This from the Sydney Morning Herald today (Jacinda should take note of what is happening in WA):
"Since the nationwide lockdowns of early 2020, West Australians have endured just 12 days of lockdown, the vast majority of the time free of masks and other business-curbing social restrictions. Two years into the pandemic most West Australians have no first-hand experience of COVID-19, and they are not particularly interested in acquainting themselves with it.
It is why the dramatic late-night announcement by WA Premier Mark McGowan that the long-awaited February 5 border reopening would be postponed indefinitely was greeted with relief by many, likely still a solid majority. Who wants to get sick? Or wear masks? Or suffer crippling restrictions? No, thanks. Do you blame them?
[McGowan, the WA Premier] insists on more than 80 per cent third [booster] dose coverage before the border comes down, with all further details pending."
McGowan is predictably copping a lot of flak. WA is a huge state with a lot of remote indigenous communities with very low vaccination rates. This is what McGowan said yesterday:
“I know I’m getting a lot of criticism. What we’re trying to do is save lives and save jobs at the same time,” McGowan said.
“A lot of people say we should be living with Covid. Well, there are 752 people in the eastern states no longer living with Covid,” he said, referring to the number of Australian Covid deaths so far in 2022. “You should ask their families whether we should deliberately infect large numbers of West Australians.”
Yep, took my mower in to get the blades changed this morning. Usually takes around 10minutes with a $25 service fee.
''No can do, mate,'' was the reply I received this morning. Why I asked, you don't look busy?
''We aren't busy,'' was the reply. I have lost my mechanic. He's left to help his dad pick the nectarine and peach crop on the the family orchard. They can't find workers.''
Marvellous!!! Now I have to change the blades myself.
''Seems right wingers don't like getting their delicate hands dirty doing a task that doesn't require a mechanic.''
Well, that's true about the delicate hands. My fingers and hands are required to be in pristine condition to feel the fretboards on my expensive guitars.
Where you come unstuck is believing changing a blade is an easy task on a new mower.
It used to be, and still is, if you have a bar blade. But if you have a plate with 4 mini blades, things become tricker. You will definitely need the RIGHT tools. You will be hoping the bolts haven't burred and penetration oil is not needed.
A simple time and motion study showed me it's easier to have the job done for me. Bike shops do similar. They don't repair punctures. They replace the tube. Only time warp lefties fix their own punctures using a bucket of water.
Then there's the problem of turning your mower up on its side to replace the blade. That's another no-no with a modern mower…but you probably know that.
Still no official word on why unemployed kiwis are not going for those jobs. I wonder how long the left & right will be able to maintain their collusion in silence?
-how will a seasonal job affect any benefits some may receive if they have to go back on the dole.
I met an older women working the sorting sheds – night shift- in Te Puke coming from Tokoroa. That is a two hour trip one way btw. She was in her 60s. 4 hours every day basic commute – unpaid of course. – So you need a car, money for patrol and such.
But lets again pretend that all bosses are evil and all unemployed people are lazy, that surely will make a difference.
How much money is left over from Kiwibuild that could be used for high quality portable housing to help with seasonal work in various areas? Quite a bit judging by the lack of kiwibuild houses.
always lots of excuses why no one wants to work, not much practical in how to make it easy for them too
yep. The reason why working holiday people would do that work is because the conditions suited them. Make the job attractive to locals, or people living elsewhere to travel and live there for a while, and they'll do the work.
Setting people who do seasonal work up with tiny homes on wheels, or housebus/truck, caravan etc would help the situation as well as solve some of the housing crisis issues.
Not really a shortage of temporary accommodation back in my day, but the double-tapping of paying for that for a few weeks while also keeping a flat at home.
Or moving towns completely but only for a couple of weeks (but then you'd need something more than a shared room in a dorm).
Tourists have few possessions and few commitments and few connections. Residents need to actually make money to justify the gamble.
When I was picking fruit Accommodation was provided. Basic but free. So what happened ? Employers like to bad mouth Socialism but would socialise costs anytime. Profits of course are private !!
I have little sympathy for the one crop wonder boys.
There is a grower just north of whangarei who employs 70 staff full time. He has diversified so he has different crops maturing year round, some fruit some veges. He is also smart in that he has diversified his income stream
Absolutely Sabine. In my day as an apple picker (some time ago now) there was such a thing as a union and part of the pickers agreement was to be accomodated at a weekly rate not exceeding $2.50 per week. Even given the lapsed time it was still only 20 mins work to pay your accomodation if the orchardist even bothered to charge, and it usually included power. It was also quite a simple matter to get back on the dole. If the only way to make money from apples is to rip off the workers then is it really an industry we need?
Why would governments talk about employing NZers at real rates and conditions when there is more profit in running an immigration scam. Two seperate political parties. Only one political philosophy. Hence we get either shit light or shit dark. Its always shit though.
"More investment in machinery to replace seasonal labour is required."
Yes it is….but then there is the issue of what we do about employment. If fewer and fewer large scale businesses are operating with less and less labour their profits will have to be taxed higher to allow for transfers to support the rest of the economy…..and we know how business feels about about taxation as well as knowing who has the politicians ears.
Or perhaps the investment is public and the dividends are returned to the citizenry….that sounds like something of an anathema to 'business.'
You really are the poster child for the idiocy of the moderation policy on this site. An obvious right wing concern troll pushing right wing talking points, yet the the two main active moderators are mainly concerned with policing the left.
The upshot of it is the comments section of this site now resembles a slightly younger version of the Herald.
Much of the "policing" has centred on curbing typical Woke excess … the mindless demonisation of entire demographics.
Let's be clear: Wokedom aint "the Left" … it's an Elitist Vanity Project … deploying camouflaged self-interest, an authoritarian, profoundly anti-democratic consolidation of power, financial privilege & in-group status,while systematically scapegoating a whole swathe of working people & poorer pensioners in the most cowardly & sadistic way … transforming them into second-class citizens in housing, health & increasingly other sectors. Always by stealth, always venomously contemptuous of democracy & majority opinion.
In core respects, the antithesis of the genuine Left … almost a new form of Toryism
Probably inevitable when 400-buck-an-hour virtue-signalling Middle-Class Professionals slowly capture the upper echelons of both the parliamentary & organisational wings of nominally "Left" Parties. Clearly an international phenomenon.
You yourself, Sanctuary, seem to fluctuate wildly between occasional hard-hitting critiques of Woke excess, followed a week or two later by a smattering of equally enthusiastic cheerleading for precisely the same dogmatic phenomenon. Quite baffling.
You really are the poster child for the idiocy of the moderation policy on this site. An obvious right wing concern troll pushing right wing talking points, yet the the two main active moderators are mainly concerned with policing the left.
Nah, man, when it's all just lefties, it gets really boring here.
I have got to thinking that the RW people come here because:
1 well have you ever been on a RW blog? full of opinion, 'lefties' accusations, inability to mount an argument. Full of farcebook one liners etc etc. Although I don't agree with everyone's views on here most of the posts are well thought out, heartfelt, referenced.
I value them (RW posters who abide by the rules) because:
2 when people respond to RW views it gives me food for thought and possible talking points when in real life.
3 because of standards of moderation and, mostly, cited arguments from RW people I may learn something.
I think though:
A) authors should not moderate their own posts, they should have a formal reply or clarification function in response
B) authors should not be able to moderate anyone off the site, this should be left to the team of moderators
C) RW moderators should not be able to moderate anyone off the site. this also should be left to the remaining team of moderators.
I value RW commenters likewise. Sanctuary is probably right that left wingers get moderated more than RW ones. I notice this. But it's because RW commenters are less in number, so there are more LW ones pushing the boundaries or breaking the rules.
I don't see any right wing comments on this site. People with a RW orientation might come and read the material here but I don't see any comments that are more than being from just a little bit to the right of centre. Nothing at all from further right than a traditional Liberal viewpoint in fact.
Lots of stuff from the left, the far left and people who make Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Jong-Un look sane of course.
I'm still trying to work out how posting the GDP percentage differential for agriculture between NZ and Britain is ''pushing right wing talking points, '' according to Shanwreagh.
But there you have it. It's certainly different when Liberals are in the house.
Not sure I have ever talked about GDP percentage differential for ag or responded to anyone who was pushing RW talking points on this topic.
My forays into ag have mainly been in support of regen ag and on the silliness of some aspects of the farmer protests (ie you run the risk of marching beside some 'different' bedfellows once you start on a protest march as the last one in Wellington showed with the MAGA and Trumpie people)
None so blind, alwyn? There've been a few Standard outbreaks of JacintaJacinta, CindyCindyCindy, and Comrade Princess, not to mention the occasional Fool making no secret of their scumminess, but rwnjs know that it's Ardern who continues to outclass their champions, one after the – ‘Next’.
You are probably right. There were no doubt a few occurrences of Jacinta, Cindy etc along the way.
I'm sure there were a lot more Jonkey's or shonky Johnkey, Paula Benefit, blinglish and Luxton to go with them. Were they offensive or did you see them as the height of wit?
Whatever they were and whatever the twists on Jacinda or Ardern they were hardly in hanging territory were they? They also don't display and left wing or right wing traits. They are all just people who confuse being a wit with being a twit.
I'm sure there were a lot more Jonkey's or shonky Johnkey, Paula Benefit, blinglish and Luxton to go with them.
Quite right alwyn – are you surprised, given where you are commenting?
And I’m pleased that your eyesight has improved
Whatever they were and whatever the twists on Jacinda or Ardern they were hardly in hanging territory were they?
The smears against Clarke Gayford by rwnjs here and elsewhere really speaks to their ‘character”, imho. If will be a minor miracle if another Clarke slur doesn’t surface ahead of the next general election, given that Luxon is now in charge.
Were they like the comments made about Max Key? I never actually saw any of these fabled comments about Gayford but I saw references to the fact they existed. I suspect they were immediately deleted from and blog where someone might have tried to post them.
You say "The smears against Clarke Gayford by rwnjs here …". Are you seriously saying that they were posted on this site. I would find that very hard to believe that they would have survived for more than a minute or two.
So it's cataracts. "Vile rumours" of that type do occasionally surface here – maybe they're allowed to ‘survive’ as a warning to other fools?
Your guess is at least as good as mine as to what the next smear will be – I doubt even brother Luxon could purge the influence of Dirty Politics within the National party and its supporters, even if he wanted to.
I'm sure you will provide a link to one if such a thing existed. I personally don't think they exist on this site. I can't believe that lprent would allow them to remain here.
I am not going to waste my time looking for something that only you say exists.
Is that what is supposed to have got the Police Commissioner involved?
Jeez, didn't Coster have better things to do than check out this rubbish? Still, yes, you did produce a link to stupid rumours being floated on this site. Mind you, in this day and age, who cares?
Exactly how many unemployed Kiwis do you think there are ?. Much less city ones who can maintain two rental payments a week for 6 weeks until the season is over. In the northern SI there is no one who isn’t working that can work, the wineries even pre-omicron will be looking at 75% staffing for harvest if they are lucky.
Yes I have heard that too. But, and there is always a but, some employers work on a Field of Dreams approach, build it and they will come. I know of many over 60s who would love to do something like this but
are afraid of unrealistic daily totals,…….the slow and steady fable
don't want to drive their cars out to accessible picking sites ie energy conscious
are wanting the $$$$ but don't want to give away their labour
Years ago I worked in a food processing plant in Hastings HB.
It had free buses leaving from central points & waypoints, north and south of the factory at a couple of times before the shifts started. Then again on the way home. I am not sure if they do this any more. There were also buses for people doing the picking.
Same are you talkin about watties ?first job at 15 just left school managed to last two weeks remember first day thinking what ?no morn smoko ?and then shit we must be working though lunch time as well whats goin on oh no !eventually i found out was only half past nine !!We stole fruit to survive had no money you could fit a can of peaches in the top of each gumboot pull yr
overalls down over them an walk out like that worked a charm an kept us alive . In those days canned fruit was actually quite good its crap now alas .Latest news says watties in hastings needs one hundred and fifty more workers now.
Weston …..yes they were early starts. We were there by 7.00am after catching the bus out of Napier to go to Birds Eye in Hastings. It was a holiday job and gee did I love it. By the time I left I was a chargehand on the corn line. I was there just over 3 months. They offered me a permanent job and that was when my dad put his foot down and said 'go-back-to -'varsity.'
They used to let the staff take all the mislabelled tins at the end of each week. Course the mislabelling mostly meant no labelling so it was a bit hit & miss as to what was in the tins you got. If you were smart, and I eventually cottoned on, you remembered what the lines had been doing that week, usually only a couple of things and labelled the top 'tomatoes or green beans' or 'peaches or green beans'. Otherwise it was a glorious mystery as to what was going to be in your tins. I made lots of green bean and tomato quiche things when I was actually wanting tomatoes and peaches.
I had some wonderful holiday jobs, worked with happy people who were working there fulltime. Toothpaste factory and plumbing supplies making and bending (wrong word) copper pipes on big machines. And yes females had differential (lower) rates from males for doing the same job…..Good union people. Aah well.
Luke Malpass looks at Labour's legislative agenda for this year:
When Jacinda Ardern was addressing her Labour Party colleagues at the beginning of the Labour’s caucus retreat near New Plymouth on Thursday, she was keen to impress upon them that Labour has a whole pile of non-Covid things it wants to achieve while it holds a majority in Parliament. Scrapping DHBs, battling climate change, reducing child poverty, and improving housing affordability were all mentioned. Three Waters was not.
Dunno if this is significant – to treat Three Waters as a can to be kicked down the road is likely to drop Labour poll ratings. The PM ought to include it as priority unless she can conjure up good reasons for discounting it.
The start of the year has also revealed a major problem with one of Labour’s earlier changes – its revamped Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), which came into force in December. The changes, designed to protect vulnerable borrowers from predatory lending practices or loan sharks, have resulted in middle New Zealand being whacked in a Government-induced credit crunch.
Obviously it's logical to blame the Minister of Finance for inept new financial law. Strangely, Luke sidesteps Occam's Razor in favour of convolution:
Commerce Minister David Clark has announced a review by the Council of Financial Regulators into the way banks are applying the new rules. But trying to sheet back to the banks a problem that was clearly created by the Government (when Kris Faafoi was in charge of the portfolio) is a classic case of unintended consequences.
He presents a picture as overview. It's an excellent illustration of how a picture is worth a thousand words…
The New Zealand Bankers’ Association publishes a “regulatory radar” of law and regulation changes worrying member banks. The larger, redder, and more central the star, the more urgent and important the issue. The new lending law star is large, red and in the centre. Clark and the Government will have to fix this quickly.
So it looks like financial law becomes part of commerce when enacted. Robertson manages to slip off the hook of accountability.
'The start of the year has also revealed a major problem with one of Labour’s earlier changes – its revamped Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), which came into force in December. The changes, designed to protect vulnerable borrowers from predatory lending practices or loan sharks, have resulted in middle New Zealand being whacked in a Government-induced credit crunch.'
Prudent lending practice would should have recognised the requirements with or without the revamp.
'The New Zealand Bankers’ Association publishes a “regulatory radar” of law and regulation changes worrying member banks. The larger, redder, and more central the star, the more urgent and important the issue. The new lending law star is large, red and in the centre. Clark and the Government will have to fix this quickly.
Fix it alright!-5 billion per annum in profits going offshore.
Changes to protect vulnerable borrowers sees headline after headline of would be borrowers upset their bank asks them about spending $287 at K Mart or people finding it too hard to lie low in their spending for 3 months.
Banks ask about spending, outgoings and income. Some people in banking are pedantic. No surprise. Should borrowers expect a cruisy ride?
C&R, formerly Citizens & Ratepayers, largely controlled the former Auckland City Council for decades before the Super City, but consistently failed to get a candidate elected to the Super City mayoralty.
A C&R source said the "stars are aligning" for 2019, and there was more momentum and financial backing than for previous elections.
I really can't see how they expect to be politically effective if they remain stuck in 2019 in their heads. Right-thinking ought to incorporate temporal context!
There's also the question around political astrology. To be effective, one must be able to specify which stars are aligning with what. Doesn't matter that it worked for Reagan – one swallow doesn't make a summer…
That there are desires for the scenario she describes I dont doubt,,im not sure that the current vaccine pass is its precursor….but I may well be wrong.
However I am increasingly concerned that the mandating of those that choose to be unvaccinated is becoming entrenched (i initially thought it was a bluff used to increase up take and would be quietly dropped)…..and I am becoming increasingly reluctant to be 'boostered' with a vaccine that appears of little benefit with the latest variant, or to see the under 12s vaccinated without strong evidence of benefit.
You should be extremely cautious about any results which show boosters are not effective. There are very confusing cofounders at play in virtually all data in these cases, which can lead to miss-leading results. I showed an example of this, in that NZ Maori & Polynesians are over-all accepting vaccination at a lower rate than any of the age groups which comprise the overall data.
See "Vaccine uptake per rate ratio (unadjusted) Māori and Pacific compared with Non-Māori non-Pacific 12+" where there are wider rate differences overall than for any age group making that up.
The same kinds of thing can happen for most covid related data when these cases are not well understood.
Here is a post doing correct estimates and working through all the potential issues.
Yes there are wider rate variations by cohort than in total due to demographics as has been noted previously…and your linked study is pre Omicron….and even so I draw your attention to point 9
9. Boosters provide further protection but it is not yet clear whether they are necessary for the younger age groups.
And the issue of mandates is unaddressed…..especially when nobody thought 90% of eligible was achievable yet we have exceeded that.
I'm just highlighting the need for evidence and very careful statistical modeling in evaluating claims like, boosters appear to have little benefit. Doing this incorrectly can mean that the 13.7% protection against death you perceive massively understates the 93.8% protection against death which actually occurs in the >60 cohort (or even the 68% protection against death for vaccinated but un-boosted).
Yes, it would be good to see studies incorporating up to date data (since Omicron). The same statistical fallacies are occurring in data relating to Omicron vs Delta variants and lower vaccine efficacy against Omicron of course.
"Mandates"* had a huge public health component far and above the persuasion to be vaccinated, in fact the health factor was the main part, at least I took it as the main part.
It goes like this……when people go to be treated at hospitals there is an expectation that they will be treated for the illnesses they came in for and not acquire any another life threatening infection while there and while their defences are down. These infections are called nosocomial infections and even before Covid pneumonia was one that did occur.
Hospitals therefore needed to introduce special measures to deal with Covid. We had PPE and stand downs until the vaccination came along.
Covid is so infectious and the vaccination seemed a simple way to minimise the risk of Covid infections spreading within hospitals. The reasons for not accepting a vaccine that I have read, especially now that there are two to choose from mRNA based Pfizer and Astra Zeneca, seem mired in social media woo woo.
Health staff have been given options. The basic point is that we cannot afford to have the potential for covid to get away in our hospitals from staff who fail to be vaccinated.
My flatmate is a nurse and she says she and her fellow nurses are looking on in amazement at the very few who have stood out, she mentions that it is a requirement before beginning nursing training to be vaccinated and maintain vaccination of a range of vaccines most of us have not come across. Defence personnel have the same requirements when signing on. They have regular testing as well.
Teachers spend days with their classes and would be powerful spreaders of the virus to their students, some of whom would have been severely affected by catching Covid and may have been consigned to a life with Long Covid.
The requirement to protect diners was both a public health measure and a measure to enable businesses to be able to trade through …it came in with the traffic light system. This was a recognition that Covid may be here for the long haul and enables vaccinated businesses and people to keep the businesses pumping along at different levels.
I had no thought that the intro of the 'mandates' was anything other than for real.
At the time the Govt had examples from overseas where front facing jobs had a requirement to be vaccinated. For all the bluff and bluster from the anti vaxxers, firms such as United Airlines with a staff of 67,000 had a vaccine requirement and 232 employees were unvaccinated and lost their jobs. ,
*Mandates is a loaded word. I never use it. Better wording that is more indicative of what it is is
work requirements
or
on the job requirements
The thing is that these requirements are usually prior to employment and people who do not want vaccines or on the job drug testing etc won't apply for jobs that require them, they self select out.
As for not achieving 90%. many that I get around with thought that in true NZ style we would overshoot. We have a history of this, examples are the telethons, our responses to crises overseas etc etc
the point about the multiple reasons for the mandates, especially in health care settings is very well made.
The thing is that these requirements are usually prior to employment and people who do not want vaccines or on the job drug testing etc won't apply for jobs that require them, they self select out.
Thing is though, a left wing position on worker rights would be that if you lose your job because the job changes, you should be looked after in some way. It's unconscionable that the Labour party basically said to people 'too fucking bad, two NZs now'.
So let's be honest about this too. Part of that is because the government needed to get the vax rate very high very quickly. It couldn't take 6 months to get enough people on board via outreach and public education. It had to coerce. Which it did with the mandates in multiple ways. Not only the actual mandates, but also the messaging: 'you can choose to not vaccinate, but there is something wrong with you and we're going to make sure you know that and we're not going to help you'
That shit may well come back and bite us.
The government couldn’t afford to be kind to those citizens, and tbh for people like Ardern, it looks to me like she didn’t want to either.
Lots of lefties think that is fine, but remember this is the same shit that the right does when relating with beneficiaries.
And until Omicron I would have supported that view entirely, however indications are that what was true before may not be so now. If transmission is unimpacted by vaccination, and boosters are to be required every few months to maintain some level of reduced hospitalisation (but not infection or transmission) then we may need to re-evaluate.
And that includes the logic of mandates.
As stated earlier (as someone who was double vaccinated from when I was eligible) the ever changing requirements are cause for concern and i know of a good many who feel the same way, however the increasing propensity to dismiss concerns will not make the issue disappear rather it is likely to entrench it.
If transmission is unimpacted by vaccination, and boosters are to be required every few months to maintain some level of reduced hospitalisation (but not infection or transmission) then we may need to re-evaluate.
Here's how I understand it. We need to get as many people boosted as possible that are in the right time band.
This is to protect them from hospitalisation and/or death (and possibly long covid).
It is also to protect the health system from overwhelm, and wider society (eg the impact on workplaces).
Where vaccination lessens the chance of getting covid, it also lessens transmission.
(and let’s not forget we still have delta).
There is a lot we still don't know about omicron. Globally (but should have better data in a few weeks), but also in NZ, which has bucked the trend all through the pandemic.
I tend to agree that we won't tolerate 3 monthly boosters, but I'm not sure we are at the point of having to make that decision.
Pfizer are developing a vaccine against omicron, available in March? I guess available here going into winter.
We don't know if a new variant will come into being in that time, globally or in NZ.
We don't know how omicron will play out with long covid. That's a huge issue.
So many unknowns. It makes sense to me to use the tools we have now to protect as many people as possible directly and indirectly.
I don't understand the government's decision to not use regional boundary restrictions, I'm guessing that they are thinking omicron will be uncontrollable so why wreck the economies. I think they are probably wrong on this. The international border is easier to understand, but I think they should have turned the tap down further than they did for a period of time.
None of that is permanent.
The problem is we just don't know how things are going to go this year. I'm not seeing anything that supports the idea yet that letting omicron rip is a good idea or even a necessary evil. We're at the point in the emergency where we are stacking sandbags and waiting to see if the tide turns soon enough.
Understandably this is very hard for many people to tolerate. Those of us used to uncertainty and precarity have a different skill set and perspective. What we really should be doing at this point is teaching resiliency en masse, because this is the tutorial for climate catastrophe.
Indeed there is much unknown as yet about Omicron (and much to be determined about the earlier variants and the long term effects of multiple vaccinations)
As to boosters I know of several people who have had the booster and complain of increased impact on their health…the progression seems to be 1st jab no or little effect, second jab increased side effects but manageable, but booster wipes them out for days…..and no enthusiasm for a further booster….and a questioning of the need to vaccinate under12s
If Omicron is as transmissible as it appears overseas then the health system is going to be overwhelmed regardless of mandates.
Given we are currently at 94% of eligible double vaccinated (yes there are pockets of lower coverage) many are feeling somewhat duped in that the country has done more than asked but the rules keep changing and the imposition increasing.
You may assert that none of this is permanent but nor has it an end date.
And as to the economy….the damage has already been done so its not the consideration.
If Omicron is as transmissible as it appears overseas then the health system is going to be overwhelmed regardless of mandates.
I don't get this argument. The mandates protect the health system imperfectly but still more than if no mandates.
Given we are currently at 94% of eligible double vaccinated (yes there are pockets of lower coverage) many are feeling somewhat duped in that the country has done more than asked but the rules keep changing and the imposition increasing.
Yes, people feel this, but the reality is that the virus adapts and then so we have to, one way or the other. I think we're in this for a number of years, and the whole 'it will soon be over narrative' is probably unhelpful.
You may assert that none of this is permanent but nor has it an end date.
It's not permanent in the sense of everything is still in flux. It may well end up being permanent. Or not.
And as to the economy….the damage has already been done so its not the consideration.
Pretty sure it's core to Labour's thinking. It's not like the damage was a finite thing, more can still happen.
And I dont get how you dont get it….if Omicron evades the vaccine as it appears what purpose do the mandates serve?…none. They dont restrict transmission, or illness.
And more damage will be done to the economy, but not by covid, in fact the economy may well push covid into the background.
afaik pfizer x 2 +booster provides meaningful protection against omicron. This is central to NZ's current pandemic response, the point of holding back omicron as much as possible is to gain time to get more people boosted.
Specifically, the researchers found that right after the third shot of the Pfizer vaccine, protection against a symptomatic infection is pretty good. Two weeks after the shot, the booster cuts the risk by about 70%.
Yes, there are some differences in vaccination reporting, but like I said, Australia refuses to wear masks. They think they are better than that, and are far less likely to adhere to Covid restrictions because their dumb-ass federal government insists on sowing discord, confusion and mistrust in the community for political gain.
and yet Australia….with a higher vax and booster rate than us.
Protection is provided by a number of tools, including but not limited to vaccination+ booster. Australia gave up many of its protection tools late last year. And they've had omicron in the community, we haven't. Not really sure what your point is though. The comparison would be Australia now and Australia all other things being equal but with no vax or boosters.
Anecdotally, a Melbourne shopping centre was full of unmasked patrons in the post Christmas period. This relayed to me by a friend who visited his mother there.
I went to Sylvia Park on Boxing day. Tens of thousands of happy, masked shoppers.
By all accounts I've heard, Australians don't do Covid restrictions well, including masks. Kiwis are more compliant which I believe is a large part of our superior pandemic response.
If injections don't prevent the spread of Omicron but reduce the impacts of infection. And if the aim to alleviate possible pressures on health care systems…then what is the point of injecting people who would likely never have ended up in hospital in the first place?
Have injections available for the elderly, the vulnerable and the scared.
That would have been (has always been) the approach of public health when the tool is a vaccine that does not prevent transmission of a virus.
The NZ government’s response is "public health" in name only.
Flatmate rushing getting ready for shift, I said 'what do you think of nurses not keeping their vaccines up to date?'
Raised eyebrow with the 'what a weird idea' look. In a conversation on this prior she says that on her large ward she knows of no nurse that is not covid up to date with booster and has only heard of a couple on other wards.
NB not all the vaccines have to be renewed annually.
I had smallpox and yellow fever to travel, and rubella. Flatmate has had these too.
I was vaccinated for those vaccines on the travel schedule.
I understand Tetanus is one that is not lifelong.
Not sure what the point about the mandated…this seems to be putting a 2021/22 spin on what were/are pretty standard conditions of employment in health sector and occupations such as plumbers to keep one's vaccines up to date.
My flatmate did a nursing degree & is a registered nurse.. For this degree she and her classmates had to have a list of vaccines, right at the start of the degree, and these had to be kept current…….similar requirements are set for plumbers etc……the topic has been discussed further on in TS in recent days and other trades/professions added to those that require a range of vaccines. My flatmate has had vaccines that I have had as I travelled overseas in the days when you had to have those on the yellow vaccine card. Many people, these days do not have them.
Defence Dept personnel, on joining are required to have vaccines and keep them up to date (I know this as I was married to one). I think that some of the vaccines on the list of requirements are not required every year.
My flatmate has to have a flu injection annually and was required to have the Covid vaccinations. She has worked/is working at large public hospitals and says that they are reminded by email each year about getting updates to their vaccinations…..
Some health workers looking after people in their own homes are/were? not required by their employers to have up to date vaccinations. When our mother was still alive we did not allow any health worker to look after her that did not have a Flu vaccine as a minimum. Many home care workers do have vaccinations for tetanus and the like and get the boosters when needed.
I find it rather odd that your contacts don't recall being vaccinated for tetanus when boosters are needed, annual influenza injections etc.
My flatmate’s & neighbour’s views are on all fours with that those of their employer. Their employer can rely on them to keep current, but I am sure that there will be others who need reminding…..possibly a number of times.
Both have said that they are aware of very small numbers of nurses leaving over the covid vaccination requirement. None on her wards but she knew of a couple on other wards. We are talking small numbers.
The health professionals I deal with have/had no problem in fulfilling any requirements for vaccines and maintaining these. Most would do this because of both one's own health and that of patients who will be in hospital because their health status is not optimum. So if reminded to get their tetanus booster then they would do it…..end of. They would not need to be chased up.
You missed the health sciences people that Drowsy put up.
There is a nursing degree at most universities.
Jeff Tiedrich's (he is from the US) tweet of 12/10/21 springs to mind, excuse the language
"Holy fucking shit, vaccine mandates are causing teachers who don't believe in science to quit, nurses who don't believe in medicine to quit, and cops who don't believe in public safety to quit. I'm failing to see the downside to this".
I only asked for you to back up your assertion of compulsion of vaccines for nurses.
Nothing to do with other health science folk, nor you or your acquaintances attitudes to vaccination.
I feel you are the one that is putting a contemporary twist. Clearly, for you it feels right that nurses be obligated to be vaccinated because plumbers, health science folk etc.
@gsays. If vaccines are not compulsory why are nurses now leaving?
I make no bones about believing what she says. She was required to have a range of vaccines on starting the degree and is required to maintain these while in a hospital setting.
Is that what you call compulsion?
I call it common sense and reasonable. Most reasonable people would not see it as compulsion but would know that their employer has rights and can warn, warn terminate over some thing as fundamental
I also call reasonable any employer, including in the health sector, who takes action to terminate employment if requirements are not met. So if she let slip on some of her vaccine requirements she is sure that action would be taken…but there are other occupations that are required to do things that we might feel are onerous.
The large hospitals she works in/has worked in operate a reminder system by email about upcoming requirements. She has had the ones on the travel schedule as working in a large hospital she may be required to nurse someone with one of them- say a recent immigrant or traveller.
I make no bones about knowing that both my flatmate and next door Dr believe in the science and are reasonable people. Neither would want to jeopardise their health or their job by playing around in not getting updates or yearly vaccines. Why would they take their employer to the brink of a termination by not getting vaccines…
Of course I accept that other hospitals may not enforce vaccines, their choice. My flatmate knows that her hospital does enforce vaccines.
I do not want to get into any squirming around, word salads or nuances of meaning to met your need to go 'shock horror', compulsion, mandate.
It is a fact, take it or leave it.
What rubbish about the health sciences……and wanting nurses to be vaccinated because of them.
I only knew about the nurses and Drs requiring to be vaccinated. And my ex husband had a range of vaccines being in the military. The knowledge about the plumbers and health sciences people I found out about in response to some of my posts on TS. Actually I did know but had forgotten about the plumbers.
If your nurses have done degrees did they not have the vaccine requirements?
What a load of rot. Good riff on "Morpheus recruits Neo" at the start, though.
Firstly, we do look at those things she was going on about with "if this was truly about health". Hell, the suicide thing for a start has been repeatedly debunked publicly. Yet still this [no longer practising] doctor is pretending it's not been discussed?
Secondly, the future she wants requires covid to not exist. It's one thing to say that the government is leveraging covid to increase control, it's another thing entirely to pretend that covid doesn't exist. Why, just today I saw a thing about from a [not a medical] Doctor that proves covid has killed 17,000 people at a minimum in the UK, and maybe hundreds of thousands more.
But let's say this is all about "control" rather than ensuring that people in situations with high numbers of close contacts have at least a modicum of immunity and physical protection (masks) against infection or symptoms. Let's pretend that's true for a moment:
How, specifically, would that differ from efforts to protect a population from a highly infections disease that is capable of causing thousands of deaths in NZ? and
Why? They're already in charge. Almost everyone carries a handy tracking device in their pocket. Most transactions are electronic. It's getting to the stage that anyone paying cash to avoid being tracked stands out like a sore thumb. All this has happened largely organically, no crisis required. So why even bother with a shitty little app?
'The academic scholars that compiled the Fed’s loans during the financial crisis for the Levy Economics Institute also provided cumulative tallies. Their tally, which included additional Fed bailout programs not included by the GAO, came to $29 trillion.-Wall St On Parade'.
Follow the money…never fails.
@$40 a second it takes 792 years to spend one trillion.
Houses in NZ cost $1million…very …good….any war drums…beating,what distractions to a financial catastrophe are…around?
OK, so the pandemic is a distraction from financial collapse because of theft by the capitalist class.
Then why the covid apps? Lockdowns, sure. Letting the disease run rampant while having xmas parties – sure. Both cause disruption and piss people off (the latter one with mass death, starting with at least 17k and likely going as high as a hundred times that, if not more).
But how does a qr code app distract from financial crises, any more than it increases "control" that the population has already taken on board willingly??
If you look at world indebtedness…crypto,and the move to a cashless society..you will see that 'control' needs to be contoured to identifying every person and their activity/movements/ and sentiments.
The 'hearts and minds ' were easily assuaged by corporate MSM ,but now the internet is such a rich vein of information that reality is a threat to perception.
2/3 for covid, maybe. But why would the powers that be spend money on apps for things we're eagerly adopting anyway?
Crypto is like cash, but without the convenience, transaction speed, or ubiquity. It makes you stand out, so if you're doing it to lay low it's counterproductive.
But the main problem for the conspiracy theories is that something like covid was going to happen anyway, and the capitalists would make money off it anyway. There's always a crisis or some international tension.
So you think the expansion in debt by trillions since 2008 backed by U.S military force is completely logical and its quite clear that an average house in NZ is worth ..$1 million ….very good..nothing to see here…hang on..China's human rights are a BIG problem,and Russia has troops on its own …border!OMG…
I just don't understand why some apparently believe that covid is realistically just an excuse to gain "control" that the population has already ceded.
I don't understand the objectives, methodology, or logic of any plan that would fit that portrayal.
Well how does distraction or truth figure in the big picture?
Well, I suppose it suggests that the people arguing against already redundant measures of "control" are providing the distraction. Predictability can be useful, I guess.
As I have pointed out numerous times 25,000 people die EVERYDAY from starvation…what have you got to say about ..that?
It's bad? Not sure how an app would prevent it, though. But I can see the point for apps to reduce the impact of a pandemic.
The vaccine conspiracists are getting quite excited by the rise in mortality New Zealand had in the middle of 2021 (the year people were first getting vaccinated). We have traditionally called that rise, which occurs in every year, "Winter"
Pretty much sums up the strident anti-vaxxers.
Edit: as opposed to those unvaccinated for acceptable reasons.
Seems to me that someone with privileges associated with being an author who abuses such a position should in turn have sanctions imposed on them. If this doesn't happen then maybe the community could boycott any further posts by that particular "author".
I've not posted until recently since early October because I was dismayed by the misinformation freely promoted by two powerful right wing vaccine/pandemic sceptic moderators resident at this forum. And by their powerful control over ordinary commenters at The Standard, and their immunity from the actual rules of the site itself.
I acknowledge the efforts of weka and lprent in calmly challenging the dangerous promotion of misinformation by these vaccine/pandemic sceptic moderators, but it has been painful to watch.
Boycotting posts that involve covid minimisation or misinformation (and broaden the exposure of others who do the same) would simply leave such information unchallenged, even if it were to contain serious omissions or errors in anything from math to basic anatomy. Would that be an echo chamber, or a recruiting station?
Lies can run around the world before the truth has its boots on. If a subject of great importance happens to be in someone's area of knowledge and misinformation can cost lives, please try to make the lie have to carry your weight for a bit.
But it's like whack-a-mole with these guys. It does not matter how many times they are challenged on misinformation. Cornered, they double down and become more virulent.
I like the idea of a boycott because their lies are left to sit idle in an empty chamber.
I think it’s time the proletariat, us, stood up with our voices like bwaghorn did, or our silence. They can’t ban us all.
But if the chamber is left empty to fester by itself, I wonder how many posts where an author ends up suggesting that the covid UK death toll might not even be 1% of the official toll would enventually end up in links on FB groups or twitter, or other blogsites?
It is whack-a-mole, sure. But the objective isn't to persuade the mole.
When someone new reads the post and discussion (and might not realise that "50% efficacy" isn't equivalent to a toss of a coin whether you get it), if the comments include "you have a basic error of fact here" the reader might think a bit more closely about the content.
Well, a huge amount of ordinary people's time is being spent continually putting out anti-vax fires when it's probably best to just kick the the fire-setters out.
Also, newcomers are going to read vaccine sceptic and ivermectin promoting posts and believe this is what The Standard is all about.
Question; how many months/years have to pass without authoring a post before an "author" is no longer considered as such?
I agree, but who has author privileges is up to the trust.
How/whether we respond to misinformation in posts and comments is up to us, while we still can.
If we have the means to act, we have the responsibility to act. Nobody's perfect at it, but hey. We can all try, even if we think other people are dropping the ball..
Not "we" brother, you're not allowed on his pages any more. It's not a ban though, you're just too good at debating so you can't play anymore 'cos you won't let him win.
Well, a huge amount of ordinary people's time is being spent continually putting out anti-vax fires when it's probably best to just kick the the fire-setters out.
As well as that we continually ask for citing and just as continually get ignored.
Opinions are good, but as many have said they're like a-holes and everybody has them but then an opinion with links or citations 'mwah mwah', love them. Weka in several posts above speaks good sense in her opinions with no need for citations.
I am just wondering 'are we there yet' as far as posts on Covid are concerned. Everything seems to have been said many times before. Would the sky fall in if we saw what would happen if we declared a moratorium for a week on posts about Covid.
If something new or groundbreaking happened in the Covid world during that week we could 'petition' a mod to open up a thread.
….the covid UK death toll might not even be 1% of the official toll… (a quote from another post)
I am aware of two individuals, each who lost a parent in England with Covid. They were elderly and frail and both were in rest homes. Yet the death certificates claimed their deaths were due to other causes. Both took place in 2020 when it became known the British Govt. was trying to hide the real Covid death toll. Since then, several Covid international experts have estimated that the real toll from Covid is at least double that of the official numbers.
No. I'm not going to go hunting for links because I have better things to do. There were many stories, some dating back to 2020, so anyone who claims they have never heard of them are obviously living under a rock somewhere.
Yes I had heard that and I think the mysterious ways death certs were being drawn up was one of the reasons for the WHO intervention as they needed to be able drag out consistent info world-wide to see trends worldwide. Tricky dicky ways of completing death certs would stymie this of course.
Anybody can submit a Guest Post here but very few do. My guess is that if you want to write about your opinion on how low the standards have fallen on The Standard it will not be published. However, feel free to try 😉
In that case, I stand corrected and I’ll look forward to your Guest Post on TS on TS. I just hope it will have more substance than your “reply” @ 11.4 to fender and less of an attack on this site and its authors.
Mikeys back in the morning. But this is a disturbing story. When someone threatens Mikey because they have a poor grasp of the English language.. you know Aotearoa is letting the wrong people through our borders.
The first reason I would deport this chap is because he didn't know what a burner phone was.
The second reason is the chap is 60 and English is his second language. Of course he was discharged without conviction.
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Ngaio Marsh House is one of Christchurch’s best kept secrets – and contains more than a few mysteries of its own.Trust Ngaio Marsh to leave more than a few mysteries scattered through her house long after her departure. For a start, there’s the curious concrete portal in the garden, ...
Appointment viewing has been lost to the mists of time, but memories of Montana Sunday Theatre can still be conjured by hitting play on a particular piece of classical music. “You’re not going to be able to sell it.” Over 30 years on, Karen Bieleski still recalls how the task ...
Performance Review King Luxon sat behind His massive polished oak desk. It is Performance Review time. There is a knock on the door. “Enter!” says the King. In steps Minister of Disabilities and Carer Pedicures, Penny Simmonds. “I can explain everything …” she begins. “Fine,” says King Luxon, pressing the ...
The pair opened their first fully collaborative exhibition, Nina for Flowers, last Saturday. Gabi Lardies visited their studio to find out who Nina is and what working together was like.‘It didn’t start out like, ‘This is a show about Nina,’” says Josephine Jelicich, gripping a thermos of peppermint tea. ...
Thank you, Dr Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner, for your brilliant invention. I’m another mid-20s Kiwi who had an OE last year. I hopped on my bicycle where France meets the Atlantic and cycled east. I pedalled through the Loire Valley, down rivers lined with willows and ancient wisteria-draped chateaus. I relished ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
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 The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
This from the Sydney Morning Herald today (Jacinda should take note of what is happening in WA):
"Since the nationwide lockdowns of early 2020, West Australians have endured just 12 days of lockdown, the vast majority of the time free of masks and other business-curbing social restrictions. Two years into the pandemic most West Australians have no first-hand experience of COVID-19, and they are not particularly interested in acquainting themselves with it.
It is why the dramatic late-night announcement by WA Premier Mark McGowan that the long-awaited February 5 border reopening would be postponed indefinitely was greeted with relief by many, likely still a solid majority. Who wants to get sick? Or wear masks? Or suffer crippling restrictions? No, thanks. Do you blame them?
[McGowan, the WA Premier] insists on more than 80 per cent third [booster] dose coverage before the border comes down, with all further details pending."
Yes, I agree that it's interesting & significant. Sensible psychology operating in WA – quite a contrast to NSW & Victoria!
McGowan is predictably copping a lot of flak. WA is a huge state with a lot of remote indigenous communities with very low vaccination rates. This is what McGowan said yesterday:
“I know I’m getting a lot of criticism. What we’re trying to do is save lives and save jobs at the same time,” McGowan said.
“A lot of people say we should be living with Covid. Well, there are 752 people in the eastern states no longer living with Covid,” he said, referring to the number of Australian Covid deaths so far in 2022. “You should ask their families whether we should deliberately infect large numbers of West Australians.”
WA has travel restrictions to protect those Aboriginal communities.
In regards to COVID deaths; ‘What were their underlying conditions?’, sounds an awful lot like ‘What was she wearing?’
I think it’s callous to see the deaths of people with diabetes, heart or kidney disease etc. as necessary cost of ‘opening up’.
You are just making things up now Arkie-those 752 are the Covid-related reported deaths.
What is it about you Boris/ScoMo pro-business fanatics that motivates you to ignore human suffering and death?
maybe reread what they said.
Fruit picking season is about to start. Is this the year many horticultural enterprises join urban businesses on the road to closure?
Britain has the same problem. But agriculture in Britain is 0.59% of GDP. While in New Zealand it's 6% of GDP, and our biggest export earner.
https://www.ft.com/content/ee933d30-43fc-47ff-b00f-8e7b1c695516
Surely some rich fuck from overseas is happy to buy these businesses a penny to a dollar.
And if anyone thought that fruit picking season was a mess last year, well its gonna be real messy this year.
Yep, took my mower in to get the blades changed this morning. Usually takes around 10minutes with a $25 service fee.
''No can do, mate,'' was the reply I received this morning. Why I asked, you don't look busy?
''We aren't busy,'' was the reply. I have lost my mechanic. He's left to help his dad pick the nectarine and peach crop on the the family orchard. They can't find workers.''
Marvellous!!! Now I have to change the blades myself.
No self respecting NZr with a name like Blade would consider paying someone to swap mower blades over.
Seems right wingers don't like getting their delicate hands dirty doing a task that doesn't require a mechanic.
Nice story though, or was it concern trolling..
''Seems right wingers don't like getting their delicate hands dirty doing a task that doesn't require a mechanic.''
Well, that's true about the delicate hands. My fingers and hands are required to be in pristine condition to feel the fretboards on my expensive guitars.
Where you come unstuck is believing changing a blade is an easy task on a new mower.
It used to be, and still is, if you have a bar blade. But if you have a plate with 4 mini blades, things become tricker. You will definitely need the RIGHT tools. You will be hoping the bolts haven't burred and penetration oil is not needed.
A simple time and motion study showed me it's easier to have the job done for me. Bike shops do similar. They don't repair punctures. They replace the tube. Only time warp lefties fix their own punctures using a bucket of water.
Then there's the problem of turning your mower up on its side to replace the blade. That's another no-no with a modern mower…but you probably know that.
Still no official word on why unemployed kiwis are not going for those jobs. I wonder how long the left & right will be able to maintain their collusion in silence?
My first guesses would be
-lack of transport to and from work
-lack of cheap affordable seasonal accommodation
-how will a seasonal job affect any benefits some may receive if they have to go back on the dole.
I met an older women working the sorting sheds – night shift- in Te Puke coming from Tokoroa. That is a two hour trip one way btw. She was in her 60s. 4 hours every day basic commute – unpaid of course. – So you need a car, money for patrol and such.
But lets again pretend that all bosses are evil and all unemployed people are lazy, that surely will make a difference.
Don't forget they will likely have to maintain accommodation costs in their hometown or risk not having housing when the season ends.
There are additional costs for NZers doing seasonal work.
I know that, but then it is easier to blame lazy unemployed people for not taking a job that they literally can't afford to take.
How much money is left over from Kiwibuild that could be used for high quality portable housing to help with seasonal work in various areas? Quite a bit judging by the lack of kiwibuild houses.
always lots of excuses why no one wants to work, not much practical in how to make it easy for them too
yep. The reason why working holiday people would do that work is because the conditions suited them. Make the job attractive to locals, or people living elsewhere to travel and live there for a while, and they'll do the work.
Setting people who do seasonal work up with tiny homes on wheels, or housebus/truck, caravan etc would help the situation as well as solve some of the housing crisis issues.
Not really a shortage of temporary accommodation back in my day, but the double-tapping of paying for that for a few weeks while also keeping a flat at home.
Or moving towns completely but only for a couple of weeks (but then you'd need something more than a shared room in a dorm).
Tourists have few possessions and few commitments and few connections. Residents need to actually make money to justify the gamble.
When I was picking fruit Accommodation was provided. Basic but free. So what happened ? Employers like to bad mouth Socialism but would socialise costs anytime. Profits of course are private !!
I have little sympathy for the one crop wonder boys.
There is a grower just north of whangarei who employs 70 staff full time. He has diversified so he has different crops maturing year round, some fruit some veges. He is also smart in that he has diversified his income stream
nice.
Absolutely Sabine. In my day as an apple picker (some time ago now) there was such a thing as a union and part of the pickers agreement was to be accomodated at a weekly rate not exceeding $2.50 per week. Even given the lapsed time it was still only 20 mins work to pay your accomodation if the orchardist even bothered to charge, and it usually included power. It was also quite a simple matter to get back on the dole. If the only way to make money from apples is to rip off the workers then is it really an industry we need?
Why would governments talk about employing NZers at real rates and conditions when there is more profit in running an immigration scam. Two seperate political parties. Only one political philosophy. Hence we get either shit light or shit dark. Its always shit though.
Scales Corp is NZ's biggest Apple business.
It has had very good earnings despite covid.
Mainly smaller growers are affected by imported labour shortages.
More investment in machinery to replace seasonal labour is required.
"More investment in machinery to replace seasonal labour is required."
Yes it is….but then there is the issue of what we do about employment. If fewer and fewer large scale businesses are operating with less and less labour their profits will have to be taxed higher to allow for transfers to support the rest of the economy…..and we know how business feels about about taxation as well as knowing who has the politicians ears.
Or perhaps the investment is public and the dividends are returned to the citizenry….that sounds like something of an anathema to 'business.'
You really are the poster child for the idiocy of the moderation policy on this site. An obvious right wing concern troll pushing right wing talking points, yet the the two main active moderators are mainly concerned with policing the left.
The upshot of it is the comments section of this site now resembles a slightly younger version of the Herald.
bwaghorn would no doubt support your comment, Sanctuary.
Yes indeed Robert Guyton.
.
Much of the "policing" has centred on curbing typical Woke excess … the mindless demonisation of entire demographics.
Let's be clear: Wokedom aint "the Left" … it's an Elitist Vanity Project … deploying camouflaged self-interest, an authoritarian, profoundly anti-democratic consolidation of power, financial privilege & in-group status,while systematically scapegoating a whole swathe of working people & poorer pensioners in the most cowardly & sadistic way … transforming them into second-class citizens in housing, health & increasingly other sectors. Always by stealth, always venomously contemptuous of democracy & majority opinion.
In core respects, the antithesis of the genuine Left … almost a new form of Toryism
Probably inevitable when 400-buck-an-hour virtue-signalling Middle-Class Professionals slowly capture the upper echelons of both the parliamentary & organisational wings of nominally "Left" Parties. Clearly an international phenomenon.
You yourself, Sanctuary, seem to fluctuate wildly between occasional hard-hitting critiques of Woke excess, followed a week or two later by a smattering of equally enthusiastic cheerleading for precisely the same dogmatic phenomenon. Quite baffling.
Nah, man, when it's all just lefties, it gets really boring here.
What's a concern troll, Weka? And…should I be worried?
worried about what?
Concerns, I would imagine
It sounds like a terminal condition that maybe only Righties can catch?
more like a chronic condition that dickheads induce.
But the term does get thrown around as an accusation too much too.
I have got to thinking that the RW people come here because:
1 well have you ever been on a RW blog? full of opinion, 'lefties' accusations, inability to mount an argument. Full of farcebook one liners etc etc. Although I don't agree with everyone's views on here most of the posts are well thought out, heartfelt, referenced.
I value them (RW posters who abide by the rules) because:
2 when people respond to RW views it gives me food for thought and possible talking points when in real life.
3 because of standards of moderation and, mostly, cited arguments from RW people I may learn something.
I think though:
A) authors should not moderate their own posts, they should have a formal reply or clarification function in response
B) authors should not be able to moderate anyone off the site, this should be left to the team of moderators
C) RW moderators should not be able to moderate anyone off the site. this also should be left to the remaining team of moderators.
I value RW commenters likewise. Sanctuary is probably right that left wingers get moderated more than RW ones. I notice this. But it's because RW commenters are less in number, so there are more LW ones pushing the boundaries or breaking the rules.
I don't see any right wing comments on this site. People with a RW orientation might come and read the material here but I don't see any comments that are more than being from just a little bit to the right of centre. Nothing at all from further right than a traditional Liberal viewpoint in fact.
Lots of stuff from the left, the far left and people who make Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Jong-Un look sane of course.
I'm still trying to work out how posting the GDP percentage differential for agriculture between NZ and Britain is ''pushing right wing talking points, '' according to Shanwreagh.
But there you have it. It's certainly different when Liberals are in the house.
Huh?
Not sure I have ever talked about GDP percentage differential for ag or responded to anyone who was pushing RW talking points on this topic.
My forays into ag have mainly been in support of regen ag and on the silliness of some aspects of the farmer protests (ie you run the risk of marching beside some 'different' bedfellows once you start on a protest march as the last one in Wellington showed with the MAGA and Trumpie people)
The comment you’re referring to was made by Sanctuary, not Shanreagh.
.https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-22-01-2022/#comment-1853615
Sanctuary was essentially complaining that you are have Right wing views but don’t always make it obvious.
Correct. Sorry Shanreagh, my mistake.
''Right wing views but don’t always make it obvious.''
I don't think Sanctuary is that good at nuances.
None so blind, alwyn? There've been a few Standard outbreaks of Jacinta Jacinta, Cindy Cindy Cindy, and Comrade Princess, not to mention the occasional Fool making no secret of their scumminess, but rwnjs know that it's Ardern who continues to outclass their champions, one after the – ‘Next’.
You are probably right. There were no doubt a few occurrences of Jacinta, Cindy etc along the way.
I'm sure there were a lot more Jonkey's or shonky Johnkey, Paula Benefit, blinglish and Luxton to go with them. Were they offensive or did you see them as the height of wit?
Whatever they were and whatever the twists on Jacinda or Ardern they were hardly in hanging territory were they? They also don't display and left wing or right wing traits. They are all just people who confuse being a wit with being a twit.
Quite right alwyn – are you surprised, given where you are commenting?
And I’m pleased that your eyesight has improved
The smears against Clarke Gayford by rwnjs here and elsewhere really speaks to their ‘character”, imho. If will be a minor miracle if another Clarke slur doesn’t surface ahead of the next general election, given that Luxon is now in charge.
Were they like the comments made about Max Key? I never actually saw any of these fabled comments about Gayford but I saw references to the fact they existed. I suspect they were immediately deleted from and blog where someone might have tried to post them.
You say "The smears against Clarke Gayford by rwnjs here …". Are you seriously saying that they were posted on this site. I would find that very hard to believe that they would have survived for more than a minute or two.
So it's cataracts. "Vile rumours" of that type do occasionally surface here – maybe they're allowed to ‘survive’ as a warning to other fools?
Your guess is at least as good as mine as to what the next smear will be – I doubt even brother Luxon could purge the influence of Dirty Politics within the National party and its supporters, even if he wanted to.
I'm sure you will provide a link to one if such a thing existed. I personally don't think they exist on this site. I can't believe that lprent would allow them to remain here.
I am not going to waste my time looking for something that only you say exists.
Link provided @2.4.4.2.2, and again @7:03 pm.
I'd get that checked out – Should've gone to Specsavers
Is that what is supposed to have got the Police Commissioner involved?
Jeez, didn't Coster have better things to do than check out this rubbish? Still, yes, you did produce a link to stupid rumours being floated on this site. Mind you, in this day and age, who cares?
Exactly how many unemployed Kiwis do you think there are ?. Much less city ones who can maintain two rental payments a week for 6 weeks until the season is over. In the northern SI there is no one who isn’t working that can work, the wineries even pre-omicron will be looking at 75% staffing for harvest if they are lucky.
Yes I have heard that too. But, and there is always a but, some employers work on a Field of Dreams approach, build it and they will come. I know of many over 60s who would love to do something like this but
Years ago I worked in a food processing plant in Hastings HB.
It had free buses leaving from central points & waypoints, north and south of the factory at a couple of times before the shifts started. Then again on the way home. I am not sure if they do this any more. There were also buses for people doing the picking.
Same are you talkin about watties ?first job at 15 just left school managed to last two weeks remember first day thinking what ?no morn smoko ?and then shit we must be working though lunch time as well whats goin on oh no !eventually i found out was only half past nine !!We stole fruit to survive had no money you could fit a can of peaches in the top of each gumboot pull yr
overalls down over them an walk out like that worked a charm an kept us alive . In those days canned fruit was actually quite good its crap now alas .Latest news says watties in hastings needs one hundred and fifty more workers now.
So you are a criminal..like Meteria ..we will hound you and track ..you down…now!
Weston …..yes they were early starts. We were there by 7.00am after catching the bus out of Napier to go to Birds Eye in Hastings. It was a holiday job and gee did I love it. By the time I left I was a chargehand on the corn line. I was there just over 3 months. They offered me a permanent job and that was when my dad put his foot down and said 'go-back-to -'varsity.'
They used to let the staff take all the mislabelled tins at the end of each week. Course the mislabelling mostly meant no labelling so it was a bit hit & miss as to what was in the tins you got. If you were smart, and I eventually cottoned on, you remembered what the lines had been doing that week, usually only a couple of things and labelled the top 'tomatoes or green beans' or 'peaches or green beans'. Otherwise it was a glorious mystery as to what was going to be in your tins. I made lots of green bean and tomato quiche things when I was actually wanting tomatoes and peaches.
I had some wonderful holiday jobs, worked with happy people who were working there fulltime. Toothpaste factory and plumbing supplies making and bending (wrong word) copper pipes on big machines. And yes females had differential (lower) rates from males for doing the same job…..Good union people. Aah well.
Luke Malpass looks at Labour's legislative agenda for this year:
Dunno if this is significant – to treat Three Waters as a can to be kicked down the road is likely to drop Labour poll ratings. The PM ought to include it as priority unless she can conjure up good reasons for discounting it.
Obviously it's logical to blame the Minister of Finance for inept new financial law. Strangely, Luke sidesteps Occam's Razor in favour of convolution:
He presents a picture as overview. It's an excellent illustration of how a picture is worth a thousand words…
So it looks like financial law becomes part of commerce when enacted. Robertson manages to slip off the hook of accountability.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/127559164/why-2022-will-be-the-year-covid-really-crimps-labours-visions-of-change
LOL.
LOL
yeah I get that there's two sides to that
within Labour it'll be scaredy-cats vs policy zealots
'The start of the year has also revealed a major problem with one of Labour’s earlier changes – its revamped Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA), which came into force in December. The changes, designed to protect vulnerable borrowers from predatory lending practices or loan sharks, have resulted in middle New Zealand being whacked in a Government-induced credit crunch.'
Prudent lending practice would should have recognised the requirements with or without the revamp.
'The New Zealand Bankers’ Association publishes a “regulatory radar” of law and regulation changes worrying member banks. The larger, redder, and more central the star, the more urgent and important the issue. The new lending law star is large, red and in the centre. Clark and the Government will have to fix this quickly.
Fix it alright!-5 billion per annum in profits going offshore.
The less regulation the more the banks…like it.
Parasites.
Changes to protect vulnerable borrowers sees headline after headline of would be borrowers upset their bank asks them about spending $287 at K Mart or people finding it too hard to lie low in their spending for 3 months.
Banks ask about spending, outgoings and income. Some people in banking are pedantic. No surprise. Should borrowers expect a cruisy ride?
Political beat up…the banks are laughing all the way…..to
I have noticed how Harvey Normans has been running a 60 months interest free offer for over 12 months now…with wraparound Herald and T.V advertising .
Maybe the music stops sometime this…year.
Ponzi schemes loses money. Who woulda thunk it?
/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-21/crypto-meltdown-erases-more-than-1-trillion-in-market-value
Conservatives unable to keep up:
I really can't see how they expect to be politically effective if they remain stuck in 2019 in their heads. Right-thinking ought to incorporate temporal context!
There's also the question around political astrology. To be effective, one must be able to specify which stars are aligning with what. Doesn't matter that it worked for Reagan – one swallow doesn't make a summer…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/is-auckland-mayor-phil-goff-about-to-bow-out-of-politics-and-support-a-rising-star-to-replace-him/TIXJQC3FAFQF5KR55CWYDS3Z6I/
I read that about 8.00 am this morning and thought: "It's 2022. That doesn't make sense. Poor proof-reading? Undetected error?"
Apparently so. UPDATED now appears at the top. And that sentence in the article now reads:
Eloquent and succinct – former MD Alison Goodwin on “What is going on”
https://odysee.com/@spearhead4truth:e/What-is-going-on:b?fbclid=IwAR1cab4g4tDgQOU7j8bNF7rZpV1eeDcQHRxnm2PPU2Q9i0nYliJjd-TLcZo
That there are desires for the scenario she describes I dont doubt,,im not sure that the current vaccine pass is its precursor….but I may well be wrong.
However I am increasingly concerned that the mandating of those that choose to be unvaccinated is becoming entrenched (i initially thought it was a bluff used to increase up take and would be quietly dropped)…..and I am becoming increasingly reluctant to be 'boostered' with a vaccine that appears of little benefit with the latest variant, or to see the under 12s vaccinated without strong evidence of benefit.
And then there are other unanswered questions….
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102
You should be extremely cautious about any results which show boosters are not effective. There are very confusing cofounders at play in virtually all data in these cases, which can lead to miss-leading results. I showed an example of this, in that NZ Maori & Polynesians are over-all accepting vaccination at a lower rate than any of the age groups which comprise the overall data.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-vaccine-data#ethnicity
See "Vaccine uptake per rate ratio (unadjusted) Māori and Pacific compared with Non-Māori non-Pacific 12+" where there are wider rate differences overall than for any age group making that up.
The same kinds of thing can happen for most covid related data when these cases are not well understood.
Here is a post doing correct estimates and working through all the potential issues.
https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/what-do-new-israeli-data-say-about-effect-of-vaccines-boosters-vs-death-critical-severe-disease
Yes there are wider rate variations by cohort than in total due to demographics as has been noted previously…and your linked study is pre Omicron….and even so I draw your attention to point 9
9. Boosters provide further protection but it is not yet clear whether they are necessary for the younger age groups.
And the issue of mandates is unaddressed…..especially when nobody thought 90% of eligible was achievable yet we have exceeded that.
I'm just highlighting the need for evidence and very careful statistical modeling in evaluating claims like, boosters appear to have little benefit. Doing this incorrectly can mean that the 13.7% protection against death you perceive massively understates the 93.8% protection against death which actually occurs in the >60 cohort (or even the 68% protection against death for vaccinated but un-boosted).
Yes, it would be good to see studies incorporating up to date data (since Omicron). The same statistical fallacies are occurring in data relating to Omicron vs Delta variants and lower vaccine efficacy against Omicron of course.
Dont dispute the need to be careful with statistics.
And is why I am increasingly concerned about current events.
"Mandates"* had a huge public health component far and above the persuasion to be vaccinated, in fact the health factor was the main part, at least I took it as the main part.
It goes like this……when people go to be treated at hospitals there is an expectation that they will be treated for the illnesses they came in for and not acquire any another life threatening infection while there and while their defences are down. These infections are called nosocomial infections and even before Covid pneumonia was one that did occur.
Hospitals therefore needed to introduce special measures to deal with Covid. We had PPE and stand downs until the vaccination came along.
Covid is so infectious and the vaccination seemed a simple way to minimise the risk of Covid infections spreading within hospitals. The reasons for not accepting a vaccine that I have read, especially now that there are two to choose from mRNA based Pfizer and Astra Zeneca, seem mired in social media woo woo.
Health staff have been given options. The basic point is that we cannot afford to have the potential for covid to get away in our hospitals from staff who fail to be vaccinated.
My flatmate is a nurse and she says she and her fellow nurses are looking on in amazement at the very few who have stood out, she mentions that it is a requirement before beginning nursing training to be vaccinated and maintain vaccination of a range of vaccines most of us have not come across. Defence personnel have the same requirements when signing on. They have regular testing as well.
Teachers spend days with their classes and would be powerful spreaders of the virus to their students, some of whom would have been severely affected by catching Covid and may have been consigned to a life with Long Covid.
The requirement to protect diners was both a public health measure and a measure to enable businesses to be able to trade through …it came in with the traffic light system. This was a recognition that Covid may be here for the long haul and enables vaccinated businesses and people to keep the businesses pumping along at different levels.
I had no thought that the intro of the 'mandates' was anything other than for real.
At the time the Govt had examples from overseas where front facing jobs had a requirement to be vaccinated. For all the bluff and bluster from the anti vaxxers, firms such as United Airlines with a staff of 67,000 had a vaccine requirement and 232 employees were unvaccinated and lost their jobs. ,
*Mandates is a loaded word. I never use it. Better wording that is more indicative of what it is is
work requirements
or
on the job requirements
The thing is that these requirements are usually prior to employment and people who do not want vaccines or on the job drug testing etc won't apply for jobs that require them, they self select out.
As for not achieving 90%. many that I get around with thought that in true NZ style we would overshoot. We have a history of this, examples are the telethons, our responses to crises overseas etc etc
That's very well expressed, Shanreagh and I find myself in full agreement with what you've written.
the point about the multiple reasons for the mandates, especially in health care settings is very well made.
Thing is though, a left wing position on worker rights would be that if you lose your job because the job changes, you should be looked after in some way. It's unconscionable that the Labour party basically said to people 'too fucking bad, two NZs now'.
So let's be honest about this too. Part of that is because the government needed to get the vax rate very high very quickly. It couldn't take 6 months to get enough people on board via outreach and public education. It had to coerce. Which it did with the mandates in multiple ways. Not only the actual mandates, but also the messaging: 'you can choose to not vaccinate, but there is something wrong with you and we're going to make sure you know that and we're not going to help you'
That shit may well come back and bite us.
The government couldn’t afford to be kind to those citizens, and tbh for people like Ardern, it looks to me like she didn’t want to either.
Lots of lefties think that is fine, but remember this is the same shit that the right does when relating with beneficiaries.
And until Omicron I would have supported that view entirely, however indications are that what was true before may not be so now. If transmission is unimpacted by vaccination, and boosters are to be required every few months to maintain some level of reduced hospitalisation (but not infection or transmission) then we may need to re-evaluate.
And that includes the logic of mandates.
As stated earlier (as someone who was double vaccinated from when I was eligible) the ever changing requirements are cause for concern and i know of a good many who feel the same way, however the increasing propensity to dismiss concerns will not make the issue disappear rather it is likely to entrench it.
Here's how I understand it. We need to get as many people boosted as possible that are in the right time band.
This is to protect them from hospitalisation and/or death (and possibly long covid).
It is also to protect the health system from overwhelm, and wider society (eg the impact on workplaces).
Where vaccination lessens the chance of getting covid, it also lessens transmission.
(and let’s not forget we still have delta).
There is a lot we still don't know about omicron. Globally (but should have better data in a few weeks), but also in NZ, which has bucked the trend all through the pandemic.
I tend to agree that we won't tolerate 3 monthly boosters, but I'm not sure we are at the point of having to make that decision.
Pfizer are developing a vaccine against omicron, available in March? I guess available here going into winter.
We don't know if a new variant will come into being in that time, globally or in NZ.
We don't know how omicron will play out with long covid. That's a huge issue.
So many unknowns. It makes sense to me to use the tools we have now to protect as many people as possible directly and indirectly.
I don't understand the government's decision to not use regional boundary restrictions, I'm guessing that they are thinking omicron will be uncontrollable so why wreck the economies. I think they are probably wrong on this. The international border is easier to understand, but I think they should have turned the tap down further than they did for a period of time.
None of that is permanent.
The problem is we just don't know how things are going to go this year. I'm not seeing anything that supports the idea yet that letting omicron rip is a good idea or even a necessary evil. We're at the point in the emergency where we are stacking sandbags and waiting to see if the tide turns soon enough.
Understandably this is very hard for many people to tolerate. Those of us used to uncertainty and precarity have a different skill set and perspective. What we really should be doing at this point is teaching resiliency en masse, because this is the tutorial for climate catastrophe.
Indeed there is much unknown as yet about Omicron (and much to be determined about the earlier variants and the long term effects of multiple vaccinations)
As to boosters I know of several people who have had the booster and complain of increased impact on their health…the progression seems to be 1st jab no or little effect, second jab increased side effects but manageable, but booster wipes them out for days…..and no enthusiasm for a further booster….and a questioning of the need to vaccinate under12s
If Omicron is as transmissible as it appears overseas then the health system is going to be overwhelmed regardless of mandates.
Given we are currently at 94% of eligible double vaccinated (yes there are pockets of lower coverage) many are feeling somewhat duped in that the country has done more than asked but the rules keep changing and the imposition increasing.
You may assert that none of this is permanent but nor has it an end date.
And as to the economy….the damage has already been done so its not the consideration.
I don't get this argument. The mandates protect the health system imperfectly but still more than if no mandates.
Yes, people feel this, but the reality is that the virus adapts and then so we have to, one way or the other. I think we're in this for a number of years, and the whole 'it will soon be over narrative' is probably unhelpful.
It's not permanent in the sense of everything is still in flux. It may well end up being permanent. Or not.
Pretty sure it's core to Labour's thinking. It's not like the damage was a finite thing, more can still happen.
And I dont get how you dont get it….if Omicron evades the vaccine as it appears what purpose do the mandates serve?…none. They dont restrict transmission, or illness.
And more damage will be done to the economy, but not by covid, in fact the economy may well push covid into the background.
afaik pfizer x 2 +booster provides meaningful protection against omicron. This is central to NZ's current pandemic response, the point of holding back omicron as much as possible is to gain time to get more people boosted.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/19/1071809356/covid-booster-omicron-efficacy
"afaik pfizer x 2 +booster provides meaningful protection against omicron."
and yet Australia….with a higher vax and booster rate than us.
I don't think that is true, pat.
NSW vaccination rates Hard to tell from this but 12+ rates in NSW is on or south of 90%
NZ vaccination rates NZ 93% fully vaccinated 12+, and 95% booked. Waitemata 95%, Auckland 98%, Counties Manukau 93%.
Also Australians refuse to wear masks.
@Murronbird
Our world in data has Australia at 78.2% of total pop double vaxed and 23.6% boosted
New Zealand at 76.8% of total pop double vaxed and 18.5% boosted as at 20/1/22
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL
Yes, there are some differences in vaccination reporting, but like I said, Australia refuses to wear masks. They think they are better than that, and are far less likely to adhere to Covid restrictions because their dumb-ass federal government insists on sowing discord, confusion and mistrust in the community for political gain.
Protection is provided by a number of tools, including but not limited to vaccination+ booster. Australia gave up many of its protection tools late last year. And they've had omicron in the community, we haven't. Not really sure what your point is though. The comparison would be Australia now and Australia all other things being equal but with no vax or boosters.
@Muttonbird
The world in data info is collected directly from the relevant health authorities.
As to mask wearing the Australian rules have been almost identical to our own …and by all accounts Ive heard they are widely adopted.
The penalties in Australia for non compliance of covid regs are stiffer than our own.
Anecdotally, a Melbourne shopping centre was full of unmasked patrons in the post Christmas period. This relayed to me by a friend who visited his mother there.
I went to Sylvia Park on Boxing day. Tens of thousands of happy, masked shoppers.
By all accounts I've heard, Australians don't do Covid restrictions well, including masks. Kiwis are more compliant which I believe is a large part of our superior pandemic response.
If injections don't prevent the spread of Omicron but reduce the impacts of infection. And if the aim to alleviate possible pressures on health care systems…then what is the point of injecting people who would likely never have ended up in hospital in the first place?
Have injections available for the elderly, the vulnerable and the scared.
That would have been (has always been) the approach of public health when the tool is a vaccine that does not prevent transmission of a virus.
The NZ government’s response is "public health" in name only.
The vaccines protect against infection as well as severity of illness if one gets covid.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/01/19/1071809356/covid-booster-omicron-efficacy
Excellent points Weka in both of your posts.
succinct. Shanreagh
"and maintain vaccination of a range of vaccines most of us have not come across."
This is simply not true, certainly at Mid Central.
Nursing staff get offered the annual 'flu jab and anecdotally, surprisingly few take it up.
More fool them.
Flatmate rushing getting ready for shift, I said 'what do you think of nurses not keeping their vaccines up to date?'
Raised eyebrow with the 'what a weird idea' look. In a conversation on this prior she says that on her large ward she knows of no nurse that is not covid up to date with booster and has only heard of a couple on other wards.
NB not all the vaccines have to be renewed annually.
I had smallpox and yellow fever to travel, and rubella. Flatmate has had these too.
Travel advisories for NZ travellers
https://www.healthnavigator.org.nz/medicines/v/vaccines-international-travel/
https://www.immune.org.nz/vaccines/travel-vaccination
Smallpox hasn't been vaccinated for since 1972.
Beyond Covid, I am curious to know what other mandated 'boosters' your flatmate claims are needed.
I was vaccinated for those vaccines on the travel schedule.
I understand Tetanus is one that is not lifelong.
Not sure what the point about the mandated…this seems to be putting a 2021/22 spin on what were/are pretty standard conditions of employment in health sector and occupations such as plumbers to keep one's vaccines up to date.
Any chance you could cite something more authoritative than your flatmate when you make this assertion?
"and maintain vaccination of a range of vaccines most of us have not come across."
Nurses I know draw a blank when I ask them.
My flatmate did a nursing degree & is a registered nurse.. For this degree she and her classmates had to have a list of vaccines, right at the start of the degree, and these had to be kept current…….similar requirements are set for plumbers etc……the topic has been discussed further on in TS in recent days and other trades/professions added to those that require a range of vaccines. My flatmate has had vaccines that I have had as I travelled overseas in the days when you had to have those on the yellow vaccine card. Many people, these days do not have them.
Defence Dept personnel, on joining are required to have vaccines and keep them up to date (I know this as I was married to one). I think that some of the vaccines on the list of requirements are not required every year.
My flatmate has to have a flu injection annually and was required to have the Covid vaccinations. She has worked/is working at large public hospitals and says that they are reminded by email each year about getting updates to their vaccinations…..
Some health workers looking after people in their own homes are/were? not required by their employers to have up to date vaccinations. When our mother was still alive we did not allow any health worker to look after her that did not have a Flu vaccine as a minimum. Many home care workers do have vaccinations for tetanus and the like and get the boosters when needed.
I find it rather odd that your contacts don't recall being vaccinated for tetanus when boosters are needed, annual influenza injections etc.
TS discussion re plumbers https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-24-01-2022/#comment-1854436
health sciences requirements are in the post nearby from Drowsy…..
"I find it rather odd that your contacts don't recall being vaccinated for tetanus when boosters are needed, annual influenza injections etc."
Tetanus is available but not compulsory.
Ditto annual (last years) 'flu jab.
I feel your flatmate may be mixing up encouraged to maintain and mandatory.
It may seem a trivial point. In this climate of getting things right, I am keen for the record to be set straight.
I am aware of the conversation regarding plumbers and overseas nurses.
It is a trivial point you are making.
My flatmate’s & neighbour’s views are on all fours with that those of their employer. Their employer can rely on them to keep current, but I am sure that there will be others who need reminding…..possibly a number of times.
Both have said that they are aware of very small numbers of nurses leaving over the covid vaccination requirement. None on her wards but she knew of a couple on other wards. We are talking small numbers.
The health professionals I deal with have/had no problem in fulfilling any requirements for vaccines and maintaining these. Most would do this because of both one's own health and that of patients who will be in hospital because their health status is not optimum. So if reminded to get their tetanus booster then they would do it…..end of. They would not need to be chased up.
You missed the health sciences people that Drowsy put up.
There is a nursing degree at most universities.
Jeff Tiedrich's (he is from the US) tweet of 12/10/21 springs to mind, excuse the language
"Holy fucking shit, vaccine mandates are causing teachers who don't believe in science to quit, nurses who don't believe in medicine to quit, and cops who don't believe in public safety to quit. I'm failing to see the downside to this".
I only asked for you to back up your assertion of compulsion of vaccines for nurses.
Nothing to do with other health science folk, nor you or your acquaintances attitudes to vaccination.
I feel you are the one that is putting a contemporary twist. Clearly, for you it feels right that nurses be obligated to be vaccinated because plumbers, health science folk etc.
It's just that it ain't so.
I prefer the original,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kA3UtBj4M
I also like an original with same name but a harder edge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHB3U9ndh6w
@gsays. If vaccines are not compulsory why are nurses now leaving?
I make no bones about believing what she says. She was required to have a range of vaccines on starting the degree and is required to maintain these while in a hospital setting.
Is that what you call compulsion?
I call it common sense and reasonable. Most reasonable people would not see it as compulsion but would know that their employer has rights and can warn, warn terminate over some thing as fundamental
I also call reasonable any employer, including in the health sector, who takes action to terminate employment if requirements are not met. So if she let slip on some of her vaccine requirements she is sure that action would be taken…but there are other occupations that are required to do things that we might feel are onerous.
The large hospitals she works in/has worked in operate a reminder system by email about upcoming requirements. She has had the ones on the travel schedule as working in a large hospital she may be required to nurse someone with one of them- say a recent immigrant or traveller.
I make no bones about knowing that both my flatmate and next door Dr believe in the science and are reasonable people. Neither would want to jeopardise their health or their job by playing around in not getting updates or yearly vaccines. Why would they take their employer to the brink of a termination by not getting vaccines…
Of course I accept that other hospitals may not enforce vaccines, their choice. My flatmate knows that her hospital does enforce vaccines.
I do not want to get into any squirming around, word salads or nuances of meaning to met your need to go 'shock horror', compulsion, mandate.
It is a fact, take it or leave it.
What rubbish about the health sciences……and wanting nurses to be vaccinated because of them.
I only knew about the nurses and Drs requiring to be vaccinated. And my ex husband had a range of vaccines being in the military. The knowledge about the plumbers and health sciences people I found out about in response to some of my posts on TS. Actually I did know but had forgotten about the plumbers.
If your nurses have done degrees did they not have the vaccine requirements?
What a load of rot. Good riff on "Morpheus recruits Neo" at the start, though.
Firstly, we do look at those things she was going on about with "if this was truly about health". Hell, the suicide thing for a start has been repeatedly debunked publicly. Yet still this [no longer practising] doctor is pretending it's not been discussed?
Secondly, the future she wants requires covid to not exist. It's one thing to say that the government is leveraging covid to increase control, it's another thing entirely to pretend that covid doesn't exist. Why, just today I saw a thing about from a [not a medical] Doctor that proves covid has killed 17,000 people at a minimum in the UK, and maybe hundreds of thousands more.
But let's say this is all about "control" rather than ensuring that people in situations with high numbers of close contacts have at least a modicum of immunity and physical protection (masks) against infection or symptoms. Let's pretend that's true for a moment:
My theory is ..this is the connection…
'The academic scholars that compiled the Fed’s loans during the financial crisis for the Levy Economics Institute also provided cumulative tallies. Their tally, which included additional Fed bailout programs not included by the GAO, came to $29 trillion.-Wall St On Parade'.
Follow the money…never fails.
@$40 a second it takes 792 years to spend one trillion.
Houses in NZ cost $1million…very …good….any war drums…beating,what distractions to a financial catastrophe are…around?
OK, so the pandemic is a distraction from financial collapse because of theft by the capitalist class.
Then why the covid apps? Lockdowns, sure. Letting the disease run rampant while having xmas parties – sure. Both cause disruption and piss people off (the latter one with mass death, starting with at least 17k and likely going as high as a hundred times that, if not more).
But how does a qr code app distract from financial crises, any more than it increases "control" that the population has already taken on board willingly??
So as Meatloaf said 2 out of 3 ain't bad!
If you look at world indebtedness…crypto,and the move to a cashless society..you will see that 'control' needs to be contoured to identifying every person and their activity/movements/ and sentiments.
The 'hearts and minds ' were easily assuaged by corporate MSM ,but now the internet is such a rich vein of information that reality is a threat to perception.
Smedley -Butlers epiphany' is proof of..that.
2/3 for covid, maybe. But why would the powers that be spend money on apps for things we're eagerly adopting anyway?
Crypto is like cash, but without the convenience, transaction speed, or ubiquity. It makes you stand out, so if you're doing it to lay low it's counterproductive.
But the main problem for the conspiracy theories is that something like covid was going to happen anyway, and the capitalists would make money off it anyway. There's always a crisis or some international tension.
They say never let a crisis go to waste…
So you think the expansion in debt by trillions since 2008 backed by U.S military force is completely logical and its quite clear that an average house in NZ is worth ..$1 million ….very good..nothing to see here…hang on..China's human rights are a BIG problem,and Russia has troops on its own …border!OMG…
No, I don't think that.
I just don't understand why some apparently believe that covid is realistically just an excuse to gain "control" that the population has already ceded.
I don't understand the objectives, methodology, or logic of any plan that would fit that portrayal.
Well how does distraction or truth figure in the big picture?
As I have pointed out numerous times 25,000 people die EVERYDAY from starvation…what have you got to say about ..that?
Well, I suppose it suggests that the people arguing against already redundant measures of "control" are providing the distraction. Predictability can be useful, I guess.
It's bad? Not sure how an app would prevent it, though. But I can see the point for apps to reduce the impact of a pandemic.
Yes I am in total agreement with you ..that an App would not prevent 25,000 dying of starvation.
I guess when it comes to deaths we have to get our ..priorities ..right.
Don't you just love 'conspiracy theorists' . . . they are so, so off kilter to be really entertaining!
Just remembering Meatloaf.
From David Farrier
https://www.webworm.co/p/meatloaf
Republican and anti vaxxer who died from Covid I find now…….who cares about his views, the music!!!!!
I did hear someone say I will do anything for love, but I won't get vaxxed. RIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_ViIPA-Gc
Magic.
This is from Oct 2021, but superb burn from the bods at the MoH,
https://twitter.com/antihobbes/status/1446363280339996675
Picked up this tweet form your link;
David Hood
@Thoughtfulnz
Pretty much sums up the strident anti-vaxxers.
Edit: as opposed to those unvaccinated for acceptable reasons.
Seems to me that someone with privileges associated with being an author who abuses such a position should in turn have sanctions imposed on them. If this doesn't happen then maybe the community could boycott any further posts by that particular "author".
What 'abuses' would they be..then?
Surprised you haven't < a href="https://thestandard.org.nz/uk-covid-deaths-with-no-underlying-factor/#comment-1853730">seen it</a>
I’ve stuffed the link up, I believe this to be an abuse of power: “That comment was the very final comment you ever made beneath one of my posts on ‘the standard’.”
I've not posted until recently since early October because I was dismayed by the misinformation freely promoted by two powerful right wing vaccine/pandemic sceptic moderators resident at this forum. And by their powerful control over ordinary commenters at The Standard, and their immunity from the actual rules of the site itself.
I acknowledge the efforts of weka and lprent in calmly challenging the dangerous promotion of misinformation by these vaccine/pandemic sceptic moderators, but it has been painful to watch.
I disagree with boycotts on some issues.
Boycotting posts that involve covid minimisation or misinformation (and broaden the exposure of others who do the same) would simply leave such information unchallenged, even if it were to contain serious omissions or errors in anything from math to basic anatomy. Would that be an echo chamber, or a recruiting station?
Lies can run around the world before the truth has its boots on. If a subject of great importance happens to be in someone's area of knowledge and misinformation can cost lives, please try to make the lie have to carry your weight for a bit.
Truth might catch up eventually.
But it's like whack-a-mole with these guys. It does not matter how many times they are challenged on misinformation. Cornered, they double down and become more virulent.
I like the idea of a boycott because their lies are left to sit idle in an empty chamber.
I think it’s time the proletariat, us, stood up with our voices like bwaghorn did, or our silence. They can’t ban us all.
But if the chamber is left empty to fester by itself, I wonder how many posts where an author ends up suggesting that the covid UK death toll might not even be 1% of the official toll would enventually end up in links on FB groups or twitter, or other blogsites?
It is whack-a-mole, sure. But the objective isn't to persuade the mole.
When someone new reads the post and discussion (and might not realise that "50% efficacy" isn't equivalent to a toss of a coin whether you get it), if the comments include "you have a basic error of fact here" the reader might think a bit more closely about the content.
Well, a huge amount of ordinary people's time is being spent continually putting out anti-vax fires when it's probably best to just kick the the fire-setters out.
Also, newcomers are going to read vaccine sceptic and ivermectin promoting posts and believe this is what The Standard is all about.
Question; how many months/years have to pass without authoring a post before an "author" is no longer considered as such?
I agree, but who has author privileges is up to the trust.
How/whether we respond to misinformation in posts and comments is up to us, while we still can.
If we have the means to act, we have the responsibility to act. Nobody's perfect at it, but hey. We can all try, even if we think other people are dropping the ball..
"…..while we still can"
Not "we" brother, you're not allowed on his pages any more. It's not a ban though, you're just too good at debating so you can't play anymore 'cos you won't let him win.
As well as that we continually ask for citing and just as continually get ignored.
Opinions are good, but as many have said they're like a-holes and everybody has them but then an opinion with links or citations 'mwah mwah', love them. Weka in several posts above speaks good sense in her opinions with no need for citations.
I am just wondering 'are we there yet' as far as posts on Covid are concerned. Everything seems to have been said many times before. Would the sky fall in if we saw what would happen if we declared a moratorium for a week on posts about Covid.
If something new or groundbreaking happened in the Covid world during that week we could 'petition' a mod to open up a thread.
I am aware of two individuals, each who lost a parent in England with Covid. They were elderly and frail and both were in rest homes. Yet the death certificates claimed their deaths were due to other causes. Both took place in 2020 when it became known the British Govt. was trying to hide the real Covid death toll. Since then, several Covid international experts have estimated that the real toll from Covid is at least double that of the official numbers.
No. I'm not going to go hunting for links because I have better things to do. There were many stories, some dating back to 2020, so anyone who claims they have never heard of them are obviously living under a rock somewhere.
Yes I had heard that and I think the mysterious ways death certs were being drawn up was one of the reasons for the WHO intervention as they needed to be able drag out consistent info world-wide to see trends worldwide. Tricky dicky ways of completing death certs would stymie this of course.
Is Liz Gunn writing a guest post here tomorrow? Maybe Brian Tamaki from the mount of Eden? How low will The Standard go?
Anybody can submit a Guest Post here but very few do. My guess is that if you want to write about your opinion on how low the standards have fallen on The Standard it will not be published. However, feel free to try 😉
https://thestandard.org.nz/contribute-post/
I was replying to fender and your "guess" is incorrect.
In that case, I stand corrected and I’ll look forward to your Guest Post on TS on TS. I just hope it will have more substance than your “reply” @ 11.4 to fender and less of an attack on this site and its authors.
Mikeys back in the morning. But this is a disturbing story. When someone threatens Mikey because they have a poor grasp of the English language.. you know Aotearoa is letting the wrong people through our borders.
The first reason I would deport this chap is because he didn't know what a burner phone was.
The second reason is the chap is 60 and English is his second language. Of course he was discharged without conviction.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/threat-against-mike-hosking-man-in-court-for-alleged-violent-text-against-newstalk-zb-host/PDH3BAYYI3ZAXFUC23MJ7E2JFY/