of Living
Housing Crisis
Climate Change
Aye
Not so great is an understatement…housing affordability and emergency accommodation fit in disastrous category.
Agree, Tony V.
As for voting NAct…to paraphrase Noam Chomsky – the good thing about choosing the lesser evil, is you get less evil. I won't be voting NAct!!
It's interesting hearing from so-called commentators about "rights" when in comes to covid restrictions and requirements. Yet it's difficult to see where these "rights" come from. The Human Rights Act lists 13 grounds of discrimination. I can't see which one or more of these could be relied upon to trump anything the government might do in the way of requirements around safety in respect to the potential spread of covid. Nor can the NZBORA provide anything similar. In any case it only applies to things done by the government or Crown-related outfits, and then only in relation to their statutory functions. It's telling that Russell McVeigh, one of the largest law firms in the country, has announced it's policy of requiring everyone visiting their offices to be vaccinated, including all staff. Surely if anyone's risk-analysis of such a requirement was going to stand up to a HRA or NZBORA critique it'd be theirs.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/russell-mcveagh-and-pwc-announce-all-staff-and-visitors-to-its-offices-required-to-be-covid-19-vaccinated/PAZNT4I6WSZ6HPA4TTIEXUGJHE/
In terms of the NZBORA and Covid restrictions, it would be the rights to refuse medical treatment, freedom of movement, association and peaceful assembly. I think the restrictions come under justified limitations (also in the NZBORA) myself and that has been the findings of courts to date, but obviously others have a differing view.
Yes, I'm sure Russell McVeigh's position would be that the restrictions are justified limitations. I'm not so sure about the right to refuse medical treatment, though. I'd say the right is still intact because people can still refuse vaccination.
Currently, but if you're a nurse or teacher (for example), NZ work might be hard to find after the order comes through, which could be seen as compulsion. Agree that it's more tenuous than hired goons actually forcing the vaccination.
Haven't really noticed this bit.
"but then suggest they’ll give their vote to the Natz? Or worse still, Act??"
And many of us lefties aren't Labour supporters either. although I do think they have done a very good job of managing the pandemic until they opened the Oz bubble. Since then they have been putting out fires.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPjPpTSznK4
As a traveller stuck in QLD I suggest the following with regard to travel back to the motherland:
What I would want to ask the Minister is how could a competent Minister let this disastrous state of affairs continue and the debacle that is MIQ, operate for so long with absolutely no leadership on this issue.
Nope.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02261-8
The vaccines are tools to help limit spread and reduce risk to individuals. They're not a panacea. The helping limit spread thing needs multiple tools, including controls on borders, periodic lockdowns, MiQ, mask wearing, hand washing, distancing etc.
Tony, I just ask the complainers exactly how many mates and matesses they were prepared to bury in the last 18 months. There is no comfortable reply.
And Dennis, maybe you haven’t been listening but it is emphasised every time Ardern et al has been asked, transmission has NOT been happening at work, shopping or out walking but at indoor mixing amongst family and friends groups. That’s what the contact tracers do.
indoor mixing amongst family and friends
Thanks Adrian – it's true that I don't watch those govt pr events, I just go by media reportage & commentary here.
So based on the above logic, Tamaki was right. Did the govt admit that?? And what exactly has the amendment of levels done to control that indoor mixing? The scenario you point to suggests to me that public health policy fails to solve the problem.
Tamaki was right about what?
Pretty hard to use public health policy to solve overcrowded housing in the short term.
Irony. His apparent assumption that mass gatherings outside are okay. If delta isn't detectably spreading in them – which is what Adrian's reporting of Ardern's messaging suggests – then he was right in his assumption.
Tamaki wasn't ok. Small outside gatherings are less risky, not free of risk. That's why there are still rules for outside gatherings. Tamaki's mass event broke pretty much all of those rules.
Nope.
He was lucky, so far.
If any cases get connected to an event he held, I hope he gets done for something in the order of negligence or some other reckless-endangering-causing-injury offense.
That was him thumbing his nose. His ant-vax sentiments are dangerous, Apostle #@*-$ believes his rubbish and spreads it. He is a parasite who may
through that kill the host.
About as many as pass from preventable causes would be my answer:
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/populations/maori-health/tatau-kahukura-maori-health-statistics/nga-mana-hauora-tutohu-health-status-indicators/major-causes-death
Let adults make decisions based on the information given and reopen
how exactly do adults choose to not get covid?
what are the projected long covid rates? Who is going to look after those people?
The information is out there, what you choose to do with it is your business and the consequences of your decisions are yours as well
Vaccinate or don't, isolate as much as possible or don't, mask up or don't
Thats how it should be.
You choose to be obese you suffer the consequences of your actions, you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences etc etc
"you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences"
That pretty much sums up your and other right wing wanky attitudes.
Most people delight in the consequences and we should be working to make that a good outcome for all people and all children so no-one would have to suffer.
Reminder in the 70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock and 40% within 9 months of getting married.
The right wing – trying to make reality in their own self-indulgent image since forever.
Not right wing, conservative.
"you choose to have sex without a condom you suffer the consequences"
I was using unprotected sex in the context of covid.
Don't want to get an STD use a condom, don't use a condom suffer the consequences (including up to death)
Your choice
"70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock".
I don't believe you. Can you provide a source for this claim. I can offer you the following. In the middle of the 70s it gives the percentage of births out of wedlock as being about 16%. This rose to more like 50% in recent years.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/graph/30221/ex-nuptial-births-1964-2017
I think it is you who is trying to make reality out of your imagination.
"Reminder in the 70's 40% of children were born out of wedlock and 40% within 9 months of getting married."
Got a source for that claim?
I'll try and find it again. It is in relation to teenage parents in NZ which I didn't make clear. The info has been around for a while.
How does that work for people who have illnesses that increase their risk of catching covid and increase the risk of very poor outcomes, and who will have to share spaces with the the people who don't vaccinate?
The outcomes for them don't sound conservative at all, in fact they sound pretty radical.
The same as it works for the flu every year around 500 per year: https://www.otago.ac.nz/otagomagazine/issue45/inbrief/otago664450.html#:~:text=Research%20by%20the%20University%20of,biggest%20single%20infectious%20disease%20killer.
Get vaccinated, wear a mask, self-isolate as much as possible or don't. The information is out there.
The flu is a seasonal illness. The Flu vaccine prevents the flu. The flu, even without the vaccine is less likely to be transmitted than covid, less likely to cause death and less likely to fill up our hospitals.
Covid is an all year illness. Rather than fully preventing the disease, the Covid vaccine more accurately reduces the spread of the disease and the impact of covid for people – not necessarily for those unfortunates "underlying conditions"
My mind is struggling to envisage how you think that would work withing the structure of a family – maybe sen the unfortunates off to some form of MIQ? It's still sounding pretty radical to me.
Depending on the location of the country, it appears the seasons might be a factor:
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/scientists-uncover-the-seasonality-of-covid-19
That's reaching a bit for relevance PR.
They think maybe Covid is seasonal, but they don't quite know how, def less seasonal in the tropics, maybe in countries with cold winters … Southland might be ok in the summertime ay?
Look, I know you were banned for a year and weren't here for most of the pandemic, but these are old and boring talking points.
Covid =/= flu.
I know the kung flu is worse than the flu, thats why I'm vaccinated against kung flu but I don't get the flu vaccine
Don't know if I am the only one but I am getting a bit sick of kung flu, China flu & the like. These and like names were Trumpian ways of either downplaying the effects of the virus or smearing countries. Now he is gone it is a blessed relief not to be hearing them again……until the last few days.
PR is there some reason why you are following this pattern of dismissing the virus by not calling it by its correct name.
The name of the virus is Covid 19.
Maybe I don't like the way China's influence has spread so far that calling it where it came from is apparently bad
It's good enough for Ross River Fever, Ebola, MERS, Japanese Encephalitis etc etc
But let's no insult our new overlords eh
A difference is that the flu is hard to vaccinate against while Delta isn't. Delta is approximately as bad as Polio on the numbers (similar R0, slightly faster serial interval, similar-higher death rate), and is quite a bit worse than the flu.
The flu is not hard to vaccinate against. Thousands get a vaccine each year that is tweaked for NZ by assessing the dominant strains in the Northern hemisphere.
Many people have had a longer exposure and thus immunities to the flu strains. Vaccines are advised for those who would be at risk if they develop influenza. It is not a matter of hard to develop but of need to have.
Hard to vaccinate against in the sense that flu is caused by collection of viruses which mutate a lot and sometimes the vaccines miss a circulating strain, and effectiveness against hospitalisation is not nearly as high as for Delta (Min Health website has it at 61% for adults 18-64 and similar numbers for other groups reported).
Personal responsibility so don't send your under 12 yr old children to school.
The Condom equivalency only a dickhead would make an analogy like that.
"No person is an island" etc, which is why we have social welfare, social health, social housing. The right wing view is so SIMPLISTIC!
As I posted elsewhere I'm not right wing, I'm conservative. I believe in capitalism with a wide social safety net.
Unlike others on here I wouldn't turn the unvaccinated away from hospitals either
Conservative? That famously left-wing sector? Respect!
Word up my brother
Dictionaries are ever so 19th century. Just explain that the net is wide enough to include businesses, he'll get it. He likely knows right-wing doctrine says that govt bail-outs are anathema to a market-driven ideologue.
Problem is, we have marginalised, impoverished, abused and undervalued broad swathes of society for decades. To expect everyone to suddenly make informed and enlightened decisions (or not be in a gang or whatever) isn't realistic. It takes consistent prosocial and supportive policies to create a cohesive, healthy and cooperative community. Neoliberal austerity and the worship of wealth has predictable negative outcomes which are not undone overnight.
100%
Maybe, but the main risk factor for Covid by a wide margin is age. You live longer, you suffer the consequences?
Good on them for living that long, they've had a better life than those that die young.
Or continue with self-isolating, mask wearing safety measures we're already doing.
They don't have to stop if the levels change.
I think you (CH) should be looking at the MOH demographics that I posted earlier.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-case-demographics
Although age was linked with poorer outcomes in the outbreak last year this does not seem, to me, to be as strong with Delta.
The main risk factor for Covid is being unvaccinated. As Biden says it is a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated'. The NZ figures show a significant number of children who are not yet eligible for a vaccine are getting Covid
I am concerned that the 'old age' and 'elderly' trope is (still) being used currently and the net effect is to mislead people as to the seriousness of Delta for younger age groups. Of course, the younger you are the longer you may potentially suffer from the effects of Long Covid.
If there are too many affected then their future and the country's future does not look rosy.
Yes in UK it became the socially active 20+ who were the spreaders. Delta magnified that.
you really don't seem to have a grasp of what public health is. Or the collective nature of a pandemic.
Or maybe you do but your ideology is every man for himself?
Theres only so much of our freedoms I'm willing to lose to a pandemic.
sure, but it's trade off right? It's not like we get to go back to how things were before. So which freedoms should we give up in order to not have lockdowns? (or have less of them)
At the point there are enough vaccines for the population and a reasonable amount of saliva testing kits (with an automatic resupply) we can open up.
Make it mandatory that you can prove you're wuhan flu free before you get on a flight to NZ (or you don't get on at all) and get tested again when you land (positive test = equals getting on the next plane back from where you cam from)
how can someone prove they're covid free before getting on a flight? If they get a test 2 days before, that's 2 days in which they can get infected and the lag between infection and infection being detectable is longer than a plane flight.
Everything we are doing is fallible, so we're talking about risk and harm minimisation. Hence my question about what restrictions do you want to trade for greater freedom.
(and putting people with covid on a plane is a sure way to infect others. All sorts of worker rights issues there in addition to public health ones).
First off we cannot keep the China Flu out of NZ indefinitely because we cannot stay in lockdown forever
So the argument isn't if we should open up (because we all know we'll have to eventually) its when we open up
But in answer to your question I do not want people to be forced to have vaccinations, thats a helluva slippery slope we don't want to be on
What does open up mean exactly?
Yeah! Draw the line, Pucky! You've got rights! Right?
A pretty decent left as well if you keep annoying me
Well people who care more about freedom than safety in a pandemic may lose everything. It is a balance.
Sure but at what point do we stop severely disadvantaging children to protect the elderly, like climate change they are the cohort which will carry the consequences in the future. .. Social Isolation, Educational deficit all have very long term consequences
So does death.
any argument that says kids vs elderly is on shaky ground right from the start. We need to envisions solutions that uphold the mana and wellbeing of all groups of people.
At the moment kids in Auckland are paying a disproportionately high price, not hearing much from govt about how they plan to alleviate that…
Online school isnt great to begin with and then there's a bunch of access issues for many with regards internet and devices etc. I had to buy an extra laptop so we could work from home and access school. All this shit is being glossed over its a big problem.
and in the UK they used covid do not resuscitate against disabled people without their permission.
We need to protect all classes of people. Kids, elderly, everyone.
Thats horrific, any good articles you could point me to?
-You're protecting doctors and nurses from burn out
-You're protecting people who may need emergency care but won't be able to get it because of beds blocked by covid patients
-You're also protecting thousands of kids mums and dads who have compromised immune systems, not just the kids' grandparents (we've been told just today that 2 doses isn't protective enough for these people)
-who knows if delta gets away on us that it won't mutate again and affect more children? Delta itself is more dangerous for younger age groups than the original Covid-19
Absolutely, if this goes on for longer we need to pay attention to how we'll work with social isolation and education to ensure kids get some benefits from this. But kids' concerns aren't necessarily that different from adults . For some, spending time with family, having time to explore and try new things, not spending hours being driven to school, activities etc. are positive. They know enough that allowing grannie and gramps to die from a disease that they feel they could have done something to prevent could be even more traumatising than missing a few months school (cross fingers that's all it is for Auckland kids).
Of course, it can't last forever. But as you imply with climate change, a new normal has to be found. This pandemic could be a stepping stone to a better future if we stopped dreaming about an imperfect past and found a way to move forward in a way that's better for kids and the planet.
The consequence of your decision may be yours but they are not yours alone. With covid-19, a person's bad choices effects everyone they pass the disease to. The disease can pass to people even when they take all the right precautions and even when they have never physically met or even seen each other.
Unfortunately, many people suffer the consequences of having sex without a condom when it was never their choice to have sex at all.
What has happened to Kiwi reporter Charlotte Bellis?
5 days ago. Stuff.co.nz published a headline story
Instead of a report to back up this headline, Stuff.co.nz published this message;
"This story has been removed by Stuff while we seek to undertake additional reporting."
Since then, nothing.
https://themuslimtimes.info/2021/09/09/journalist-charlotte-bellis-on-that-taliban-press-conference-life-in-afghanistan-and-why-being-a-kiwi-helps-her-feel-safe/
That is weird.
I heard her interviewed a short while ago – she was very good.
Spare a thought for the tribulations of kiwi aristocracy – it's tough at the top:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300433025/my-heart-is-broken-major-family-snub-at-larnach-castles-150th-birthday-event
The Barker family started with next to nothing when they bought this badly run down castle .I was one of the first to go through the castle in 1967 when the Barkers first opened the castle 50cents for a tour the money going to its restoration.
43 rooms is a gross misrepresentation it is only a very small castle about 12 rooms the other rooms are motel rooms added later.Sophie is a very nice person .Always trying to do her best to make Dunedin a better place.
Is this the politics of envy or the politics of pettiness?
both?
http://memegenerator.net/instance/55918967/why-not-zoidberg-why-not-both
neither, it's Stuff reporting on a family feud that really has no public interest that would warrant a whole article.
It is a shame, they did a lot of good, hard work getting the castle up to scratch
nah dude – wrong end of the stick, there.
It wasn't quite a Cargill's Castle-level ruin when the family moved in, but they sure took a proerty that was falling apart and made it one of Dunedin's prime landmarks. Back when that was still possible without millions in the back pocket.
The spectre of creeping Stalinism:
What are they trying to hide?
Could be. More likely its simply the general impression of cluelessness that the leftist Greenies who control the party are embedding in the public mind. James soldiers on resolutely in advancing his govt portfolio agenda. Marama does what exactly? Hard to tell. There seems a total lack of Green leadership emanating from the GP.
Perhaps it is all with The Greens, or maybe the media and it's style if reporting has something to do with it
As an example, Checkpoint on RNZ, seems to be looking for the outrage.
The government draws a line for a border near Auckland and they interview someone on the 'wrong' side of the border. Government announces residency/citizenship (i forgot which) to migrants working and they interview the one who has left hospo and gone studying ECE, therefore inelligible.
TBF the Greens support for BDMR/ Gender Self ID, is causing dissent too.
It depends on how one sees the function of a conference. The formulation and discussion of truly new policy is sensitive and involves false starts and disagreements. However much our cynical media might like to harvest that for clickbait, doing so does no service to the party, nor to the causes it was created to further.
Bomber, like Trotter, hates the Greens.
Love/hate? He often reminds us he's a Green voter. Tbf, the dichotomy between the Green movement & the Green Party will always loom in the psyche of those of us motivated by the difference between what is & what ought to be…
It's not looming in the psyche of 94% of New Zealand.
Hard to imagine in 2020 the Greens and Act were level.
The unrelieved media adoration of ACT, in the absence of an even remotely plausible National, has done wonders for ACT's polling. The same sugar hit would have done as much for the Greens, had it occurred.
Still, Green schools and revisionist rainbow Mexicans will only take one so far – when the environment takes a back seat, its supporters lose interest in the remains of the party.
6% is not a safe place for the Greens.
They tend to see it as bedrock, eh? Building on bedrock is sensible. Too bad they continue to shirk the task of doing the actual building.
Since I'm the one who showed them how to make consensus politics work 30 years ago, I always wonder what part of extending consensus is ever so hard for these turkeys to grasp.
There is a place below 6% for the Greens to exist.
It's where Swarbrick retains Auckland Central and the Greens coat-tail 3 more MPs in.
A total of 4 Green MPs would not ensure that Labour is returned to power.
Labour have held their end up really well since 2017, but the Green Party are just a failure.
Unless the Greens stop being shit we will have a National-Act coalition in 2023.
Good point. I expect Ardern to win through this period of difficulty though. It's not as if Nat/Act seems a viable alternative to anyone with half a brain.
Your logic does work on the basis of sheeple psychology, however. Depends how ephemeral the drift back across the center line really is. Trouble with polls is that they merely indicate mass sentiment at the time.
There us also the chance that we'll end up through the worst of Covid and well into the coming financial maelstrom which could well see the tide shift very quickly as soft Labour voters switch back.
If the Nats put up a freindly face as leader wont take much…
Good point. That looming economic storm currently on the media horizon could come our way too eventually, but seems likely to break in China first. Globalised markets could provide a tsunami sloshing around for a while.
Not could, it will… inflation isnt going away for a start price increases are coming through daily, so the RB starts shifting interest rates which will be a hit on floating rates but once fixed term mortgages etc are reset will suck big chunk of disposable income from the economy to service the debt… that and people will stop using their home equity to spend so a pretty stiff belt tightening which will set off a chain reaction that will be very hard to do much about…. and if shit hits the fan overseas first we'll feel it pretty quick.
We’re already seeing market distortions that are pretty decent indicators of incoming problems… bit like Angora goats and Deer… except its more tied up in housing, art and collectibles like of all kinds look at NFTs or whatever theyre called.
Called even add billionaire space race to that list…
Stop gaslighting the Greens.
John Key's National was able to govern with support partners supplying less than 7 seats – so why not Labour with say 4 Greens and 3 MP?
The Greens polled better than the polls predicted at the last election.
This government is Labour-no Greens are around the cabinet table. This parliamentary term has been dominated by the Covid response. This gives the Greens' ideas very little oxygen.
In 2 years time at the election all this will look different. NZ will have 3000 Covid cases a day and 12 deaths, but this will be the accepted reality and it will hit Labour in the polls.
The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue. Swarbrick will hold Akl Central, but the Greens won't need it to be in parliament and become part of a new coalition with Labour, but this time around the cabinet table.
BG you say "The Greens' ideas will come through in the election campaign and they will poll 8-10% as climate change comes through as a key issue."
I fear that is wishful thinking going by the Greens performance in this term. Their mojo is missing and they seem to be forever side-tracked into woke issues. I watch with dread as their support tumbles. It appears that somethings have become unstuck in their management and discipline because their embarrassing gaffs can't be solely blamed on the media gotcha moments.
please fix username on next comment, ta.
People have been writing the Greens off for all 25 years of MMP……they have never failed to get elected.
Cassetteboy tells it like it is in the UK.
This link?
https://youtu.be/PLITXTXBS1s
Yes – sorry about that – Youtube seems awfully keen to push that other thing at me for some reason.
Dennis, watching the 1 or 4 pms is a way of getting the direct info not stuff that has been filtered through the reckons of the likes of Malpas and Cooke and Cheng and Tova. They have a tendency to leave out the reasonings and clarifications.
Yes that is why I watch them too. I turn off at question time so I don't have to listen to the opinionated, and gotchas from the media. If I want to catch up on these I look at the written feeds that s come through at the same time as the questions.
You can always watch the live version at a time to suit.
I watch the q&a as the Tova/Jason etc show their hands with multiple gotcha attempts often on the same issue.
JA has shown incredible patience with what passes for media in this country.
Agree with this.
Still not keen to watch the questions again after spending many half an hours of my life during the first outbreak going 'OMG', 'are you for real', 'she's just said that………'
The only bright light was the questions from a reporter from one of the Maori media outlets, but to wait for his questions, which are usually on point and actually useful/helpful/in depth (judging from the responses he gets from those he is asking questions) means I have to listen to an 'awful lots of frogs'. The old joke about finding the handsome prince and how you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs in the process.
Absolutely Adrian. Get it from the source not a bloody tributary with a filter!!
Auckland wants a target or a number? Some certainty. Some direction. The magic number to 'open up' or go to L2 ? It looks like Covid is spreading right across all of Auckland. Those numbers are not going to come. At some point the decision will be made using the dartboard system, blindfolded. The dartboard will be a calendar.
How about a target like Level 1 on the 1st of December for the whole country. That gives everyone a chance to get their first jab this week and 3-4 weeks later their second jab.
Because the recalcitrants won't and the target won't be reached and raised hopes will be dashed.
A little surprised new case numbers aren't bigger. Contact tracers must be working overtime. Expecting case numbers to explode soon and 'open up' targets will be distant dream. The mutinous mobs will be blissfully ignorant.
An important figure though is the number of unlinked cases. This is a key as well as actual daily numbers.
In reality theyre much bigger, key is to look at test numbers, we're finding more cases with a fraction of the tests…
But why should the recalcitrants hold back the rest of Auckland and for how long? If Auckland's vaccination rate is say, 87% on the 21st of December, do we remain in level three for a further two weeks/month over new years?
Probably, even at that rate the hospitals couldn't cope with demand. Everyone mingles over Christmas so it's a recipe for disaster.
Jimmy wasn't saying that recalcitrants would get vaccinated Robert. He was saying that would have had the chance to do so. If they haven't done so that is their choice. It doesn't mean that the rest of New Zealand should have to remain in confinement just because a bunch of idiots refuse to take protective measures.
There are a few people in New Zealand who cannot safely have a Pfizer vaccination. IIRC I heard Bloonfield say a couple of weeks ago that it was less than 100. I don't have a source though and I may have misheard it. However, cruel as it might sound I don't believe that we can remain shutdown for them. For those who can be vaccinated but won't they are going to have to take their chances.
We know the recalcitrants won't though, don't we Alwyn, so we'll consign them to the scrap-heap/ICU? They could pull themselves up by their boot-straps, right? Ayn Rand has a lot to answer for and I guess that's a weigh-heart-against-feather sort of issue. Gonna be ugly!
I prefer to think of all the people now overseas who can't exercise their right to return to their own country.
Or the people now here who cannot travel overseas to see a parent before the parent dies. They can't go because they can't get a place in the MIQ jungle when they try and return.
Or the people who can't get an elective operation and struggle on with the pain of a hip that needs replacing but which they cannot be operated on because the beds have to be saved for the selfish people who don't get vaccinated and therefore will get a much more serious and long lasting hospital stay for their Covid.
Or the people whose business, and all the work they did to build it, is being dumped on the scrapheap because they are locked down to protect the bums who won't make any attempt to protect their own health.
Or the hundred billion or so dollars that is being wasted because the Government would rather pay out benefits than let people work. And the young people who are going to have to pay off the borrowing in the future.
But they don't matter do they? Far better to allow a few people to refuse a vaccination that will protect them and make every socially minded person suffer for the few's selfishness.
Had any vaccinations yourself Robert?
I know people who are vaccinated who would die if they catch covid-19. Them being vaccinated is not for their own safety but to improve the safety of those who may come into contact with them.
Those NZers matter too.
How about letting my double vaxed Swiss national best mate of the last 17 yrs , my essential worker, my financial partner, back in NZ along with the kiwis for Xmas. Our farm is a perfect MIQ and I have been double vaxed since mid August. The work is piling up and the farm projects have been on hold for 18 mths now. I am not a superwoman, just a 73 yr old woman holding the fort.
Oz has moved to allow their citizens to return (first NSW and Victoria) to home isolation. Other states as their vax rates get up and they allow inter-state activity. We'll do Auckland first.
Their PM said no to foreign tourists in the meantime.
This does raise the issue about use of the managed isolation for incoming workers (or worker placement to onsite work places – orchards/vineyards and farms) before tourism.
He does not come as a "foreign tourist" He is as important to me and the farm as "Kiwis coming home for Xmas" are to their families and he will stay much longer than most of them.
Did I say he came as a foreign tourist?
Managed isolation facilities (hotels) are usually used by tourists – they are currently used for returning citizens and under a quota some workers.
But some workers (for example, later this year PI seasonal workers) are isolating where they will live while working.
So while there will soon be more spots for incoming workers in these hotels, some are already being allowed to isolate where they will live and work – such as on a farm.
You should seek advice about the process for bringing in a farm worker – if the person qualified then they would either come in through the hotel MI system or to the farm.
Yes thank you for your advice. I have already been down the Humanitarian road but declined due to the fact, I think, that we are not a married couple! ( Who would want to get married again at our age!) ) No the PM is saying no to foreign tourists. The way it is going , I think I will have to take my situation to my MP because we are going to miss another summer season – of long planned development work on the farm- some of it waiting half finished for 18mths.
and, by the way, seasonal workers coming into Switzerland from other parts of Europe have been isolating for two weeks at their places of work for about 6 months now.
Bless hope he gets an MIQ, which is harder as spots are taken by the sick.
First he has to get a visa …. Switzerland used to be Visa waiver country but not right now. NZ Immigration have already declined granting him visa after he applied recently.
They won't go back to Level 1 nationwide (they have sort of ruled out going back to either Level 1 or Level 4 – unless they really have to).
It'll be a move to the traffic light system in 2022.
The hope would be Level 2 in Auckland by 1 December, the reality will more likely a move from Level 3 lite (now) to Level 3 lighter, then to Level 3 lightest and onto Level 2 later in December.
The border might remain, albeit allowing those with vaccination passports to come and go (making it difficult to come in and then leave without a certificate).
OK. So the response for anyone who doesn't get vaccinated is "let 'em die".
What about vaxxed folk who need medical attention but the unvaxxed spread it to enough vaxxed people that all the beds are full even if we throw the unvaxxed straight in the bin?
Is that worth a fucking haircut?
If your Auckland business happens to be a hairdresser, then "Yes, it is worth a fucking haircut!"
So the response to the million or so that have been vaccinated is "Sorry, no travel out of Auckland for you as we have a few people that don't want the vaccination. Sorry about Labour weekend, Halloween and Christmas and new years….there's always next year" It's like a teacher making the whole class stay late due to one naughty child.
Yes. We all know capital alienates us to the point we would rather people die than our business go under.
But you're not supposed to say that bit out loud.
Get them all double jabbed then if they don't want to die. It is their choice.
Such a shame that the tory brain can't compute that some of the people dying will have had their vaccinations but just be in the unlucky 10%.
The cult of individual responsibility refuses to believe that our individual choices might have repercussions upon others that can't be mitigated by their individual choices.
So friggin' true.
There is no evidence the mortality rate is 10%.
but fuck actual facts when you want to hate Tories right?
lockdown fanbois obviously don’t get the situation on the ground. As outlined way above in this post, the problem is south auckland. Lock that down and hard. Let the good people north and west who’ve had the jab get on with life. Kids at school developing. Adults letting their kids see their grandparents.
fuckfaces like you forget the human side of this pandemic in your quest to eliminate (not eradicate)
I didn't say 10% will die.
I said that some of the people who die will be in the group of people who got vaccinated but it was less effective for them.
100% – 90% effective = 10%.
None of the 90% will die, because the vaccine will be effective for them.
Clear enough?
Lockdown stress sucks. So does the stress of having friends and loved ones die, or long-term disabled (remember long covid?). Your experience isn't the entirety of the human cost of this pandemic.
If I thought I had read and heard the range of silly or ill-informed comments about Covid vaccines, new ones keep emerging. Pembroke Bird came out with this gem explaining why he and others won't get the Pfizer jab
What vaccines do you think the US has used? That's right, overwhelmingly Pfizer and Moderna,both exactly the same technology as we have available here. To a far lesser extent the Janssen vaccine, which is good but not as effective as the other 2.
How about Israel? Yup, same as the US. Pfizer and Moderna. Now giving a third shot of either to the more fragile.
So lets talk about Africa. That continent is desperate to get whatever it can. Egypt is leaning heavily on the Sinovac vaccine, which whilst it is decent at keeping you alive and suffering the worst effects of covid, isn't a stellar performer. South Africa has relied on the Janssen vaccine, Many other countries have no choice other than to take what they get – AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Sinopharm, whatever gets delivered.
Maybe that's the option Pem Bird says he is choosing, the wait and see what gets delivered into his letterbox, vaccine surprise, whilst hoping covid doesn't get to him first.
That's the Murupara Kaumatua line …
Moderna 2 doses provides the longest high level of antibodies (Pfizers immunity fades a little earlier). Of those in the UK, Pfizer two doses provides the most antibodies, but it's the AZ Pfizer combo that provides the most T cell response.
yup that's the Murupara Kaumatua's line
We don't want to take Pfizer, we want the same vaccines successfully used in the US and Israel, that being Pfizer
We also want the same vaccines available in Africa, being anything they can get hold of
This guy runs a school, Principal of a Wharekura.
Just had a conversation with an ECE teacher in L2 and are fully vaccinated. 5 staff are away due to a virus and coughing. The person cannot go to work due to coughing.
I asked has anyone had a Covid test?
A person has to stay home until the test result is known.
No sick leave entitlement yet.
I then said, you need to find out if the government will cover your wages while waiting for a Covid test result. Also you would not want to be known as the teacher who exposed Covid to the under 5 year olds if you were positive for Covid.
People who work with children cannot ignore the possibility of being exposed to Covid. Some ECE teachers also have young children or primary school age children.
When schools reopen in Auckland some sort of mobile testing unit would be helpful to do the rounds at schools.
We need rapid saliva tests, and we need them fast.
My partner gets his brain tickled once a week just to be on the safe side as he travels a lot and has a huge territory. It wears thin after the 15th tickle, believe me.
Really what needs to happen is for people to start acting as if the virus was everywhere, as if everyone is at risk of infection at any time and behave accordingly, masking always, social distance always, keep bubbles small and managable, avoid big crowds (can we please stop the nonsense with big outdoor concerts for 22), and test test test.
Covid transmission cannot be taken for granted. In time I am hopeful that a better saliva test not requiring a lot of spit will be available and is as accurate as a PCR test. Needs to be affordable.
I am having to dodge a lot of discarded masks at the supermarket carpark and verge on the foot path. Lazy and inconsiderate people who dump them, I have seen them left in trollies. Mask disposal bins are required as masks are essential.
Mask disposal bins would be excellent. They should be handled/treated as bio hazard.
There are a saliva tests out there and they are used widely.
It would be in the best interest of all if we could each get these as easily as buying a pack of coldral in the supermarket. if and only if this test shows a positive then follow up with the brain tickle test. Not perfect, but better then nothing. I guess that having hte world be a testing tube for us is comfortable, but at some stage we also need to accept that these are the tools we have now, and while not perfect they still help.
Every home should have a home test kit before next winter – to distinguish between coronavirus and flu infection.
+1
Were a mask bin available it would need to be designed so people cannot retrieve the masks unless they are maintenance. Other bio waste is a risk as well, discarded cigarette butts. I also try and avoid stepping on spit.
Tell the protesting covid deniers and vaccine hesitant freedom mob.
i honestly don't care about them.
I personally do what i can to keep myself safe as far as that is possible with an essential worker at home. I simply live life as if the plague was here, and as if i could catch it at any moment. And maybe we all need to do that, rather then wait for someone else to do the right thing. Also please keep in mind that there will be still people who will not be able to vaccinate due to age or health restrictions.
But we can also just continue to cry about spilled beans.
Rapid test kits are on the way …
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/the-detail/300433138/the-detail-what-is-antigen-rapid-testing-and-how-will-it-aid-aotearoas-covid-plan
Yes 300.000 of them to some select businesses. I want them in super markets at a cheap and affordable price. So again, nothing more then a trickle where we need a flood. But again, this too is better then nothing.
I agree – but yeah, it's a start.
The employer can claim $300 for each day an employee is waiting for a covid test result, I think
And Sabine – yes to your third para in particular.
OK, I need to read the details. It might just be for some levels.
Most ECE centres have a weekly meeting and the manager would need to inform the staff.
$359 one-off payment.
https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/covid-19/short-term-absence-payment/index.html
Thank you.
The rapid testing equip has been ordered and will be presumably be used by health and educational locations.
The more rapid test options the better.
When ever supervision/care of children is required, once the teacher/staff are away the ratio of required staff is an issue.
From the Guardian – What really counts? How the patriarchy of economics finally tore me apart | Economics | The Guardian
Great article, which includes reference to the ex-National MP for whom I have an immense amount of respect.
Good to see this. Onsite here several years ago I got surprising push-back when I pointed to the residual patriarchy. After the initial eye-roll about leftists being thick again, I figured that denial was a wall to bulldoze thro so I adopted the policy of repeating that pointing on every suitable occasion to wear the buggers down.
There's a female Green economist who has been part of the solution a hell of a long time: Hazel Henderson.
Ardern "We will tell you on Friday. I can't talk about it till our announcement of the plan on Friday"
Thanks for that. Most transparent govt ever.
They have obviously decided. Just fucking say. Businesses are dying
Still putting details together I should think. The virus rips up old plans almost as quickly as new one can be made.
Agreed – what's the use of targets plucked from people's backsides that provide an illusion of certainty but turn out to be wrong because circumstances change? Of course it would play beautifully into the Tova O'Brien school of confessional journalism – where every interviewee would confess their missed target and resign on the spot or disembowel themselves on-screen with a samurai sword.
The problem here is not really lack of plans, or communication or certainty. It's an economic system that leaves so many people precarious and therefore potentially devastated by any shock. Including minor capitalists who own small businesses.
"we need a plan! Target!"
"We will announce a plan/target this Friday"
"We want it now!"
& Yet the RW say the PM talks to them like a kindy teacher, maybe theRW still stop acting like kindy kids.
The corporation as a person.
A government risks death at each election.
It was suppose to be my day off on the Standard. Anyone else planning a circuit breaker and impulse getting the better of them? The number of comments on TS have been picking up.
Inflation at 4.9%, people will cut back on some of the treats. This will have an impact on business. Once the decision is made to pull the plug on the business or to keep talking to the bank, (fight or flight) other possibilities will be explored. Business people have a creative gene, they might need to step back, recuperate and then proceed.
The hard truth.
Have been saying that since last year. In fact it would be really really great if the good minds in government could come up with a way for people to close down shop without breaking commercial leases and being forced into bankruptcy and / or breaking existing laws. Many many businesses are still there simply for the leases they have signed well before Covid was even a thing.
yet here we are and nothing has come of it.
Having a business partner instead of a sole owner.
Lease agreements are a huge stress. Predicting the quartely revenue is hard, along comes Covid and not knowing if the business can operate fully, partially or not at all and for how long, is a lot upon ones shoulders.
Let's take the capitalist view CT.
If a business dies, then given the laws of the market economy another business will take its place. You will still be able to buy your coffee from the corner cafe, the restaurant will still serve yummy food, and your favourite menswear retailer may well stock a better range.
All preferable in my book to being dead.
No its not preferable
So you will take the socialist coin to keep your cafe going.
How is that supposed to work for a good capitalist like yourself. Doesn't the market rule? And if a pandemic is the result of the market, so be it.
Wrong.
1. The business failing due to lockdowns is the governments fault therefore the business is entitled to compensation to allow it to keep going.
2. I believe in capitalism with a wide social safety net.
3. The market rules but also needs rules (see above)
4. The pandemic appears to be more a result of China playing silly buggars
A government would be liable for the survival of a business during a pandemic if there had been payment of pandemic insurance by the company to the government.
Don't know about "silly buggars", but 'appearances' can be deceptive
Prisoner of the Right .
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls.
Less is More Trolling 101.
Prisoner of the Right.
– Conservative
No insurance company will cover for Covid why should the govt.
– Because the government is responsible for the lock down
So if we didn't have a lockdown we would have had a far worse outcome many Doctors and nurses dying on top of a huge death toll and a toll of long covid in the community predicted to affect 10 to 15% of the population .Damaging the economy longterm.
– When did I say no lock down, I did say with all the information available, if theres enough time and vaccines for the population then yes we should open up.
Pathetic Retaliation to Nationals poor Results in the polls
– They are bad but I'm glad you've got that off your chest
Well it is actually the Pandemics fault.
No different from a war, earthquake or extra rain in winter.
As a general principle however, one of the reasons to pay taxes is for mutual insurance against mis-fortunes such as pandemics.
I.E. Socialism.
There is no Capitalist justification for bailing out businesses that cannot survive the "slings and arrows" etc. Despite the rather nonsensicle claim, that the Government is fiscally responsible to individual businesses, for taking necessary measures to keep the country viable during a pandemic.
I’m sure that the irony, of the same people that complain about paying taxes or “Government interference” now complainimg about not enough Government help, is obvious to most of us.
I have been thinking about what travel insurance is going to look like for Covid cover?
Patience…just three more sleeps, little one..
Some are dying, some have pivoted, some are growing.
Pre-lockdown there were 152,502 jobs in the accommodation and food sector. End of Maty 2021 151,303. Overall it has rebounded pretty well. The spread maybe uneven but overall it doesn't seem quite as bad as all the doom and gloom merchants suggest.
Overall jobs are up on pre=-lockdown. Building industry well up. Transport is in a worse state.
Anyway what is the right wing mantra – don't like it get a better job, adapt, pivot, be flexible, get qualified etc. Why is some pithiness not applicable now.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/experimental/covid-19-data-portal
I think this week they should announce the decisions they're going to make on December 1st. Based on circumstances now.
Then when they change their minds by December 1st because circumstances have changed, everyone can call them liars, say they're all over the shop with decision making and call them indecisive.
That's how it works doesn't it. Next years budget is going to be really important. Grant Robertson has probably made up his mind about some general approaches.
Why haven't we heard Lisa Owen on air haranguing Robertson, "Yes Minister, but if you have decisions now, why can't you tell us?" And some mention of transparency of course.
Yesterday's announcements Adern said their would be more economic aid for businesses but said that will be announced on Friday.
"The government has been working on a plan for days, why didn't they tell us this earlier"
"The government has told us a plan will be released in a few days and have indicated it's coming, why don't they tell us now"
Moans if they don't preface what is coming, moans if they do.
Outbursts based on frustration can be illogical and knee jerks reactions.
Chris T perhaps talking to the affected business parties?
Not being funny. But if Ardern knows there will be an announcement Friday, Why not just tell us what is likely to be?
Businesses are dying. A bit less tell you tuesday or friday would be a tad handy
You are a one! Thanks chris T for the best laugh of my day so far. What's the point of telling us what it's "likely to be", when it might turn out to be something else. Or do you want the PM to give odds?
A very funny comment from chris T @12.
Ever been told by a teenager "that's too much information" when you have tried to explain something important?
The PM has to reduce being cross examined due to time restraints. She has to know what her ministers are reporting as well, and has the responsibility of managing the country.
Good question, why do governments announce things on Friday?
https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/
Nope no idea
It's a chance for the political pundits to share their/our wisdom over a weekend pint. A Friday night pint for the Week That Was, another for the Week To Be, one for the weekend footie and one more because that last tasted bloody good.
I don't think political pundits need an excuse but I get what you're saying
Why is the deadline for settlement / opportunity for bargains always 4:00pm Friday
They must have some really bad news to release. It isn't just a Friday. It is also the day before a long weekend. That makes it a double-dump-the-trash day of course.
Here is one of the things that is happening between now and Friday.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/10/covid-19-govt-consulting-hospitality-industry-on-introducing-vaccine-passports-ahead-of-friday-covid-19-plan-announcement-jacinda-ardern.html
Bearing in mind the pre-disposition of many of those in hospo to complain about anything and everything about the actions of the Govt from wages, to levels, to not enough time to get our sh*t together to talk to you, giving them time to feed back ideas, assess them and formulate policy around them this seems to be worth waiting for.
Also this.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/10/covid-19-everyday-activities-won-t-be-available-to-the-unvaccinated-jacinda-ardern.html
Yet with all that she knows they can work it out by Friday
Actually cracks me right up. We can't say at his time!! We will tell you Friday.
If you know on Friday then just say now.
No! We definitely know we will have the answer but cant tell you till friday.
Why?
Because it needs to be Friday
So you are still thinking about the answer?
No Or we wouldn't know we can give it to your on Friday
If they can say say they will have a definitive answer Friday then they must know what it is now.
Or they wouldn't be able to say they know the answer Friday
This shit aint rocket science
Because at the start of the pandemic someone leaked that Lombardy was going to be locked down in 48 hours (they needed to mobilise and deploy folk to enforce it), so a whole bunch of infected Lombards went throughout Italy and Europe.
How did that work out??
RNZ News just now reporting on radio a bipartisan housing announcement: Megan Woods & Judith Collins, with associates. Excellent start down a new path…
Good ol' Jude, willing to put aside politics to do whats right for NZ
But on a more serious note, well done to both parties
The eternal optimist in me hopes this will herald in a new era of cooperation which will only be of benefit to NZ as a whole
The obvious losers are rabid partisans of the left & right. Consensus politics can be made to work: where there's a will, there's a way. This clever move proves that point!
oh look, Labour and National working together to funnel resources into developers who can work with less protections in place.
This isn't how you solve the housing crisis. This is how you rearrange some deck chairs.
thanks for saying that.
I was spitting nails when i read that. 3 story crappily build houses to appear everywhere and every one will just have to live with it!
but hey, who says that National and Labour can't find common ground. I am sure Grant boy is happy that hte govt real estate holdings will increases even further. Surplus! yei!
imagine increasing housing density during a pandemic that's getting out of control by people living close to each other.
I wonder if they can work together on greater guarantee of building standards being met, or at least some sort of accountability?
lol.
National the naysayers have turned a corner and for want of a better word more constructive.
Maybe they're thinking of their post-National career.
that's very hopeful of you.
While there's life, there's hope, as the old saying goes. This initiative embeds centrist political ethos in Aotearoa for the forseeable future. It may even improve JC's poll rating! Scepticism is reasonable, nonetheless, so it will be up to the Nat/Lab leaders to ensure that delivery matches rhetoric.
The realist in me thinks somewhat differently
Lifestyle block values will boom.
A great day for disaster capitalism – a lot of houses will be destroyed, to make way for the new (maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?).
maybe rather than knock them down they should allow a pick up by those with some spare iwi land to provide for their homeless?
Good thinking! I'd mandate that if I were the cabinet minister rolling out policy. Perhaps a prudent precaution would be around the costing of the home removal/relocation – a three-way split tween developer, buyer & taxpayer?
So much for our need to be more self sufficient in the future. I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do. No wonder they're going stir crazy! I'd be lost without my garden, and proximity to a large reserve during these times of lockdown.
There's no planning for social infrastructure in this rush to ruin more and more sections and I can only foresee more cheap and nasty NZ ballsups.
I'm with you on that. Have the old quarter-acre first time in five house ownerships (sequentially) and am a keen gardener.
Chinese immigrants seem partial to shoebox apartments – probably due to it being the norm in their past. My final full-time job in Ak a decade ago was supervising the dressing for sale (homestaging) and I got to see how tiny they can be. Think that design got lodged in the heads of Ak planners & developers like a mental virus back in the '90s.
Sorry, but I think you are both wrong. The idea of the quarter-acre paradise was supreme while NZ's population was small enough, but those days are gone.
In the late 1970s -early 1980s I lived very happily in apartments in Cologne (West Germany) and Lyon (France). They were among the best years of my life; I never felt that I was living in an era of social decline, and was able to jog, take pleasant walks in parks/green zones as I wished. I kept fit and enjoyed a good life-style.
What you are now demanding as a birthright will condemn our over-populated country (controversial?) to years more of evil urban sprawl, eating up valuable agricultural land, creating future mayhem.
Sorry, but NZ needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century – or even the late 19th – when most other countries learned that house/garden, house/garden throughout the land was unsustainable.
If our population growth is to continue, our cities have to go upwards, not outwards. We just need to do it right. France and Germany did where I was back then.
What you are now demanding as a birthright
But we didn't make that demand. I've been citified all my life & have no issue with better urban design. Permaculture does that and I have a permaculture design certificate. However lots of folk prefer to be closer to nature if they can & I'm just fortunate enough late in life to enjoy having the old settler bit of both.
In Australia, the three level walk up apartments are common.
Single houses fill a whole block(section) and then you get stand alone smaller homes 3 to a block, another combination is 4 units in two sets, or six units in a walk up 1 whole floor of one half as an apartment. Then small and large high rises with 1 bedroom 2 bedroom 3 or 4 bedrooms. This gives a variety of types for purchase, and stock for rentals.
Our problem is the 4 bed and office 2/3 bathroom homes being built. They are out of reach of most. So variety is needed, near transport hubs.
" I look at all these dog kennel units being built everywhere and wonder what the hell all the people locked up in them do."
Depends how much accessible open space there is incorporated into the planning rules, and social mixing in public housing, and public transport
Can we do this please, rather than putting houses and roads over good farmland and regenerating bush?
Exactly. 20 years ago we bought a two bedroom unit 1 of 2 on a cross lease. Friends thought we were mad at the time. We own it do not have a body corp and they are all paying mega bucks to move into retirement villages, and a hefty weekly fee.
And now for something completely different.
This morning at Mataharehare, contractors arrived to begin work on the proposed National Erebus Monument. After a stand-off with protestors and police, the contractors left.
The Ministry of Arts and Culture are pressing ahead with this project despite widespread public opposition, opposition from local mana whenua and many of the Erebus families, a rahui having been placed on the site, and an active Ombudsman's investigation. The Ombudsman has written to the Ministry asking them to cease work until his investigation has been finalised. They have refused.
Dame Naida Glavish has published her communication with the PM, the Ministry of Arts and Culture and various other local and central government bodies on this issue, setting out the alleged misrepresentation and inadequate consultation around this issue. For anyone concerned about democracy her communications are a chilling read.
it's like we never learn.
How much money has been spent on the project already? I bet that's part of why the government won't back down.
Here's an insight into the proposed works, from Dame Naida:
"The Ministry proposes 534sqm of earthworks on the Pā s a d clud g directly to the
north of the Tupuna Pōhu u awa ha s as old as Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It proposes to insert tonnes of concrete and steel directly in front of this great Rakau and into its roots that reach down toward te Waitematā."
Unfortunately, this is firmly at the feet of the PM. She made a promise to "a couple of" Erebus families that the memorial would be sited at that location. Apparently she now can't/won't back down.
A Kiwi PM that won't back down eh – extraordinary.
Mind you, NZ's political history is littered with PMs not backing down; think Key (public asset sales and the flag referendum), Key/Clark (unpopular anti-smacking legislation), Clark (foreshore and seabed), Bolger and Ruthanasia, Lange (anti-nuclear stance), Muldoon (pro-tour; at least we know where he stood), Kirk (cancelled the 1973 Springbok tour and opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific) et al.
There is nothing in this that reflects well on the PM, no matter how you spin it. She's made a promise she had no right to make, and a significant Auckland landmark is going to be detrimentally affected as a result.
A revealing comment. Not that I’m surprised at the target of "And now for something completely different" @15 – why would I be?
Your 'concern’ is noted – keep chipping away.
“A revealing comment.”
Only in response to your attempt to paint this as something noble. My first comment didn’t attach any criticism to the PM. In fact it’s possible that initially she was simply ill informed, but now she’s digging in, and that’s not reflecting well on her.
Bollocks. I listed several examples of former PMs not backing down; some “noble” and some not, imho.
Really?
As I said, your 'concern' is noted – keep digging for those "nothing in this that reflects well on the PM" stories, and mind the dirt.
Dame Naida Glavish Ready To Fight [29 Sept 2021]
“Really?”
How is my comment a criticism of the PM? The PM was Minister of Arts and Culture when this got underway. Dame Naida’s communications are critical of processes undertaken by that ministry specifically. Have you read them? Do you think those processes are ok?
As far as not reflecting well on the PM, that is evident. She made promises to a very small number of families that overrode the wishes of the majority, that defied the advice of the governments own commissioned report, and that defied the survey of families conducted to assess a location. As I said, she may have been misinformed at the time. But now that all of the misinformation and poor process has been uncovered, she has an opportunity to put this right.
When you wrote (in consecutive sentences @15):
and
I joined the dots and thought you were suggesting that Dame Naida Glavish's “communication with the PM” formed part of "a chilling read". Apologies for getting that wrong, and/or possibly misinterpreting "a chilling read" as criticism. Thanks for making your intentions clear.
Are you sure it is not a few in opposition to the memorial, that are overriding the wishes of the families and community because they got their noses out of joint?
The majority of families don't want the memorial there. Some don't want one at all (there are many other memorials to the tragedy).
You must be hearing different information from me.
I read/heard that the majority of families, local IWI etc, agreed.
Then Glavish and co came along after it was announced, and decided they were opposed.
The line you're hearing is wrong, but I don't blame you for that. There has been a huge misinformation campaign from the Ministry around that. Just on mana whenua involvement, here are some examples of how this process lacked genuine support and consultation:
There's lots more. This has been a shabby process, with mana whenua and the majority of families sidelined by a deceptive ministry.
As far as the families are concerned:
1. Colmar Brunton were commissioned to conduct a survey of Erebus families to get feedback on a suitable location. Based on the results of that survey, Mataharehare is totally unsuitable.
2. The Boffa Miskell report, commissioned by the Ministry, highlighted a number of problems with the site, and recomended a location closer to Auckland Airport.
3. Following the CM survey and the BM report, Auckland Council invited Ministry officials to Auckland to view alternate sites. The Ministry rejected that offer on 20 August 2018, and wrote that staff would “come to Auckland (earlier the better) to discuss how we square things away with council on confirming the site and to visit the site with a couple of the family members we have a close relationship with”.
"A couple of families". Does this not smell to you?
The hospitality industry amuses me, no type of business even in the best of times fails anywhere as much as cafes and bars and restaurants, probably mainly because anybody who can burn a cheese toastie thinks they are a chef and those who can’t give you a drink at a party without spilling it over everyone in sight thinks they would make a great bartender. The ones that have failed would have fallen over without Covid help.
The hospitality industry, the tourism industry, the retail industry, all and any front facing other industries……….they would have all failed even without covid.
Yeah, totally.
So a business that, through no fault of it's own, suddenly has no customers, and yet has to still pay most of it's fixed costs, "would have fallen over anyway, without Covid's help"?
So a cafe or bar in Auckland that has been forced to close for 10 weeks due to no fault of their own, and seen their turnover drop say between 90% (as they can now do a few takeaway coffees) – 100%, would have failed anyway?
Do you actually think about what you type before you type it or sense check it?
You have obviously never run a business (or shouldn't).
If we are going to let them fail as suggested, first we would need to legislate away personal guarantees on the lease or we're gonna have a helluvalot more homless families. Banks and landowners can share some pain.
from todays update and maybe we can stop that Maori bashing in regards to vaccination.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-delta-outbreak-94-cases-today-including-seven-in-waikato/MK4XLUYN6D7A3UHMCUB6JVPBLM/
As for Aucklanders, mask up, keep distance, keep your bubbles smalls, sanitize and consider anyone around you as potentially infected.
94 cases.
Jacinda Ardern: put that wall right back up again! 😀
Lock down Auckland and Waikato, South Island to level 1
It's the only way to be sure.
Ha!
On a completely unrelated note I love this movie, I really do. Its always in my top 5 action movies of all time
You have one of the best heroes of all time being a complete bad ass and its a woman and no one batted an eye because the set up of her character, the writing, the performance, the chemistry all contributed to a strong, flawed yet courageous, believable character carrying out the heroes journey to perfection
You believe she can shove a corporate suit against a wall (great performance by Paul Reiser): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=casQQhO1jkw
You believe she can take charge and come up with great decisions on the fly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrQHPZrnbPk
You believe she can earn the respect of others without putting other people down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPMk-EEyOpE
When she loads up an goes down into the depths of hell (at least that was the symbolism for me) you root her own:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLhdtd3eJF8
Then you have this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmT_-erX0TA&t=74s
Every time it gets a hell ya! Every. Single. Time.
Sci-Fi action horror perfection and the nuclear family gets a positive shout out as well
What more do you want from a movie
"Game over man, game over"
Vasquez – "Lets Rock!"
"You ever been mistaken for a man"
"No, have you?"
Sorry – it's a bit like Die Hard 6 compared to Alien 1.
The thing is Alien is a horror sci fi classic but its horror first and foremost and very well done but Aliens is action sci fi with horror elements so yeah if you're wanting a retread of Alien you'll be disappointed but if you're one of the greatest action movies ever made you'll be happy
Quite similar to Terminator vs Terminator 2 really
Fair enough, if you agree that neither Terminator movie equals the quality of Alien 1. I like Terminators 1+2, but…
that only works if NI and SI are firewalled from each other.
Level 1 won't happen fullstop until children under 12 are vaccinated 1/3 of new cases are children.
Level 2 is a good short term solution until we get the future of NZ vaccinated.
It looks like the FDA might give approval by Dec 1 in the US.
If we can get that cohort vaccinated by the end of February then we should go to Level 1 .with masks with vaccination passports.by the end of 2022 with new antiviral medicines becoming available .We should be back to near normal.
Provided Covid doesn't mutate to a degree where vaccines don't provide protection.
Def' Sth Island level 1.
Ridiculous and easy as shit to control borders
Level 1 but no interisland travel isn't a great life for a bunch of people either.
Highest daily Covid cases in NZ ever.
I picked a 100 a day by the end of the month.
Modelling this is going to get tough (one has to profile the infectious and their associates accurately) (we need the infectious to prefer the company of the double vaxxed).
This might get too high for comfort by 1 November (rising towards 200 and contact tracing capacity will end chance of any easing in November).
The data on the infected (no vaccination or one dose or within 2 weeks of a second dose or two doses 6 months ago) will be telling.
The Wall:
that is a bit arbitrary don't you think?
.
Sadly, I'm afraid it's the North side for you.
rude!
Dunno if I'd call them "rude" exactly … but the accursed northern hordes are certainly barbarians … or, in your specific case, Bavarians.
you know me so well, tho i do not live in the north.
.
tbf … Bayern is one of the Great Clubs of Europe … Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Sepp Maier, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Lothar Matthäus, Jürgen Klinsmann, Thomas Müller … and Bavaria is one of the prettiest regions of Europe … socially & politically conservative ? yes … but let’s be fair about this … outrageously gorgeous with it.
I see a true connoisseur.
bahahahahahahahah,
but seriously Rotorua and Taupo are good, as is Whakatane.
As we get closer to Auckland getting down to level 2, can we imagine for a moment the noise that is going to be generated from south of the border.
(Assuming that area is covid-free at that time)
I don't even contemplate any such move, and i apply the same rules for auckland here.
You know, there's always a way over a wall…
https://youtu.be/jwS2KlxKXZ8?t=83
Trying to remain optimistic, but 150,000 of my fellow Aucklanders not yet vaccinated (first dose) … that's not good. Running out of excuses for them.
And this is the kind of idiot we're dealing with … incentives for NOT being vaccinated:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/10/auckland-real-estate-agent-tim-webb-apologises-for-unacceptable-offer-giving-unvaccinated-kiwis-discounted-rates.html
woke with a heavy heart, my arse. Woke from a dream of a much lighter wallet. Business Darwin award nomination.
Very sorry for being called out no doubt…
Have to say, we're better off here when there are some RWNJs around, much more interesting. You just need to up your game to the leftie level of political argument Chris and PR 😈😛
Hi weka, did you manage to listen to the Nolan podcasts before they were removed?
(Just got up to Ep 6, and the gagging condition in Stonewalls Terms & Conditions. Wondering whether it's worth a transcription .)
I thought the BBC made them available?
they are here.10 episodes
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09yjmph/episodes/downloads
Thanks. I'd already downloaded from weka's link, but missed Ep 4. I'm more of a reader but 5 and 6 seem to have upped the info of relevance.
Am still on the second one. Did listen to an interview with Nolan yesterday, hang on I'll get the link.
interview on the BBC (starts 2hrs 38m)
I've started a post, because he gives two very clear examples of SW influence: Scottish govt removing the word mother from its maternity leave policy, and the BBC changing its news style guide so that homosexuality means same gender attracted rather than same sex. I assume both of those are covered in the podcasts?
Found the first couple of episodes to be basic outlines.
Skipped Ep 4 as my download was corrupted, Ep 5 and 6 giving good specific information of the unquestioning acquiesce of government departments and institutions to Stonewall 'recommendations'.
that trashing of language infuriates me.
Homo/same + sex =same sex = an individual who is sexually attracted to a person of the same sex
Not gender
And genitals do matter
Full and Frank discussions like the Puckish Christ Rogue test it might get up your nose but for democracy to survive we need to able to question both sides to get a better outcome.
yep!
let's not give them delusions of grandeur though. Puckish Chris Rogue test will do.
Pretty sure my delusions are pretty well set by now
Fly my pretties
Make a submission to the Emissions Reduction Plan! The pressure needs to be put on the Govt to make climate action a priority, please take the time to make a submission.
https://action.greens.org.nz/erp_submission_guide
https://action.greens.org.nz/strengthen_the_erp
50,000 new cases in a day in the UK with 83% vaccinated. That would be 4,000 new cases approx a day in New Zealand.
That’s leaping away Trickle, a week ago it was in the mid twenties. Watch Melbourne.
yeah. Unless they pull something spectacular, we'll be getting more deaths soon.
Something spectacular? Like what?
A cracker. If you pull a cracker a small plastic piece of crap usually jumps out.
Australia has by and large contained the virus within states. We could create some more borders and do the same. They say it's hard to put one around the Waikato but surely not as hard as having another outbreak. Containers would do a good job of blocking roads.
Many would think some jail time would be appropriate for the likes of the North Shore party ratbags.
I mean, technically as an isolation violation there's probably already the potential to detain them on health grounds. But then you'd need temporary facilities set up – stadiums are traditional – and everything goes downhill from there.
Unless you give them enough vodka and dope that they don't realise they're in isolation for a fortnight lol
Out of curiosity can you tell me whether the 2 people (supposedly prostitutes) who went into North Auckland were charged with any offence?
Or the gang members who ignored the rules during a tangi?
Or the ones who were picked up bringing huge amounts of cash into Auckland from the Waikato after bypassing the lockdown?
Or is it just the ones partying on the North Shore who you think should be charged?
Last minute apology by Peters.
As good as you'll get from the guy – still adamant that everything he said was accurate about a member of a specific gang doing a specific thing, but admitting that the specific gang member wasn't Harry Tam.
But his source was still “credible”, lol
5 minutes to spare, and no sign of having worked with Tam or Mansfield in crafting his response (but good to see the complete text of the lawyer letter). May be just enough to get Peters off the hook though. Still if there was a gang associate present in Northland, then you'd expect them show up on CCTV footage…
The Mongrel Mob may be bad news, but as far as I'm aware, are not actual vampires!
"The Mongrel Mob may be bad news, but as far as I'm aware, are not actual vampires!"
Not literal anyway…
Anyone got any idea if the vaccination status of the new covid cases for the day is published anywhere?
It's not data they have had stats on so far (but obviously it is the sort of information any modeller would want to know if they were to make useful forecasts).
What is.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases
https://www.health.govt.nz/news-media/media-releases/94-community-cases-covid-19-5-new-border-cases-89-percent-aucklanders-receive-one-vaccine-dose
Pingao below was able to point me to a very helpful RNZ link.
It's a couple of days out of date, but it's showing 2005 total cases.
1541 of those are unvaccinated (of those 409 are under 12), of the 1132 unvaccinated eligible adults, 138 are hospitalised
91 of the cases are fully vaccinated, of which 3 are hospital.
There's also various categories of partially vaccinated. Make what you will of whether just one dose provides substantial protection.
Of those 409 cases in kids, 7 are hospitalised. That to me is a very good argument for why we should also be vaccinating kids as soon as we reasonably can, contra those agin vaccinating our kids.
Yeah I found that on the RNZ site.
What will inform on the under 7's, is if ICU care is needed for any of the cases (and how they respond to treatments available – such as monoclonal antibodies).
It's not that encouraging
A positive is that the low numbers of the double vaxxed being infected.
Another positive is that most of those being infected are not the older and vulnerable to more serious outcomes (thus low ICU demand so far).
It is on the MOH link (top one – but click on case demographics, rather than current cases).
Thank you.
I obviously wasn't using the right search terms.
Reply to Andre at 26. Try Radio NZ "Covid-19 data visualisations: NZ in numbers". Scroll down to "vaccination status of cases … "
Overall the website "visualisations" are not necessarily entirely accurate/up-to-date as I've seen other figures relating to say, DHB vaccination numbers on the MOH but it is probably a good guide.
Sorry – I've given up on trying to paste links as it doesn't seem to work anymore on my mobile.
Thank you, very helpful link.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/450874/covid-19-data-visualisations-nz-in-numbers
Those unvaccinated vs vaccinated case rates and hospitalisation rates could probably do with being much more widely publicised. They really are that dramatic.
Source MOH – not so easy to find on the MOH site though.