Open mike 26/02/2023

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 26th, 2023 - 22 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Step up to the mike …

22 comments on “Open mike 26/02/2023 ”

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  1. Ad 1
    26 February 2023 at 7:49 am

    Any actual Green person know how the Green Party candidate conference is going this weekend?

    • SPC 1.1
      26 February 2023 at 9:14 am

      It's good luck finding out via the Green Party site online or MP tweets moment… all I have discovered is that Elon Musk wants people to unblock those they once blocked and typing in Chloe S gets a list of tweets from those anti-Green.

    • arkie 1.2
      26 February 2023 at 10:33 am

      Delegates from the regional branches have until the 20th of March to vote on the initial list order. Branches will have meetings to discuss this with their delegates before this time.

  2. AB 2
    26 February 2023 at 10:44 am

    My initial impression is that National's replacement of 3-Waters is just user pays (rates increases and water-use charges) with a government financial backstop of unknown size:

    • keeps provincial fiefdoms (elected on sub 45% turnouts) in place by bogus appeals to local democracy
    • provides minimal political or administrative oversight of what these provincial fiefdoms do
    • regressively rations water on the basis of ability to pay and smears the cost of infrastructure development across everyone even though the benefits predominantly fall to local businesses and agriculture. And increases economic inequality as a result
    • Makes the the properly hardened infrastructure that might come from working at scale less likely, i.e. creates the moral hazard of it being easier to continue building cheap and fragile

    Probably other things too.

    • Incognito 2.1
      26 February 2023 at 10:58 am

      Have they left the door open to privatisation? In NACT land mentioning user-pays often is dog whistling and a euphemism for privatising profits and socialising losses and extracting profit for shareholders who often have no personal stake (skin in the game) in those local affairs if they even live in NZ.

      • Mac1 2.1.1
        26 February 2023 at 12:42 pm

        Interesting to note that Luxon used a similar description of the timber companies and slash- "“It is the only sector I know that gets to internalise the benefit and to socialise the cost. We need to revisit practices. We need to revisit penalties and prosecutions,” he said.

        https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/131315345/government-orders-inquiry-into-forestry-slash-after-cyclone-gabrielle

        Luxon should be mindful of timber company practice if and when contemplating privatising water, or anything else. The rail ferries are a recent example of poor corporate performance. We don'r need more incompetence in essential services.

        • Ed1 2.1.1.1
          26 February 2023 at 1:40 pm

          Farmers leaching nitrate into soils in Canterbury are another industry that socialises its costs. I understand that we may be a little behind targets on emission reductions – now is the time to start moving emission trading settings to cover full costs – the electricity industry in particular needs the benefit of clear direction for development of new sources of power; it is embarrassing to hear that Coal is still being burned at Huntly; that industry should not be able to recover any emission costs into pricing either – it should reduce profits able to be distributed to shareholders.

        • Incognito 2.1.1.2
          26 February 2023 at 3:16 pm

          As already pointed out by other commenters, Luxon is selective there. As expected and true to form, Luxon turns this into a Law & Order issue and passes the buck to lawyers and Courts that are already stretched – the typical digger at the bottom of the cliff approach. Of course, he doesn’t mention anything about the regulatory framework that is required to hand be able out those ‘penalties and prosecutions’. If current regulations are not up to it then they needs strengthening, obviously. But you would never hear Luxon utter such a heresy – even Maureen Pugh would have a coughing fit. National and its neoliberal think tank called ACT will fight any regulation that could set a precedent for similar intervention in other areas that are the domain of their primary interest groups and so-called blue-ribbon seats. Luxon’s dishonesty proves he lacks the (political) integrity for doing the right thing.

  3. Patricia Bremner 3
    26 February 2023 at 12:55 pm

    yes Anne, did you have more problems with that weather event? We were wondering how you were.heart

    • Anne 3.1
      26 February 2023 at 6:37 pm

      No. Quite a mild event yesterday compared to what we have been having. A few thunderstorms around today but in the north and west. I live in Devonport.

      I think it is a waiting game from now on. Someone is coming to sanitise the affected area this week – whatever that entails.

  4. fender 4
    26 February 2023 at 2:18 pm

    lprent

    Don't know if you exercised your magic or if it's just coincidence, but soon after emailing you I'm now able to see TS updated to today. Yay

    • lprent 4.1
      26 February 2023 at 2:45 pm

      Yes. It is currently running under develop control at cloudflare for another 2 hours.

      Seems to run correctly for some time ok, and then seem to start caching an supplying old pages. Just sent an acerbic support request after satisfying myself that it is the cloudflare system ramping up the caching.

  5. SPC 5
    26 February 2023 at 3:05 pm

    Remembering bazball 2014 vintage. The chance to bat as long as you like is a gift not to be wasted.

    In 2014 at the Basin Reserve, McCullum scored 302 runs in the third innings of the second test against India, rescuing New Zealand from a likely innings defeat. McCullum closed the innings at 680/8d, both the highest ever innings by New Zealand, and the highest ever third innings in Test cricket history.

  6. lprent 6
    26 February 2023 at 3:06 pm

    Test comment – please ignore.

    • lprent 6.1
      26 February 2023 at 3:54 pm

      I’m now pretty confident that the caching problem is with a cloudflare feature called “Tiered caching” with a beta feature called “Cache reserve”.

      This site is fully dynamic for the HTML pages. To make sure that it is, most pages have browser Cache-control to no cache, max-age=0 and a number of other don’t cache features.

      The problem is that with Cache reserve, it stores up to 30 days of old caches that it provides when there is a cache ‘miss’. It doesn’t always do what it should with no-cache. It doesn’t bypass to the origin site. It gets it from the Cache reserve.

      Ok – watching the site again – but after I do the weekly shop.

  7. joe90 7
    26 February 2023 at 8:24 pm

    Marie-Antoinette channels Baldrick.

    /

    Environment Secretary Therese Coffey has suggested turnips could be a suitable alternative while other vegetables remain in short supply.

    Some supermarkets have limited sales of cucumbers and tomatoes, following shortages partly caused by extreme weather in Spain and north Africa.

    Ms Coffey told MPs British consumers should "cherish" home-grown produce.

    But she added that people wanted "a year-round choice" and supermarkets were trying to meet that demand.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64745258