Yup. Back in the early 90's I was working for a US based company that had a very early footprint on the internet. (At that time it had a whole Class A address range (136.xxx.xxx.xxx) allocated to it …). We rolled out laptops across the whole organisation in 1991 and a US based training guy came over for a week to introduce us to the internet and where it was going.
I recall very clearly just how prescient he was, especially around personal privacy and the many implications it would have in the future.
Entities like FB and Google have far more information on you than any government, except maybe the CCP, who probably have fat files on every participant here. Hell if they don't I've been wasting my time 🙂
I don't mind the randos on the community pages. What occasionally gets me down is "argh, shit, 20 years ago Jamie was a bit mad but fun, caught up with him a year or two back, but now it's becoming obvious that he's apparently a Nazi-adjacent and I have to defriend him" sadness.
good post mcflock. that has happened-is happening to me . but, the way I look at it, jamie would still be someone to run from. with facebook, you can find that out without having to share oxygen (and other things) with them.
It's not like the most recent one had runes and 14 words on his profile pics. I started to notice lots of dogwhistling, and then linked comments to a south island far-right-dirtbag publishing house.
Such a shame – didn't spout any of that back in the day, he was good fun. But how someone gets from there to here over the decades is a frequent mystery.
No, nobody will tell him that. For a start, the left aint unified, so it would be false advertising. For seconders, the left aint even attempting unification, so any general left-wing response to covid-19 terminating neoliberalism will remain a wish & a hope.
"I've suggested that the NZ Left urgently put together a virtual conference to thrash out a basic policy agenda platform as a response to this unprecedented crisis of free market capitalism and that should be getting planed right now". Good idea, eh? Well, no. Leftists talkfests never go anywhere. Factoring in a plan would be sufficiently audacious to spook participants.
Consciousness-raising has been the norm in leftist meetings in recent decades. The idea that everyone gets conscious enough to agree to a plan would require the left to adopt consensus politics. The left has never agreed to become that Green. Not here, nor anywhere else.
Not a bad summation @ Denis, and one only has to look at a few blogs and new media for evidence of you claims.
Que sera sera, and we get what we deserve all things considered. I only wish we could all be a bit less tribal about it all. It doesn't need to be such a war of egos.
As noted in the post below, when in recent history New Zealanders have been given the opportunity to contribute new ideas that assist in response to a crisis, they absolutely do, and they are effective.
The New Zealand left are in government (together with NZF).
They have shown that they are outstanding at managing a crisis with a plan that has saved the entire country. Our Prime Minister – previously a global leader of socialism – has done nothing but effective consciousness-raising for the last 40 days straight.
Through the Budget 2020 they are about to show that they have an economic recovery plan for many sectors of New Zealand particularly the public sector.
The bitter and resolutely defeated left that you describe have no place in New Zealand political life right now.
Yeah, there is that bright side – which you have described well. The left are succeeding via collaboration with centrists. The PM's leadership has been exemplary through the saga. My point was directed at the bomber's complaint – which you haven't addressed.
It rather highlights the current divide between those into pragmatic response and managing consensus decision-making, and those seeking a sensible plan for the future. The closest the govt have got to the latter is making vague noises that they are getting around to it. I shall keep reminding myself that patience is a virtue.
1. Excessive debt bubbles everywhere in every sector. (China being off the charts)
2. The demographic transition that means consumption led recoveries become increasingly unlikely
3. Growing risk of deflation
4. Currency de-stabilisation as a result of heroic central bank attempts to prop everything up
5. The digital disruption, increased pace of automation changing the nature of work and the value of labour
6. De-globalisation. The collapse of the US-led post-WW2 global alliance will result in regionalisation and a major reduction in global trade, with tighter trade restrictions in many important sectors
7. Increasing populism as the relative prosperity and peace of the past 70 years ebbs away. People react badly to seeing their standard of living slide backwards
8. The geostrategic standoff between the US and China. Both nations are facing major risks of quite different kinds. China is much weaker than it looks and it's authoritarian leadership will do anything to retain power; while the USA is getting it's ass handed to it as the direct result of 30 years of self-indulgent, narcissistic culture wars.
9. Increasing probability of food and fuel disruptions in the traditional zones of conflict, the Northern European Plain, The Middle East and the Far East. As the US withdraws local hegemons will be aggressively playing to fill the vacuum. Expect more wars.
10. And the ever present risk of climate change and environmental mismanagement disrupting human development.
All of these clusters of threat have been previously spoken to here at length. Roubini condenses them into a concise, chilling summary. All of them are real threats, and we should resist the temptation to dismiss the sum of them as catastrophising; whichever way you cut it, this looks like being a high entropy decade.
Aus/NZ have some incredibly fortunate strategic advantages going into this; any plan we make should look to play to them. But we have to accept that the outcomes could be wildly different to what we might hope for.
Ah tramping. I wish that I could still do it.. Actually just walking more than a kilometre without the bones grinding together in my right foot and causing pain twinges for days afterwards would be nice.
"These non-economic issues – debates on everything from nuclear weapons, abortion, sexual politics, racism and environmentalism – never fitted easily into the traditional left-right spectrum."
This shows Mr Edwards understands nothing of the left in New Zealand since the late 1970s. It now consists near-entirely of these groups. The current Cabinet is the full summation of this set of idealisms.
Bomber just builds on that ignorant sentiment. Bomber wants the union movement back so he can remember the proletariat as they ought to be. It's not coming back.
Bomber is welcome to invite the entire left to a conference in which all ideas are invited. He can frame it any way he wants. Who knows maybe it would be as successful as that which occurred in Christchurch.
Meanwhile, the left in government publish another budget, another nation-wide recovery plan (as they have done often throughout history), another moral recovery through a gentle return to national resilience and communitarian ideals, and on current polls another parliamentary term.
The schizophrenia of MMP is that coalitions require a certain level of consensus while the other side of the politics is highly adversarial and polarised (and polarising). IMHO, this is a design flaw stemming from FPP mentality and political history in the Anglo-Saxon parts of the World.
What is badly needed, and has been for a long time, is a coherent and cohesive policy platform. Ironically, the rebuild of the Economy will help this Government to focus, which will create an impression of direction, purpose, and integration, on paper, at least. The Devil is always in the detail as the pandemic response has shown so well; gaps and errors will become clear once the behemoth is set in motion and if not dealt with adequately, the wheels will start to fall off and undo the whole thing.
Last, but not least, they need to sell it to the voters.
Sure, the PM and Dr Bloomfield took centre stage in their daily updates over the last month or so. The COVID-19 crisis made us pull together; we’re all in the same boat together. Crises have this effect on communities and even whole nations. As do wars …
I’m not holding out for too many specifics in Budget-2020 and I expect more ‘broad brush strokes’ and aspirational stuff (AKA planning & modelling) than in a usual Budget.
Good question (if everybody refers to all on the left). I guess I was showing my age: my first awareness of the left was in the era when unity was written and chanted as a mantra routinely ("the people, united, will never be defeated").
I observed rather acidly here a while back, in respect of sheeple subservience to the control system, that the people, defeated, will never be united.
I agree that the semblance of a plan is as good as the reality of one, from the perspective of giving assurance to a sufficient number of voters. So, as political strategy, painting it with a broad brush would enable the left to cruise on past the devil lurking in the details.
However the gist must be sufficiently effective as a prescription to withstand critical appraisal from the media, as well as leftist supporters & fellow-travellers such as myself. If the design is that clever and robust, it will constellate a semblance of unity.
True enough. Although the leftists in those days would probably argue that it was just a pitch for idealism, and all you really need is a majority under FPP.
I think the origin of that idealism lies in the notion of liberation, deriving from the revolutions in France & the USA: a bipolar frame in which the people are considered separately from the ruler(s). When the rulers are an entire class (ruling class, aristocracy, nobility, etc) they attract hangers-on, sycophants, who nowadays constitute the right wing along with business (the days when business folk were a despised component of the people are long gone). So the people are indeed structurally divided in the real world.
yes you do need a majority…and given there are a lot more losers at the moment we may get it.
It is the tension between competition and co-operation that is key….if you perceive (or are in fact) 'winning' in the contest you wish it to continue, if you are 'losing' you are more likely to wish to co-operate.
Unfortunately co-operation requires consensus….competition does not
And sadly those that are by nature competitive tend to end up in positions of power…go figure.
NZ can be as co-operative as it likes but unless it separates itself from the world it is still subject to competition from without.
The ultimate expression of competitiveness is war.
Should we be competitive?….we are constantly told we need to be.
I watched Planet of the Humans last night. I thoroughly recommend it.
I thought it was a Michael Moore film, so hadn't watched it earlier as I wasn't feeling up to being lectured at for an hour an a half.
The film is by Jeff Gibbs and the messages are delivered in a far gentler manner than Moore's style.
It tackles the major problems we as a species are facing, and pulls the covers back on some of the sneakier aspects of the 'Green' shenanagins going on in the U.S.
Nah. The reviews from people that actually know a bit about the topics covered are kinda negative. A lot of the info is simply way out of date and misleadingly presented.
VOX? The hipsters on that site "actually know a bit", do they? Like they do about Venezuela?
And…. have you actually watched the documentary? Let's assume you did.
1.) Do you think the producers faked the scenes where Al Gore and Bill McKibben compromise themselves? (I use the word "compromise" as a euphemism in this instance.)
2.) Do you think they faked the investigation which finds the Koch Brothers have received more money by far for "green" energy than any other entity?
No, I haven't watched it. A few minutes reading of reviews from experts that actually understand the topic persuaded me to not waste one hour forty minutes on it.
But thanks, the way it evidently appeals to your motivated unreason is an even stronger indication I shouldn't waste my time on it.
That was obvious, but thanks for confirming it for us.
A few minutes reading of reviews from experts that actually understand the topic persuaded me to not waste one hour forty minutes on it.
That time is of course better spent trawling Twitter and Facebook in search of that one zinger epithet to hurl at Trump. How's that working out, by the way?
Agreed. While it supports my contention that solar PV and wind power have serious limits that have been too often ignored or underplayed, there are too many inaccuracies and distortions in this doco for it to be useful.
Worse still it doesn't take us anywhere; it's depressing and nihilistic. It makes virtually no mention of next generation nuclear which is the most promising way through this bottleneck.
There is an important message in here, but it's been buried by a lack of balance and accuracy.
…. too many inaccuracies and distortions in this doco for it to be useful.
????!!? Could you give us one example of either?
… it's depressing and nihilistic.
It's certainly depressing. No surprises about the corrupt and foolish Al Gore, but I was depressed to see just how compromised and how evasive Bill McKibben was. How is it nihilistic?
… no mention of next generation nuclear which is the most promising way through this bottleneck.
"Next generation nuclear." Now that sounds like a sane and rational option.
Andre has already covered off the inaccuracies aspect.
I've already spoken frequently to the fact that renewables have serious limitations, and the reasons why can be conveyed in cool, accurate terms as this David McKay's presentation does.
The difference is that I don't take the ideological position that any energy source is rubbish. They all serve a role both in time and place. Wood and muscle power sustained our recorded history, coal got us out of absolute poverty, oil gave us industrialisation. Renewables work well in specific locations and contexts; both Australia and NZ are among the relatively few countries almost perfectly placed to exploit them well.
But globally the numbers on renewables are not promising, and this is a cold hard fact that many 'clean energy' advocates are not keen on confronting. In this the doco serves a purpose, Moore confronts this reluctance like a kick to the nuts, but in doing so he goes off track too often for my liking.
And this is before we look at a whole raft of next generation nuclear technologies, that by any informed analysis are at least several orders of magnitude safer again. In my career I've participated in four major (multi-day) HAZOP analyses from a control and automation perspective, so I have real heavy industry experience in evaluating risk.
You complained above that Andre had not 'watched the doco'. Well I have and I found it a curate's egg. I agree with it's underlying message, but I don't like the approach Moore used. Maybe that's just the engineer in me protesting the absence of hard numbers, and clear headed analysis that McKay does in his presentation.
I presume you haven’t watched the McKay link I gave yet?
You complained above that Andre had not 'watched the doco'.
I didn't complain, I actually thanked him for confirming what I had suspected: that he was commenting from a position of ignorance.
I agree with it's underlying message, but I don't like the approach Moore used.
???? The "approach"? You mean you don't like his style. That's irrelevant to whether the revelations in the documentary have merit or not.
… the absence of hard numbers,
Wrong. The documentary backs up its narrative with statistics throughout the one hundred minutes. Of course the numbers that have angered so many people are those that reveal how much money Al Gore, Richard Branson, Bloomberg, the Koch brothers, and Bill McKibben are pulling in from these scams.
and clear headed analysis…
Again, simply wrong. Jeff Gibbs's narration is clear from beginning to end.
I don't think it's a savage attack, Ed. It's a calm, rational, honest, and therefore grim documentary about capitalism, and how it corrupts even the most well meaning people.
(I don't think Al Gore is well meaning, by the way.)
Ed, that bloke proudly announced this morning that he has not watched the documentary. It's a pity that Radio Sport has disappeared; that was one outlet that defiantly made a virtue out of complete ignorance. Our friend would have fitted right in. “I’m not going to waste an hour and a half of my time WATCHING the game, but I’ll tell you why it sucked…”
The time you spent dreaming up Perelman-level zingers like "Drumpfelthinskin" today, you could have spent watching the documentary. Or do you take all your opinions straight from VICE and the failing New York Times?
I'm sure you'll enjoy it, Ed—it's leavened with wit and dry humour, in spite of how depressing as it is. There's a great quip about a former Vice-President and a Goldman Sachs gangster right near the end, which is the only outright joke in the whole thing.
Yes. Setting aside your Trumpism, the correct answer is that abundant, reliable, carbon free energy would enable human development to be extended universally.
1. This would bring human population into equilibrium everywhere
2. It would enable closed loop resource management everywhere. We have a long way to go on the details here, but in most instances the roadblock at present is energy costs.
3. It would accelerate the urbanisation of humanity, the intensification of agriculture into smaller land footprints, which together mean that wilderness can re-claim back more of the planet.
Essentially we save the natural world by not using it. I realise that I'm painting an ambitious vision here, but already we are living lives beyond the wildest dreams of our own great great grandparents.
I realise that I'm painting an ambitious vision here..
"Ambitious" in this case is a euphemism for insane.
Chernobyl remains largely unremediated since its meltdown in 1986. With each passing year, dead plant material accumulates and temperatures rise, making it especially prone to fires in the era of climate change. Radiation releases from contaminated soils and forests can be carried thousands of kilometres away to human population centres…
Chernobyl was a design that would have never been licensed in the Western world. If you watch the excellent and very popular documentary on it, plus do some in depth reading, it's clear that the root cause of the disaster was that because of the authoritarian and secretive nature of the Soviet regime, at least two critical flaws in the design were never conveyed to the plant operators.
People also forget that despite these flaws, about a dozen of these relatively primitive RBMK reactors operated for many years afterward, with pretty good safety records.
There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy, but if safety is your concern then nuclear energy is by far the safest form we have. Anyone claiming otherwise is really arguing for more deaths and more environmental harm, not less.
And that safety data is based on a fleet of Pressurised Water Reactors whose fundamental features date from the 40's and 50's. The next generation reactors I am advocating for here are entirely different machines, many thousands of times safer than these again.
Chernobyl was a design that would have never been licensed in the Western world.
So how did the responsible and ethical politicians of "the Western world" get away with installing those disasters at Three Mile Island and Fukushima and Windscale?
The evolution of nuclear reactors was bounded by the need to make them safe.Teller asked Dyson to make a reactor that was both phd proof and child (read engineer proof).
Here very clever physicists,needed great confidence in their equations.
The Windscale piles (they can scarcely be called a reactor at all) were a first generation graphite moderated machine designed in the 1940's, in the immediate post-WW2 era. They were really just primitive research machines and at that time safety was a much lessor concern than it is now.
TMI and Fukishima were both third generation Pressurised Water Reactor designs that derived from the original nuclear submarine program dating from the 1950's. All of these reactors have a fundamental risk factor, that while they worked very well at the size of a submarine (<10MW thermal) they didn't scale well to power sized plants (>100MW or more) from a safety perspective. Despite this the vast majority of them have operated safely over their lifetime. So well that they remain dramatically the safest energy source we have.
However all this irrelevant, I'm explicitly not endorsing the notion of building more of these PWR machines. Indeed I'd be happy to see them all de-commissioned as they reach the end of their lifecycle and no new ones ever constructed. You are essentially asking me to defend an obsolete generation of reactors that I am not advocating for.
Nuclear engineering has advanced considerably since the 1950's, and the designs I am pointing to are completely different. Everyone working in this field is vividly aware of the accidents in the past and have worked hard to eliminate their root causes in this next generation of machines. There are no free lunches when it comes to energy and from where I'm sitting, nuclear is the only path forward out of the fossil fuel development trap we are in.
The equilibrium of the population I can get with. A significant part of that, is the likes of us, scaling back our energy dense habits.
That is the bit no-one seems to want to acknowledge.
Eating seasonally and locally.
If we get yr nuclear, does that mean Coca Cola can still be the be the biggest plastic polluter?
On another note, what is so special about the next great energy resource that humanity will achieve some equality? Something that has not managed to happen during the steam or oil/coal/gas years.
If we get yr nuclear, does that mean Coca Cola can still be the be the biggest plastic polluter?
Abundant low cost energy might mean for instance that we could readily return to using glass as the default packaging material and build recycling into the cost of the product. This isn't a very big leap at all.
As I type this my eye alights on a couple of Sodastream gas bottles waiting for me to take back to the shop. These use exactly the same model.
In general the idea is that we can move over time toward closed loop resource management, where the goal is to develop both materials and methods that dramatically scale back our raw extraction rates from the planet.
In 100 yrs time we could look back on the goods we purchase today, from a resource perspective, as impractical historic curiosities. Much like someone wearing a digital smart watch might look at a grandfather pendulum clock.
what is so special about the next great energy resource that humanity will achieve some equality?
Well look at it this way; the first problem to solve is absolute poverty. Fossil fuels have enabled most of the human race to escape this; in 2016 fully half the human race achieved a modest middle class life by local standards. For the first time ever. That seems to me a big step in the right direction.
Hankering for a return to neoliberal bau are the conservative rump: 9% – but there's also 6% who want bau while conceding they need to perform a personal change of lifestyle.
3% are growing food. When I was a kid here in the fifties everyone did that. Those who didn't need to try something new come in at 50%. Plus change, plus la meme chose. https://flo.uri.sh/story/262445/embed#slide-2
A quarter of respondents noticed more wildlife (shame they didn't also ask `did you become wilder?'), while 40% noticed a stronger sense of local community (slide 4).
The immediate struggle for short term survival will "Trump" any luxury Green changes and policies.
Most of us will be driving our present vehicles (if we can afford to do so!) for far longer before being able to financially afford expensive Electric replacements.
Britain now 4th worst affected country for Covid-19 deaths/million. Overtook France after the belated release of some care home stats. France, which shares land borders with the three worst affected countries.
When will the people there start asking questions of their totally incompetent leadership?
There's to be an inquiry over the high number of health care workers deaths, but they've been asked to not look at the shortage of PPE because that's too political.
The Tories really don't want to talk about excess deaths.
One thing about a country having a dysfunctional media system is that its inhabitants may have difficulty recognising the full scale of the disaster through which they’re living. pic.twitter.com/QNGEkPXEVY
The United Kingdom is suffering one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, with the official figures admitting over 20,000 Covid-19 deaths. Research based on figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest that the real total is likely more than double once deaths in care homes and the community have finally been counted.
It is widely considered acceptable to talk about the official death rate and to mourn specific individuals who have died in the pandemic, especially front line NHS staff who have fallen in the fight, but once anyone begins asking questions about why the death rate is so high in the UK compared to other nations, the push back is vehement.
The moment efforts are made to establish a cause, the moralising ”how very dare you politicise the crisis?” brigade immediately show up in droves in order to deter any thought processes that may lead back to the party of government or the Westminster political establishment bearing any responsibility whatever.
Here in NZ, some like to create a narrative that this Government has caused excess economic damage. I see parallels in the way the moralising arguments and counter-arguments are constructed and narratives are developed. It is a variant on the old theme of how to run the economy and the role of the State.
Winston Churchill led Britain to victory over the Nazis, but he lost the election in 1945 to Clement Attlee.
Herein lies a lesson.
Attlee won because, among other reasons, when the war was over the troops and their families wanted something better to make up for their sacrifice. Churchill represented a return to normal, Attlee offered the promise of a better world.
There is a lesson in this as well.
All the pain from Lockdown leaves people with the hope that afterwards society will be "better."
Terrible analogy. Simon Bridges is no Clement Attlee. And there is nobody in the National Party even remotely talented like Gaitskell, Cripps, or Bevin.
Attlee, Gaitskell, Cripps, and Bevin won't be voting in our election though. A lot who will be voting will think that National is best at handling the economy. Especially after a crisis.
A vote from one deluded simpleton = one vote from someone with a grasp of reality.
It is just as likely a scenario come September that NZ, having eliminated COVID-19, is in a nice economic recovery with life almost back to normal, looking aghast at a world outside our borders wracked with second and third waves of corona virus and economies wrecked with second and third lockdowns or riots and mass deaths of the vulnerable and elderly. In that case, we will not only re-elect Labour, we'll build a giant statue to Jacinda as well.
The point is surely that when people have endured huge losses because of a Lockdown then they would be hoping that it was all worthwhile because the recovery began delivering major successes in addressing Inequality, Climate improvement, a better Democracy and an addressing the damage done by the Economic System. That does not suggest that Bridges has a box seat, but suggests an Opportunity for change.
National have not changed any of their policies for thirty years. Bridges has consciously moved the party further right on social issues and economically he remains completely enamoured with the short termist neoliberalism of the Key era. I have major doubts he wants or is capable of taking advantage of any opportunities…
Putting Labour/National aside Sanctuary, do you think that there is a mood in the population for a significant desire to move into a more people centred way of life?
I guess right now a lot of people have had a glimpse of a different way that looks quite nice. I would think for most children and pets, who don't grasp what is going on, the coronaviris has been a period of unalloyed bliss at having their parents at home. And most parents have probably been really, really happy to spend more time with their families.
It may be that after this the workforce participation slumps for reasons entirely to do with different lifestyle choices as one parent decides they actually preferred being at home and you know what? They can just about make do on one income. But we already know a lot of (lets be honest) mums would stop work tomorrow to be full time wives and mothers if they had the choice.
But the thing is, the lockdown was really a glimpse of what the cost of being a rich country is, because it looked a lot like those charming but poor places we like to go on holiday look like. Slower pace, lots of ambling around, people having the time to talk and play with their kids. Are we really willing to take the insularity of poverty (the poor people in any country don't travel) and the consequences of poverty in exchange for a more people centred way of life? I doubt it. We are a rich first world country and we like it that way, by and large.
A four week lockdown won't undo a generation of consumption led materialism but I think that it produced a moment that bold leadership could achieve some wins in – people have marveled at how wonderful Auckland has been without cars and how fun cycling has been, for example. Before that memory fades why not seize the moment to announce a huge program to make Auckland a cycling, walking and PT flagship for the world?
The sense of national unity & crisis could be usefully harnessed as well, perhaps with the idea of a UBI (if practical) or a CGT to offset a cut in GST.
But to sum up, I think the main mood of the land is to just get back to life as normal – which for most of us in these islands of ours is really rather pleasant.
A good month ago, trump said he only expected 60,000 deaths in the USA. I remember thinking, that's more than the population of our whole region, and felt shocked that he used it as a throw away number. Like the deaths of 60,000 people was nothing.
He continued bragging and lying, claiming he had saved the lives of millions of American's by taking fast action. And that 60,000 was a small number compared with that.
Today the number of Covid19 deaths in the USA has reached the disturbing number of 61,112
The Knights of the Realm are riding again. Sir John, Sir Bob, Sir Ray, et cetera. It is Election Year and they crave attention and relevance. It provides the MSM with cheap easy fodder for the electorate too. Meanwhile National can play in the ERC sandpit and brag about it on Social Media. BAU.
Also Paul Henry back. I am finding this reappearance of Key and Henry quite disturbing. Waiting for a lot of beat ups against the Government in the media to happen soon. Spearheaded by PH,MH and TO. Also expecting Paula Bennett to be huddling in with this lot. Jacinda will need to be on the top of her game to keep a lid on people like Winston and Shane et al to have a clean shot at the election. And who in the heck is Chris? Keys main squeeze.
When I first heard Henry's Zoom show was to be called "Rebuilding Paradise" I immediately assumed they meant rebuilding from the ravages of a Labour government rather than the pandemic.
Well I accidentally caught about 2 minutes of Paul Henry which should be enough for several years.
He had chosen to run a series of clips of public people on operating on Zoom- mocking and making fun of the backgrounds in the shots. Now we all know that there have been "accidental disclosures" to amuse us but to use a major media platform in an attempt to humiliate people doing their job under trying circumstances felt just plain nasty and hardly the stuff of necessary and serious discussion..
We now refer to the Herald as "The Collected Thoughts of John Key". Slap a couple of little red (or blue?) covers on it and distribute it to the faithful, hand it out at street corners, and publicly shame those who do not abide by its precepts. ZB hosts could start each show with a reading from it, followed by detailed exegesis of the text and its meaning for our lives in the present moment.
Simple explanation is that The Herald has gone completely mental over Bridge's poor performance and has reverted to past glories to keep the gloss on the National Party brand.
Evil thought experiment is that they are preparing the ground for John Key to step in as caretaker leader for the 2020 election, He then wins, because after lockdown everyone really, really wants to have a beer with him, and then hands over the PM role to Luxon in 2022.
God will protect him. "Vice president Mike Pence toured the Mayo Clinic without wearing a face mask, despite being told by officials it was a requirement."
Heh. Reminds me when I'd see gate signs in the suburbs saying `beware the dog' & recall anglican preachers bombarding me with `beware of God' propaganda when I was young. Gate signs saying beware the god would probably sell like hot cakes nowadays, there's so many ironists & nostalgia freaks around. There's an idea for covid-struck business folk seeking to diversify.
God works in mysterious ways, and social darwinism is one of them. Seeing the virus take out those preachers in the USA probably induces in Pence a typical reaction. Their faith was not strong enough!
Righteous rant on the anti-intellectualism and the dangerous willful ignorance of tRump's 'Murica.
The number of insane conspiracy theories that the Trump regime is responsible for breathing life into is worrying, and will negatively impact society for generations to come.
— 🌈Trevor_Pott(Black Lives Matter); (@cakeis_not_alie) April 28, 2020
"The broader grounds of Warren’s endorsement demonstrate that Biden has cleared the bar for political praise set by a coalition of “Any Functioning Adult 2020” bumper stickers."
Joe Biden is NOT an "imperfect candidate" for the Democrats. He is the perfect candidate, because he's everything the party is: Demented. Decrepit. Bloodthirsty. Corrupt. Cronyistic. Authoritarian. Rapey. He is exactly what they deserve. He is exactly what they are.
Bolsonaro is a threat to his team-mates and may have to be removed….
"But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
"A wave of disgust swept over social media as word of the president’s comments spread. “A sociopath,” tweeted the musician Nando Moura. “What a tragedy,” wrote the journalist Sônia Bridi."
Tests in recovered patients in S. Korea found false positives, not reinfections, experts say
SEOUL — South Korea’s infectious disease experts said Thursday that dead virus fragments were the likely cause of over 260 people here testing positive again for the novel coronavirus days and even weeks after marking full recoveries.
Oh Myoung-don, who leads the central clinical committee for emerging disease control, said the committee members found little reason to believe that those cases could be COVID-19 reinfections or reactivations, which would have made global efforts to contain the virus much more daunting.
I hope I'm wrong but I fear we may see a spike in infected people in a couple weeks, other than the fast food queues today I saw tradies all in a row on scaffolding, tradies in vans, a truck with 3 people on the front seat, and a funeral service, 100s of people gathered outside, I would have thought that was still disallowed under L3? So I guess we shall see how it all goes, such a shame as I see a lot of other people really trying.
Tradies seem to respond when you quietly remind someone in charge that workers are very obvious and risk having their worksite shut down. Does the same strategy work for queues at fast food joints. If not, then a few need to be closed down so the patrons get the message.
Here in Brisbane we've effectively been at Level 3 all the way through. The first few weeks were a bit chaotic, but as the majority of people did the right thing and set the right examples, fairly quickly the rest got with the plan.
It takes time for people to take on new behaviours, and not everyone does it at the same pace. Think bell curve, early, mid and late adopters.
The word "elimination" is a problem. The word has a specific meaning in epidemiology, which differs to what Joe Ordinary would think elimination means. For that reason I think it was unwise to claim publicly that New Zealand had eliminated the virus, as people would draw the wrong conclusions.
Its not surprising that such headlines made people think we were now safe.
Oooh, Drumpfelthinskin might be feeling the heat a wee bit. Now he's turning his feral shouting tufted meatball routine on his re-election campaign team.
The most dangerous moment will be when he finally realises it's over for him. That's when he's going to try to do real damage with his lashing out. Like a domestic abuser realising their victim is really truly walking out and leaving it behind.
On the so-called plan B and it's initial poster child, Sweden…
Sweden's far-right chief state epidemiologists, Anders Tengell is being increasingly exposed as a bullshitter who has dignified his ideological preference to sit on his hands and conduct an experiment in eugenics as a "model".
As Richard Seymour eloquently puts it: (Patreon patrons only, so no link. Pay up for the tasty stuff!)
"…Sweden's unfolding policy debacle, which is now being mythologised as a 'model'. There is no 'model'. Just as the British government has retrospectively justified each of its pratfalls and forced moves by claiming it was all part of a cunning strategy, so the Swedish government and its apologists are dignifying a stupid calamity by calling it a 'model'. Just like the British government, the Swedish government did not set out wanting to shut high schools, and Universities, and ban large gatherings. The position was forced on them by the fact that the spread of the disease made their position ridiculous. And by the growing despair and alarm, still unabated, among the country's epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists and other disease specialists…"
Sweden's current death rate (and let's not think it might not accelerate) by going on just official figures – which will all be underestimates – is 231 per million. Let that sink in. For NZ, that translates to 1155 dead and climbing, with a poorly prepared public health system probably already collapsing. IHME modelling – https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden – expects the country's death rate to spike toward the end of May, leading to a total of 15,625 deaths. That would be over 1500 deaths per million. For us, that would be 7500 dead New Zealanders – that is the spike, not the final total. Most likely, using Swedens approach NZ's dead in a matter of several months would approach or exceed our losses in WW2 (11,625), which took 61 months to fight.
One other thing – Swedenss ICU capacity is double that being used. This reflects a ruthless triaging of patients. As one of the disease specialists critical of Tegnell’s approach points out, “the mean age of those who have died is 20 years higher than the mean age of those treated in ICUs”.
Which means, in laymans turns, the old have been left to die
When asked about the high number of deaths in rest care homes the Swedish govt said "that wasn't part of the plan" & the Brits "that's within the margin of error". Our pollies couldn't get away with that blitheness.
… in laymans turns (terms?) the old have been left to die.
An English friend of mine who lives in NZ has lost her father to Covid 19 back in England. He was 84 years old and had an underlying health condition. He lived in a retirement home and was never taken to hospital for treatment. The carers at the home no doubt did what they could for him but he was – effectively – left to die.
It happened about 2 weeks ago so his death is not part of the official statistics. It would not surprise me if cause of death was officially attributed to the underlying condition even though he had tested positive for Covid 19.
Multiply his situation by the many elderly folk in rest homes who were not included in their statistics… it makes a mockery of the so-called official figures. Multiply that again by the many thousands of elderly folk who have died of Covid 19 in other countries who likewise are fudging their figures… and the world tally thus far is probably almost twice as high as what is being reported.
It stands to reason that under the Trump regime the real US total is way above what has been admitted to at this stage.
I don't think Sweden asked to be a poster child for plan B or that their policy has been implemented without a model. To the extent that it differs from other countries they have not implemented some lock-down procedures and so they won't see spikes in the cases as these restrictions are wound back. If this works better as a strategy can only be discerned after other countries have wound back lock-down procedures and reviewing the impact of the virus after that has occurred.
I would also suggest that somewhere like New Zealand this would be (has been) considered quite differently due to our geographic isolation advantage.
“There may be some market pullback if the RBNZ is no longer directly active in the local bond market,” Keane said.
“For that reason, it would be appropriate for the RBNZ to continue executing some portion of its QE program on-market, thus maintaining the focus of the dealer community and the support for bond prices.”
There may well be quite considerable pullback…..we may find out sooner than we would like.
Would be cool if the govt were to do a pr thing with the media along the lines of `quantitative easing for dummies': "Well, the Reserve Bank has this magic money tree, and every now & then they give it a shake & dollars float down like autumn leaves."
"We've considered helicopter money but the people would freak out if the choppers were painted black. We figured green would work but when we put it to the Greens those who favoured enhanced brand recognition got out-voted by the fundamentalists averse to using fossil fuels. So the idea's on hold till we get electric helicopters."
there is no magic money tree….the only question is how long the illusion there is can be maintained…..personally I think not long at all, others differ.
There are only resources and they are limited and diminishing…and increasingly need to be divided among more (inequality aside)….the best we can hope for is to learn to use them more efficiently (and equitably) so they last as long as possible….that could be millennia but on current form it is likely decades.
And that requires co-operation….and that includes those naturally competitive.
Oh yeah. Rightists, mainly. Old dogs, new tricks. However, it is possible to induce anyone to reframe on current circumstances so there's a realistic basis for optimism.
Tell rightists to reflect on how the All Blacks succeed by combining competition and collaboration. Instruct them to deduce that the general principle applies to all similar team sports. Ask them "Can you walk and chew gum simultaneously?"
If they say no, suggest they become a National Party candidate. If they say yes, ask them if they can think of any reason a politician can't compete sometimes and collaborate sometimes just as team players do.
Ask them if they are aware that medium to large businesses have been training their staff in how to operate as teams since the 1980s. If no, they may be a farmer, of course. If yes, explain that politicians have similar average intelligence to employees & voters, so you'd expect them to get the picture by now.
Should only take a couple of minutes. Half the time a problem looms until you change your perspective, then you suddenly see how to diffuse it.
Okay – I did wonder. So nations need to do likewise; pursue a strategy of collaborating in suitable contexts, while maintaining a competitive economic policy to produce trade goods efficiently on a sustainable basis.
It is a fallacy that resources are limited and diminishing. Resources are invented all the time. Lithium was a non resource until it became necessary for lithium batteries. But when the next generation of batteries come along, lithium may no longer be needed. Already oil and coal are being left in the ground as new resources start to replace them.
Stuff is getting added to the earth – so not really "finite" and there is always the chance of a another meteorite hit. Another effectively infinite input is sunlight.
Brilliant. I thought we might have to mine the asteroid belt, when it was just a matter of waiting for the dust to come to 'us' – problem solved
Alas, the daily input of cosmic dust is insufficient to compensate for the loss of hydrogen and helium – the Earth is on a fairly steady weight loss programme, as if it really matters.
Fwiw, I thought Wayne's "It is a fallacy that resources are limited and diminishing." comment was priceless. Just as well lawyers aren't coordinating NZ's Covid-19 response!
Good luck with that. You will probably get some bumf about how the government is managing its spending to reduce the inflation rate to above the reserve banks policy targets out. After all its really important by which particular mental gymnastics the government has ended up owing itself a few bucks.
Fresh water is finite, that freaked the fuk outta me when I heard that! & of course it's perspective, it depends where you are, for eg water certainly finite up in Northland.
The summary is that it makes little difference how the funding is arranged, with QE and secondary bond market purchases the RBNZ is already effectively directly financing the New Zealand government.
As far as I can se this is just another desperate attempt by National to get some, any, news coverage. The mercenary who went to Iraq to look after some dogs tries to pressure the Police Commissioner to 'give him some names'.
Honestly, if Mark Mitchell ever gets near a ministerial position, we should be very, very afraid. The man is as corrupt and evil as they come.
All this over a few checkpoints which I'm sure didn't block any locals at all. It's National Maori-bashing because that is the only thing they are good at.
In addition, Parliament sat this week so why the fuck do we have to put up with the butchers committee still? It’s turning into a circus.
The chances are they have also got it in for the new Police Commissioner because he was appointed by the Ardern-led government.
Their childishness and venom knows no boundaries.
And I agree with you about Mark Mitchell – a narrow minded officially backed thug who maybe cunning as a fox but actually has few brain cells inside his head. And he's one of the leading contenders for the race to be the next leader of the National Party. The Nats are growing more like a down-under version of the Trump regime every day.
His appointment was announced by the PM about two to three months ago and he took up the position of Commissioner shortly before the Lockdown started. I have no idea what his politics are and his appointment was made on merit not politics anyway. The Nats are just being childish and stupid.
I recall John Key appointing the current DG of the SIS some years back. The Labour Opposition welcomed the appointment and agreed she was a good choice. From memory Andrew Little was the leader.
So Bridges et al do not think it appropriate for communities to gently remind people of their obligations with some sympathy from the Police. There is another option. In Australia, the exemplar that National seem to be extolling, there is a different approach. Random stopping and instant fines of over $1000. Seemingly even Bridges would have been hit with his dumb-fuck trips between Tauranga and Wellington. To be sure, the sick excuse of a poor internet connection would not have had one second of consideration.
PDF earlier in the week claimed in an exclusive that Wally Haumaha had personally authorised the head of the Mongrel Mob, Sonny Fatu, as an essential worker.
Of course Police can't issue essential worker status, that falls to MBIE I believe. That didn't stop Farrar steaming ahead with false information from his source.
He's since had to walk back from that with a retraction after communication and clarification from Police. He's now threatening to OIA the Police for communications between Iwi and Police.
Thing is Farrar only fessed up in an update to the three day old post which, as everyone knows, are unread. I think the Police should demand he issue a retraction and apologise to Police in a new post.
This whole thing, when viewed against Mitchell and Seymour attacking the Police Commissioner today in the Butchers' Committee Zoom meetings, reinforces the very, very close connection and communication on strategy between Farrar and the National Party.
Middle of a pandemic and the IiC is up at midnight bagging talking heads.
Lyin’ Brian Williams of MSDNC, a Concast Scam Company, wouldn’t know the truth if it was nailed to his wooden forehead. Remember when he lied about his bravery in a helicopter? Totally made up story. He’s a true dummy who was thrown off Network News like a dog. Stay tuned!
I must admit that Lyin’ Brian Williams is, while dumber than hell, quite a bit smarter than Fake News @CNN “anchorman” Don Lemon, the “dumbest man on television”. Then you have Psycho Joe “What Ever Happened To Your Girlfriend?” Scarborough, another of the low I.Q. individuals!
"Doctors around the world have reported more cases of a rare but potentially lethal inflammatory syndrome in children that appears to be linked to coronavirus infections."
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There has been renewed focus on New Zealand First acting as a handbrake on the Government after our decision to not support Auckland light rail. We are a handbrake for bad ideas, that istrue, but our track record since 2017 has seen New Zealand First constructively also serve as an ...
Mark Patterson MP, New Zealand First List MP New Zealand First’s Fair Residency for Superannuation Bill passed its First Reading in Parliament today. The Bill makes a significant change to NZ Super by raising the minimum residency requirement from 10 to 20 years, after age 20. “Currently, a migrant of ...
Darroch Ball MP, Spokesperson for Law and Order A New Zealand First member’s bill in the name of Darroch Ball introducing a six-month minimum prison sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its second reading in Parliament. The new offence of "injuring a first responder or corrections officer with ...
Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Deputy Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First welcomes the launch of the new Criminal Cases Review Commission, gifted with the name from Waikato-Tainui - Te Kāhui Tātari Ture, announced in Hamilton today by Justice Minister Andrew Little. “New Zealand First has long believed in and ...
The Green Party is celebrating over $800m in new funding for green projects, which will get people into jobs while solving New Zealand’s long-term challenges. ...
Mark Patterson MP, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First is appalled that Meridian seems to have been unnecessarily spilling water from its dams to drive up its profits."While New Zealanders have been coming together in some of our darkest hours, we don’t expect power gentailers to waste water and ...
We wrapped up the first half of 2020 with a busy month, taking additional steps to support New Zealanders as we continue with our economic recovery. We rolled out targeted packages to support key industries like tourism and construction, helped create jobs in the environmental and agriculture sectors, and set ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Infrastructure Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has welcomed the appointment of Maurice Davis and his deep infrastructure and construction experience to the board of the Infrastructure Commission. Mr Davis (Ngāti Maniapoto), is the seventh and final appointment to the board led by former Reserve Bank Governor ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand’s click bait journalism is taking a turn for the worse, with yet another example of sensationalist, wilful-misrepresentation of the facts. “New Zealand First has worked constructively with its Coalition partner on hundreds of pieces of legislation and policy, and ...
The Green Party is today unveiling its Poverty Action Plan, which includes a Guaranteed Minimum Income to ensure people have enough to live with dignity. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Rotorua Museum redevelopment and Whakarewarewa and Tokorangi Forest projects will be accelerated thanks to a $2.09 million Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) boost, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher ...
This week, we rolled out the next steps of our recovery plan, with new infrastructure investment, extra support for tourism operators, and a new programme to get Kiwis into agriculture careers. The global economic consequences of COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge, but we have a detailed plan to ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its final reading in Parliament today fulfilling a coalition agreement commitment. “This is an important step in saving the lives of New Zealanders and delivers a key coalition commitment ...
Whakatāne has been given a $2.5 million boost to speed up previously funded projects and create more than 450 jobs in the next decade. Of those, the equivalent of 160 full-time jobs could be delivered in the next six weeks. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is in town to make ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister Fletcher Tabuteau MP, Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $2.5 million to accelerate three infrastructure projects in Whakatāne, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “This package is about ...
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones is throwing his weight behind a bid by the Auckland Council to fast-track the more than doubling of the city's water allowance from the Waikato River. And he's coming out strongly against anyone who plans on getting in the way of this campaign. "It is my ...
The Green Party is thrilled to see changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that mean consents for large projects can be declined if they will have significant climate change implications that are inconsistent with the Zero Carbon Act and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Paris Agreement obligations. ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of Defence The Royal New Zealand Navy’s new ship, Aotearoa, set sail for New Zealand on 10 June from the Republic of Korea, and is due to arrive in Auckland tomorrow, announced Minister of Defence Ron Mark. “Aotearoa is the Royal New Zealand Navy’s new fleet ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Racing Racing Minister Winston Peters has today welcomed the Racing Industry Bill passing its third reading, creating the legislative framework for revitalising the racing industry while limiting the need for future government intervention. “For too long our domestic racing industry has ...
The Green Party has today put forward an amendment to the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill to ensure all people in prisons can vote in general elections. ...
The Green Party welcomes the decision to not proceed with Public Public Investment (PPI) delivery of Auckland’s light rail project and to instead run the process through the public service. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First List MP Hon Ron Mark welcomes the announcement of Provincial Growth Funding investment of $1.4 million to help secure the Wairarapa’s water supply. The funding boost will allow the Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), and ...
New Zealand First list MP Mark Patterson has been selected to represent the party in the newly formed Taieri electorate at the upcoming election. Mr Patterson, his wife Jude and two daughters farm sheep and beef at Lawrence and Waitahuna. He previously stood in the Clutha-Southland electorate however boundary changes ...
Hon Shane Jones, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises A new ‘super depot’ to be built for NZ Post in Wellington will create around 350 jobs during construction, Associate Minister for State Owned Enterprises Shane Jones says. Shane Jones today attended a ground-breaking and blessing ceremony for the parcel-processing depot ...
Our strong economic management prior to COVID-19 - with surpluses, low debt and near-record-low unemployment - put us in a good position to weather the impact of the virus and start to rebuild our economy much earlier than many other countries.Now we're putting our plan to recover and rebuild ...
Darroch Ball MP, New Zealand First Spokesperson for Law and Order Recently released Police fleeing driver statistics have shown yet another increase in incidents with another record-high in the latest quarter. “This new quarterly record-high is the latest in a string of record-high numbers since 2014. The data shows incidents ...
New Zealand First MP Fletcher Tabuteau is pleased to be confirmed today as the party’s candidate for the Rotorua electorate. Speaking at the Rotorua AGM for New Zealand First, Mr Tabuteau said this is an election that is incredibly important for the people of Rotorua. “The founding principles of New ...
The Human Rights Commission’s PRISM report on the issues impacting people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) provides an excellent programme of work for future governments to follow, say the Greens. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said the trans-Tasman bubble had not been jeopardised after aborder botch-upresulted in New Zealand having two active cases of COVID-19. On Friday, Mr Peters told RNZ's Morning Report he had heard from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that borders for trans-Tasman travel would open by ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said today he was pleased the army was now running the quarantine and isolation process - up until now it has been the Ministry of Health. Peters told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking that the army knew how to introduce and follow protocols and instil discipline. ...
Hon Ron Mark, New Zealand First List MP based in the Wairarapa New Zealand First MP and Minister for Defence and Veteran’s Affairs Ron Mark has confirmed his bid for the Wairarapa seat.“The Coalition Government has done a lot of good work throughout the Wairarapa, but many constituents have told ...
New Zealand First is pleased to release the names of its next tranche of candidates for the 2020 election. We’re proud to announce these hardworking New Zealanders that have put their hand up to fight for a commonsense and resilient future.Jamie Arbuckle – Kaikoura Mark Arneil – Christchurch Central Jackie ...
The Government is maintaining current levy rates for the next 2 years, as part of a set of changes to help ease the financial pressures of COVID-19 providing certainty for businesses and New Zealanders, ACC Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. “New Zealanders and businesses are facing unprecedented financial pressures as a ...
Small businesses are getting greater certainty about access to finance with an extension to the interest-free cashflow loan scheme to the end of the year. The Small Business Cashflow Loan Scheme has already been extended once, to 24 July. Revenue and Small Business Minister Stuart Nash says it will be ...
A package of 23 projects across the country will clean up waterways and deliver over 2000 jobs Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Environment Minister David Parker announced today. The $162 million dollar package will see 22 water clean-up projects put forward by local councils receiving $62 million and the Kaipara ...
Tena koutou katoa Nga tangata whenua o tenei rohe o Pōneke, tena koutou Nau mai, haere mai ki te hui a tau mo te roopu reipa Ko tatou! Ko to tatou mana! Ko to tatou kaupapa kei te kokiri whakamua Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena tatou katoa Welcome. I ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $1.5 million to ensure QE Health in Rotorua can proceed with its world class health service and save 75 existing jobs, Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development, Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. The PGF funding announced today is in addition to the $8 million ...
A new programme, which sets a firm course for the Building and Construction sector to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, has been announced by the Minister for Building and Construction Jenny Salesa. “A significant amount of New Zealand’s carbon emissions come from the building and construction sector. If we’re serious ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing more than $7.5 million in Northland ventures to combat the economic impact of the COVID-19 virus, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters and Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones have announced. The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) investment is going to the Northern Adventure Experience and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced significant funding for Auckland’s Northcote College as part of the first wave of a new nationwide school redevelopment programme to upgrade schools over the next 10 years. The $48.5 million project brings the total investment in Northcote College to ...
The Government has opened an urgent response fund to support schools and early learning services to get children and young people back on track after the Covid-19 lockdown. “While we are seeing improvements in attendance under Alert Level 1 Ministry of Education data shows that attendance rates in our schools ...
The law to boost the economic recovery from the impact of COVID-19 by speeding up resource consenting on selected projects has passed its second and third readings in the House today. “Accelerating nationwide projects and activities by government, iwi and the private sector will help deliver faster economic recovery and ...
Five port-related projects in Whanganui will receive a $26.75 million Provincial Growth Fund investment to support local economic recovery and create new opportunities for growth, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This is a significant investment that will support the redevelopment of the Whanganui Port, a project governed ...
Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery will receive an investment of up to $12 million administered by the Provincial Growth Fund to support its redevelopment, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. The project is included in a $3 billion infrastructure pipeline announced by Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Shane Jones yesterday. ...
The Provincial Growth Fund is investing nearly $2.5 million into three Te Ara Mahi programmes to support Manawatū-Whanganui jobseekers and employees to quickly train and upskill, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Up to 154 local people will be supported into employment within the first year by these ...
This morning I have formally tendered my resignation as Minister of Health, which was accepted by the Prime Minister. Serving as Minister of Health has been an absolute privilege – particularly through these extraordinary last few months. It’s no secret that Health is a challenging portfolio. I have given ...
Scholarships for 57 early-career agricultural emissions scientists from 20 developing countries is another example of New Zealand’s international leadership in primary sector sustainability, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. Mr O’Connor, announcing the scholarships today, says hundreds of applications were received for this fourth round of the CLIFF-GRADS programme (Climate, Food ...
A project to help rejuvenate the Horowhenua town of Foxton will receive a Provincial Growth Fund investment of $3.86 million, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This funding for the Foxton Regeneration project will be used to make the well-known holiday town even more attractive for visitors and ...
Moa bones and other sub-fossil remains of extinct species are set to have improved protection with proposals to prevent the trade in extinct species announced the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage today. “We have lost too many of our native species, but these lost species, such as moa, remain an ...
The Government’s free and healthy school lunches programme moves south for the first time creating jobs for around 30 people in Otago and Southland. “Eighteen schools with 3000 students are joining the programme – 11 have already begun serving lunches, and seven are preparing to start during Term 3. This is ...
Thousands of Kiwi jobs and investment in New Zealand productions will be protected through a screen sector support package announced today by Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford and Minister for Broadcasting Kris Faafoi. The package also includes investment in broadcasting ...
The Government has established a new $10 million fund for the domestic events sector to help save jobs and protect incomes as it recovers from the impacts of COVID-19, Minister of Economic Development Phil Twyford announced today. This funding from Budget 2020 follows talks with the event sector designed to ...
The Government has taken another step in its commitment to making sure New Zealanders get a fairer deal at the petrol pump with the introduction of legislation to improve competition in the retail fuel market, says Energy and Resources Minister Megan Woods. “The fuel market study that this Government ordered ...
New Zealand has joined a global initiative that aims to enable all countries to access a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters announced today. The COVAX Facility was recently launched by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The Alliance includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank ...
From today new legislation takes effect to both restore the right to legal representation at the start of a Care of Children (CoCA) dispute in the Family Court, and allow parties to those proceedings to access legal aid where eligible. During a visit to the Family Court in Auckland today, ...
Home-based early childhood education (ECE) subsidised by the government will transition to a fully qualified workforce by 2025 to ensure better and more consistent quality, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. “Quality early learning helps provide children with a strong foundation for their future,” Chris Hipkins said. From 1 January ...
The new Criminal Cases Review Commission | Te Kāhui Tātari Ture (CCRC) has started work and can now independently investigate claimed miscarriages of justice. “Even though we have appeal rights and safeguards against unsafe convictions, from time to time our justice system does get things wrong. The design of the ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha, tēnā koutou Ki a koutou Te Āti Awa, Taranaki Whānui, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, ngā mana whenua o te rohe nei, tēnā koutou Ko Te Whare Wānanga o Aotearoa ki ngā take o te Ao (NZIIA), Ko te Rōpū Tohu Tono ...
The Government’s increase to paid parental leave kicks in today with another 4 weeks taking New Zealand up to a full 6 months (26 weeks, up from 22 weeks) leave for new parents, and the maximum weekly payment will increase by $20pw, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. ...
A new package of infrastructure investments will help kick-start the post-COVID rebuild by creating more than 20,000 jobs and unlocking more than $5 billion of projects up and down New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones today outlined how the $3 billion infrastructure fund in the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today expressed the New Zealand Government’s deep disappointment at the passage by China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee of a national security law for Hong Kong. “New Zealand has consistently emphasised its serious concern about the imposition of this legislation on Hong Kong without inclusive ...
More jobs and more family time with newborns are the centrepiece of a suite of Government initiatives coming into effect today. July 1 is a milestone day for the Government as a host of key policies take effect, demonstrating the critical areas where progress has been made. “The Coalition Government ...
Environment Minister David Parker has today “called in” Auckland’s application to the Waikato Regional Council to take an extra 200 million litres of water a day from the lower reaches of the Waikato River for Auckland drinking water and other municipal uses. The call-in means the application has been referred ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker announced today that New Zealand’s hosting of APEC in 2021 will go ahead using virtual digital platforms. Mr Peters said the global disruption caused by COVID-19, including resultant border restrictions, had been the major factor in the ...
The start of construction on a new link road between Matakana Road and State Highway 1 will create jobs and support the significant population growth expected in the Warkworth area, Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Mayor Phil Goff announced today. Transport Minister Phil Twyford said construction of the Matakana Link ...
The Government is prioritising its latest investment in PPE for frontline health workers, including staff at managed isolation and quarantine facilities, Health Minister David Clark says. “With no community transmission of COVID-19 our response now has a firm focus on keeping our border safe and secure. “We must ensure that ...
The Parihaka Papakāinga Trust in Taranaki will receive up to $14 million for a new visitor centre and other improvements at the historic settlement that will boost the local economy and provide much-needed jobs, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little have ...
Protections for workers who are employees of one employer but working under the direction of another business or organisation have come into force, closing a gap in legislation that made the personal grievance process inaccessible for some workers, says Workplace Relations Minister Iain Lees-Galloway. “This Government is working hard to ...
A range of improvements are already underway to address issues identified in the rapid review of the Managed Isolation and Quarantine system released today, Housing Minister Megan Woods said. The review was commissioned just over a week ago to identify and understand current and emerging risks to ensure the end-to-end ...
The important brown kiwi habitat around Whakatāne will receive added protection through an Iwi-led predator free project announced by Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage and Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau. “The Government is investing nearly $5 million into Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa’s environmental projects with $2.5 ...
An extra 4,000 tonnes of offcuts and scraps of untreated wood per year will soon be able to be recycled into useful products such as horticultural and garden mulch, playground safety surfacing and animal bedding as a result of a $660,000 investment from the Waste Minimisation Fund, Associate Environment Minister ...
The Governor-General has referred Scott Watson’s convictions for murder back to the Court of Appeal, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. Mr Watson was convicted in 1999 of the murders of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope. His appeal to the Court of Appeal in 2000 was unsuccessful, as was his ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics, University of South Australia Victoria recorded its largest daily increase of 127 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, 16 more than the previous peak of 111 cases on March 28. As I recently wrote, there’s no formal definition ...
After months of delays, the man responsible for murdering 51 people in a Christchurch mosque will finally be sentenced next month. Law professor Kris Gledhill explains how the sentencing will likely unfold. On the very day New Zealand entered Covid-19 lockdown, the man arrested for the Christchurch mosque terror attacks admitted ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Kettlewell, Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Economics Discipline Group, University of Technology Sydney We live in a culture that values “experiences”. These are often promoted in the media, and by those selling them, as vital to enhancing our well-being. We all know ...
Hidden camera footage showing cows being beaten with a steel pipe was deemed unlawful in court partially on the grounds it would encourage undercover filming in the future A Northland contract milker caught on hidden camera beating cows with a steel pipe has had five charges against him dropped after a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Iredell, Professor, Medicine and Microbiology (conjoint), University of Sydney The NSW-Victorian border will be closed as of midnight Tuesday this week, the NSW and Victorian premiers have announced, in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19. The announcement comes amid ...
Keagan Carr Fransch reviews I May Destroy You, the acclaimed new show from British writer-director-actress Michaela Coel. The following includes discussion of rape, sexual assault, sexual violence, drug-facilitated sexual assault, and PTSD.Since the release of her comedy Chewing Gum in 2015, Michaela Coel has been a recurrent name on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Burridge, Lecturer in Human Geography, Macquarie University Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced the border between his state and NSW will close after 11:59pm on Tuesday to prevent the coronavirus outbreak in Melbourne from spreading further. It will be the first ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jim Salinger, Honorary Associate, Tasmanian Institute for Agriculture, University of Tasmania A major global update based on data from more than 36,000 weather stations around the world confirms that, as the planet continues to warm, extreme weather events such as heatwaves and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Thornton, Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University The federal government today announced A$190 million in funding for new recycling infrastructure, as it seeks to divert more than ten million tonnes of waste from landfill and create 10,000 jobs. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Dunk, PhD Candidate, Australian National University Amid fanfare last week at the start of the new financial year the government promised to invest A$270 billion over a decade to upgrade the defence force. It said a side benefit would be a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonya Teich, Lecturer in Design, Visual Effects Projects, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington When Star Wars was awarded the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1978 it marked the first time the visual component of effects was differentiated ...
The Forest Owners Association says the MBIE announcement of ‘Building for Climate Change’ will mean more timber is used in New Zealand construction. FOA President Phil Taylor says he’s been waiting three years for the government to announce a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Kelly, Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University This week, the Victorian government unilaterally placed the residents of nine public housing towers in inner Melbourne under “hard lockdown” due to the “explosive potential” of increasing COVID-19 cases. The lockdown requires ...
Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk Thirty five years ago this week in another life Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie was an environmental journalist on board the original Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace flagship that was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985. He was on board for almost ...
Head of the inquiry Michael Heron QC will have the power to require the production of documents, summon witnesses and question parties under oath if necessary. ...
State Services Commissioner Peter Hughes has today announced the details of an investigation into the breach of sensitive personal information last week. The Commissioner said the Minister of State Services, the Hon Chris Hipkins, had asked him to undertake ...
More than 3400 primary health care nurses and medical receptionists/administrators across more than 500 practices and accident and medical centres will stop work for two hours nationwide on Thursday 23 July after mediation to settle their multi-employer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology On the very day New Zealand entered COVID-19 lockdown (March 26), the man arrested for the Christchurch mosque terror attacks admitted he was a murderer and a terrorist. Despite the lockdown, Justice Mander ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union says Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford needs to front up about how much public money is being used to bail out struggling bus company InterCity. Union spokesperson Louis Houlbrooke says: “InterCity has ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is sceptical that 61% of taxpayer funding for waterway clean-up just happens to be focused on the Northland electorate. Union spokesperson Louis Houlbrooke says: “The Government has announced that $162 million of taxpayers' ...
Tai Tonga Candidate, Takuta Ferris, has signed up to the visionary thinking that has been produced by Tokona Te Raki (Māori futures collective). “The opening statement by Dr Eruera Tarena says it all” said Takuta Ferris. “The future is not just ...
The huge success of a pilot programme featuring rural mayors connecting youth in their regions with local small businesses has led to it being scaled up around the country, across 23 more councils. A collaboration between the Mayors Taskforce for ...
The associate editor of The Indian Times joins host Duncan Greive to discuss his belief that New Zealand’s media ignores the quarter of our population not born here – and why both parties lose as a result. I first met Gaurav Sharma in the aftermath of March 15. New ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Cross, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology Last year, Australians reported more than A$634 million lost to fraud, a significant jump from $489.7 million the year before. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ...
Having already faced a devastating earthquake, Christchurch knows the value of community in times of crisis. Now in the wake of Covid-19, a popular creative hub is expanding its mission to bring more people together.Whether it’s a beautifully restored building or a brand new office block, the reminders of the ...
Parole hearings will return to New Zealand prison’s this week after face-face meetings were suspended as a result of the COVID-19 emergency. The New Zealand Parole Board completed all its scheduled hearings during the COVID-19 lockdown period, with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW In an open letter to Attorney-General Christian Porter, about 500 women working in the law from across Australia have sought changes to the way judges are disciplined and appointed. The letter comes after former High ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Genevieve Wilkinson, Lecturer in Intellectual Property and Human Rights, University of Technology Sydney After a decade of legal challenges by the tobacco lobby, Australia’s pioneering push to eliminate all tobacco advertising finally has clear air. Its longest stoush, over plain packaging laws ...
With the world in lockdown, and a new album set for release, The Beths decided to keep playing live – from their living rooms. As the band prepare for their first show in front of a crowd in months, they tell Josie Adams the stories behind Live From ‘House’. When ...
Latest from the Beehive – According to the blare from the Beehive, the Small Business Cashflow Loan Scheme will be further extended to 31 December, a new $162 million package of 23 projects across the country will clean up waterways and deliver over 2000 jobs, and the PM has delivered ...
Vision New Zealand is delighted to be launching George Ngatai as its candidate for Takanini tonight, 6th July, at the Songbird Cafe, 9 Gosper Road, Waiata Shores, Conifer Grove Takanini. Party Leader Hannah Tamaki said “I am confident that George will ...
Honour the Maunga and Iramoko Marae have announced a unique partnership that gives life to Treaty principles in their joint efforts to save 345 trees from being felled on Ōwairaka / Mt Albert. Honour the Maunga has maintained an ongoing tree-saving ...
Festival for the Future Live will kick off its 10th annual event on Monday 13 July, in what is touted to be the most international digital summit ever hosted from New Zealand. With speakers from The United Nations Development Programme and The Obama ...
Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk The Lokataru Legal and Human Rights Foundation says there are two problems with the Indonesian police which have developed during the era of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration. These two problems are “politicisation” and “police professionalism”. “Perhaps it’s still the same as the problem before, particularly ...
By RNZ Pacific A sit-in has been held outside the French High Commission in French Polynesia to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons test at Moruroa. The demonstration was organised by the anti-nuclear group Association 193 which again decried the recent law change tightening compensation criteria for ...
David Goldsmith, a 52-year-old dad from Christchurch, is starting his month-long hunger strike outside Parliament on Monday as a drastic call for climate change action AR: Hunger strikes are mostly known from prisons – that’s drastic. DG: Yes, it’s ...
The biggest news site in New Zealand, and the country’s fifth biggest site overall, Stuff has embarked on an experiment in dropping the use of Facebook and Instagram. It has been launched ‘in the context of the international Boycott Facebook movement’, according to a memo leaked to The Spinoff. A leaked ...
After the Labour's annual conference, pundits were quick to criticise Jacinda Ardern for taking a 'self-congratulatory tone' in her remarks, but the PM says that was not her intent at all. ...
A global study is under way to compare how information about Covid-19 is delivered by authorities and the media, and how it is understood and used by people in different countries. University of Canterbury (UC) population health expert Professor Philip ...
It’s time to get ready to vote in the 2020 General Election and referendums. “It’s less than three months now until the election on 19 September when you choose the people and parties that represent you in Parliament. There will also be two referendums ...
If you’re like most New Zealanders, you probably don’t know the name of the country’s most powerful judge. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of, writes University of Otago law lecturer Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere. Here’s a test for you: name New Zealand’s chief justice. Click on the link to find ...
If enough New Zealanders continued to work from home on a regular basis, the country could easily save the same amount of carbon emissions as taking 35,000 cars off the road, according to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority. The analysis ...
There are many groups within NZ including the Green Party that are calling for the legalisation of marijuana for personal/medicinal use and my question for them is: - How can they reconcile that stand with the negative environmental effects from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Moore, Director of The Australian National University Institute for Space and the Advanced Instrumentation Technology Centre, Australian National University With all of the immense challenges we face on Earth this year, space can feel like an afterthought. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Notley, Senior Lecturer in Digital Media, Western Sydney University Today we release the findings from our new research into how young Australians consume and think about news media. Following a summer of bushfires and during the COVID-19 pandemic, young people have ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Thwaites, Chair, Monash Sustainable Development Institute & ClimateWorks Australia, Monash University The global Sustainable Development Report 2020, released this week in New York, ranks Australia third among OECD countries for the effectiveness of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, beaten by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Yue Zhang, Associate Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology Only 40% of students in China who previously intended to study overseas still plan to, while just under 50% of those who had studied overseas plan to return to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Warren, Emeritus Professor of Taxation, UNSW A major report commissioned by the NSW government has proposed lifting and expanding the goods and services tax and replacing stamp duty with a broad-based land tax. Launched at the National Press Club on July ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Baker, Lecturer in Business Strategy, Auckland University of Technology Like the coronavirus itself, joblessness can act as a pestilence on a society. People who would have otherwise gone to their local restaurant, hairdresser, café or bar, taken a holiday in Queenstown ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Mailhammer, Associate Dean, Research, Western Sydney University Remember when Australians paid in shillings and pence? New research suggests the words for these coins and other culturally important items and concepts are the result of close contact between the early Germanic people ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level one – read about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. To support this ...
Ian Cummings - Independent Candidate Ian Cummings is pleased to announce he will be campaigning as an independent candidate in the upcoming general election to provide voters with a credible alternative and more effective voice on issues that matter ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Stories raise themes of political accountability, investigation launched after active case details leaked, and frustrating infrastructure failures hurt Auckland water system.There have been several stories involving the theme of political accountability for mistakes in recent days. So for a lead today, ...
As Serena Jones faces incurable cancer, she wants to add something personal to the end-of-life choice debate Seven years ago I was told I had a 25 percent chance of living five years without the cancer returning; two years ago I was given 12 months to live. Plainly the up-coming ...
Advocacy group Sea Shepherd steps up its moves to push for US ban on New Zealand seafood over Māui dolphin protection A US ban on New Zealand seafood could be three to four weeks away after Sea Shepherd filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. Earlier this year, the marine advocacy group ...
David Clark has become the oldest of ritual objects: a scapegoat, writes Dr Deane Galbraith and Dr Ben Schonthal The casting out of David Clark has been a spectacle of biblical proportions. We mean that quite literally. The Health Minister’s mistakes were serious and the media is right to hold our ...
Labour's scaled-down party conference was still an opportunity for Jacinda Ardern to show how loved she is by her fans - and make the case for why her Government should keep on moving to a second term Looking around the packed room at Te Papa in Wellington, it was hard ...
Stacy Gregg and Nicky Pellegrino conclude their podcast series, and interview Tayi Tibble. Wellington poet Tayi Tibble was 23 years old when she won the Ockham for best first book of poetry for Poukahangatus. Of Te Whanau ā Apanui and Ngāti Porou descent, Tayi’s poems speak to beauty, activism, power ...
As New Zealand’s top artistic gymnast, Maia Fishwick, heads back to the US to join her college team, the Aggies, she tells Suzanne McFadden her rise has been an against-the-odds story. Maia Fishwick was told she was too old to be a good gymnast. She was seven. This was a kid who obviously had a ...
Oranga Tamariki's refusal to acknowledge systemic issues within the organisation is intolerable, writes social worker and social work researcher John Darroch Recently Newsroom published an article based on interviews with practising social workers who described systemic issues within Oranga Tamariki. As a social worker, and post-graduate student conducting research into statutory ...
A new petition calling for an end to religious instruction in primary schools is part of a renewed campaign to make state schooling truly secular, reports Emily Writes.Few people know about Section 54 of the Education and Training Bill, but Tanya Jacob does. That’s why she has authored a petition ...
Combatting climate change as a healthcare organisation involves more than simply reducing its carbon footprint, writes David Galler. It means seeing climate change and wellbeing as intertwined – and that what’s good for the environment is always good for health.This pandemic, as overwhelming as it is, will eventually pass. But ...
A list of infrastructure projects handpicked for border exemptions is either a hasty cut and paste job or a sign we can't build anything without foreign labour. ...
A New Zealand-made ad featuring porn stars that encourages parents to talk to their children about what they're seeing online has gone viral - and sparked a world-wide conversation. The campaign that features two naked actors has reached more than 22 million viewers around the world and is being retold in ...
Parliament's independent MP has been accused of pandering to anti-vaccine activists after he started a petition and introduced a bill against what he calls "forced vaccination". ...
Changes to Covid-19 testing criteria may see fewer New Zealanders being tested - but there is some confusion about how the rules are being applied Health Minister Chris Hipkins has promised to put officials on notice about providing Covid-19 tests for those who want them, following confusion after changes to ...
Open mike 30/04/2020 
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After a long break, the government is back inserting secrecy clauses in legislation. This time its the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3), which in its clause allowing Ministers to exempt purchasers of farm land from the usual rules also allows them to exempt an exemption from the publication requirement: ...8 hours ago
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Here we go…another day on Facebook doing battle with increasingly unhinged wild-eyed National voters.
Maybe get off Facebook?
Don't get on it to start with.
Yup. Back in the early 90's I was working for a US based company that had a very early footprint on the internet. (At that time it had a whole Class A address range (136.xxx.xxx.xxx) allocated to it …). We rolled out laptops across the whole organisation in 1991 and a US based training guy came over for a week to introduce us to the internet and where it was going.
I recall very clearly just how prescient he was, especially around personal privacy and the many implications it would have in the future.
Entities like FB and Google have far more information on you than any government, except maybe the CCP, who probably have fat files on every participant here. Hell if they don't I've been wasting my time 🙂
There's nothing more satisfying than rubbing official noses up the wrong way. Its what makes life worth while. 😀
You're helping them gather information? I thought as much.
Nah, it’s how I keep in touch with people all over. The Tories flailing around on it at the moment are just a minor irritant.
Nothing like a bit nat baiting although I've noticed if you point out the national parties failings thier pages stop appearing on my feed .
Thanks, might have to try that with bloody Greenpeace spamming of my Facebook every day.
Words of wisdom. I quit FB before Xmas last year and have never looked back. Same with Twitter.
I don't mind the randos on the community pages. What occasionally gets me down is "argh, shit, 20 years ago Jamie was a bit mad but fun, caught up with him a year or two back, but now it's becoming obvious that he's apparently a Nazi-adjacent and I have to defriend him" sadness.
good post mcflock. that has happened-is happening to me . but, the way I look at it, jamie would still be someone to run from. with facebook, you can find that out without having to share oxygen (and other things) with them.
It's not like the most recent one had runes and 14 words on his profile pics. I started to notice lots of dogwhistling, and then linked comments to a south island far-right-dirtbag publishing house.
Such a shame – didn't spout any of that back in the day, he was good fun. But how someone gets from there to here over the decades is a frequent mystery.
The bomber's feeling a tad plaintive this morn: "Please tell me the Left have an economic response beyond middle class identity politics. Please." https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/04/30/next-election-fought-on-the-economy-not-identity-politics-why-that-will-hurt-the-left/
No, nobody will tell him that. For a start, the left aint unified, so it would be false advertising. For seconders, the left aint even attempting unification, so any general left-wing response to covid-19 terminating neoliberalism will remain a wish & a hope.
"I've suggested that the NZ Left urgently put together a virtual conference to thrash out a basic policy agenda platform as a response to this unprecedented crisis of free market capitalism and that should be getting planed right now". Good idea, eh? Well, no. Leftists talkfests never go anywhere. Factoring in a plan would be sufficiently audacious to spook participants.
Consciousness-raising has been the norm in leftist meetings in recent decades. The idea that everyone gets conscious enough to agree to a plan would require the left to adopt consensus politics. The left has never agreed to become that Green. Not here, nor anywhere else.
🙂
Not a bad summation @ Denis, and one only has to look at a few blogs and new media for evidence of you claims.
Que sera sera, and we get what we deserve all things considered. I only wish we could all be a bit less tribal about it all. It doesn't need to be such a war of egos.
How very defeatist of you.
As noted in the post below, when in recent history New Zealanders have been given the opportunity to contribute new ideas that assist in response to a crisis, they absolutely do, and they are effective.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/04/30/1149880/post-lockdown-democracy-lessons-from-chch
The New Zealand left are in government (together with NZF).
They have shown that they are outstanding at managing a crisis with a plan that has saved the entire country. Our Prime Minister – previously a global leader of socialism – has done nothing but effective consciousness-raising for the last 40 days straight.
Through the Budget 2020 they are about to show that they have an economic recovery plan for many sectors of New Zealand particularly the public sector.
The bitter and resolutely defeated left that you describe have no place in New Zealand political life right now.
Yeah, there is that bright side – which you have described well. The left are succeeding via collaboration with centrists. The PM's leadership has been exemplary through the saga. My point was directed at the bomber's complaint – which you haven't addressed.
It rather highlights the current divide between those into pragmatic response and managing consensus decision-making, and those seeking a sensible plan for the future. The closest the govt have got to the latter is making vague noises that they are getting around to it. I shall keep reminding myself that patience is a virtue.
The problem with demanding a plan is that many of the important parameters and constraints are going to be outside of this govts control.
pat linked to this good summary from Roubini last night.
1. Excessive debt bubbles everywhere in every sector. (China being off the charts)
2. The demographic transition that means consumption led recoveries become increasingly unlikely
3. Growing risk of deflation
4. Currency de-stabilisation as a result of heroic central bank attempts to prop everything up
5. The digital disruption, increased pace of automation changing the nature of work and the value of labour
6. De-globalisation. The collapse of the US-led post-WW2 global alliance will result in regionalisation and a major reduction in global trade, with tighter trade restrictions in many important sectors
7. Increasing populism as the relative prosperity and peace of the past 70 years ebbs away. People react badly to seeing their standard of living slide backwards
8. The geostrategic standoff between the US and China. Both nations are facing major risks of quite different kinds. China is much weaker than it looks and it's authoritarian leadership will do anything to retain power; while the USA is getting it's ass handed to it as the direct result of 30 years of self-indulgent, narcissistic culture wars.
9. Increasing probability of food and fuel disruptions in the traditional zones of conflict, the Northern European Plain, The Middle East and the Far East. As the US withdraws local hegemons will be aggressively playing to fill the vacuum. Expect more wars.
10. And the ever present risk of climate change and environmental mismanagement disrupting human development.
All of these clusters of threat have been previously spoken to here at length. Roubini condenses them into a concise, chilling summary. All of them are real threats, and we should resist the temptation to dismiss the sum of them as catastrophising; whichever way you cut it, this looks like being a high entropy decade.
Aus/NZ have some incredibly fortunate strategic advantages going into this; any plan we make should look to play to them. But we have to accept that the outcomes could be wildly different to what we might hope for.
Plans in small and medium-sized countries have obviously worked before, and in more dire global circumstances than this.
There's no doubt we are in a catastrophe.
There's also no doubt that both Australia and New Zealand as exceedingly good at forming plans – even plans on the fly – and making them work.
So we should plan, and we should expect that plan to succeed.
Time you quit Brisbane Red, and started proper tramping again here.
Time you quit Brisbane Red, and started proper tramping again here.
Funny you should say that. Working on it.
Ah tramping. I wish that I could still do it.. Actually just walking more than a kilometre without the bones grinding together in my right foot and causing pain twinges for days afterwards would be nice.
Plan B. Electric mountain bikes. … really.
While the NZ system of trails is pretty good now, the Aussies have a fabulous network.
Bryce Edwards proposes that:
"These non-economic issues – debates on everything from nuclear weapons, abortion, sexual politics, racism and environmentalism – never fitted easily into the traditional left-right spectrum."
This shows Mr Edwards understands nothing of the left in New Zealand since the late 1970s. It now consists near-entirely of these groups. The current Cabinet is the full summation of this set of idealisms.
Bomber just builds on that ignorant sentiment. Bomber wants the union movement back so he can remember the proletariat as they ought to be. It's not coming back.
Bomber is welcome to invite the entire left to a conference in which all ideas are invited. He can frame it any way he wants. Who knows maybe it would be as successful as that which occurred in Christchurch.
Meanwhile, the left in government publish another budget, another nation-wide recovery plan (as they have done often throughout history), another moral recovery through a gentle return to national resilience and communitarian ideals, and on current polls another parliamentary term.
Does the Left want to unite-unify everybody?
The schizophrenia of MMP is that coalitions require a certain level of consensus while the other side of the politics is highly adversarial and polarised (and polarising). IMHO, this is a design flaw stemming from FPP mentality and political history in the Anglo-Saxon parts of the World.
What is badly needed, and has been for a long time, is a coherent and cohesive policy platform. Ironically, the rebuild of the Economy will help this Government to focus, which will create an impression of direction, purpose, and integration, on paper, at least. The Devil is always in the detail as the pandemic response has shown so well; gaps and errors will become clear once the behemoth is set in motion and if not dealt with adequately, the wheels will start to fall off and undo the whole thing.
Last, but not least, they need to sell it to the voters.
What could go wrong?
Through our Prime Minister, the left have united and unified the entire country.
Like you I keenly await the united policy platforms. Two weeks to budget and we'll see.
Sure, the PM and Dr Bloomfield took centre stage in their daily updates over the last month or so. The COVID-19 crisis made us pull together; we’re all in the same boat together. Crises have this effect on communities and even whole nations. As do wars …
I’m not holding out for too many specifics in Budget-2020 and I expect more ‘broad brush strokes’ and aspirational stuff (AKA planning & modelling) than in a usual Budget.
Does the Left want to unite-unify everybody?
Good question (if everybody refers to all on the left). I guess I was showing my age: my first awareness of the left was in the era when unity was written and chanted as a mantra routinely ("the people, united, will never be defeated").
I observed rather acidly here a while back, in respect of sheeple subservience to the control system, that the people, defeated, will never be united.
I agree that the semblance of a plan is as good as the reality of one, from the perspective of giving assurance to a sufficient number of voters. So, as political strategy, painting it with a broad brush would enable the left to cruise on past the devil lurking in the details.
However the gist must be sufficiently effective as a prescription to withstand critical appraisal from the media, as well as leftist supporters & fellow-travellers such as myself. If the design is that clever and robust, it will constellate a semblance of unity.
the reason the people united could never be defeated was because that assumes no adversary….the adversary is the (other) people
True enough. Although the leftists in those days would probably argue that it was just a pitch for idealism, and all you really need is a majority under FPP.
I think the origin of that idealism lies in the notion of liberation, deriving from the revolutions in France & the USA: a bipolar frame in which the people are considered separately from the ruler(s). When the rulers are an entire class (ruling class, aristocracy, nobility, etc) they attract hangers-on, sycophants, who nowadays constitute the right wing along with business (the days when business folk were a despised component of the people are long gone). So the people are indeed structurally divided in the real world.
yes you do need a majority…and given there are a lot more losers at the moment we may get it.
It is the tension between competition and co-operation that is key….if you perceive (or are in fact) 'winning' in the contest you wish it to continue, if you are 'losing' you are more likely to wish to co-operate.
Unfortunately co-operation requires consensus….competition does not
And sadly those that are by nature competitive tend to end up in positions of power…go figure.
NZ can be as co-operative as it likes but unless it separates itself from the world it is still subject to competition from without.
The ultimate expression of competitiveness is war.
Should we be competitive?….we are constantly told we need to be.
I watched Planet of the Humans last night. I thoroughly recommend it.
I thought it was a Michael Moore film, so hadn't watched it earlier as I wasn't feeling up to being lectured at for an hour an a half.
The film is by Jeff Gibbs and the messages are delivered in a far gentler manner than Moore's style.
It tackles the major problems we as a species are facing, and pulls the covers back on some of the sneakier aspects of the 'Green' shenanagins going on in the U.S.
Al Gore, amongst others, doesn't come out well.
Nah. The reviews from people that actually know a bit about the topics covered are kinda negative. A lot of the info is simply way out of date and misleadingly presented.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/michael-moores-green-energy-takedown-worse-than-netflixs-goop-series/
https://www.vox.com/2020/4/28/21238597/michael-moore-planet-of-the-humans-climate-change
VOX? The hipsters on that site "actually know a bit", do they? Like they do about Venezuela?
And…. have you actually watched the documentary? Let's assume you did.
1.) Do you think the producers faked the scenes where Al Gore and Bill McKibben compromise themselves? (I use the word "compromise" as a euphemism in this instance.)
2.) Do you think they faked the investigation which finds the Koch Brothers have received more money by far for "green" energy than any other entity?
Leah Stokes, the author of the Vox piece is indeed a credible expert on clean energy and environmental policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Stokes
No, I haven't watched it. A few minutes reading of reviews from experts that actually understand the topic persuaded me to not waste one hour forty minutes on it.
But thanks, the way it evidently appeals to your motivated unreason is an even stronger indication I shouldn't waste my time on it.
No, I haven't watched it.
That was obvious, but thanks for confirming it for us.
A few minutes reading of reviews from experts that actually understand the topic persuaded me to not waste one hour forty minutes on it.
That time is of course better spent trawling Twitter and Facebook in search of that one zinger epithet to hurl at Trump. How's that working out, by the way?
Agreed. While it supports my contention that solar PV and wind power have serious limits that have been too often ignored or underplayed, there are too many inaccuracies and distortions in this doco for it to be useful.
Worse still it doesn't take us anywhere; it's depressing and nihilistic. It makes virtually no mention of next generation nuclear which is the most promising way through this bottleneck.
There is an important message in here, but it's been buried by a lack of balance and accuracy.
…. too many inaccuracies and distortions in this doco for it to be useful.
????!!? Could you give us one example of either?
… it's depressing and nihilistic.
It's certainly depressing. No surprises about the corrupt and foolish Al Gore, but I was depressed to see just how compromised and how evasive Bill McKibben was. How is it nihilistic?
… no mention of next generation nuclear which is the most promising way through this bottleneck.
"Next generation nuclear." Now that sounds like a sane and rational option.
Andre has already covered off the inaccuracies aspect.
I've already spoken frequently to the fact that renewables have serious limitations, and the reasons why can be conveyed in cool, accurate terms as this David McKay's presentation does.
The difference is that I don't take the ideological position that any energy source is rubbish. They all serve a role both in time and place. Wood and muscle power sustained our recorded history, coal got us out of absolute poverty, oil gave us industrialisation. Renewables work well in specific locations and contexts; both Australia and NZ are among the relatively few countries almost perfectly placed to exploit them well.
But globally the numbers on renewables are not promising, and this is a cold hard fact that many 'clean energy' advocates are not keen on confronting. In this the doco serves a purpose, Moore confronts this reluctance like a kick to the nuts, but in doing so he goes off track too often for my liking.
As for the nuclear energy aspect. Again I've written to this extensively in the past year and I'm not going to do it justice in one comment. But already the cold hard numbers prove that even existing nuclear energy technologies are by far the safest form of power generation.
And this is before we look at a whole raft of next generation nuclear technologies, that by any informed analysis are at least several orders of magnitude safer again. In my career I've participated in four major (multi-day) HAZOP analyses from a control and automation perspective, so I have real heavy industry experience in evaluating risk.
Andre has already covered off the inaccuracies aspect.
???? Andre did nothing of the sort. Your statement's almost as funny, and as worrying, as your expression of support for nuclear power.
You complained above that Andre had not 'watched the doco'. Well I have and I found it a curate's egg. I agree with it's underlying message, but I don't like the approach Moore used. Maybe that's just the engineer in me protesting the absence of hard numbers, and clear headed analysis that McKay does in his presentation.
I presume you haven’t watched the McKay link I gave yet?
And I'm guessing you really haven't yet spent several hundred hours reading up on MSR's? Or watched a single one of Gordon McDowell's many video's?
Get back to me when you have.
You complained above that Andre had not 'watched the doco'.
I didn't complain, I actually thanked him for confirming what I had suspected: that he was commenting from a position of ignorance.
I agree with it's underlying message, but I don't like the approach Moore used.
???? The "approach"? You mean you don't like his style. That's irrelevant to whether the revelations in the documentary have merit or not.
… the absence of hard numbers,
Wrong. The documentary backs up its narrative with statistics throughout the one hundred minutes. Of course the numbers that have angered so many people are those that reveal how much money Al Gore, Richard Branson, Bloomberg, the Koch brothers, and Bill McKibben are pulling in from these scams.
and clear headed analysis…
Again, simply wrong. Jeff Gibbs's narration is clear from beginning to end.
You think analysis is the same thing as narration? You ain't encouraging me to watch it that's for sure.
???? Clear narration precludes analysis how, exactly?
You are speaking a lot of sense Morrissey. Thank you for your insight.
The film is a savage attack on capitalism. It puzzles me that people cannot see that.
I don't think it's a savage attack, Ed. It's a calm, rational, honest, and therefore grim documentary about capitalism, and how it corrupts even the most well meaning people.
(I don't think Al Gore is well meaning, by the way.)
Have you read or watched any of the reviews and critiques of the movie?
For most people, being anti-capitalist doesn't excuse being dishonest, misleading, using out-of-date information like the film does.
But hey, you do you, if bullshit as long as it's anti-capitalist is your thang.
Andre, I have not read any reviews yet.
However I have ( and I appears you have not) watched 85 minutes of the documentary.
I prefer to look at reviews once I have looked at the original document.
Ed, that bloke proudly announced this morning that he has not watched the documentary. It's a pity that Radio Sport has disappeared; that was one outlet that defiantly made a virtue out of complete ignorance. Our friend would have fitted right in. “I’m not going to waste an hour and a half of my time WATCHING the game, but I’ll tell you why it sucked…”
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/an-educated-lot-breakfast-with-radio.html
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2019/07/tony-veitch-newstalkzb-in-action-dec-28.html
(Actually, it's not a pity that Radio Sport has disappeared.)
Have you successfully deluded yourself that you have the knowledge or the inclination to spot the factual inaccuracies, misleads and misinformation?
The time you spent dreaming up Perelman-level zingers like "Drumpfelthinskin" today, you could have spent watching the documentary. Or do you take all your opinions straight from VICE and the failing New York Times?
Watching the film as I type.
It is full of data and statistics, supporting points made.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it, Ed—it's leavened with wit and dry humour, in spite of how depressing as it is. There's a great quip about a former Vice-President and a Goldman Sachs gangster right near the end, which is the only outright joke in the whole thing.
Agreed Morrissey, your language is precise.
The documentary is "calm, rational, honest, and therefore grim" about capitalism.
As a result it is a devastating expose of capitalism.
Ok, we have yr nuclear installed, then what?
We keep on biggering?
I think you missed one of the main messages of the movie.
We keep on biggering?
Yes. Setting aside your Trumpism, the correct answer is that abundant, reliable, carbon free energy would enable human development to be extended universally.
1. This would bring human population into equilibrium everywhere
2. It would enable closed loop resource management everywhere. We have a long way to go on the details here, but in most instances the roadblock at present is energy costs.
3. It would accelerate the urbanisation of humanity, the intensification of agriculture into smaller land footprints, which together mean that wilderness can re-claim back more of the planet.
Essentially we save the natural world by not using it. I realise that I'm painting an ambitious vision here, but already we are living lives beyond the wildest dreams of our own great great grandparents.
I realise that I'm painting an ambitious vision here..
"Ambitious" in this case is a euphemism for insane.
Chernobyl was a design that would have never been licensed in the Western world. If you watch the excellent and very popular documentary on it, plus do some in depth reading, it's clear that the root cause of the disaster was that because of the authoritarian and secretive nature of the Soviet regime, at least two critical flaws in the design were never conveyed to the plant operators.
People also forget that despite these flaws, about a dozen of these relatively primitive RBMK reactors operated for many years afterward, with pretty good safety records.
There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy, but if safety is your concern then nuclear energy is by far the safest form we have. Anyone claiming otherwise is really arguing for more deaths and more environmental harm, not less.
And that safety data is based on a fleet of Pressurised Water Reactors whose fundamental features date from the 40's and 50's. The next generation reactors I am advocating for here are entirely different machines, many thousands of times safer than these again.
Chernobyl was a design that would have never been licensed in the Western world.
So how did the responsible and ethical politicians of "the Western world" get away with installing those disasters at Three Mile Island and Fukushima and Windscale?
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/brief-history-nuclear-accidents-worldwide
The evolution of nuclear reactors was bounded by the need to make them safe.Teller asked Dyson to make a reactor that was both phd proof and child (read engineer proof).
Here very clever physicists,needed great confidence in their equations.
The Windscale piles (they can scarcely be called a reactor at all) were a first generation graphite moderated machine designed in the 1940's, in the immediate post-WW2 era. They were really just primitive research machines and at that time safety was a much lessor concern than it is now.
TMI and Fukishima were both third generation Pressurised Water Reactor designs that derived from the original nuclear submarine program dating from the 1950's. All of these reactors have a fundamental risk factor, that while they worked very well at the size of a submarine (<10MW thermal) they didn't scale well to power sized plants (>100MW or more) from a safety perspective. Despite this the vast majority of them have operated safely over their lifetime. So well that they remain dramatically the safest energy source we have.
However all this irrelevant, I'm explicitly not endorsing the notion of building more of these PWR machines. Indeed I'd be happy to see them all de-commissioned as they reach the end of their lifecycle and no new ones ever constructed. You are essentially asking me to defend an obsolete generation of reactors that I am not advocating for.
Nuclear engineering has advanced considerably since the 1950's, and the designs I am pointing to are completely different. Everyone working in this field is vividly aware of the accidents in the past and have worked hard to eliminate their root causes in this next generation of machines. There are no free lunches when it comes to energy and from where I'm sitting, nuclear is the only path forward out of the fossil fuel development trap we are in.
The equilibrium of the population I can get with. A significant part of that, is the likes of us, scaling back our energy dense habits.
That is the bit no-one seems to want to acknowledge.
Eating seasonally and locally.
If we get yr nuclear, does that mean Coca Cola can still be the be the biggest plastic polluter?
On another note, what is so special about the next great energy resource that humanity will achieve some equality? Something that has not managed to happen during the steam or oil/coal/gas years.
If we get yr nuclear, does that mean Coca Cola can still be the be the biggest plastic polluter?
Abundant low cost energy might mean for instance that we could readily return to using glass as the default packaging material and build recycling into the cost of the product. This isn't a very big leap at all.
As I type this my eye alights on a couple of Sodastream gas bottles waiting for me to take back to the shop. These use exactly the same model.
In general the idea is that we can move over time toward closed loop resource management, where the goal is to develop both materials and methods that dramatically scale back our raw extraction rates from the planet.
In 100 yrs time we could look back on the goods we purchase today, from a resource perspective, as impractical historic curiosities. Much like someone wearing a digital smart watch might look at a grandfather pendulum clock.
what is so special about the next great energy resource that humanity will achieve some equality?
Well look at it this way; the first problem to solve is absolute poverty. Fossil fuels have enabled most of the human race to escape this; in 2016 fully half the human race achieved a modest middle class life by local standards. For the first time ever. That seems to me a big step in the right direction.
I've slept on it but I do not understand yr Trumpism quip.
Please enlighten me.
Apologies. I read the term "biggering" as the kind of non-word that Trump regularly comes up with. Crossed wires …
Hey no worries, I thought I had missed something.
I was referencing The Lorax with biggering and thneeds.
It's funny how a 'kid's' book can be so concise and apt.
A nationwide survey of public opinion in the UK measured the post-covid desire for change: https://flo.uri.sh/story/262445/embed#slide-0
More than a majority of Brits are hoping for change: https://flo.uri.sh/story/262445/embed#slide-1
Hankering for a return to neoliberal bau are the conservative rump: 9% – but there's also 6% who want bau while conceding they need to perform a personal change of lifestyle.
3% are growing food. When I was a kid here in the fifties everyone did that. Those who didn't need to try something new come in at 50%. Plus change, plus la meme chose. https://flo.uri.sh/story/262445/embed#slide-2
A quarter of respondents noticed more wildlife (shame they didn't also ask `did you become wilder?'), while 40% noticed a stronger sense of local community (slide 4).
Change is going to happen whether they tick the box for it or not.
The immediate struggle for short term survival will "Trump" any luxury Green changes and policies.
Most of us will be driving our present vehicles (if we can afford to do so!) for far longer before being able to financially afford expensive Electric replacements.
Lovely phrase but what does it mean?
Britain now 4th worst affected country for Covid-19 deaths/million. Overtook France after the belated release of some care home stats. France, which shares land borders with the three worst affected countries.
When will the people there start asking questions of their totally incompetent leadership?
There's to be an inquiry over the high number of health care workers deaths, but they've been asked to not look at the shortage of PPE because that's too political.
There is a panorama episode about the lack of PPE in England "Panorama: Has the government failed the NHS?".
The Tories really don't want to talk about excess deaths.
The United Kingdom is suffering one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world, with the official figures admitting over 20,000 Covid-19 deaths. Research based on figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest that the real total is likely more than double once deaths in care homes and the community have finally been counted.
It is widely considered acceptable to talk about the official death rate and to mourn specific individuals who have died in the pandemic, especially front line NHS staff who have fallen in the fight, but once anyone begins asking questions about why the death rate is so high in the UK compared to other nations, the push back is vehement.
The moment efforts are made to establish a cause, the moralising ”how very dare you politicise the crisis?” brigade immediately show up in droves in order to deter any thought processes that may lead back to the party of government or the Westminster political establishment bearing any responsibility whatever.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/opinion/in-times-of-crisis-i-will-continue-to-be-another-angry-voice/28/04/
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-englands-excess-deaths-among-the-highest-in-europe-11977394
Here in NZ, some like to create a narrative that this Government has caused excess economic damage. I see parallels in the way the moralising arguments and counter-arguments are constructed and narratives are developed. It is a variant on the old theme of how to run the economy and the role of the State.
Maybe the idea that any country, following any strategy, could get through this scot-free was always delusional.
Of course! No Country is an Island.
And so it continues, the Bank of England refuses to release gold reserves to Maduro, so he can finance Venezuela's Covid-19 program.
The economy may be stalled, but the mechanisms of directing it are demonstrably still in play.
"It's the Venezuelan Government that caused it, being too socialist".
All the pain from Lockdown leaves people with the hope that afterwards society will be "better."
https://www.pundit.co.nz/content/churchill-beat-hitler-but-attlee-won-the-election-elections-strategies-in-post-crisis-world
Terrible analogy. Simon Bridges is no Clement Attlee. And there is nobody in the National Party even remotely talented like Gaitskell, Cripps, or Bevin.
Attlee, Gaitskell, Cripps, and Bevin won't be voting in our election though. A lot who will be voting will think that National is best at handling the economy. Especially after a crisis.
A vote from one deluded simpleton = one vote from someone with a grasp of reality.
Thats right, most of the yo-yos queueing for murder burger get to vote too.
It is just as likely a scenario come September that NZ, having eliminated COVID-19, is in a nice economic recovery with life almost back to normal, looking aghast at a world outside our borders wracked with second and third waves of corona virus and economies wrecked with second and third lockdowns or riots and mass deaths of the vulnerable and elderly. In that case, we will not only re-elect Labour, we'll build a giant statue to Jacinda as well.
The point is surely that when people have endured huge losses because of a Lockdown then they would be hoping that it was all worthwhile because the recovery began delivering major successes in addressing Inequality, Climate improvement, a better Democracy and an addressing the damage done by the Economic System. That does not suggest that Bridges has a box seat, but suggests an Opportunity for change.
National have not changed any of their policies for thirty years. Bridges has consciously moved the party further right on social issues and economically he remains completely enamoured with the short termist neoliberalism of the Key era. I have major doubts he wants or is capable of taking advantage of any opportunities…
Putting Labour/National aside Sanctuary, do you think that there is a mood in the population for a significant desire to move into a more people centred way of life?
I guess right now a lot of people have had a glimpse of a different way that looks quite nice. I would think for most children and pets, who don't grasp what is going on, the coronaviris has been a period of unalloyed bliss at having their parents at home. And most parents have probably been really, really happy to spend more time with their families.
It may be that after this the workforce participation slumps for reasons entirely to do with different lifestyle choices as one parent decides they actually preferred being at home and you know what? They can just about make do on one income. But we already know a lot of (lets be honest) mums would stop work tomorrow to be full time wives and mothers if they had the choice.
But the thing is, the lockdown was really a glimpse of what the cost of being a rich country is, because it looked a lot like those charming but poor places we like to go on holiday look like. Slower pace, lots of ambling around, people having the time to talk and play with their kids. Are we really willing to take the insularity of poverty (the poor people in any country don't travel) and the consequences of poverty in exchange for a more people centred way of life? I doubt it. We are a rich first world country and we like it that way, by and large.
A four week lockdown won't undo a generation of consumption led materialism but I think that it produced a moment that bold leadership could achieve some wins in – people have marveled at how wonderful Auckland has been without cars and how fun cycling has been, for example. Before that memory fades why not seize the moment to announce a huge program to make Auckland a cycling, walking and PT flagship for the world?
The sense of national unity & crisis could be usefully harnessed as well, perhaps with the idea of a UBI (if practical) or a CGT to offset a cut in GST.
But to sum up, I think the main mood of the land is to just get back to life as normal – which for most of us in these islands of ours is really rather pleasant.
Thanks Sanctuary. Suppose most people are a bit self-centred but there is a last resort of Hope.
A good month ago, trump said he only expected 60,000 deaths in the USA. I remember thinking, that's more than the population of our whole region, and felt shocked that he used it as a throw away number. Like the deaths of 60,000 people was nothing.
He continued bragging and lying, claiming he had saved the lives of millions of American's by taking fast action. And that 60,000 was a small number compared with that.
Today the number of Covid19 deaths in the USA has reached the disturbing number of 61,112
But he still has the best words.
It is the expressions on the faces of the skilled folk behind him that shock.
Lololz… God help 'Murica.
Two John Key stories on the Hurled website this morning.
The signs are there for the resurrection of the neoliberal messiah.
If Simon cant sell their message someone has to
Pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the Tories increasing alarm at their dismal prospects in September.
more at stake than the election result…..BAU is paramount regardless
Taxpayer money to pimp hollowman mouthpiece shonky.
Nice work if you can get it. What a joke this media landscape is….grow a pair faafoi.
The Knights of the Realm are riding again. Sir John, Sir Bob, Sir Ray, et cetera. It is Election Year and they crave attention and relevance. It provides the MSM with cheap easy fodder for the electorate too. Meanwhile National can play in the ERC sandpit and brag about it on Social Media. BAU.
You forgot Sir Keir demanding a way to get out of lockdown
Also Paul Henry back. I am finding this reappearance of Key and Henry quite disturbing. Waiting for a lot of beat ups against the Government in the media to happen soon. Spearheaded by PH,MH and TO. Also expecting Paula Bennett to be huddling in with this lot. Jacinda will need to be on the top of her game to keep a lid on people like Winston and Shane et al to have a clean shot at the election. And who in the heck is Chris? Keys main squeeze.
When I first heard Henry's Zoom show was to be called "Rebuilding Paradise" I immediately assumed they meant rebuilding from the ravages of a Labour government rather than the pandemic.
I suspect that's exactly what they meant.
Well I accidentally caught about 2 minutes of Paul Henry which should be enough for several years.
He had chosen to run a series of clips of public people on operating on Zoom- mocking and making fun of the backgrounds in the shots. Now we all know that there have been "accidental disclosures" to amuse us but to use a major media platform in an attempt to humiliate people doing their job under trying circumstances felt just plain nasty and hardly the stuff of necessary and serious discussion..
Plus Cameron Slater has recovered and blogging again, it's like it's 2012 all over again.
We now refer to the Herald as "The Collected Thoughts of John Key". Slap a couple of little red (or blue?) covers on it and distribute it to the faithful, hand it out at street corners, and publicly shame those who do not abide by its precepts. ZB hosts could start each show with a reading from it, followed by detailed exegesis of the text and its meaning for our lives in the present moment.
Simple explanation is that The Herald has gone completely mental over Bridge's poor performance and has reverted to past glories to keep the gloss on the National Party brand.
Evil thought experiment is that they are preparing the ground for John Key to step in as caretaker leader for the 2020 election, He then wins, because after lockdown everyone really, really wants to have a beer with him, and then hands over the PM role to Luxon in 2022.
God will protect him. "Vice president Mike Pence toured the Mayo Clinic without wearing a face mask, despite being told by officials it was a requirement."
"The clinic is forcing everyone who enters, whether as a guest or a patient, to wear a face mask while at the facility, to help stop the spread of coronavirus." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-mike-pence-face-mask-mayo-clinic-a9489096.html
Was their force insufficient?? Or did they concede that the VP is above rules that apply to all (like our current health minister).
Seems dog’s protection isn’t going so well.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/a-phantom-plague-evangelicals-who-defied-social-distancing-guidelines-are-dying-of-coronavirus-in-frightening-numbers/
Heh. Reminds me when I'd see gate signs in the suburbs saying `beware the dog' & recall anglican preachers bombarding me with `beware of God' propaganda when I was young. Gate signs saying beware the god would probably sell like hot cakes nowadays, there's so many ironists & nostalgia freaks around. There's an idea for covid-struck business folk seeking to diversify.
God works in mysterious ways, and social darwinism is one of them. Seeing the virus take out those preachers in the USA probably induces in Pence a typical reaction. Their faith was not strong enough!
Righteous rant on the anti-intellectualism and the dangerous willful ignorance of tRump's 'Murica.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1255278190769160194.html
Awww, c'mon joe. Open your eyes! Free your mind from constraints! Can't do this, can't do that, that's just what they want you to believe.
I guess god just loved them even more than they claimed.
"The broader grounds of Warren’s endorsement demonstrate that Biden has cleared the bar for political praise set by a coalition of “Any Functioning Adult 2020” bumper stickers."
Gee, dunno about that. Strikes me it's a race between two geriatrics, both intent on signalling that they are already senile: Malfunctioning Adults 2020. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/joe-biden-progessives-2020.html?via=features
The writer explains "How Progressives Can Get Behind Joe Biden Without Losing Their Credibility". Unsuccessfully.
"Smart activists will take note of the way Biden has slowly but surely followed his party to the left." Like a tortoise chasing a worm?
Election 2020
Demented Rapist VS Demented Rapist
The perfect candidate.
Bolsonaro is a threat to his team-mates and may have to be removed….
"But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/so-what-bolsonaro-shrugs-off-brazil-rising-coronavirus-death-toll
"A wave of disgust swept over social media as word of the president’s comments spread. “A sociopath,” tweeted the musician Nando Moura. “What a tragedy,” wrote the journalist Sônia Bridi."
This could be very good news.
Tests in recovered patients in S. Korea found false positives, not reinfections, experts say
SEOUL — South Korea’s infectious disease experts said Thursday that dead virus fragments were the likely cause of over 260 people here testing positive again for the novel coronavirus days and even weeks after marking full recoveries.
Oh Myoung-don, who leads the central clinical committee for emerging disease control, said the committee members found little reason to believe that those cases could be COVID-19 reinfections or reactivations, which would have made global efforts to contain the virus much more daunting.
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1266758/tests-in-recovered-patients-in-s-korea-found-false-positives-not-reinfections-experts-say
I hope I'm wrong but I fear we may see a spike in infected people in a couple weeks, other than the fast food queues today I saw tradies all in a row on scaffolding, tradies in vans, a truck with 3 people on the front seat, and a funeral service, 100s of people gathered outside, I would have thought that was still disallowed under L3? So I guess we shall see how it all goes, such a shame as I see a lot of other people really trying.
Tradies seem to respond when you quietly remind someone in charge that workers are very obvious and risk having their worksite shut down. Does the same strategy work for queues at fast food joints. If not, then a few need to be closed down so the patrons get the message.
Here in Brisbane we've effectively been at Level 3 all the way through. The first few weeks were a bit chaotic, but as the majority of people did the right thing and set the right examples, fairly quickly the rest got with the plan.
It takes time for people to take on new behaviours, and not everyone does it at the same pace. Think bell curve, early, mid and late adopters.
I agree people have now really relaxed.
The word "elimination" is a problem. The word has a specific meaning in epidemiology, which differs to what Joe Ordinary would think elimination means. For that reason I think it was unwise to claim publicly that New Zealand had eliminated the virus, as people would draw the wrong conclusions.
Its not surprising that such headlines made people think we were now safe.
Oooh, Drumpfelthinskin might be feeling the heat a wee bit. Now he's turning his feral shouting tufted meatball routine on his re-election campaign team.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/29/politics/donald-trump-brad-parscale-campaign-coronavirus/index.html
It's going to be ugly. Who and what is he going to take down with him?
The most dangerous moment will be when he finally realises it's over for him. That's when he's going to try to do real damage with his lashing out. Like a domestic abuser realising their victim is really truly walking out and leaving it behind.
Poor wee Boy 🙁 – he's upset now with Faux News too!
Seems like he has a new bestie now OANN.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/29/fox-news-trump-democratic-talking-points
My money is still on a cheeseburger to take him out.
Just one? I'll go with hamberders.
hamberder (noun): a bulk order of budget range loss-leader junk food burgers left to go cold and congealed, then stacked in a large pile
The final cheeseburger will be final. 🙂
On the so-called plan B and it's initial poster child, Sweden…
Sweden's far-right chief state epidemiologists, Anders Tengell is being increasingly exposed as a bullshitter who has dignified his ideological preference to sit on his hands and conduct an experiment in eugenics as a "model".
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/04/20/commentary/world-commentary/grim-truth-swedish-model/#.XqoI1agzaUl
As Richard Seymour eloquently puts it: (Patreon patrons only, so no link. Pay up for the tasty stuff!)
"…Sweden's unfolding policy debacle, which is now being mythologised as a 'model'. There is no 'model'. Just as the British government has retrospectively justified each of its pratfalls and forced moves by claiming it was all part of a cunning strategy, so the Swedish government and its apologists are dignifying a stupid calamity by calling it a 'model'. Just like the British government, the Swedish government did not set out wanting to shut high schools, and Universities, and ban large gatherings. The position was forced on them by the fact that the spread of the disease made their position ridiculous. And by the growing despair and alarm, still unabated, among the country's epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists and other disease specialists…"
Sweden's current death rate (and let's not think it might not accelerate) by going on just official figures – which will all be underestimates – is 231 per million. Let that sink in. For NZ, that translates to 1155 dead and climbing, with a poorly prepared public health system probably already collapsing. IHME modelling – https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden – expects the country's death rate to spike toward the end of May, leading to a total of 15,625 deaths. That would be over 1500 deaths per million. For us, that would be 7500 dead New Zealanders – that is the spike, not the final total. Most likely, using Swedens approach NZ's dead in a matter of several months would approach or exceed our losses in WW2 (11,625), which took 61 months to fight.
One other thing – Swedenss ICU capacity is double that being used. This reflects a ruthless triaging of patients. As one of the disease specialists critical of Tegnell’s approach points out, “the mean age of those who have died is 20 years higher than the mean age of those treated in ICUs”.
Which means, in laymans turns, the old have been left to die
When asked about the high number of deaths in rest care homes the Swedish govt said "that wasn't part of the plan" & the Brits "that's within the margin of error". Our pollies couldn't get away with that blitheness.
An English friend of mine who lives in NZ has lost her father to Covid 19 back in England. He was 84 years old and had an underlying health condition. He lived in a retirement home and was never taken to hospital for treatment. The carers at the home no doubt did what they could for him but he was – effectively – left to die.
It happened about 2 weeks ago so his death is not part of the official statistics. It would not surprise me if cause of death was officially attributed to the underlying condition even though he had tested positive for Covid 19.
Multiply his situation by the many elderly folk in rest homes who were not included in their statistics… it makes a mockery of the so-called official figures. Multiply that again by the many thousands of elderly folk who have died of Covid 19 in other countries who likewise are fudging their figures… and the world tally thus far is probably almost twice as high as what is being reported.
It stands to reason that under the Trump regime the real US total is way above what has been admitted to at this stage.
Link to an interview with one of the epidemiologists in Sweden who advises Tengell.
https://larspsyll.wordpress.com/2020/04/26/johan-giesecke-on-why-lockdowns-are-the-wrong-policy/
I don't think Sweden asked to be a poster child for plan B or that their policy has been implemented without a model. To the extent that it differs from other countries they have not implemented some lock-down procedures and so they won't see spikes in the cases as these restrictions are wound back. If this works better as a strategy can only be discerned after other countries have wound back lock-down procedures and reviewing the impact of the virus after that has occurred.
I would also suggest that somewhere like New Zealand this would be (has been) considered quite differently due to our geographic isolation advantage.
"It won’t be long before Treasury and the Reserve Bank (RBNZ) enter taboo territory and work together more closely to keep the economy afloat."
https://www.interest.co.nz/bonds/104780/experienced-banker-makes-case-%C2%A0rbnz-following-%C2%A0bank-england-directly-financing
“There may be some market pullback if the RBNZ is no longer directly active in the local bond market,” Keane said.
“For that reason, it would be appropriate for the RBNZ to continue executing some portion of its QE program on-market, thus maintaining the focus of the dealer community and the support for bond prices.”
There may well be quite considerable pullback…..we may find out sooner than we would like.
Would be cool if the govt were to do a pr thing with the media along the lines of `quantitative easing for dummies': "Well, the Reserve Bank has this magic money tree, and every now & then they give it a shake & dollars float down like autumn leaves."
"We've considered helicopter money but the people would freak out if the choppers were painted black. We figured green would work but when we put it to the Greens those who favoured enhanced brand recognition got out-voted by the fundamentalists averse to using fossil fuels. So the idea's on hold till we get electric helicopters."
there is no magic money tree….the only question is how long the illusion there is can be maintained…..personally I think not long at all, others differ.
There are only resources and they are limited and diminishing…and increasingly need to be divided among more (inequality aside)….the best we can hope for is to learn to use them more efficiently (and equitably) so they last as long as possible….that could be millennia but on current form it is likely decades.
And that requires co-operation….and that includes those naturally competitive.
you see the problem?
Oh yeah. Rightists, mainly. Old dogs, new tricks. However, it is possible to induce anyone to reframe on current circumstances so there's a realistic basis for optimism.
Tell rightists to reflect on how the All Blacks succeed by combining competition and collaboration. Instruct them to deduce that the general principle applies to all similar team sports. Ask them "Can you walk and chew gum simultaneously?"
If they say no, suggest they become a National Party candidate. If they say yes, ask them if they can think of any reason a politician can't compete sometimes and collaborate sometimes just as team players do.
Ask them if they are aware that medium to large businesses have been training their staff in how to operate as teams since the 1980s. If no, they may be a farmer, of course. If yes, explain that politicians have similar average intelligence to employees & voters, so you'd expect them to get the picture by now.
Should only take a couple of minutes. Half the time a problem looms until you change your perspective, then you suddenly see how to diffuse it.
leftist/ rightist wrong framing….refer 2.3.2.1.1.1.
Okay – I did wonder. So nations need to do likewise; pursue a strategy of collaborating in suitable contexts, while maintaining a competitive economic policy to produce trade goods efficiently on a sustainable basis.
except without constraint the efficiency tends towards output, not best use.
There needs to be an enforced strategy that promotes 'best use'…and laissez faire aint it.
Pat,
It is a fallacy that resources are limited and diminishing. Resources are invented all the time. Lithium was a non resource until it became necessary for lithium batteries. But when the next generation of batteries come along, lithium may no longer be needed. Already oil and coal are being left in the ground as new resources start to replace them.
Are you God Wayne?….the earth is finite ipso facto resources are finite,
What we can do with what we have is not unlimited…indeed it is constrained by many factors…and every currency is only representative.
Dollars dont trump physics.
Stuff is getting added to the earth – so not really "finite" and there is always the chance of a another meteorite hit. Another effectively infinite input is sunlight.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/geology/article/45/2/119/195213
lol…why settle for a meteorite…how about an asteroid?
And even the sun aint infinite…timing is everything
Or UFOs.
Invasion of the body snatchers?….could explain Trump.
Brilliant. I thought we might have to mine the asteroid belt, when it was just a matter of waiting for the dust to come to 'us' – problem solved
Alas, the daily input of cosmic dust is insufficient to compensate for the loss of hydrogen and helium – the Earth is on a fairly steady weight loss programme, as if it really matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass#Variation
Fwiw, I thought Wayne's "It is a fallacy that resources are limited and diminishing." comment was priceless. Just as well lawyers aren't coordinating NZ's Covid-19 response!
"We can always pay another lawyer, for a different, opinion".
Do tell, what are these new resources replacing oil and coal?
Good luck with that. You will probably get some bumf about how the government is managing its spending to reduce the inflation rate to above the reserve banks policy targets out. After all its really important by which particular mental gymnastics the government has ended up owing itself a few bucks.
Fresh water is finite, that freaked the fuk outta me when I heard that! & of course it's perspective, it depends where you are, for eg water certainly finite up in Northland.
Another link explaining how the Bank of England is directly financing the UK government at present and how that works.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=44808
The summary is that it makes little difference how the funding is arranged, with QE and secondary bond market purchases the RBNZ is already effectively directly financing the New Zealand government.
No catastrophic death toll from a pandemic if no one knows about it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495295-florida-ordered-coroners-to-stop-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-report
That is a sort of Trump reasoning. We can reduce the number of deaths by not publishing the numbers. So Florida is doing very well you see.
Is John Key trying to set himself up for a place high on the Nats party list?
Is Goodfellas retiring?
Is an arsehole an arsehole?
Like the Juicy van owner in Auckland found out, never leave your Key in the ignition with the door unlocked……
Odd thing to say.
Probably just wants a cruisey job with Labours cronies.
"Odd thing to say."
National Party MPs and the hologram trying to rough up the new Police Commissioner.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/04/that-s-a-disgrace-mps-police-commissioner-in-fiery-clash-over-covid-19-community-roadblocks.html
As far as I can se this is just another desperate attempt by National to get some, any, news coverage. The mercenary who went to Iraq to look after some dogs tries to pressure the Police Commissioner to 'give him some names'.
Honestly, if Mark Mitchell ever gets near a ministerial position, we should be very, very afraid. The man is as corrupt and evil as they come.
All this over a few checkpoints which I'm sure didn't block any locals at all. It's National Maori-bashing because that is the only thing they are good at.
In addition, Parliament sat this week so why the fuck do we have to put up with the butchers committee still? It’s turning into a circus.
The chances are they have also got it in for the new Police Commissioner because he was appointed by the Ardern-led government.
Their childishness and venom knows no boundaries.
And I agree with you about Mark Mitchell – a narrow minded officially backed thug who maybe cunning as a fox but actually has few brain cells inside his head. And he's one of the leading contenders for the race to be the next leader of the National Party. The Nats are growing more like a down-under version of the Trump regime every day.
I do not know which political camp Coster is in. I do know that he was appointed for 5 years.
Is it the 5 year appointment or that the PM appointed Coster or both?
His appointment was announced by the PM about two to three months ago and he took up the position of Commissioner shortly before the Lockdown started. I have no idea what his politics are and his appointment was made on merit not politics anyway. The Nats are just being childish and stupid.
I recall John Key appointing the current DG of the SIS some years back. The Labour Opposition welcomed the appointment and agreed she was a good choice. From memory Andrew Little was the leader.
What a difference in responses.
I watched most of the Coster interview. Bridges thought he was in a courtroom being a prosecutor and Coster had to be the defence.
So Bridges et al do not think it appropriate for communities to gently remind people of their obligations with some sympathy from the Police. There is another option. In Australia, the exemplar that National seem to be extolling, there is a different approach. Random stopping and instant fines of over $1000. Seemingly even Bridges would have been hit with his dumb-fuck trips between Tauranga and Wellington. To be sure, the sick excuse of a poor internet connection would not have had one second of consideration.
Farrar watch:
PDF earlier in the week claimed in an exclusive that Wally Haumaha had personally authorised the head of the Mongrel Mob, Sonny Fatu, as an essential worker.
Of course Police can't issue essential worker status, that falls to MBIE I believe. That didn't stop Farrar steaming ahead with false information from his source.
He's since had to walk back from that with a retraction after communication and clarification from Police. He's now threatening to OIA the Police for communications between Iwi and Police.
Thing is Farrar only fessed up in an update to the three day old post which, as everyone knows, are unread. I think the Police should demand he issue a retraction and apologise to Police in a new post.
This whole thing, when viewed against Mitchell and Seymour attacking the Police Commissioner today in the Butchers' Committee Zoom meetings, reinforces the very, very close connection and communication on strategy between Farrar and the National Party.
What one does, the other does…
I've seen so many graphs in so many sources in recent months. Cartoons too.
There's a graph/cartoon to be drawn for someone who has the skill. Two lines on a time scale.
A plunging one from left to right: "National polling figures."
A soaring one from left to right: "The desperation, nastiness and bullshit on Kiwiblog."
The devil will be in the detail but on the face of it this looks like a mistake.
https://www.interest.co.nz/business/104786/another-wave-government-support-way-business-crown-give-covid-19-affected-smes-loans
Extremely stupid woman calls Tulsi Gabbard a "toady"
Then she admits she doesn't even know what the word means.
Middle of a pandemic and the IiC is up at midnight bagging talking heads.
So much yet to be learned about this virus.
"Doctors around the world have reported more cases of a rare but potentially lethal inflammatory syndrome in children that appears to be linked to coronavirus infections."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/29/more-cases-of-rare-syndrome-in-children-reported-globally
Yeah that story slowly gaining momentum, might wake a few Truthers up.