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April 19, 2020 8:00am by Kokila Patel

General Debate 19 April 2020

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PhilBest

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/canada/canada-proposing-to-imprison-anyone-who-argues-against-the-government-bill-gates/

Canada proposing prison for anyone arguing against the government’s COVID-19 information….

Mark Steyn has a good rant about this on his latest podcast / daily show

https://www.steynonline.com/10234/the-sages-and-the-non-essentials

As he points out, no-one is more guilty of misinformation than the government itself; and we’re being asked to submit to “rule by experts” at the very time the experts have never been proven more wrong…
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April 19, 2020 8:00am
- Classic Liberal
  
  Nat radio today actually some correct information in interview w prof Michael Levit (sp): there’s been a total overreaction, hardly more deaths than normal flu season, last flu season v mild so more vulnerable ppl available for covid, and total natural causes deaths also pretty normal. And most importantly: ppl die and life years lost should b in any proper calculations. When mainly over 80s die, it just isn’t the same for a country as when young ppl die. insurance co and health service normally evaluate yrs of life lost, but suddenly govt has forgotten that ppl do die. Worth a listen, tho on red radio.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:16am
  - WaveyDavey
    
    Incoming Dr Siouxsie whine in 3… 2… 1…
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:33am
    - johnson777
      
      [Third time not lucky johnson – you posted this at least twice already. Mod]
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:35am
      - johnson777
        
        Here; something different for the censors.
        
        “Canada proposing prison for anyone arguing against the government’s COVID-19 information.”
        
        Ha, ha, ha, ha.
        
        It’s a HOAX.
        
        The COVID-19 HOAX can be seen in the way COVID-19 spread.
        
        It spread to the whole world but jumped over the major Chinese cities.
        
        You know Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, etc.
        
        You know Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, etc. On March 16,
        
        Beijing Municipality had 442 confirmed cases of Covid-19 (population 20 million),
        Shanghai Municipality had 353 confirmed cases of Covid-19 (population 23 million),
        Guangdong Province had 1,357 confirmed cases of Covid-19 (population 104 million),
        Hong Kong Region had 141 confirmed cases of Covid-19 (population 7 million).
        
        Get that… it didn’t appreciably spread (before or after the Chinese lockdown) to any of the major Chinese cities.
        
        But it massively spread (before the Chinese lockdown) to Iran and Italy.
        
        How’s that?
        
        http://www.preearth.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1184
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:16pm
  - Clyde
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Jim Mora is actually one of the best interviewers on radio – along with Kathryn Ryan – and I also listened to this interview. The subject ended up actually saying that he didn’t know the real effects of this virus. Worth noting that in Israel – where he was speaking from – no-one was allowed to travel more than 100m from their home.
    
    To suggest that there is a world-wide conspiracy or mass panic is just too stupid to even to reply to.
    
    Worth listening to Media Watch as well when Mike Hosking was once more exposed after he did his normal verbal dribble about Iceland. Turned out he was so wrong in his stats – but he has that opinion platform where he doesn’t need, or want, to withdraw.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:07am
    - PhilBest
      
      His point is correct even if his “stats” weren’t quoted perfectly. Iceland stands out for determining early on, the rate of asymptomatic infection. We should be grateful to them.
      
      One constantly detects a deep anguish on the part of the alarmists, about “the right statistics” actually being investigated by anyone. Naughty Iceland! Naughty anyone, including epidemiologists, who dare to make use of those statistics! The GIGO models are gospel!!
      
      I don’t believe in an organised global conspiracy; I do believe in groupthink, the predictability of the way people react to any given situation depending on their political beliefs; and I also believe that by a process of self-selection in the hiring approaches in bureaucracies everywhere and anywhere, they are inevitably stacked by “progressives”. Those who are not progressives don’t have the same “live, breathe, sleep” their political beleifs so they wouldn’t even bother to think of “gate-keeping” their own institutions. One day they find it’s too late and they are a marginalized, “discredited”, “denier” of what is now the “approved” “science” or whatever.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:27am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
      I think Media Watch should give up on critiquing Hosking. He;s always wrong, about everything, and everyone already knows that. Attention paid to his farcical show just fuels a belief that it is somehow relevant.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:36am
      - Peter Lane
        
        Ah the old ‘everyone knows that’ line.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:39am
      - JackRabbit
        
        “He;s always wrong, about everything, and everyone already knows that. ”
        
        Absolutes and Extremes:
        Always
        Everything
        Everyone
        
        What if I say, mikenmildagain is Always an unthinking idiot, About Everything, and Everyone knows that?
        
        Mirror Mirror on the Wall…
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:41am
      - kowtow
        
        Media Watch should be renamed Purity Watch , a sub division of the Ministry of Truth .
        It critiques the miniscule amount of media that is not toeing the party line.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:56am
      - emmess
        
        Hosking is virtually the only journalist in this country willing to really question the government.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:01am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
        Perhaps I expressed that badly. There is no point in critiquing Hosking, because no one is interested in a critique of him. For his fans, he’s great; for everyone else, he’s a moron. Mediawatch does some very good stories, but it lets itself down by wasting valuable minutes on Hosking’s dross.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:27am
      - JackRabbit
        
        @mikenmildagain.
        
        Again!
        
        “…no one is interested in a critique of him. For his fans, he’s great; for everyone else, he’s a moron.”
        
        Here we go with extremes again.
        
        “no one is interested in a critique of him.” What, not even his fans?
        
        “To Everyone Else … he’s a moron.”
        
        What if said:
        No-one likes mikenmildagain. To his fans (all three of them), he’s great.
        
        “To Everyone Else … he’s a Richard Head.”
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:26pm
  - Wayne Mapp
    
    Why don’t you go to New York and try and tell them it is really no different to the normal flu with just the usual mortality rate (or try that in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and the UK).
    
    When Covid gets a real bite, the death rate gets way above normal flu.
    
    In New York, it is now nearly 1 in 1000 who have died. Sure most of them are older, but in most cases they have died earlier than they otherwise would have. And there are lots of younger people (under 60) as well who have died.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:16am
    - MT_Tinman
      
      Or perhaps Wayne we look at Sweden (as you suggested yesterday) compared with Belgium, or maybe Belarus.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:31am
      - Wayne Mapp
        
        Surely the better comparison for Sweden is Denmark, Finland and Norway.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:10pm
    - PhilBest
      
      Bear in mind that in New York, mortality from almost ALL causes is higher, especially in the elderly.
      
      High urban density; mass transit systems; housing unaffordability that condemns many to tenement accommodation; concentration of pollutants and pathogens of all kinds; so much for “vibrant urbanism”.
      
      The other factor that makes ALL of the epicentres what they are, including NYC, is that they not only were “too casual” until too late, about sensible distancing, etc – they were “full retard” insisting that life go on as normal – in the case of Democrat-run local administrations in the USA, this was because Bad Orange Man “exploiting imaginary crisis in the cause of xenophobia”.
      
      Are Kiwis even aware of how hypocritical and shameless Nancy Pelosi looks right now? She did a TV publicity stunt in mid February, visiting Chinatown in San Fran and urging all Americans to support their city’s Chinatowns public events and hospitality sectors “to make a statement”. She’s since deleted this off her own social media but Team Trump has completely wrecked her over it with preserved footage.
      
      See also:
      
      http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2020/04/identity-politics-lied-new-yorkers-died.html
      
      Wayne, you epitomise the class of “centre right” person who needs to wake up about the nature of the progressive Left and stop letting them use you as a doormat.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:35am
      - Jack5
        
        Meanwhile Taiwan’s Covid-19 cases have jumped 3 to 398, 6 deaths. Total population: 23.6 million.
        
        Hong Kong: 1,024 cases, 4 deaths. Population 7.48 million.
        
        New Zealand, 1,422 cases, 6 deaths. Population 4.95 million.
        
        These parts of east Asia are invisible to those who kow-tow to Beijing.
        
        Meanwhile, in Singapore, there has been a big spike in cases after the island republic seemed to be doing well in Covid-19 control.
        
        The cause has been foreign “guest workers”.
        
        There soon will be pressure to bring in thousands of Melanesian and Polynesian “guest workers” to harvest and process our horticultural crops.
        
        This could be, to use the news-speak cliche “a tipping point”, on the NZ economy and disease control balance see-saw.
        
        The Woke don’t like guest worker issues questioned, so we aren’t hearing or reading much about this, or what guest-worker inflow has done to Singapore.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:21am
      - Benedict Yu
        
        “There soon will be pressure to bring in thousands of Melanesian and Polynesian “guest workers” to harvest and process our horticultural crops.”
        
        Won’t there be thousands of newly unemployed New Zealanders who can do that?
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:41am
      - Wayne Mapp
        
        Phil,
        
        I guess myself and the great majority of National MP’s are in your definition of the class of “centre-right”.
        
        Basically you are confusing “centre-right” with “right” at least as it applies in New Zealand. In NZ the centre-right are essentially in the same zone as Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, at least as he was while President.
        
        If I wanted to be “centre-right” as per your definition I would need to join ACT.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:16pm
      - johnson777
        
        @Jack5 What about China?
        
        Covid-19 deaths (todays) for the Chinese Provinces/Municipalities from the Johns Hopkins University website
        
        https://www.gisaid.org/epiflu-applications/global-cases-covid-19/
        
        4,512 deaths Hubei China
        22 deaths Henan China
        13 deaths Heilongjiang China
        8 deaths Beijing China
        8 deaths Guangdong China
        7 deaths Shandong China
        7 deaths Shanghai China
        6 deaths Anhui China
        6 deaths Chongqing China
        6 deaths Hainan China
        6 deaths Hebei China
        4 deaths Hong Kong China
        4 deaths Hunan China
        3 deaths Shaanxi China
        3 deaths Sichuan China
        3 deaths Tianjin China
        3 deaths Xinjiang China
        2 deaths Gansu China
        2 deaths Guangxi China
        2 deaths Guizhou China
        2 deaths Liaoning China
        2 deaths Yunnan China
        1 death Fujian China
        1 death Inner Mongolia China
        1 death Jiangxi China
        1 death Jilin China
        1 death Zhejiang China
        
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        April 19, 2020 2:02pm
    - fisho
      
      1 in 1000 is 0.1% Wayne, which is significantly lower than the forecast/modelled 3% that kicked off this panic-demic in the first place.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:59am
    - carl wiekart
      
      Spoken like a true alarmist who gets their stats from the news and not from actual data.
      
      The death rates have been on par with bad flu seasons. Some countries are actually still having less deaths than they normally would for the same time of year..
      
      Just because you get the stats of one form of death every day doesn’t mean it is on top of those that die anyway.
      
      Out of 23 published data sets from European countries 16 have no change or less mortality rates than the average. Those that have spikes being Italy, uk Spain etc are on par with a bad flu season.
      
      Those are the actual stats
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:05am
    - JackRabbit
      
      “In New York, it is now nearly 1 in 1000 who have died.”
      
      I notice that you didn’t qualify how these people died.
      
      And how do you know that these 1 in 1000 deaths are in healthy individuals that had no pre-existing underlying health issues that would have been bowled over by a bad flu?
      
      How do you know?
      
      Statements without facts is not truth.
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:30pm
    - MrTips
      
      Wayne : 1 in 1000 is 0.1%
      That’s the death rate from the flu.
      So why couldn’t NY cope with an event rate like that, that they are used to.
      Paranoia and Cuomo most likely
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:55pm
      - Wayne Mapp
        
        MrTips
        
        One in a thousand New Yorkers do not die of the flu in a 4 week period. The morality rate you are talking about is the rate of those who actually catch the flu, and who have symptoms. In the case of covid the rate in NY is closer to 7% (241,000 cases, 17,000 deaths). I would presume most people who have covid symptoms get tested.
        
        So no, it is not business as usual in terms of health outcomes in NY.
        
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        April 19, 2020 1:58pm
- Alex13
  
  “and we’re being asked to submit to “rule by experts” at the very time the experts have never been proven more wrong…”
  Is there a better option?
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:28am
  - hookerphil
    
    Of course there is – try the 16 year old school drop out for all the latest on climate change
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:41am
    - JackRabbit
      
      Or a petition of Kindy Kids.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:01pm
      - johnson777
        
        The U.S. Geological Survey people are not school drop outs.
        
        The U.S. Geological Survey people claim that;
        
        The Greenland ice sheet melting will raise sea-level 6.55 meters (21.5 feet),
        the West Antarctica ice sheet melting will raise sea-level 8.06 meters (26.4 feet),
        the East Antarctica ice sheet melting will raise sea-level 64.8 meters (212.6 feet),
        and all other ice melting will raise sea-level another 0.91 meters (3 feet).
        
        For a grand total of about 80 meters (263 feet).
        
        http://www.preearth.net/pdfs/USGS-sea-level-and-climate.pdf
        
        So, what does an 80 meter (263 feet) rise in sea-level mean. Have a look at the following map of the world after an 80 meter rise. It means that over one billion people will have to be resettled to higher ground and that much of the most productive agricultural land will be under water. Fortunately, at current rates, the Greenland ice sheet will take over a thousand years to melt and the Antarctica ice sheet, much longer. However, the greater the temperature rise the faster the ice sheets will melt, bringing the problem much closer. Remember, the huge ice sheet that recently covered much of North America, almost completely melted in only 15,000 years (today, only the Greenland ice sheet, and some other small patches of it, remain). Since then (15,000 years ago), sea-levels have risen about 125 meters (410 feet), only 80 meters to go.
        
        If you live in NZ this will be a big, big problem.
        
        Have you heard about this?
        
        http://preearth.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=23
        
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        April 19, 2020 2:11pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        @johnson777
        
        The U.S. Geological Survey people are not school drop outs. – But should have been.
        
        “West Antarctica ice sheet melting will raise sea-level 8.06 meters”
        
        According to NASA the West Antarctica ice sheet is not melting, but doubling at twice the rate the East Antarctica is reducing. East Antarctica is not melting but reducing through sublimation, and picked up by West Antarctica, as the magnetic poles continue to drift as they have done for eons.
        
        So many scientists come up with really really absurd “What if?” ideas. Like this one – where does the energy some from to melt the ice – crash the earth into the sun ? Who comes up with this shit!
        
        If there is enough energy to melt all the ice your biggest problem will not be displacement of people. It will be the 80° C increase in temperature you would need to worry about. Probably as a result of a giant meteor, or being nuked by the death star for unpaid Empire taxes.
        
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        April 19, 2020 6:06pm
  - PhilBest
    
    This guy seems to be doing a pretty good job of TRUTHFULLY representing the cross section of expert opinion that there is out there.
    
    Then it comes down to who you want to believe, and why. Progressives want to believe Garbage In, Garbage Out computer models above all else, because of what they, the progressives, want to see happen politically. There’s not a shred of honesty or true scientific objectivity about it. Just as with the global warming scam.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:38am
    - Wayne Mapp
      
      Frankly I prefer Dr Bloomfield, Professor Baker, and Sir Peter Gluckman to your views.
      
      Imagine you are actually the PM. All the leading scientific experts, including your own DG of Health say there is a pandemic, and you need to go to Level 3 (I will take the Aussie position for this, as being more palatable to you). Are you really going to say, “No, you are just a bunch of politically motivated no nothing public health experts. All we are going to do is Level 1 or 2.”
      
      Try and explain that publicly.
      
      Well, I guess that is being tried in Sweden, though at least their DG of Health recommended it. Not the case in NZ, the DG said Level 4. The Swedish “experiment” has shown the danger of their decision, but at least the PM can say “I was acting on official advice”. Try going against official advice on an issue like this.
      
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      April 19, 2020 2:14pm
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Jacinda Ardern tomorrow:
        “I have been reading comments on Kiwiblog and am now convinced that we can lift all lock-down restrictions. I was impressed by comments from ‘PhilBest’ and ‘JackRabbit’, who presented particularly cogent cases for ignoring my official advisors and pointy-headed scientists”.
        
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        April 19, 2020 2:33pm
      - Prisoner of Comrade Jacinda
        
        Would that be Dr Bloomfield who threw the entire NZ medical profession under a bus by claiming that the differences in outcome of Maori vs the Rest of the World were due to racism in the medical profession.
        
        Bet ya he has never made a formal complaint to the medical complaints authority!
        
        The man is a rat.
        
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        April 19, 2020 2:44pm
      - PhilBest
        
        I forgot to include this link in my original comment.
        
        https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/#latest
        
        Bloomfield, Baker, Gluckman! Bah!
        
        Are you interested in even engaging with criticism and rebuttal of the “experts” you slavishly believe in? The latest DPF posting is interesting, isn’t it? The Harrison audit of NZ’s modelling of COVID-19 risk. I suppose you wouldn’t even let Harrison in the Committee room door, like you did to Vincent Gray years ago.
        
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        April 19, 2020 3:04pm
      - Aunty
        
        I think we would have to say, Wayne, that the Swedish experiment has been a total failure. It has not only failed to stop the pandemic (as we appear to have done here in New Zealand) but also the deaths that go along with it, currently sitting at 1,511. Just how many more deaths will the Swedes put up with before they go into some form of a tighter lockdown? And would I want to live in a country that has that sort of attitude? Hell no!
        
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        April 19, 2020 3:14pm
      - Aunty
        
        Furthermore, the other shocking thing I find is that Sweden has (by my calculation) the 14th highest death toll from COVID-19 of any country in the entire world, yet in terms of its population it ranks in at only #91! If our death toll was as bad as the Swedes, we would have 720 dead New Zealanders with no sign of the deaths stopping anytime soon.
        
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        April 19, 2020 3:28pm
      - The Proper Ghandi
        
        Wayne
        I claim no medical expertise. However, the reality is that the current crop of experts in positions of influence are simply the experts who just happen to be around at the moment. So its all highly contingent. It could just as easily have been a different set of experts who had a different set of views – which ‘expert’ is correct? Who the fuck knows, because experts in the same field disagree constantly, there being no such thing as a “scientific consensus.” In the judicial system, for instance, experts are called for the prosecution, while experts with a divergent opinion are called by the defence. Yet, each is still an ‘expert’.
        
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        April 19, 2020 5:07pm
      - JackRabbit
        
        @mikenmildagain
        
        ” I was impressed by comments from ‘PhilBest’ and ‘JackRabbit’, who presented particularly cogent cases for ignoring my official advisors and pointy-headed scientists”
        
        Yes you joke, but that would be really daft wouldn’t it. The PM basing her decisions on a blog, no matter how good, is as bad as basing it on “phone a friend”.
        
        It also proves that you don’t engage with the substance of what is here. All you want to do is poke fun or oppose the ideas, but not follow the reasoning.
        
        I believe the benefit of KB is the exchange of ideas, facts and rationale. It is stimulus. And if as a result, Mx Ardern realises the mistake she has made, I hope she has the moral fortitude to correct it.
        
        “To make an error in judgement, and make a wrong decision, is not a mistake, it is an error of judgement. The error should be fleeting, and corrected immediately. To precariously cling to the wrong decision, and justify the error in judgement, is the mistake.”
        
        I prefer that quote, to this:
        
        “I made a mistake by being ejected from the presidency. Next time, I will choose a Cabinet which will allow me to be life President.”
        – Nelson Mandela
        
        A good leader does what is right by the country, not right for themselves. Nelson Mandela was not a good leader.
        
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        April 19, 2020 5:34pm
- peterwn
  
  Andy has painted Labour into a corner on this one. He can hardly argue in one breath that ordinary crims should be let out and then in the next breath that those convicted of ‘thinkcrime’ should be imprisoned. Similarly with votes for prisoners, presumably Labour thinking would be those imprisoned for ‘thinkcrime’ should not get the vote while a guy who T-bones a police dog van breaking the dog handler’s leg (the dog was OK) when fleeing from the police should get the vote while in prison.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:09am
  - pdm
    
    peterwin – hypocrisy comes easy for Angry Andy.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:04am
krazykiwi

For the past 40 years elections have been fought at the centre, and for the last 20 years slightly to the left of centre. Our Overton window has panned left with Labour picking up the pace, followed by National applying the brakes but not reversing the trend.

We are looking down the barrel of the largest economic shock in the history of our country, and while there is lots of debate about how we arrived here, there can be no debate about who is responsible: Ardern’s Labour government.

Their failure with routine business (building a few houses, planting trees, running a disciplined team) makes them wholly unsuitable the task of fixing the social and economic disaster that they helped create.

The risk is National campaigning in the middle. Labour’s answer will be more State, more socialism, more control. We need an opposition that has the balls to attack Labour’s appalling mismanagement and the tragic consequences of their being left in control, and to offer a stark alternative on the way forward for New Zealand. To arrest the inexorable slide, or rather now, acceleration towards Venezuelan misery we need less State, more freedom and leadership that believes that New Zealanders know how best to organise and run their lives.

I believe National have a once in a lifetime opportunity this coming election. The old steady-as-she-goes rules do not apply.
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April 19, 2020 8:00am
- PhilBest
  
  Absolutely! No-one has lamented more than me, the way National just capitulated on Hulun’s program, not really changing anything in 2008. I don’t know that they have a clue about the Overton Window or the Ratchet Effect, and the consequences in the long term.
  
  But we are now in a position where all the touchy-feely, red tape, green tape, troughing, etc is completely and utterly unaffordable. We need to get just as realistic about the value of every new dollar of economic activity, as a third-world nation is. Otherwise we become a third world nation eventually.
  
  “Economic” considerations now need to be “the” criteria, not snails, “vibrant urbanism”, inanimate landforms, Taniwha, hurt feelings, etc etc
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:31am
  - Ian Boag
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Can you be specific? One could start with …
    
    Tax cuts. Top earners get a bigger $ cut than the people at the bottom but they deserve it and will put the money into the property market to save the economy.
    
    Flat 15% income tax with corresponding increase in GST.
    
    Kill all this housing standards stuff so mum and dad landlords can get the max for of renting cold damp overcrowded hovels?
    
    Eviction after one week of rent arrears.
    
    Kill the RMA so all those people sitting on city boundary rural land can make a killing selling it for housing?
    
    Bin the idea of a minimum wage.
    
    Kill ring-fencing of rental income/costs.
    
    Reduce all benefits and make it harder to get one. Reduce allowable extra earnings to zero.
    
    Councils to sell off social housing.
    
    Sell Housing NZ and all SOEs.
    
    Don’t touch the pension ….
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:59am
    - Captain Mainwaring
      
      You forgot the /sarc/ notation.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:28am
      - Ian Boag
        
        I tried not to suggest anything that hasn’t already been promoted on KB ….. 🙂
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:45am
    - Prince
      
      I can play that game.
      National will be up against Labour/Green policies;
      
      Tax increases. Top earners whacked 40% on earnings over $150K. ‘The most vulnerable’ under $50K get a guaranteed tax rebate ‘to simulate the local economy’.
      
      Increase Govt levies and additional taxes but allow ‘the most vulnerable’ to apply for exemptions.
      
      Tighten housing standards so mum and dad landlords give up and sell at bargain prices to ‘the most vulnerable’.
      
      Eviction only after 6 months warning, five official warnings. First $10k property damage to be apid by landlord.
      
      Tighten RMA so all private development is baulked, only Govt housing gets through.
      
      5% annual increase to minimum wage on top of average wage increase..
      
      Freeze rents.
      
      Increase all benefits and make it easier to get one. Remove allowable extra earnings sanctions. Emergency payments available on demand.
      
      Councils required to spend 10% of rates on social housing.
      Expand Housing NZ. Nationalise banks, oil companies, power companies, supermarkets.
      
      Don’t touch the pension ….
      
      This is fun eh.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:36am
      - Ian Boag
        
        Game.
        
        If I wanted to start pulling policies out of my arse as you have done I could probably come up with an even more impressive list.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:50am
    - artemisia
      
      Kill all this housing standards stuff so mum and dad landlords can get the max for of renting cold damp overcrowded hovels?
      
      Just on that part of the post —
      
      Cold – turn on the heaters then. Not the landlord’s problem if tenants can’t afford the power bill. Especially since insulation has been mandatory in rentals for some time now so that is no longer an excuse.
      
      Damp – mainly incompetent occupants, see the Tenancy Services website for the short list landlords are responsible to fix, and the long list entirely the responsibility of tenants. If tenants are causing dampness or mould, landlords should be onto that tout suite with a 14 day notice to fix.
      
      Overcrowded – certainly a real problem, especially in some demographics and a significant cause of cross infection. Landlords should act immediately to issue a 14 day notice to reduce the number of occupants to the maximum permitted by the tenancy agreement or the Housing Improvement Regulations.
      
      My point is that your list is very common, but bears little relation to the real world. The landlord is not your mum.
      
      But fortunately a shortage of rentals and increased compliance and costs means less than ideal tenants miss out on rentals and landlords have far fewer hassles to deal with.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:42am
    - Swifty
      
      A few fine ideas in that lot Ian.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:42am
    - PhilBest
      
      I’ll focus on just one of your points to show how poor your powers of logic are.
      
      “…Kill the RMA so all those people sitting on city boundary rural land can make a killing selling it for housing?…”
      
      In the cities in the annual affordability surveys that still have a house price median multiple of 3, this is because they DON’T have a boundary or rationing system of ex-fringe land and hence the prices the owners of that land can sell for, does NOT represent a “killing”.
      
      House prices are high and a killing is made BECAUSE of a growth boundary – those favored by every new slight shift of the boundary outwards get to make a capital gain in the order of 2000 percent or more, while those a couple of kms beyond still own “farms” as far as the value of that land is concerned.
      
      We never should have imposed these rentier-capitalist gouge-enabling boundaries in the first place, they are responsible for all the problems since, in affordability and the property cycle volatility. “Experts”who are still denying this after decades of evidence, epitomize the problem with ideologically driven logic-challenged “experts” completely screwing their whole society over. This differs only from the great 20th century planning disaster, in the scale and nature of the issue; the ideological blindness and the sheer conceit is the same.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:46am
- artemisia
  
  Any government after September will be cut a fair amount of slack over austerity measures. Ability to deliver will be crucial, but there are more votes in spin like ‘we saved thousands of our people from untimely death’.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:50am
  - kevn
    
    @art… ‘tens of thousands’ JA said.
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:58am
    - hookerphil
      
      She did say 80,000 at one stage.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:00am
      - pdm
        
        Then quickly reduced it to 10,000 as I recall.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:58pm
  - cmm
    
    Just think of all the tens of thousands of children who still have grannys and grandpas due to St Jizz.
    
    Imagine all the sadness that she has saved.
    
    #CinD4UN
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:09am
- Ipanema69
  
  Yes they do have a once in a lifetime opportunity. This could be very similar to the 84 election.
  
  I believe that the Sept elections will be a referendum on the economy, which will be in a very bad state by then. Additionally the covid 19 “crisis” will be viewed as an over reaction to the equivalent of a bad flu season.
  
  However I am not convinced that National needs to campaign on anything hugely specific. Governments loose elections oppositions dont win them.
  
  The open question is will the have the guts when elected to make the radical changes required.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:58am
  - Colville
    
    I think National need to campaign on a fully costed rebuild plan for gong forward.
    A two pronged attack…
    1 – Slash and burn existing wastefull shit of which there is plenty to choose from
    2 – Dig it / Drill it/ Build it. How and what exactly they will change to bring the economy back as fast as possible.
    
    Oh and continuing to tell Winston to go f**k himself and speeding the SFO along with their investigations.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:09am
    - Paulus Gnome
      
      Line in the sand.
      
      WFF to be capped and child benefit for the first two children only.
      
      25 2
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      April 19, 2020 10:00am
      - Ian Boag
        
        Pension to be untouched.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:14am
      - suzieq
        
        Amen to that.
        
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        April 19, 2020 5:57pm
    - Isobar
      
      Means testing the pension would save a few bob
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:45am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Seeing as its a benefit, rather than actual superannuation, means testing and/or raising the eligibility age would be sensible.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:30am
      - Classic Liberal
        
        That would need decades of warning. People currently retired or soon to retire are relying on the current ‘deal’ and can’t be suddenly caught short.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:57am
      - artemisia
        
        Means testing the pension would certainly save / create a lot of jobs. For public servants, accountants, financial advisers, lawyers. Many of the newly created roles will be kept busy ‘adjusting’ the means being tested. And unless means testing covers both income and assets (as it oughta) there will be a lot of switcheroo going on.
        
        Better to push the eligibility date out over time. Now that sounds familiar …
        
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        April 19, 2020 5:04pm
    - Ed Snack
      
      There’s always waste and excess to be at a key. Never seen any actual significant cutting under any government in my lifetime though. Snouts are not easily removed from troughs.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:59am
      - artemisia
        
        There has been some cutting back or canning completely some third party contracts where KPIs were not met. Health and gambling come to mind. Not much under the current government that I’ve noticed.
        
        30% waste in every process. CEOs must be required to identify and get rid.
        
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        April 19, 2020 5:08pm
    - ISeeRed
      
      I don’y see National as fit for purpose. They don’t seem to have learned any lessons from when they were last in power. Ultimately, just Labour-lite globalists in suits.
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:14pm
    - curry4me
      
      Colville: They should set up a dedicated FB page for ideas and info.
      
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      April 19, 2020 5:30pm
- kowtow
  
  The danger is the socialists will use this crisis to accelerate their agenda .
  
  This has been very clearly signalled .
  
  “Robertson – he said that while taking account of the “massive disruption to some sectors”, his longer-term plan is to also “address some of the long-standing challenges we face”.
  
  He specifically mentioned climate change, inequality, New Zealand’s low productivity, and trade diversification.
  
  Robertson reiterated the sentiment of a comment Ardern made on Tuesday, saying, “we must also not allow inequality to take hold in our recovery. In fact we need to take this opportunity to improve the prospects of all New Zealanders and tackle those long-standing divisions.”
  
  https://www.interest.co.nz/news/104552/grant-robertson-says-we-must-also-not-allow-inequality-take-hold-our-recovery-he
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:07am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Dangerous.
    Get them out as soon as possible. If this was a commercial situation they would have been fired. Also they may have been charged with fraud or false pretences holding themselves as able to do the job.
    Just look at Twyford and Genter as examples.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:26am
  - The Proper Ghandi
    
    ‘Inequality’? Inequality is what got us out of the caves for ffs. Unequal distribution of attributes is a fact of nature. No organism is equal to any other. Attempting to achieve equality would fly in the face of the laws of nature. Therefore a wholly unachievable construct should never be applied to humans. Logically, there would be no such concept as excellence without its antithesis, ineptitude. They are comparative concepts.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:57am
  - PhilBest
    
    FFS, the socialist talks about “NZ’s low productivity”??? WTF does he think is the cause of that, if it isn’t his side’s b—-y red tape, green tape, etc – and distortionary urban planning especially…?
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:49am
- DeepBlue
  
  In the job-seekers graph the kick up is going to go miles high, but the upward trend from 2017 election shows how bad Labour were at squashing jobs even before COVID.
  
  Labour have no job growth track record to date this term.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:17am
- freethinker
  
  Party vote ACT-10 ACT MPs to keep National Honest and effective . David Seymour for Deputy PM, Luxton for PM.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:34am
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    Didn’t Luxton retire about 20 years ago?
    Do you mean Luxon?
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:30am
    - Ian Boag
      
      Not criticizing the man, just pointing out that he doesn’t really walk on water. He stepped down from Air NZ when their earnings were at a peak. It was well-timed because earnings and share price fell about 30% shortly after.
      
      That was before the current Air NZ drop into the toilet. Noone could have averted that.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:01am
  - Isobar
    
    Ive often wondered why national voters strategically vote for NZF over Act. Poor old Act have been nothing but irrelevant since the 80s. Perhaps some new policies to get them to appeal to a new generation would help. Also probably a new brand, Act as a brand is damaged baggage.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:44am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      They should rebrand as the ‘Taxpayers’ ~~Union~~Party.
      
      1 21
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      April 19, 2020 11:31am
- Justitia
  
  Great comment Krazykiwi. I think the key issue, regardless of ideology, is that Labour has demonstrated it simply doesn’t have the skills to manage the major reconstruction of the economy that will be necessary in the coming months and years. Ardern has been allowed to recover some false credibility over the management of the pandemic response so far – Act and National need to go harder here. By September / November however that reputation will lie in tatters as the magnitude of the economic devastation becomes apparent to all but the most one-eyed Lefty, of which there are quite a few in this country admittedly. Austerity will not be the answer; massive investment will be necessary in projects and activities which contribute to rebuilding and enhancing our economy. The Zero Carbon legislation that National foolishly supported should also be immediately binned for starters.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:50am
  - ISeeRed
    
    Yep. That Zero Carbon insanity is an example of National. Just. Not. Getting. It.
    
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    April 19, 2020 12:16pm
PhilBest

I don’t agree with everything this Prof. Keith Woodford says, but his assessment of the government’s sham “border control” is spot on. They must have been drooling at the idea of a locked-down Police State experiment, therefore the more COVID-19 infections that came in through the border the better, from their perspective.

https://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/104604/forthcoming-decision-when-we-should-move-covid-level-3-high-risk-expectations-high

“…One day after the Prime Minister’s ‘hard and early’ announcement, in what was my fourth COVID-19 article and writing from high in the Canadian Rockies, I expressed the reservation that only time would tell if Jacinda had gone early enough.

Some two weeks earlier my wife and I had decided as a matter of community responsibility that we were going to self-isolate on our return from Canada, regardless of the official rules, and despite minimal cases of COVID-19 in Canada at that time. I was therefore appalled to see Air New Zealand putting on special wide-body jets from Australia on the evening of 15 March so people could beat the self-isolation requirements, and with the government extending the deadline so those flights could pour into New Zealand in the early hours of 16 March.

As I saw the glee with which my fellow Kiwi citizens exalted at their success in beating the self-isolation deadline, I could only say to myself, ‘these people do not understand what is happening’.

Since then there have also been some mis-steps around the management of self-isolation for those who arrived thereafter.

To put that into perspective, Taiwan has had (as of 18 April) 345 returnees who brought COVID-19 into the country, but they only passed that on, directly or indirectly to 50 additional people. In contrast, New Zealand had by that date 550 people who brought COVID-19 into the country but they passed it on, directly or indirectly to more than 850 people.

The difference reflects the fact that the Taiwan Government knew what they were doing whereas New Zealand had to start from scratch with almost no systems in place. This was despite knowing for months that COVID-19 was coming.

New Zealand has also had multiple problems with the supply and use of PPE, despite ongoing affirmations from Ministry of Health that supply was not an issue. Once again, the systems were not in place and health workers, particularly care-workers in rest-homes were inadequately trained in its use.

A consequence of this is that as at 18 April we have more than 60 health workers who are presumed to have been infected in the workplace. This includes a large number of rest-home carers…”
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April 19, 2020 8:00am
- Ruahine
  
  Very good points being made in the Post.
  To my mind the fixation that Ardern had on the media and hug fest in Christchurch has cost us billions.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:38am
  - Delicate lady voter
    
    100% this… she was so focussed on her Christchurch event that she refused to see the writing on the wall… the Pandemic had been declared and STILL she didn’t cancel Christchurch.
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:46am
    - Nickc2
      
      Its things like this that the National Party should be pounding the podium over. If the MSM won’t give them oxygen, they should hold a press conference and pound the podium about that too.
      Our MSM are pushing Cindy’s socialism agenda at every chance they get. Its about time National named and shamed Labour like journalists and their organisations. LETS DO THIS!
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:06am
      - Tony Stuart
        
        There’s a slight hitch to that plan Nick. If Bridges and National go feral on the media, who’s going to turn up to their podium-thumping press conferences?
        
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        April 19, 2020 9:19am
      - Nickc2
        
        @ Tony Stuart
        A good point Tony but not insurmountable. They could tell Barry Soper there is free booze being served in the auditorium and the whole press gallery would follow him. When they are all there, lock the doors and start pounding the podium. Better arrange a couple of wheel chairs for Auntie Audry and Fran O’sullivan.
        
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        April 19, 2020 9:54am
      - Paulus Gnome
        
        FOMO, they’ll be there even if only to write derisively there after.
        
        Sorry, more derisively if that is possible
        
        12 1
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        April 19, 2020 10:03am
      - Maggy Wassilieff
        
        who’s going to turn up to their podium-thumping press conferences?
        
        Well it’s about time the Nats got their Act into gear and stopped relying on the MSM for exposure.
        
        Kick the buggas to touch … and get some decent material out on every other platform available.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:07am
      - GT Build
        
        The msm are looking for a handout it will come lots of strings attached eg only nice words about the princess that is why at the moment lots of articles start the day saying one thing and are saying something else by the end of the day
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:08am
      - PhilBest
        
        Maggy is right. Trump has demonstrated that it is possible to go straight to the people over the heads of the media, and expose their dishonesty in the process. John Ansell commented right back at the start of Trump’s”outsider” run, at last, here’s somebody coming along who is doing it right, he’s going to win the Presidency.
        
        The MSM have become so utterly shameless because of the decades of lack of accountability, they present a target like ducks in a barrel when someone does actually take them on.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:52am
      - Piniwi
        
        Sure Nickc2 @9.06 am but timing is the key to such action as we remember the adage to “never interrupt the enemy when they are making fools of themselves”. The best time will be when the rank and file start to get to grips with what the new “normal” is like post lock down. Perhaps somewhere around the shortest day which is followed by the longest cold night of increasing shortages.
        
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        April 19, 2020 1:33pm
      - Nickc2
        
        @ Piniwi
        Yes, you are probably correct. However, the way I see it is that there is so much stuff out there at the moment that is going to waste in terms of making political capital. I think the longer we let the situation continue unchallenged, the less impact latter announcements will have as people will have gotten used to the situation and fail to see things the way they could/should be.
        Never mind though, your point is valid and worthy of consideration. TKS.
        
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        April 19, 2020 1:58pm
  - Lee C
    
    I agree, Ruahine, but perish the thought that the media might critically discuss this.
    
    In my view the Commemoration was to be a central plank of her re-election campaign, but once she realised it was untenable, she replaced it with the convid-19 response.
    
    All about the optics.
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:46am
    - Lee C
      
      feel free to down-tick milky.
      
      The operative word being ‘free’ , of course.
      
      28 3
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      April 19, 2020 9:07am
    - alloytoo
      
      I certainly share that view, we neither went hard nor early, waiting for March 15.
      
      5 1
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      April 19, 2020 12:50pm
- emmess
  
  To put that into perspective, Taiwan has had (as of 18 April) 345 returnees who brought COVID-19 into the country, but they only passed that on, directly or indirectly to 50 additional people. In contrast, New Zealand had by that date 550 people who brought COVID-19 into the country but they passed it on, directly or indirectly to more than 850 people.
  
  Yes, this is what most of us have been saying all along. If the government had approached the situation like Taiwan did, then we would have never needed a lockdown or a very light one at most.
  Never forget this, especially when you are sitting at home on the dole.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:17am
MT_Tinman

Rise up New Zealand!

Cast aside the yoke of oppression.

Leave the dictatorship hanging by their heels from the nearest lampposts and take up freedom and democracy one more!
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April 19, 2020 8:01am
- mikenmildagain
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  Cool. Incitement to murder. I’ll take you seriously if you take some non-violent action first as a warning, like tagging an empty police car with your fascist slogans.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:29am
  - MT_Tinman
    
    That’s pretty weak mm.
    
    Hell, I could have written that for you – in fact in my mind I did.
    
    Is the dictatorship getting to you too?
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:49am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
      What dictatorship?
      
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      April 19, 2020 8:58am
      - gravedodger
        
        As a frog might say as the water boils.
        
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        April 19, 2020 9:24am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Another tick for luck.
    
    12 4
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    April 19, 2020 9:28am
  - Nutta
    
    You’ve just accused him of incitement to murder. He suggested no such thing.
    
    Hanging people upside down by their heels is a pretty pacifist approach to revolution…
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:29am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Well, I guess you are free to reinterpret that very old trope of ‘hanging from lampposts’ to mean something quite jolly and harmless..
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:34am
  - Ed Snack
    
    Oddly enough, those sound just like Bolshevik slogans rather than explicitly fascist ones. Not that there’s a lot of difference of course.
    
    6 2
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    April 19, 2020 12:10pm
- G152
  
  It may well come to that.
  There are a number of people who are sick of the yellow banded propaganda in everything.
  And socalled experts at every turn
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:33am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    socalled experts at every turn
    
    And the interminable screeds from Kiwiblog’s resident epidemiologists.
    
    10 52
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    April 19, 2020 9:00am
    - David George
      
      Mike, now now – remember the call from Dear Leader: Be Kind.
      
      Anyone else sick of that childish drivel – including the typical socialist like Mike all alone in their squalid digs is starting to get ratty. Mind you who the hell have they got to be kind to? The cat?
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:18am
      - chukar
        
        Sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind!
        
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        April 19, 2020 1:58pm
    - krazykiwi
      
      Yes, what do we know milky?
      
      A new serological study by Stanford University found antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in a Covid-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% or even lower (i.e. in the range of severe influenza).
      
      In a new analysis, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at the University of Oxford argues that the lethality of covid19 (IFR) is between 0.1% and 0.36% (i.e. in the range of a severe influenza)
      
      You contribute nothing helpful, nothing of value. You are a virus to this blog, but no more so than a bad flu, one to be shaken off.
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:55am
      - Ian Boag
        
        Serological studies involve the use of antibody test kits. They are (would be) the gold standard because such tests can differentiate between “never infected”, “currently infected (even if asymptomatic)” and “recovered (assumed immune)”. The test is a simple finger prick and test stick not unlike what diabetics do for blood sugar.
        
        There are a lot of these under development that will be available (jn the words of Jerry Pournelle) “Real Soon Now”. (Byte magazine – 1980’s – showing my age.)
        
        However there is no general consensus that any of the many under development are as good as we would want them to be. If they were, the world would be all over them like a rash.
        
        The UK ordered a few million kits from one supplier. If any country needs antibody testing the UK does. Then they cancelled it …. Germans, Chinese, Americans, Brits …. all working on this.
        
        So – AFAIK – that is the problem with people reporting serological tests.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:31am
      - PhilBest
        
        As Ian says, we are finding out vital info by use of antibodies tests now. But there always was early “sample subset” tests as COVID-19 started to spread, that showed the same. Governments and their tame “experts” ignored that in favor of GIGO models based on assumptions already known to be false.
        
        https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2020/03/coronavirus_stats.html#comment-2668972
        
        https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2020/03/coronavirus_stats.html#comment-2668984
        
        And even now, after “not wanting to know” about the early data on asymptomatic infection, there are STILL governments and their tame experts who are turning blind eyes to the antibodies findings!!
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:57am
      - Ian Boag
        
        @PB
        
        we are finding out vital info by use of antibodies tests now.
        
        The tests are not up to snuff. There are unresolved problems with sensitivity and specificity. Specificity is where there is a false positive from the presence of an antibody that looks like a COVID one. Sensitivity is what it says.
        
        If these problems were half-pie solved, the test kits would be all over the world …. they aren’t. It is not a devious plot …..
        
        Go figure.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:10am
      - Ian Boag
        
        @PB and others.
        
        I did what I should have done first – read the abstract and comments of the actual study. The comments were quite illuminating … there were a lot.
        
        There was some agreement for points about the kits – buttressed by numbers I didn’t always understand. There were also quite a number of comments about how getting the test subjects from response to a Facebook ad was not very random.
        
        Personally I think the researchers gave it their best shot in a short time span using the kit they had available. FWIW it was from China, not that I think that matters. I probably would not have done the study very differently.
        
        But I don’t know about the conclusions ….
        
        Hopefully someone will do a larger similar study better in the not too distant future.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:39am
      - Ed Snack
        
        Ian, the test reported above did account for the uncertainties in the result from the test protocols. They also were careful to distinguish between infection with SARS-Cov2 and the far more common Corona Virus that is around that causes basically a “cold” (around 30% of colds are apparently due to CV’s rather than the usual rhinovirii).
        
        There’s reasonable error bands, but the overall results are pretty statistically significant. It does appear that there is a large cohort of people who have the virus and exhibit no or minimal symptoms, and as a result under the current testing protocols, do not get tested for the virus itself.
        
        What we don’t really know well is whether these no symptom people can still:pass on the infection readily. It is presumed that those with minimal symptoms (minor cough and sneeze) could do so through aerosol expellations (if there’s such a word, maybe should be expulsions).
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:18pm
      - johnson777
        
        Such a test is BioMedomics COVID-19 IgM/IgG Rapid Test: BioMedomics has developed and launched one of the world’s first rapid point-of-care lateral flow immunoassays for the diagnosis of coronavirus infection. The test has been used widely by the Chinese CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) to combat infections and is now available globally. This test detects both early marker and late marker, IgM/IgG antibodies in human finger-prick (capillary) or venous whole blood, serum, and plasma samples…. BioMedomics Rapid IgM-IgG Combined Antibody Test for COVID-19 is used to qualitatively detect IgG and IgM antibodies of the novel coronavirus in human serum, plasma or whole blood in vitro.
        
        It has been used by the Chinese since February.
        
        It is available worldwide and the US has allowed its use since March 16 (I think).
        
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        April 19, 2020 2:40pm
    - pdm
      
      Damn – up ticked m’n’m by mistake.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:01pm
  - Ruawai
    
    I would love to know what the yellow banded propaganda has cost us. Maybe we will get yellow armbands if we test negative to Covid.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:13am
- Alex13
  
  Are you a troll, or are you that silly for real?
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:37am
- Scooter
  
  I want NZ to do it for the rest of the world. Go Hard Go First.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:58pm
Than

In a shocking development surprising nobody, the Greens have proposed building a nationwide rail network as a post-coronavirus economic stimulus project. (Since this is something they’ve always been in favour of anyway, a cynical person might accuse them of shamelessly using a terrible situation to push their existing agenda.)

No you bloody fools – in a post-pandemic world more public transport is absolutely the last thing we should be encouraging. Transport systems intended to cram as many people into as small a space as possible? No. No. No. Just no.

Public transport is fundamentally incompatible with physical distancing and presents a significant transmission risk from a resurgent coronavirus or any new infection that comes along. That should be blatantly obvious to anybody with half a functional braincell.

This idea should be an absolute non-starter.
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April 19, 2020 8:02am
- PhilBest
  
  Everyone should be aware of Prof. Dave Heatley’s book, “The History and Future of Rail in NZ”.
  
  Publishing it was a career-killing move for the good Professor, rail being sacred of course.
  
  Basically rail in NZ has been our “Concorde Project”. It has never contributed a cent to its own initial capital costs, it has only ever cost, and cost, and cost, to run – all the money for running it, and for paying back the initial capital costs (which took decades) has had to be sucked out of the invisible, unthanked sectors of the economy that actually do “contribute”.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:35am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Looks like an interesting read.
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:44am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Rail per se is not the problem. It is rail managed by Government. Anything government has, will, or is thinking getting involved in is still born from the outset.
    
    Any project in private hands can possible be made to work, provided there is a good case for investment, and the figures stack up.
    
    Any project in public hands is never successful.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:19pm
    - PhilBest
      
      Besides that, there is an inherent problem with NZ’s low population and geography in combination. It means we need extremely powerful locomotives and yet we never run the massively long trains that they do, say, in the USA, across their Plains States. Ironically the automobile-mad USA has the world’s most viable rail freight system, Europe has passenger rail but uses trucks for most of their freight – the latter is what NZ should do, but should not also do the former, because we just don’t have the population.
      
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      April 19, 2020 3:10pm
    - Komata
      
      Jackrabbit@1319
      
      Those of us with a long memory will recall what happened when the former New Zealand Government Railways Department was sold off to Messrs Fay, Ritchwhite and co ( By labour if I recall correctly), then first to Wisconsin Central
      (A railway co.), then, when Wisconsin left NZ , to Toll Holdings Australia. Wisconsin Central at least tried making go it, before on selling it to Toll, an organisation which, it might surprise you to learn, is a trucking company. Definitely a case of putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Talk about having control over your enemy! Toll sold off as much as it could and deliberately gutted the national railway system! It’s what you do when your competition is handed to you on a plate! The entire system was allowed ( deliberately) to run down, and with that goal achieved and only minimal naintenance being undertaken ( just enough to get by, and no more than that), Toll then decided to get rid of the ‘remains’ and sold it back to Michael Cullen for $1! On this basis, to suggest that Pivate Enterprise would ‘instinctively’ do things better than government would, in this instance, seem to be somewhat incorrect…
      
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      April 19, 2020 8:49pm
- Prisoner of Comrade Jacinda
  
  In fact it’s good news… business returns to usual (even Green insanity. You can’t get everything 🙂
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:49am
- KevO'Brien
  
  Go gently on Genter she’s very likely to miss out because of the Green’s placement rules.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:30am
  - alwyn
    
    It isn’t going to matter. Ardern has so completely dominated the news I would say there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of anyone from the Green or New Zealand First parties getting back into Parliament.
    Whether you are number 1 or number 10 on their lists won’t make the slightest difference.
    “Oh happy day”
    
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    April 19, 2020 2:10pm
- Max Howler
  
  Im no fan of this rail proposal either, but if general, if you don’t believe in public transport (PT), you probably don’t believe in urban sprawl, or cities, and its a slow slide into “if you cant walk or push bike, or remote-in to your work, you shouldn’t be working”
  Or its a license to “I have to take by BMW (solo) to work in the city, so i can maintain my bubble”
  
  Ive taken PT for the last 30 years, and sure, I’ve picked up the odd cold/flu, but I have no issue with getting back on PT, nor am I afraid of this convict-19. I can easily afford to drive my late model V8 to work, but if everyone does that, then its gridlock
  Society needs to think about whats the threshold to shut itself down. This is not the zombie apocalypse that ning nong bobble head says it is.
  disclaimer: I am truly afraid of the austerity measures to come from another Coalition Of Leftwits Govt (if the unthinkable happens in the election), to pay for the 100Bn min that will be trashed (if you had a row of 44 gallon drums, you couldn’t burn money that quick)
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:10am
  - PhilBest
    
    The irony with this familiar argument, is that it assumes that all the jobs are where they were 100 years ago and are going to stay there forever.
    
    Data on the centralization of employment makes interesting reading. Basically if your city still has an overwhelmingly powerful CBD concentration of regional employment, it’s been rigged to be that way by vested interests and ideologically driven planning. There are extreme examples in the other direction, where there are dozens of nodes of employment spread throughout the region, none of which have more than 5% of the total employment. This is especially typical of small cities i.e. like the cities Auckland, ChCh and Wellington should be compared to. I remember Sir Bob Jones writing after the ChCh earthquake, that we needed to realize that there was nothing abnormal about cities of 300,000 people being “just a much bigger Havelock North”.
    
    Instead Kiwis and their urban planners seem to want to kid themselves that Hong Kong is the model for all cities everywhere all of the time. Another factor is the kind of employment that actually pays an economy’s way – it is NOT CBD offices!! It is easy to be clear in NZ that farming is important, more so than CBD offices, but we have lost the plot about the importance of heavily-suburban industries. Look at any German city on Google Earth, their manufactured-export powerhouse economy certainly isn’t based on “jobs in CBDs”. F&P Healthcare, Tait, Rakon, Weta, Marine Air Systems, Hamilton Jet, companies like this ain’t in Wellington or Auckland CBD. Strong CBD’s are an indicator of a high level of parasitism in the economy.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:08am
  - Than
    
    You’re assuming your premise here. You’re taking it as a given that a large, sprawling city cannot have cars as its primary means of transit. That’s not true, and I can cite examples to prove this.
    
    Here in the US mid-west I could point out Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and St Louis, to name only four. These are all large, sprawling cities (in the ~2 million population range), and like most US cities have limited public transport options. I’m not going to claim they have zero traffic congestion, but not enough that it’s a serious issue. Cars are by far the main form of transport in these cities, and people get around just fine.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:12am
    - Max Howler
      
      Than, dont get me wrong, I LOVE cars, and driving them, but the transformation to a city with minimalist PT will be very painful indeed.
      gweenie overlords will slap $5 a litre “encouragement tax” to help us bubblies out of their global warmers 🙁
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:33am
      - alloytoo
        
        FSM knows the Greenies will learn to hate Optical Fibre as must as they hate Nuclear power and Genetic modification, and indeed any other solution that actually solves problems.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:59pm
    - JackRabbit
      
      To the Greenies:
      
      Cars are just like walking or cycling, except that you travel in a metal / fibreglass / carbon fibre bubble.
      And it is very much quicker.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:23pm
    - PhilBest
      
      Exactly, Than! Actually those cities traffic congestion delays is a tiny fraction of the congestion delays in Auckland or Wellington. We are being systematically LIED TO about the “congestion reducing” effect of PT. These cities have several times as much highway and main-road space per capita; that is why they have low congestion delays. Even Europe’s cities have more highway space per capita, it is a lie that is completely typical of Greens, that their PT is anything to do with it. NZ is an outlier example of inadequate highway and main-road space, combined with outlier-bad congestion delays for small cities, that proves the case.
      
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      April 19, 2020 3:15pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  The Greens probably idealise thousands of happy workers swinging picks and axes, singing rousing songs in support of the government, and eating a sustainably grown lunch.
  
  Unfortunately, the reality of modern railway construction is totally different. It involves a giant machine which lays and welds the tracks and lays the sleepers. About 50 workers follow tidying up and securing the rails to the sleepers. This cool video shows the giant machine in operation.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khsD82s33lw
  
  These machines (I am guessing you won’t get change out of $100 million) plus almost all the steel will need to be imported just at a time when our expert earnings have collapsed.
  
  At the end (and it will be “the end” in every sense) there will be a white elephant. Eventually it will go bust or be defunded and it will sit there growing weeds for the next 100 years.
  
  Oh mikenmildagain – this is a good example of your lie, repeated again today, that there is minimal differences between the policies of political parties in New Zealand.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:25am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    You will have to point out for me where I claimed there was no difference between, say, the Greens and ACT. Some parties have major differences in approach. Our two main parties differ only over fairly trivial details.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:36am
    - Benedict Yu
      
      “Our two main parties differ only over fairly trivial details.”
      
      That may have once been correct, but these policies are not “trivial details” and a National Government would have done none of them:
      
      – Ban offshore gas exploration
      – PGF
      – Fees Free tertiary education
      – Abandon requirement for sole mother welfare recipients to name father
      – Abandon HNZ tenancy reviews
      – Give prisoners the vote
      – Abandon dozens of roading projects (before frantically reversing the policy, wasting two years)
      
      I could go on with these trivial details.
      
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      April 19, 2020 2:03pm
      - PhilBest
        
        Will the next National government change any of it though? Some of us took it as a common-sense “given” that John Key in 2008 would have to undo at least half of the Hulun program. We were betrayed.
        
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        April 19, 2020 3:17pm
- Sacha
  
  As long as they widen the gauge when they do it – since presumably money will be no object.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:26am
- Nutta
  
  It could be called the “CoronaExpress”…
  
  Marketing is everything.
  
  Let’s Do This!
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:31am
  - JackRabbit
    
    Every carriage could have Mx Ardern on a screen with Teddy Bear hunts and nursery rhymes.
    
    Puke!
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:26pm
- emmess
  
  I would say perhaps other than our geographic isolation and season that the coronavirus hit us, the thing that has protected New Zealand the most has been the private vehicle.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:20am
Steve James

Joe Biden puts his pants on like everyone else, one arm at a time.
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April 19, 2020 8:04am
- Ed Snack
  
  I’m Joe Biden and I forget this message !
  
  Poor old creepy Joe, staged a “press conference” live on TV a couple of days ago and even though the questions were all pre-advised and the answers scripted he still couldn’t read the answers in an intelligible way without getting lost.
  
  Seriously, those who really want to get rid of Trump and elect a Democrat (because Trump will be the GOP nominee), do you really thing Biden can survive a campaign without his mental deterioration being absolutely obvious ? Or do you really believe that he isn’t deteriorating ?
  
  Does anyone really think that he will in fact be the nominee and be in the November election as candidate, or will the Democrats “retire” Joe and just select someone else either during or after the convention ?
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:31pm
- JamesP
  
  Get your spicy Biden memes here
  https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/04/the-week-in-pictures-team-joe-edition.php
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:18pm
MT_Tinman

Now that it is confirmed that this year’s (northern) winter “flu” virus has killed approximately as many as every other year’s “flu” virus it’s time for the panic to stop, the dictatorship to be curtailed, Parliament to be recalled and democracy returned to New Zealand.

Politicians and the New Zealand police will then need to start work on regaining the respect of the populace they have so badly wasted.
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April 19, 2020 8:06am
- Alex13
  
  “Rule by experts” can be difficult while the experts are still trying to make sense of what’s happening, but “rule by ignorance” is definitely a non-starter.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:43am
Andrei

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!

Хрїсто́съ воскре́се!

Christ has Risen!

Today is a celebration of Life
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April 19, 2020 8:11am
- Tauhei Notts
  
  Kali E Nastasy
  That is about as good as I can get it.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:53am
  - Andrei
    
    Kua ara a te Karaiti!
    He pono tonu, kua ara a Ia!
    
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    April 19, 2020 12:11pm
- KevO'Brien
  
  He is risen indeed.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:32am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjVEoQZhNaI
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:10am
- JamesP
  
  Jacinda said to be nice ay.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:22pm
- Jack5
  
  Google Translate to our aid …
  
  Orthodox Russian friends would respond to Andrei’s ✝️ “Христос воскрес” (Christ is resurrected) with:
  
  “Воистину воскрес”
  (Truly, He is resurrected).
  
  Then they would swap Russian coloured Easter eggs.
  
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  April 19, 2020 5:29pm
  - Alex13
    
    They also do a handshake and exchange a triple kiss of peace. I guess being protected by the deity provides total immunity to the coronavirus and all its former and future mutations.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:37pm
Poppa

I wonder if AirNZ have had a heads up?

Normal schedules seem to be pretty much back 28
April. Does that mean level 2 is applying from then?
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April 19, 2020 8:13am
- MCos
  
  You can get a flight to a main centre plus Queenstown right now if you want one.
  The provincial airports are closed for the long term.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:37am
  - DeepBlue
    
    But only if you are an essential worker.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:22am
  - gump
    
    You can’t actually get a flight to Queenstown.
    
    If you try to book one of flights shown on the website, you get an email from Air NZ a few hours later saying that the flight has been cancelled.
    
    Their website shows flights that were scheduled prior to the lockdown. They’re not actual running services.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:37am
  - Benedict Yu
    
    No. Queenstown airport has zero flights.
    
    These are the flights you can get if you meet the criteria:
    
    Auckland-Christchurch – Three return services – Monday-Friday – One return service – Saturday/Sunday
    
    Auckland-Wellington – One return service – Monday-Sunday
    
    Wellington-Christchurch – Two return services – Monday-Friday – One return service – Saturday/Sunday
    
    Wellington-Nelson – One return service – Monday-Friday
    
    Christchurch-Dunedin – One return service – Monday & Friday
    
    https://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/covid19-airnz-updates#nz
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:27am
Steve James

So, I have been watching Fox News and I have to note the incredibly hot women featured on Fox. Is this why it’s called Fox?
Here’s the best bit: They are sooo… intellegent, reasoned and knowledgable it’s amasing. Here’s some names:
Alex Hogan, Dana Perino, Emily Compagno, Alicia Acuna, Ainsley Earhardt, Shannon Bream, Ellison Barber, Martha MacCallum, Katie Pavlich, Lea Gabrielle… and there’s more “Foxes on Fox”
Makes the CNN and MSNBC women look very ordinary at best on every measure.
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April 19, 2020 8:14am
- The Proper Ghandi
  
  Conservative women are the best. No contest.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:23am
  - PhilBest
    
    There is an absolutely glorious “Babe Theory of Political Movements” that keeps disappearing on the web and getting reposted by someone else. Worth trying to find
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:38am
  - lifesgood
    
    What about Daisy Cousens on Sky News? One smart lady proud to be feminine.
    
    10 1
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    April 19, 2020 10:30am
    - Nickc2
      
      Yes, she is a class act alright. She doesn’t pull any punches either. I reckon her and Peta Credlin would be the smartest women on TV in our neck of the woods for sure. They certainly leave our bunch of female journalists and commentators for dead.
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:08pm
    - PhilBest
      
      It was fantastic she got on Sky News, some of us were aware of her as a vlogger well before that.
      
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      April 19, 2020 3:45pm
- mikenmildagain
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  How about that cute-as, Laura Ingraham! She tweets real clever, too:
  
  How many of those who urged our govt to help liberate the Iraqis, Syrians, Kurds, Afghanis, etc., are as committed now to liberating Virginia, Minnesota, California, etc?
  
  How does Fox manage to attract that kind of intellectual firepower?
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:33am
  - The Proper Ghandi
    
    If she means liberating Virginia, Minnesota and California from the Indians, Somalis and Mexicans respectively, then hell yeah – send in the tanks and deport the fuckers!
    
    Someone like yourself – having the intellectual capacity of a squashed apricot – shouldn’t go about criticising the intelligence of a fine woman such as the delightful Ms Ingraham. You’re just a sniping little shit-stain, in my opinion.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:16am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      No, she meant ‘liberating’ them from their elected governors who are trying to save some lives.
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:34am
      - The Proper Ghandi
        
        Really? You need a good steak and some spinach to counteract your irony deficiency.
        
        22 6
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        April 19, 2020 9:45am
      - Ed Snack
        
        And apparently violating the constitution in doing so. It does appear that the lives they are trying to save are in fact singular – their political lives and those only.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:34pm
    - Nickc2
      
      If you’re looking for a second opinion Ghandi, I’ll put my hand up.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:46am
      - The Proper Ghandi
        
        …as the doctor said to his nubile patient.
        
        6 3
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        April 19, 2020 12:20pm
- Nickc2
  
  Agree, none of them suffer from the Nancy Pelosi virus.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:47am
  - freethinker
    
    Pelosi is a virus.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:45am
    - Inandout
      
      But Nancy has a $24,000 fridge/freezer, stacked with frozen sweets.
      
      10 2
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      April 19, 2020 10:14am
      - Nickc2
        
        Yes, and it shows. Sour faced cow. Anyway, Hannity is going to shout her a fridge full of her favourite Ice Cream. He says he will even buy the fridge. I would suggest because of her coldness and lack of empathy for her fellow Americans, the fridge may not be necessary.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:00pm
      - Ed Snack
        
        Not just favourites, but those special $13 per serve and up special delights. Now if she were a Republican the MSM would be screaming out about her hypocrisy, as a Democrat, not so much.
        
        Just showing her solidarity with those she serves so effectively, the disproportionately rich and spoiled.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:37pm
  - Nickc2
    
    @ The Proper Ghandi
    NO Ghandi, not even with rubber gloves would I do that!
    
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    April 19, 2020 12:36pm
    - The Proper Ghandi
      
      It’s been a long 3.5 weeks… :-/
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:46pm
- Scott
  
  I suspect it’s because conservative women care about their appearance whereas feminism generally doesn’t value beauty and make up.
  Also conservative women are generally happier, they are more likely to get married, have children and go to church. Feminist women don’t generally like any of those things.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:51am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    Check out those gorgeous women the Trump boys have scored! Smart too, $180,000 a year each channeled through the Trump campaign to keep sleeping with Uday and Qusay.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:03am
  - Nickc2
    
    Yea, but the trouble we in NZ have is they all join the Labour or Green political parties and end up in our Parliament. F_wits the lot of them.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:16am
    - emmess
      
      Yeah, I am so over this karenocracy.
      
      7 2
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      April 19, 2020 11:27am
  - Steve James
    
    Scott, Feminist women don’t generally like anything, period.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:17am
Simon

Biden during the Kavanaugh hearings.

Former vice president Joe Biden, said Monday night that any woman’s public claims of assault should be presumed to be true.

Speaking generally, Biden added, “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-when-a-woman-alleges-sexual-assault-presume-she-is-telling-the-truth/2018/09/17/7718c532-badd-11e8-a8aa-860695e7f3fc_story.html

Tara Reade, who worked in Biden’s office in 1993, accused Biden of touching her, kissing her and penetrating her with his fingers without consent.
“We were alone, and it was the strangest thing. There was no, like, exchange really, he just had me up against the wall,” Reade said.

“His hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then, he went, he went down my skirt and then up inside it, and he penetrated me with his fingers…and um…He was kissing me at the same time and he was saying something to me,” she also told Halper.

“He got finished doing what he was doing and I, how I was pulled back and he said, ‘Come on man, I heard you liked me.’ And that phrase stayed with me because I kept thinking what I might have said. And I can’t remember exactly if he said ‘I thought’ or if ‘I heard.’ It’s like he implied that I had done this.”

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/27/joe-biden-accused-of-sexually-assault-tara-reade/
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April 19, 2020 8:15am
- mikenmildagain
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:35am
  - The Proper Ghandi
    
    You may very well be a rampant homosexual, perhaps even an incel, but when confronted with a real man with a bit of swagger and mojo, you’d be amazed what a woman will consent to (‘consent’ being the operative word).
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:46am
    - Inandout
      
      TPG, rampant homosexual. That term brings back memories of the Five Go Mad series where Uncle Quentin admits to his bent and is taken into custody. Such crazy fun.
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:33am
      - Nutta
        
        Blah blah Corona Virus… Blah blah lockdown…
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:38am
  - Simon
    
    MM thanks for the comment on the Venezuela thread.
    
    Yeah Trump eh? He will say prove any alleged sexual assault in Court. Not a prefect system but the best there is.
    
    Whereas Biden’s position is for us all to believe that he sexually assault a woman with his finger up her vagina.
    
    Hoist with his own idiot petard and all that.
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:53am
    - Papalazarou
      
      Hoisted by his own retard
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:38pm
  - Happychappy
    
    Well being a Labour man MM you would be allow to grab pussy as they seem to think that a mans right and go all out to make sure its covered up or have a inquiry on it so when it goes to court Judges give name suppression so no knows what punishment has been given.
    
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    April 19, 2020 8:53am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
      I didn’t realise Donald Trump was a Labour man. Bigly amazing.
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:04am
      - KevO'Brien
        
        There’s a lot you don’t know.
        
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        April 19, 2020 9:36am
      - Inandout
        
        m&m, if you can extricate yourself from CNN and Jim Costa for just a moment you will learn there are many fascinating aspects to Trump 2020.
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:18am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        Please enlighten me. How many other family members are getting sweet, sweet grift from the thousands of $10 donations from the ~~suckers~~MAGA hats?
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:42am
  - redeye
    
    I worked at a Rolling Stones concert at Anaheim Stadium in the 70’s and saw 2 beautiful women give oral sex to a three different security guys & a couple more roadies just so they could get into the tent where the band was.
    I know it’s unpleasant but there are some women who will literally let themselves be grabbed on the pussy just to get close to the famous.
    So he wasn’t wrong.
    Of course groupie behavior isn’t limited to just women. There are some men who also worship celebrities and vote for them because they look nice on the cover of the Women’s Weekly.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:18am
    - Inandout
      
      redeye, and of course the term ‘casting couch’ was invented as reference to the Hollywood movie moguls. From studio bosses right down to heads of departments, and we will never know the true number of hopefulls of both sexes who were given the ‘don’t ring us’ line after they were bedded.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:23am
      - Nickc2
        
        You should have recognised them Inandout, they were all at Harvey Weinstein’s court case with their hands out for a financial settlement.
        I wonder if they told their husbands where they were going and why?
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:14am
    - Nickc2
      
      Because they look nice on the cover of the Women’s Weekly eh?
      I think its about time you took another trip to your optometrist redeye if you are referring to the person I think you are.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:10am
      - JackRabbit
        
        Airbrush…
        
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        April 19, 2020 1:33pm
    - Fletch
      
      I’ve come to a late realization that not only are celebrities just the same as us, they are, most times, far worse, and not worthy of our admiration.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:50am
  - rouppe
    
    Everything else he says is presumed to be a load of untruths, funny how this one seems to be taken as an unchallenged truth.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:29am
    - mikenmildagain
      
      Fine. If you want to believe that was a lie, and similarly disbelieve everything else he says, that’s fine with me.
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:35am
      - rouppe
        
        Not what I said, mate. But you have a habit of reversing things. A kind of “backwards thinking” if you will…
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:06pm
  - Ed Snack
    
    Now that is absolutely classic “whataboutism” there Mikey ! Absolutely classic.
    
    Funnily enough, Blaisey-Ford could not demonstrate that she ever met Brett Kavanaugh yet she just had to be believed. Reade worked for Biden for some years as a matter of public record, yet of course she should NOT be believed.
    
    Don’t you ever feel just a touch the hypocrite ?
    
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    April 19, 2020 12:43pm
- Scott
  
  Simon – excellent points! I would encourage readers to check out the YouTube videos “Rising” on “The Hill” where Sagaar notes that Joe Biden has had about a dozen interviews and a total of 81 questions. Not one of those questions has been about the sexual assault allegations! Not one?
  Like no one ever asked candidate Trump about “Stormy Daniels”?
  If the media didn’t have double standards they would have no standards at all.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:42am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
    So Scott, you seem convinced Biden is guilty of a sexual assault. Are you equally convinced by the dozens (dozens!) of similar allegations against Trump?
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:06am
    - Inandout
      
      m&m, like most leftists you lend a deaf ear to anything Biden has done. He is a creep of the highest order.
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:26am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        I’m quite prepared to believe Biden is a creep. Funnily enough, I doubt you can say the same about your orange god…
        
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        April 19, 2020 10:43am
  - Scott
    
    Mikey – you have an ability to misunderstand others that is almost pathological. I am not convinced that Biden is guilty of sexual assault. But I am convinced that he should be asked about it.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:56am
    - Ed Snack
      
      Yes, perhaps the simplest explanation is that we dislike hypocrisy. If someone goes all out on “believe all women” to score political points, should it not be noted as grossly improper for them to turn around and start saying “don’t believe the is particular women because she is accusing me !”
      
      It does amuse me Mikey that you can so readily be taken in by such political games. You’re just the sort of simple mark that the left loves.
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:51pm
The Proper Ghandi

I note that there are now a few bodies being found around the country recently, “not thought to be suspicious.” Pure speculation, but I wonder if these will be “Covid-19 related deaths”? Always sad of course, but if these are related to current events then it is doubly sad.

We spend a lot of time here discussing politics and other issues, sometimes at one another’s throats, but we all share the same humanity, and I feel that the following is apropos at this time:

If you or yours are doing it tough right now, mentally or financially, and things seem very uncertain for you, please remember that it’s the same for us all. Just hold on tight and the storm will eventually pass, so don’t do anything unwise. Stay safe and stay strong, all of you.
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April 19, 2020 8:18am
- Swifty
  
  And to you TPG.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:23am
- JackRabbit
  
  Rumour has it that some of these bodies are from suicides or old people that just gave after losing all hope and cut off from family.
  
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  April 19, 2020 1:36pm
dave_c_

Huh ! I have just read something that really confirms what we all probably knew.
There’s rules for us plebs, and rules for others !
The warriors rugby league team have been granted a dispensation to travel (fly) to Australia !
I you or I requested such travel, we’d be told to go home, stay home.
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April 19, 2020 8:19am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  And Ozzie will be sending this ex Rugby League (Queanbeyan Blues) chap back to NZ in a couple of weeks..
  
  https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6727189/kickboxer-set-to-be-deported-as-appeal-against-sentence-for-civic-attack-fails/?cs=14225
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:30am
  - Nutta
    
    I’m all for deporting kickboxers. Even if they have gone legit with a lawnmowing business…
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:41am
- Steve James
  
  The warriors and their supporters are mostly brown and it’s election year. What did you expect??
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:36am
- 3-coil
  
  dave_c_
  Evidently true there are 2 versions of every coronavirus rule (Warriors, Labour Health Ministers etc etc). My current favourite is Hone Harawira’s flagrant breach(s) – he drives from Northland to Auckland (like we all…can’t) stops at his sister’s place for bacon’n’eggs (breaking his own and his sister’s bubbles), heads home to his public roadblocks and resumes stopping and poking his head into every vehicle to check who’s entering “his” territory! Meanwhile, Wally Haumaha’s NZ Police Force “engage” with Harawira to advise on the “appropriate way of engaging with members of the public”. No consistency, just pathetic appeasement of illegal activities.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:52am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    The Police will learn to regret this. They have destroyed their integrity.
    Harawira is a professional activist. It’s about time his flagpole was chopped down.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:39am
- Nickc2
  
  What’s the bet pressure was applied from Labour’s Maori Caucus?
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:24am
  - emmess
    
    His mate, Willie Jackson in particular
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:30am
Close Hen Counters

Well cindy’s news (NZ Herald) seem to have locked and loaded the country moving into level three – less suffocating they say. What a fucking joke. The rooster can still not return to work, three children cannot return to school (twins in 7th form fretting about university options next year with disruption to school programme – and American SAT uni entrance exams cancelled) … this is just bullshit. When the Wuhan flu was kicking off in December January, where was Ardern … overseas flinging our money around in Fiji. Why wasn’t our army/navy mobilised to man every international port in NZ to ensure appropriate quarantine – this is a war of sorts – what the hell else are they doing Monday to Sunday? Failing to prepare is preparing to fail and here we are going down the gurgler – young NZers compromised, economy farked to stop what?
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April 19, 2020 8:19am
- Komata
  
  CCH@0819
  
  Re: ‘…Economy farked to stop what?’
  
  Perhaps Cindy losing the muslim vote by not ‘remembering’ a massacre by a deranged Australian, and also an all-important photo opportunity to show that ‘She really cares’?
  
  Just a thought…
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:40am
- Ruahine
  
  The Media is actually the PR arm of the Labour Party and the Labour Gov’t. Prostituting themselves for the coming promise of more taxpayer money.
  This pretty well makes them the enemy of the people.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:01am
Paulus

When will the so called Media apologies for their continual comments that Stephen Joyce’s statement that the Labour Government’s figures were a pack of lies.
His $11 Billion deficit was wrong, being out by many times more, and growing exponentially.
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April 19, 2020 8:20am
- MCos
  
  Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
  When Stephen Joyce made his $11bil budget deficit prophesy there was probably more chance of someone inventing a foolproof hair restorer than the world being hit by a economically crippling pandemic.
  Furthermore.
  He came within a whisker of remaining Minister of Finance and he would have been confronted with the same problem whatever the government did.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:03am
  - JackRabbit
    
    “…and he would have been confronted with the same problem whatever the government did.”
    
    Nope. He is a little more financially prudent than Grant Robertson.
    
    For a start there was no Billion Trees Scam to fund, no multi billion dollar NZF slush fund, and no bottomless money pit for the People’s Car, sorry People’s Houses to fund.
    
    And like 99.999% of anyone that reads and understands GDP charts, Joyce did not read the NZ GDP rate of growth curve upside down prior to the 2018 budget. Robertson’s “Better GDP growth than expected” was actually a plummeting GDP rate of growth curve.
    
    How dopey can you get? You would have to be as blind as Mr Magoo to get that wrong.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:47pm
amospicton

Re Biden – the hypocritical left – a tautology if ever there was one.
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April 19, 2020 8:29am
Chuck Bird

The following is a great article by Simon O’Conner.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/simon-oconnor/covid-statistics-politics-and-the-way-forward/2840410452722093/?notif_id=1587109508825147&notif_t=page_highlights
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April 19, 2020 8:31am
- Ruahine
  
  This an excellent post. Chuck.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:02am
- Wayne Mapp
  
  Simon’s item should be a guest post on Kiwiblog. As Simon properly notes, the right comparison is Australia. Though in practise (at least in Vic, where my sister lives) it is a pretty comprehensive lockdown, probably equivalent to Level 3.5.
  
  I know some here would go straight to Level 2, (or even Level 1) which would be like Sweden. Look where that got them.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:32am
  - PhilBest
    
    Be a smart-arse about Sweden in 6 months time, Wayne. After “excess mortality from all causes” is looked at and “the curve” with its long, fat tail in the lockdown countries has finally ended.
    
    And the countries you are conveniently comparing Sweden with, are all countries where the cost of lockdown is not justified, not to the same extent as lockdown is unjustified in NZ, but unjustified nevertheless.
    
    It’s becoming clear that factors other than lockdown are what determines the outcomes; particularly how early a country started taking sensible precautions, even voluntarily. The way to have a deadly pandemic is to have the worst kind of environment, urban conditions, lifestyles, attitudes to sanitary behavior, and demographics; AND “play chicken” with the threat till it’s too late. None of the Northern European countries have these particular problems.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:23am
  - MrTips
    
    I agree that going to level 2 straight is not a good idea, but it should be communicated that it is the goal by time X. Give the population a carrot and they will behave to get it.
    
    And Sweden. So much of the criticism of it is based on emotion and not data. It is no worse than any median response in Europe, and in fact better than many.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:07pm
  - Cinematic
    
    Wayne, I’m guessing you’re comparing NZ and Sweden by total deaths. I agree that by that (simplistic) measure NZ is currently doing better.
    
    But there’s another way of thinking about it. Imagine a year from now; which country do you think will have moved on from this virus and returned to a normal life soonest?
    
    If you sincerely believe that NZ won’t get a ‘fair share’ of virus deaths you need to prepare yourself for disappointment. Sweden has chosen a pragmatic evidence based approach. NZ not so much.
    
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    April 19, 2020 2:07pm
- Peter Lane
  
  Thanks for posting that Chuck. It pretty much articulates my views on this whole situation, especially regarding deification of certain people.
  
  I’ve read so many posts on social media telling people not to worry because ‘Jacinda will save us’
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:35am
- the deity formerly known as nigel6888
  
  Genuinely well written and thoughtful. I had honestly never heard of him. What a gem.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:12am
- emmess
  
  So beware anyone saying ‘don’t be political’. What they are saying is that they do not want any critique of their actions.
  
  Yes, exactly
  My sister keeps saying that but she does not restrain her praise for Jacinda.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:46am
Komata

Krazy@ 0800

Re: ‘I believe National have a once in a lifetime opportunity this coming election. The old steady-as-she-goes rules do not apply’

Sadly, I believe that they’ll blow it!

Simon B has repeatedly shown that he largely agrees with Cindy and her policies, to the extent that he could (indeed, should) now be considered a NINO (National In Name Only), and on which basis, he has no interest in ‘Winning’ against something he very evidently agrees with.

The Nats themselves also have no apparent ‘Set in Stone’ policies which differentiate them from the CoL, nothing which a voter can view which says WE ARE NATIONAL AND WE BELIEVE etc. etc…. and in the absence of such a ‘differentiation’ the options available are nil, nil and nil.

Were that it ‘twernt so.
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April 19, 2020 8:33am
- Delicate lady voter
  
  He had the opportunity to confirm a withdrawal from the ETS and carbon zero… and choked, wouldn’t do it, didn’t do it. Farming New Zealand cannot trust National any further as it’s farming that will be stripped of every last cent as it drags New Zealand out of this.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:54am
  - chukar
    
    DLV
    Yep the tax grab is starting as well, see Professor Chappell yesterday.
    Wealth tax ,GG tax ,regulatory imposition not to mention possible manipulation of macroeconomic policy.
    
    They don’t like farmers
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:19am
- tf78
  
  I suggest you take the time to read Simon O’Conner’s article posted above by Chuck – National is full of these people if anyone bothered to look.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:08am
  - Tony Stuart
    
    O’Connor’s last two paragraphs are especially good, particularly his remarks around not being political.
    
    We also have calls for people to not be political. This is just an excuse to silence people. In these times where government has enormous power, people should absolutely be political. People should question and challenge every decision made. We must remember the enormity of decisions that are literally being made by just a few people. Parliament is suspended; people are locked in their homes; police are stopping people doing what used to be the most simplest of activities; businesses are by in large closed; travel is restricted; certain media have been banned; press conferences are highly choreographed with journalists already protesting their inability to ask questions … the list goes on. If there was a time for people to be political, it is now. So beware anyone saying ‘don’t be political’. What they are saying is that they do not want any critique of their actions.
    
    So much for us all to consider as we move forward. We need to look carefully and as objectively as possible at past decisions, not so much to criticise but to learn from. In the present, we need to understand the dynamics in play that shape the way we think and then choose to act. And, finally, we must anticipate the future and what is in the best interest of all New Zealanders. I am under no illusion that the latter is immensely difficult, but I am also a believer that if we seek what is right – using reason, science, and honesty – we will achieve our goal.
    
    https://www.facebook.com/notes/simon-oconnor/covid-statistics-politics-and-the-way-forward/2840410452722093/?notif_id=1587109508825147¬if_t=page_highlights
    
    I’ve included the link again in case anyone missed it earlier. O’Connor’s piece is well worth a read in its entirety.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:17am
Liberty

When will our good and great government be releasing “ Rover”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ffr1U7KMY
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April 19, 2020 8:41am
- Komata
  
  Liberty@0841
  
  ‘I am NOT a number etc., etc. etc…’
  
  A good and prescient reference; Plod seems to be leaning towards the same script…
  
  Thank you.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:07am
  - emmess
    
    A lot of us GenXers opposed to Boomers would know that quote from this:
    
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfk5-y_pYac
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:51am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  More likely to be a “DraganFly”
  https://theconversation.com/pandemic-drones-useful-for-enforcing-social-distancing-or-for-creating-a-police-state-134667
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:41am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  What happens if you ask “Why?”
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:07am
- Liberty
  
  Down tickers
  Would you like to explain why it would be acceptable for the state to persecute an individual ?
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:35pm
I remember when

86% of air cargo is thru Auckland.
80%, to and from NZ, was in bellyhold of passenger planes (say 320 passengers 15 tonnes cargo).
Cut in April from 25,000 04/19 to 15,000 04/20Currently Air NZ, Air China, Cathay Pacific, China Eastern Airlines, Fiji Airways, Hainan Airlines and Korea Air are operating passenger aircraft with cargo-only loads to and from Auckland.
Difficulty will be frequency and access to some destinations.
There is a cash benefit for traders using air cargo.
Phil Twyford’s answer to ERC was a sunshine one.
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April 19, 2020 8:42am
- PhilBest
  
  Who else is waiting for something from Amazon, from the USA, where it’s been sitting in a transit store in Arizona for a whole month now after the initial journey there from the seller?
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:27am
TWEEDSE

Our virtuous PM, ministers and hanger ons are broadcasting how wonderful they are at taking a 20% paycut, which is of course yet another lie. It is over 6 months which is actually a 10% pay cut.
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April 19, 2020 8:51am
- MCos
  
  1% over 10 years
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:33am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  When this is all over pay will return to normal, and will be back dated 6 months imo.
  So no paycut at all. These bastards are not to be trusted
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:13am
- tf78
  
  In six months the COL will all take a much larger pay cut, it is best they get weaned early.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:22am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Not if they win the Election – it will be full blown socialism with a huge messy trough
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:30am
Steve Otto(North Shore)

A guy walks into a bar.

Lucky bastard
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April 19, 2020 8:52am
- MCos
  
  Yes and no.
  The last time I walked into a bar I couldn’t believe how expensive the beer was!
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:06am
- MT_Tinman
  
  Two fellows walk into a bar.
  
  You’d have thought the second one would have been bright enough to avoid it after seeing the first fellow hurt – must have been a leftie.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:13am
- mikenmildagain
  
  A priest, a rabbi and an imam walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says,”is this some kind of joke?”
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:31am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    No downtick Mike. But don’t give up your day job
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:31am
Odakyu-sen

Each day, media are reporting on the numbers of deaths from Covid-19. For example, “Yesterday there were 852 deaths in the UK.”

That’s it. No context. Just “deaths.”

What kind of information could the media give us that would help us to get these tragic deaths into perspective?

At the very least, I would like to know the median age of the deceased and a “healthy” vs. “unhealty” proportion, where “healthy ” = having a BMI of less than 25 and no pre-existing medical ailments.
The new reporting style could be like this: “Yesterday there were 852 deaths in the UK. The median age was 65. The proportion of healthy was 6%.”

Would that kind of reporting shine a light to allow you to judge the government’s policies more clearly?
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April 19, 2020 8:57am
- Lee C
  
  LoL.
  
  Ask one of the supporters of the current administration – I’m sure they have all the info at their fingertips and will put you straight.
  
  They’ve been a collective font of information thus far.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:20am
- amospicton
  
  Yes Odakyu-sen, we’ve had, what 11 or 12 deaths so far, probably equal to something like 20 life-years (lives * life expectancy w/o virus). That’s not even 1 motor accident equivalent and at what cost? “Deaths” is meaningless by itself.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:24am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Out of that 11 deaths, 7 were from one elder nursing care group.
    
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    April 19, 2020 9:44am
    - Odakyu-sen
      
      A report in my proposed format for deaths in New Zealand would be something like:
      
      “In the past month there have been 11 deaths in NZ. The median age has been 80. The proportion of healthy has been 0%.”
      
      Note:
      The median age in New Zealand is 37.3 years.
      Healthy proportion is 50% (I made this 50% figure up)
      
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      April 19, 2020 9:51am
- pjay
  
  Exactly – for many years now we have been warned about the approaching tidal wave of type 2 diabetes and the attendant obesity within our population.
  
  This eating disorder (that is really what it is) spawns a host of concomitant diseases of the immune system and provides a very willing host for any passing virus.
  
  To date I have not observed any comment from our health professions in regard to lowering insulin resistance and improving the body’s immune system – all of which can happen an a few weeks of carbohydrate-free eating.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ7A1Nqca64
  
  On on ….
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:32am
- PhilBest
  
  The analysis I posted yesterday on GD, covered by “The Spectator”, is relevant and disturbing. In Britain, mortality from NUMEROUS causes other than COVID-19, are UP. We expected because of reduced driving, reduced industrial activity etc, that certain kinds of deaths would drop and maybe total excess mortality might be lower in spite of COVID-19. But the opposite is true; lockdown itself seems to be killing as many vulnerable people (heart conditions etc) as the virus is!
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:31am
Ruahine

I have read that in the big US cities 25% of the population are drug takers. I suspect many of these people have very compromised immune systems.
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April 19, 2020 9:05am
- MrTips
  
  It would be very important to know how the opioid epidemic in the USA is affecting COVID19 outcomes.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:26am
  - mikenmildagain
    
    And the overall deficiencies of their healthcare system when compared with other developed countries.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:32am
    - PhilBest
      
      You mean like THIS deficiency? – moron!
      
      https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2020/03/12/the-countries-with-the-most-critical-care-beds-per-capita-infographic/#75625a537f86
      
      4 4
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      April 19, 2020 11:32am
  - PhilBest
    
    Also, the effect of legalized pot, between different States, perhaps?
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:33am
- kowtow
  
  Obesity and all its attendant issues will be a ‘huge’ factor too.
  And I’m not talking just a wee bit plump.
  
  Funny how there was such a push back by the Slob Mob against so called fat shaming. A bit of self discipline might have saved themselves , the health system and tax payers a shit load of grief.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:31am
  - Ed Snack
    
    It does appear that obesity is a risk factor for a poor outcome of a SARS-Cov2 infection, though the reason for that is not well understood. It could be something to do with sugar metabolism that is often abnormal in obese people (incipient type 2 diabetes perhaps) as diabetes is another risk factor. The Virus does seem to have some significant interaction with the sugar metabolism in the body.
    
    Also more at apparent risk are (in the USA) African Americans and Latinos, and this appears to be independent of socio-economic factors. Again the reasons are not understood.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:04pm
  - Odakyu-sen
    
    So, obesity is the elephant in the room.
    
    Who knew?
    
    //
    
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    April 19, 2020 2:14pm
TWEEDSE

The age old art of selling is to create anxiety and offer a solution. Ardern creates anxiety daily with sound bites without context – today x people died – etc and then offers the solution of destroying the economy and staying locked up at home.

The trouble is I don’t like what she’s selling but I am told I still have to buy it.
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April 19, 2020 9:09am
Komata

O-sen@0857

Re: ‘Would that kind of reporting shine a light to allow you to judge the government’s policies more clearly?’

It would but ‘Number of deaths’ as a bald statement sounds SOOO much more impressive and shows once again what Dear Leader is saving us from…

(Besides which, to do so would require some ‘journalists’ to do some actual work; never a good thing…)
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April 19, 2020 9:11am
Tauhei Notts

One of the awful downstream consequences of this Corona virus is the racing industry. For some time the management of the TAB have embarked on an ill guided strategy. Now they are broke.
How can the Tote go broke?
Well, they are, and for all of us with an interest in the racing game it is a crying shame.
For those who disagree with me ask yourself what is the TAB’s tangible assets minus their liabilities. It is terribly sick.
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April 19, 2020 9:12am
- marcw
  
  TN, the day the TAB decided to ditch Free To Air TV and pitch their total future on Sky was the day they signed their death warrant. All the flash Harry’s said they knew best, they liked all the up front money and forgot about their base and future base. Ha ha ha ha is all I can say.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:27am
- MCos
  
  I’m not interested in either racing or gambling, but even I can see that the TAB has gone from being pretty much the only legal avenue for gambling in NZ to just another player jostling for attention.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:31am
- Poppa
  
  I totally agree Notts
  
  The TAB was run by a bunch of fools to be honest & what racing clubs did was turn their backs on the average punter. They even had the arrogance to charge for you to walk in the gate!
  
  They have now lost an entire generation of punters
  
  I have interests in a couple of harness horses & I do believe that harness racing will come out of this mess much better than thoroughbred as they have been far less arrogant
  
  Rugby is heading down the same path, but they have yet to see it
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:42am
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  But a decent bookie can always find something to get suckas to bet on.
  
  How long will lockdown 3 last?
  
  Which week will go to Lockdown 2?
  
  Next big business to go bust?
  
  Unemployment level by June 1st?
  etc
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:48am
- tf78
  
  Thank God for Aussie racing at this time – just shows sensible they are and how ignorant our COL of muppets are.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:27am
- Nutta
  
  They could diversify into glue and pet food. Would be the most useful thing they could do.
  
  3 2
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  April 19, 2020 10:50am
  - Tauhei Notts
    
    En Rouen je mange le hamburger cheval.
    I do not know how to put it in the past tense.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:20am
    - Maggy Wassilieff
      
      J’ai mangé un hamburger de cheval.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:40am
- Nickc2
  
  Yep, and he’s going to be an impeachable creep if elected, which I doubt.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:37am
rouppe

37 investigations into Christchurch prison staff in 3 years

Kelvin? Hello? Kelvin, are you there?
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April 19, 2020 9:15am
- Nutta
  
  Not a private prison. Nothing to see here. Move along.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:50am
MrTips

John Ioadinnis. Some sense from a guy who knows what he’s talking about. There are clear edits in the video though that I don’t like, but his main messages are unedited : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUvWaxuurzQ

Summary: public health measures must be taken but data is key. Our current data is nowhere good enough. Protracted lockdowns likely worse than good. Media not helping at all by making people unnecessarily scared. Highly likely current death rate models are overcooked and excessive.

FWIW, I rate him highly. Good mixture of public health, evidence base required information and acknowledgment that the real world is not just about medicine.
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April 19, 2020 9:25am
- PhilBest
  
  Indeed – and like the so called “fringe deniers” in climate science, there are MANY.
  
  https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/#latest
  
  You’ll find links to Ioadinnis on there among the dozens of links to experts who are contrarians
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:36am
Tony Stuart

The Greens are broke, and they’ve sent out a begging letter. Interestingly, the reason they’re broke, apparently, is COVID-19.

Simeon Brown’s FB post has the letter from Marama Davidson, which among other things, complains that the Greens aren’t eligible for the Government’s wage subsidy! Oh dear; how sad; never mind…

https://www.facebook.com/SimeonBrownMP/photos/a.402178586826886/1114720425572695/?type=3&theater
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April 19, 2020 9:33am
- Poppa
  
  I hope they do go broke Tony
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:43am
  - Paulus
    
    Didn’t some old lady from Tasman area I think leave the Greens something in excess of $350,000 recently or have they already spent it.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:11am
    - Tony Stuart
      
      Yes, she did, but it had a caveat to the effect it could only be spent in the Nelson electorate. That covers their permitted spending for the next ten elections!
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:23am
      - mikenmildagain
        
        I think they hold their conferences there, don’t they, to use the donation?
        
        5 4
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        April 19, 2020 11:40am
- Colville
  
  What about this POS proposition from the Greens…
  
  https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/121108095/greens-want-nationwide-rail-connecting-cities-to-save-economy-from-coronacrash
  
  10 years before work could start then no one would use it!!
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:44am
  - Tony Stuart
    
    Who, after the COVID lockdown and all the emphasis on “social distancing”, would want to sit for hours in a packed railway carriage breathing in everyone else’s germs?
    
    25 1
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    April 19, 2020 9:56am
    - Colville
      
      Packed train? LOL LOL
      
      Likely 2 people per carriage INCLUDING the staff.
      
      17 2
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      April 19, 2020 10:00am
    - Isobar
      
      Packed would imply that its popular?
      
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      April 19, 2020 10:50am
      - PhilBest
        
        Or that “planning” has deliberately made driving difficult as possible by neglecting road capacity for 40 years, eliminating carparking, etc
        
        5 2
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        April 19, 2020 11:38am
      - PhilBest
        
        And “planning” that holds the entire region in thrall to the viability of the commuter rail system by restricting as much as possible, the opportunities for employment growth at dispersed rather than central locations.
        
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        April 19, 2020 11:40am
  - Kevin Herlihy
    
    A nationwide bus service already exists that fore fills intercity transportation requirements. The service is inexpensive, efficient and has full regional coverage, and would be operating with capped seating numbers once the lockdown is over.
    There will be considerable pressure on domestic airfares due to capped seating, only a limited number of seats will be available and they will be expensive. The same will apply to international fares.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:08am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Stupidty. Rail lines were closed previously because no one used them. New fast models–I hope they pay for them from their own piggy banks.
    Implementation: next 3 weeks at the latest. Someones got to beat Tywfords housing record. Is Robbo getting the Chinese Development Bank to fund this?
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:42pm
- fightingtemeraire
  
  So not enough money from tithing their MPs and donations from the members. They are in the poo.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:15am
  - Captain Mainwaring
    
    How bloody arrogant to send out a begging letter at this stage of the game. Who do they think they are?
    Hope they go broke and that this is the last we see of the bludging communist bastards.
    
    24 2
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    April 19, 2020 10:42am
- mikenmildagain
  
  How come they can’t get the wage subsidy when the Taxpayers’ ‘Union’ does get it?
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:34am
  - Alboy
    
    How about, one is a union advocating for the rights of its supporters and the other is a political party…..
    
    7 1
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    April 19, 2020 12:11pm
    - mikenmildagain
      
      You don’t think the Taxpayers’ ‘Union’ is a political party? Just because it’s not registered doesn’t make it any less political, imo. I hadn’t thought about this before but does its spending count as election expenses for National and ACT?
      
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      April 19, 2020 12:26pm
      - Nickc2
        
        In response to your last sentence, NO, they share the same accountancy firm as NZ First. Where there is a will, there is a way.
        
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        April 19, 2020 12:39pm
Old White Loser

Reading Tony Alexander in the NZ Herald, this is signalling the end of small bushiness in New Zealand and the rise of large corporations.

Why is National not highlighting this as a Government failure? they should be the voice of small business!

https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/37801
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April 19, 2020 9:41am
- Ruahine
  
  Labour has certainly taken full advantage of this created crisis to ruin small business. The reason for this is that with Corporations you get more Union members and you can bestow financial and political favours.
  A good example is Fletchers. It may look as if it is a private company but without all those Gov’t contracts it would totally collapse. Fulton Hogan also springs to mind. All doing good work but almost entirely from taxpayer and ratepayer money. Control is the winner.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:29am
  - PhilBest
    
    It is also much easier to “command and control” when there is just one big player that you can coerce with the ever-present threat of punitive action. A great mass of small businesses is a different proposition.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:43am
    - Durden
      
      They all want control. When Nats made Fletcher’s effectively the prime contractor for Christchurch EQC rebuilds — they wanted control. And they wanted the big guys to drive the prices down when sub contracting with small businesses. National also did that with their mandatory “panel procurement ” processes for all contract work.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:51pm
Swifty

Anyone got any thoughts in what’s going to happen in our housing and rental markets in the next year or two?

I’d also be interested in what you guys think will happen to our population levels over the same period? Eg. will all the students and workers no longer flocking here result in (much) softer demand for rental housing and therefore will we see landlords will be chasing tenants? Will we see rents fall?
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April 19, 2020 9:52am
- marcw
  
  If the normal rules of supply and demand go ahead, then yes, there will be reductions in rent. If however, this current ship of fools get re-elected, their policy of demonising and regulating what landlords can and can’t do will see a shrinking pool of rental properties, and there is no doubt, rents will continue to rise. The COL solution of course will be increasing benefits and accommodation supplements using non-existent taxpayer funds. It looks very grim for our future.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:00am
  - Max Howler
    
    totally agree, rents will rise. the laws of unintended consequence will kick in. I see even more people doubling up into small rentals, because they cant afford the rent.
    That will suck for both tenants and landlords.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:17am
  - tf78
    
    I’d be decreasing benefits and making them actually get off their butts and into work – factories for manufacturing NZ made goods should be set up by some smart people who could create work for the beneficiaries. No work, No money. It’s the only way to wipe out the plague that is welfare. Wage cuts, power, water, rates, insurance decreases necessary everywhere then the cost of living could slowly return to normal. Time to drain the swamp of bottom dwellers and give them back their freedom to feel good about an honest days work.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:46am
    - Steve Otto(North Shore)
      
      Most are unemployable. The company I work for has tried a few, just to give them a chance to enter the workforce. Useless is a word that is too kind. Sorry but I can’t work with dropkicks.
      We now have two generations of welfare dependents.
      
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      April 19, 2020 11:41am
    - KevO'Brien
      
      A great number have mental health issues like anxiety. Employment grade: zero.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:35pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  I expect rentals will drop, especially in locations with lots of air bnb’s.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:01am
  - Max Howler
    
    average wager (and its getting lower by the day) wont be competing for Airbnb houses even if they come on the rental market. and landlords will HATE multi groups moving in to a single house. So nah.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:30am
- Kevin Herlihy
  
  The Taxpayers Union podcast with Bevan Wallace is worth a listen if you are interested in the housing and rentals market:
  https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/taxpayer_talk_in_the_market_with_bevan_wallace
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:59am
  - Swifty
    
    Cheers Kevin.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:23am
Littletramp

As personal and many corporate incomes come down, asset prices come down (watch what happens from the banks when a few defaults kick in), interest rates come down and everything in the economic cycle is wound back, the ratchet clauses in property rental agreements must be seriously looked at if we want to recover, or even survive. They are draconian and unfair.
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April 19, 2020 10:02am
- marcw
  
  Ltramp, do you think interest rates will come down? Investment rates may do (though they can’t go much lower that 0.5%), but I’m picking what will kill most peoples’ assets will be a rapid rise in lending rates as money will be very scarce for some time.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:11am
  - Max Howler
    
    As my real estate agent says….its not where you start, its where you end.
    When interest rates start rising in the medium term there will be carnage with recent first home buyers, many will have talked their banks into 10-15% deposit setups, and with shrinking income.
    
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    April 19, 2020 10:37am
    - Colville
      
      I don’t believe intrest rates will move much for 3 years and by then this will be history.
      Any first home buyer with even a half mil mortgage can afford to pay it at 3.5%
      Even after the GFC prices were back to zero loss after 18 months.
      
      Holiday homes excluded from that tho.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:39pm
  - Littletramp
    
    marcw, Interest rates have come down already in recent years and don’t look like going up again for some time – my opinion. Are the downticks to my previous comment because people don’t think ratchet clauses in property rentals should be reviewed?
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:40am
Maggy Wassilieff

Henry Cooke reveals some of the tensions swirling around our PM

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/121095795/coronavirus-jacinda-ardern-could-be-in-for-a-lot-of-political-pain-if-she-decides-to-extend-lockdown
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April 19, 2020 10:19am
- Inandout
  
  Maggy, Jacinda won’t let this stranglehold on the country go easily. The virus messages flood the TV and radio almost at every ad break, it is a socialist’s dream. This pic shows what devotion a socialist leader demands.
  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/02/kim-jong-un-north-korea-understanding
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:53am
- KevO'Brien
  
  The worms are turning.
  As a trade off I’ll accept another week of level 4 then go to level 2.
  
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  April 19, 2020 1:32pm
YesMinister

You’d have to be absolutely insane to even try to win the next election. Jacinda has made everybody’s bed, and she needs to lie in it. Let the collapse happen under Labour. Let everybody see what they actually voted for and gleefully agreed to. 90% of people support this lockdown. Let the 90% reap the harvest of their cowardice.

If I was National, I’d be sitting back, having a beer, letting this shit ride itself out for another three years. Let the public have what they think they want.
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April 19, 2020 10:28am
- Benedict Yu
  
  I’m pleased I have a second passport.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:43am
  - Steve Otto(North Shore)
    
    Good idea. I could fuck off to the Alaskan Interior – nobody would ever find me. The winter would be tough (-60F) However the summer is just like Auckland summer
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:45am
    - Ian Boag
      
      With lots of biting insects 🙂
      
      5 0
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      April 19, 2020 4:32pm
      - Steve Otto(North Shore)
        
        The mossies are huge, millions of them. Huge black clouds of them
        
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        April 20, 2020 7:46am
- Isobar
  
  Probably not a silly idea, that would give them time to get Bridges out and Luxon in.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:52am
  - Paulus
    
    Is Luxon an MP ?
    He has to beat JLR who will have certain media female’s backing.
    Or is he politically wet behind the ears yet ?
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:15am
  - PhilBest
    
    What is it about Luxon that makes anyone think he wouldn’t be just another smiley reassuring Vichy National figurehead, not rocking the boat or changing anything the Media Party supported St Hulun or St Jacinda in?
    
    5 4
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    April 19, 2020 11:46am
- Max Howler
  
  no way. this really is this countries most important election in a generation. Total nuclear wasteland coming, and they wont give a shit (“its for your own good wahahaha” tilty head eyebrow pull)
  the future will decide which generation pays the ferryman, and whos left to wander for years in desolution
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:52am
  - Ruahine
    
    This will be the best election to lose in decades.
    
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    April 19, 2020 3:48pm
- tf78
  
  How about defer the election until towards the end of 2021 by which time the economy will have totally tanked and there will be no one else to blame but Jacinda. The Nats could then have up to 12 years to repair the damage. Short term pain for a longer term gain.
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:57am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    The COL can’t be trusted to go that far. Robbo is out of his depth but can all the money printed he wants.
    
    Don’t give the COL another week. They stole the Selection by pretending they were capable.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:25pm
- Colville
  
  Two problems with that:
  
  1. Us NZers. The poor taxpayers that will take a hammering if the COL stay in.
  2. Simon. He will want it because he wont be there for a next time if he drops this one.
  
  IMHO Simon is very capable of winning this time and making a good fist of digging NZ out of the shit too.
  Cindy will quit and FO over to some offshore tax free quangoesqe job and the Labour Party will be totally screwed. 🙂
  
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  April 19, 2020 10:59am
  - Paulus
    
    Assume Grant already see this is as his big opportunity for which he has worked for years – but the Unionist Little will get the nod again.
    
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    April 19, 2020 11:17am
    - smttc
      
      You don’t think Little already get the message that he is electoral poison?
      
      2 1
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      April 19, 2020 1:15pm
  - brett68
    
    Bridges will be the reason National loses.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:46pm
- emmess
  
  Nope, I put it a 50/50
  By September, we will really be seeing the extent of damage that they exacerbated as opposed to other countries, Australia, in particular.
  Jacinda can consider herself lucky that she chose September as the election date instead of pushing out as far as possible.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:59am
- JackRabbit
  
  Normally I’d agree with you. But another three years of this and there may not be an opportunity to vote them out.
  
  Giving the degree of manipulation and control, and current level of usurping the democratic process, is there going to be enough democracy left to get a proper vote? Will there even be a vote?
  
  Can you have a democracy when the Commissariat control the economy, the education system, the media, the police, the gun supply, and so on.
  
  To think that an election in 2023 will be any easier than 2020 you have to be dreaming. The only way that it would be easier, is if the Commissariat all have spontaneous recognition of their wrong doings sometime between 2020 and 2023, resign, and offer up themselves to be tried in court.
  
  If these rogues get in again, it is a reasonable assumption, based on the rate of their advancement of totalitarian polices, that they will only be out through other means, with a high price for all concerned.
  
  This election is critical.
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:43pm
  - KevO'Brien
    
    Absolutely. I saw that in 1975 and the Nats took the country with a big landslide. Now we have the media to fight too.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:22pm
    - JackRabbit
      
      Yes, so the task is a lot harder.
      
      What most people need to understand is that there is a tipping point in any country that is being overtaken by totalitarians beyond which democracy is not enough to vote them out. This is because they control enough of the media, and have enough controls in place to stop freedom of expression and association.
      
      Germany, as with other countries, arrived at and surpassed that tipping point, where the only solution was war and loss of human life. Getting to the tipping point involves lots of media fluff, outright lying to the public, lots of passing laws giving the state supreme power.
      
      The tipping point is reached and surpassed with the general public unaware of it. After the tipping point, those who oppose government are seen as heroes.
      
      Prior to the tipping point, those who see what is coming and oppose government are seen as nutters, extremists, and conspiracy theorists.
      
      Prior to the tipping point, those who think that the government is not a threat, are the ones who after the tipping point with something to lose, are the ones to complain that “no-one warned us”. It is not that they were not warned, but that when they were warned, they did not listen.
      
      We are far along the track to the tipping point in NZ. Far too far.
      
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      April 19, 2020 2:04pm
    - Ruahine
      
      The Media Party is Nationals opponent in the coming election. I feel Labour has it in the bag. It will be the cheapest election campaign Labour has ever run. Just a few taxpayer dollars to the media so they don’t all lose their jobs and it is in the bag. Just watch the TV channels at newstime. It is unbelievable. What a great job they are doing. They really are kind.
      
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      April 19, 2020 3:54pm
  - brett68
    
    Be honest do you believe Simon bridges is the person who can beat Ardern.
    
    Does he have the ability to sell an alternative vision to the country?
    
    I don’t.
    
    6 3
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    April 19, 2020 1:48pm
    - JackRabbit
      
      It is not Simon who needs to deal with Ardern. It is NZ that needs to deal with Ardern. Why place the fate of a country in a person or party? Placing fate in the hands of Mx Ardern and Labour is what got us into this mess in the first place.
      
      A strong party or leader who are on the correct side, is always good. But without a strong NZ, who need to learn from History, it will never be enough. It is not Simon that needs to grow balls, it is the NZ public.
      
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      April 19, 2020 2:09pm
    - Nickc2
      
      It’s interesting that you pit leader against leader in your post. Why not pit front bench against front bench? Both front benches are capable of making bullets, but straight shooting is not a skill I would attribute to anyone on Labour’s front bench. If you were to paste a LIAR sticker where applicable on each member of Labour’s front bench, your container load of stickers would be empty before you even passed the PM (where she was first in line).
      
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      April 19, 2020 2:16pm
      - brett68
        
        Because the election is Jacinda Ardern vs Simon Bridges.
        That’s the way it’s going to be pitched by the media, that’s what’s going to decide who wins the election.
        
        It’s pointless putting your head in the sand and not accepting that.
        
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        April 19, 2020 6:45pm
    - Isobar
      
      The Nats still haven’t solved the biggest problem… No friends.
      
      So either they get some ‘electable’ friends real quick or do a deal with winston.
      
      Need to give up the wet dream of a majority govt, it will never happen under MMP
      
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      April 19, 2020 3:57pm
      - Poppa
        
        I predict ACT will get 4% or more
        
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        April 19, 2020 6:28pm
      - brett68
        
        Probably the only chance National has at the moment is to knife Bridges, put Collins in charge and do a deal with Peters and Jones.
        
        Apparently, she gets on quite well with them.
        
        Simon Bridges guarantees defeat and a really heavy struggle to comeback type of defeat as well.
        
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        April 19, 2020 6:49pm
  - Ruahine
    
    Nationals true opponent in the coming election will be the Media Party. Much of which is directly funded by taxpayer money.
    Many people do not know where Radio NZ gets it money from. Which i think is quite astounding.
    
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    April 19, 2020 2:17pm
    - brett68
      
      Only Nat MP who gets positive media coverage is Judith Collins, she’s actually quite well-liked by all the media luvvies.
      
      Unlike Bridges.
      Fucked if I know why National thinks it’s still a good idea to continue to battle against the current.
      Apart from drown I have no idea what they’re trying to achieve.
      
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      April 19, 2020 6:51pm
rouppe

Damien Grant quotes CS Lewis:

“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
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April 19, 2020 10:38am
- Alex13
  
  One can find many quotes, some wiser than others. The trick is to find those that are appropriate for the situation.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:15am
- Fletch
  
  Yup, I’ve posted that quote many, many times on KB. It’s appropriate more often than not.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:35am
- PhilBest
  
  Yep, I’ve been quoting that on KB more than once in the last few days! Glad to see Damien Grant’s thoughts again
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:48am
- PhilBest
  
  This is magnificent: Damien Grant himself:
  
  “…Quality of life is a function of economic wealth; which is why refugees willingly risk a high chance of death to reach the shores of Italy and Florida. We are making the journey in reverse and it is a decision our children will come to regret…”
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:51am
- KevO'Brien
  
  The robber Baron knows he needs his serfs for another day. The Socialists need them to educate and justify those controllers self esteem.
  
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  April 19, 2020 1:19pm
Maggie Pie

We don’t know how lucky we are.

There’s no doubt the whole world is doing it tuff at the moment. But you still have to feel for the USA. They certainly have their fare share of ‘natural disasters’ 🙁
A good friend of mine is currently working over there, she Tweets….

“This is a pic of an enormous asteroid crater in Arizona.
Just look at how close it came to hitting the Visitor Centre”

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EVynPF1X0AA8nHt?format=jpg&name=small
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April 19, 2020 10:42am
- Papalazarou
  
  Brilliant!
  
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  April 19, 2020 1:28pm
Tasman Terror

China might be in for a rough economic time…..many of my parents’generation that suffered at the hands of Germany, Japan, and Italy In World War 2 refused to ever buy goods like cars, food, travel from those countries for decades because of their hatred towards this previously totalitarian states. I wouldn’t mind betting you will see many individuals boycotting Chinese goods for years to come given the world wide carnage caused by Chinese lies and indifference to other countries over Covid 19. For example I will be one of many who buys a shirt manufactured in Bangladesh not China, etc. That’s not racism, it’s removing support for a country that has hurt me, my family, and friends. Like the supermarket boss in Australia I give them the middle finger. When millions do they might appreciate what it means to be a good global citizen.
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April 19, 2020 10:56am
- Maggie Pie
  
  And my partner thinks exactly the same way.
  He used to regularly drive over to the $2 Shop in the Onehunga Mall for his Shaving Cream and Pomade – he sez he wont be any more.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:10am
- fightingtemeraire
  
  Also look at the supermarkets. A lot of the Garlic and processed Garlic comes from China.
  
  A lot of the fish caught in NZ is frozen, sent to China for processing then sent back.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:30am
- MT_Tinman
  
  I doubt you are correct.
  
  The country, indeed the world, has been damaged by bloody stupid politicians, not the current winter “flu” virus that may or may not have actually formed in China.
  
  In 12 months time I doubt more than a very tiny minority will put China and Covid-19 together when they think back, let alone pay a premium to avoid purchasing Chinese-sourced goods.
  
  Personally I will still buy whatever I see as the best value for money and/or the most convenient.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:31am
- the deity formerly known as nigel6888
  
  Indeed, and we need to tighten the Overseas investment act, like australia is doing – we dont want to watch our businesses fire-saled out to our new Chinese overlords.
  
  The world has imported enough CCP values thanks. When they decide to be responsible adults, then maybe they can be allowed back into the civilised world.
  
  In the words of a resident Hong Konger during the recent unpleasantness:
  
  “Don’t Trust China, China are assholes!”
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:32am
- Fletch
  
  The thing is, that just about everything is made in China – even stuff that you wouldn’t think. Commodities with well-known names that used to be made here or in the States are now made in China. Even kiwi themed stuff you see in souvenir shops here is made in China. You can boycott obvious things like the $2 shops, but most stuff is manufactured in China anyway.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:34am
  - KevO'Brien
    
    I have been importing medicinal containers from China. Am I to continue?
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:15pm
    - Fletch
      
      I’m not one of the people advocating for a boycott. I was just pointing out the facts.
      
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      April 19, 2020 1:38pm
    - Engelbert Humperdink
      
      You do you. I am looking at everything I buy and if it is made in China I put it back and do without.
      
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      April 19, 2020 2:14pm
- Inandout
  
  Yes TT, that buyer of a truckload of toilet rolls suddenly found he couldn’t move them inter state and wanted to return them. You can guess where he hails from.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:49am
I remember when

Air cargo volume grew with the increase in the number of passenger flights.
Will passenger numbers return with the volume of air cargo flights?
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April 19, 2020 11:17am
- Inandout
  
  A simple no, air traffic won’t return to pre Wuhan Flu for many years; if at all.
  
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  April 19, 2020 11:51am
  - Engelbert Humperdink
    
    I believe it can rebound if reliable serology can prove immunity…
    
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    April 19, 2020 2:13pm
- Benedict Yu
  
  No the two are unrelated. Passenger airlines carry cargo in the cargo hold. Because most of those flights have stopped, specialist cargo planes and airlines (FED EX, Atlas Air) are in great demand. Most airlines (e.g. Qantas, Singapore, Emirates) all have specialist cargo aircraft. Air New Zealand does not.
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:13pm
I remember when

KiwiRail spokesperson said Wairoa-Napier log train had only run three times this year.
Many moons again I travelled on the Napier-Gisborne railcar. It was an interesting journey. Perhaps it would make an ideal tourist passenger option properly organized with the benefit of boosting Wairoa’s economy
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April 19, 2020 11:23am
- Ed Snack
  
  I did a special Art Deco weekend Napier to Gisborne return trip by rail just before the line closed (a slip in behind Mahia). It certainly was interesting, they stopped twice on the way for photo shoots – once on the coast just before Mahia from Wairoa and once just out of the last tunnel between Mahia and Gisborne. Great views, but not a fast or comfortable trip really.
  
  There are two conflicting issues, one is that the line is expensive to maintain and goes through fairly rugged terrain. The cost of trucking logs to the Gisborne load point plus trans shipment makes the return to owners even more marginal. The other side is that the road link has the same issues and the logging trucks do rather pound it to bits.
  
  Right now however, the reason that the train doesn’t get any business is that the loggers are trying to keep their truckies in business by giving them as much work as they can. So rather than the short forest to railhead journey they give them the entire forest to port business. That has saved quite a few of the often independently owned and operated truckies from going broke – they’re not thriving but at least they have turnover to pay the financing costs on their vehicles.
  
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  April 19, 2020 1:24pm
Fletch

Damn it, internet is patchy as hell for me today. Probably thanks to the music stars who decided to hold an 8 hour streaming concert worldwide… ?
7 2
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April 19, 2020 11:30am
- emmess
  
  One World: Together at Home is an unprecedented virtual event organised by Global Citizen to raise funds for the WHO and frontline healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
  
  https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2020/04/general_debate_19_april_2020.html/comment-page-1?unapproved=2691028&moderation-hash=f326d62ee8c30d20d7190ba38e030b74#comment-2691028
  
  Fuck that, no way I am raising money for corrupt CCP puppets
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:08pm
  - cmm
    
    I just remember that WHO are the people that appointed Robert Mugabe as a health ambassador in 2017.
    
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    April 19, 2020 3:28pm
I remember when

With elderly people what does saved from coronavirus mean?
4 3
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April 19, 2020 11:36am
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Means you are alive and Cindy saved you so you can vote Labour
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:13pm
  - cmm
    
    Many of the “saved” will fall off their perch before the elections.
    
    4 2
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    April 19, 2020 3:25pm
JackRabbit

Someone who joins politics for the right reason, i.e. to serve their country, are focused on the long term well-being of the country, and protecting Life, Liberty, and Property. That is their top priority.

Someone who joins politics for the wrong reasons, do so to push their own agenda and their distorted view of the world. They always remain focused on the next election. The long term well-being of the country, along with Life, Liberty and Property is never a priority. They are just common everyday criminals dressed up in an image that the public have not yet seen through.
Aka The Emperor’s new clothes.

Aka The Pied Piper – By “manufacturing a crisis” by neglect and exaggeration, then pretending to be the friendly “pied piper”, and “save” the country from Covid-19, all the while in fact screwing over this country and robbing children of their future. Note the Pied Piper of Hamelin did actually exist, and by all accounts was a deviant. Think about that before you embrace the “Princess” who is a self confirmed LGBTQI zealot.

Aka Hansel and Gretel – Enticing in the young with Teddy Bear Hunt trails, Easter Egg Hunts, free vote buying computers, appealing to children with daily Facebook appearances, and other Cutie appeals to children, but the actions she is taking is going to rob them of their future. Do you really want an LGBTQI zealot, appealing to your children?

Aka The Wooden Horse – Little suggesting we can stamp out Covid-19 by giving everyone a Track’n’Trace Bluetooth card, so that contact tracing can be activated in the event of an outbreak, by knowing where you are at all times.

Little wants the contact tracing, and cares not for fixing Covid-19 even if it was the big problem they suggest it is. What appears is a solution is actually a way to get inside your personal life, by tracking who you are associating with. So as the Stasi become more controlling, you will not be able to meet with people, they deem a risk.

So far, a dozen or so deaths from Covid-19 and in the same time period dozens if not hundreds of flu and respiratory deaths, they could not prevent. So Covid-19 for NZ, is a Chicken Little story.

IF Chicken, sorry, Andew Little WAS at all concerned about Covid-19, why was he not belligerently harassing Mx Ardern on a daily basis, as early as January, to activate maximum entry checking for returning NZer’s and using his Stasi control of the police to make this happen. Why wait until Covid-19 was allowed into the country and already propagating?

And if the Commissariat is so concerned about Covid-19, and knowing that any impaired lung capacity will dramatically increase chances of dying why are they not publishing day after day about quitting smoking tobacco, smoking marijuana and vaping?

Why is the Commissariat not offering up constructive advice on health and the foods and supplements we can take that will increase immunity to Covid-19?

Why is Mx Ardern not using her Facebook time to focus on solutions, instead of appealing to the young children? “Come on kids, try a bit of candy from my candy house”

The answers to these questions are all the same. It does not fit with their totalitarian agenda.
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April 19, 2020 11:41am
Steve Otto(North Shore)

Free stuff in exchange for toilet paper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAtpu6jbyG8
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April 19, 2020 12:09pm
Maggie Pie

BREAKING
Richie Hardcore being interviewed on Magic in 1 minutes time!!

😛
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April 19, 2020 12:12pm
- Maggie Pie
  
  My partner took the tranny outside to have a listen while i was getting the lunch.
  He just came back in and said “It’s no wonder Jacinda turns to him for advice. Sounds like a total f***ing goose!!”
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:58pm
  - Prisoner of Comrade Jacinda
    
    Not everyone is fortunate to have a resident transvestite.
    
    10 2
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    April 19, 2020 1:36pm
  - Papalazarou
    
    It was kind of him to give your TQI house guest some time outside.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:50pm
oldfella

At last, something to make every TDS leftie’s head explode. Brand new and hot off the press…
https://protrumpnews.com/
Enjoy! 🙂
10 1
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April 19, 2020 12:14pm
- emmess
  
  Looks like Drudge
  
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  April 19, 2020 3:47pm
TWEEDSE

So when is the appointed PM going to announce we are all paying Fletchers for Ihumātao? Waiting for the perfect moment to burry the story.
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April 19, 2020 12:28pm
- Nickc2
  
  Good question TWEEDSE. I suspect it’s already been done. Rather fait accompli I think.
  Are those protesters still occupying the land? If so, are they staying in their bubble? Don’t think so, it would have to be a F_n big bubble.
  Maybe that’s who Hone travelled down from the Far North to brief on their next expected rort and the role he wanted them to play.
  
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  April 19, 2020 12:48pm
cmm

Why do people not cover their noses with their masks?

https://resources.stuff.co.nz/content/dam/images/2/0/2/w/8/3/image.related.StuffLandscapeSixteenByNine.1240×700.203uhl.png/1587247462214.jpg
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April 19, 2020 12:58pm
- GoVege
  
  Coz then its hard to breathe, cmm!
  
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  April 19, 2020 1:17pm
Iamright

Just watching the latest party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party. Makes me puke. Pass the bucket please.
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April 19, 2020 1:19pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  If you thought those reporter’s questions were not scripted, think again. Why do only some get selected?
  Oh, get your own bucket – I need mine
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:30pm
cmm

Medics warn of serious problems trying to catch up after all the hospital shutdowns.

Sorry, I don’t think it is actually possible to catch up in any realistic timeframe. Work will have to be dumped and thousands of people will have their risk profiles increased.

I was supposed to get two tests in the cardio unit. Both cancelled.

For what? Christchurch hospital has had zero Covid-19 cases in hospital almost all the time since the lockdown happened.

However, since we were in level 4, all hospitals were shut down to prioritise around a wave of Covid19 patients that never came.

This was an outrageously poor outcome of this oversimplified “Level” system. The hospital system should never have been at level 4.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12325346
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April 19, 2020 1:20pm
- Steve Otto(North Shore)
  
  Due for colonoscopy and MRI prostate scan.
  Scan is important under active surveillance. Cancer is cancer, no matter how small
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:35pm
Fletch

I notice that Japan, once thought to have overcome the virus, is going back into lock down…
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April 19, 2020 1:33pm
- cmm
  
  If you “overcome” it too effectively you’ll just get a second wave.
  
  Not too bad in the northern hemisphere that are moving out of flu season.
  
  Not so good if you’re in the southern hemisphere and are moving into flu season.
  
  10 1
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  April 19, 2020 1:43pm
  - JamesP
    
    Like the dog chasing the car it appears Ardern has given little thought to what will happen if she achieves eradication.
    
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    April 19, 2020 1:56pm
- Engelbert Humperdink
  
  Japan’s case resurgence in 2 words: Mass. Transit.
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:09pm
kwkiwigirl

Is anyone getting heartily sick of the police state we are living in at the moment, not to mention the daily briefings by Ardern and her trusty henchman Bloomfield? I never voted for her and never will so it’s almost like getting spammed, having to hear her voice every single day of the week at 1pm. I now turn the radio off at 1pm.

Also does anyone know friends who are just taking the piss out of the NZ taxpayer now? Spoke to one friend who is getting the wage subsidy and thinks it’s just marvellous being able to stay home and get paid, do a whole lot of odd jobs round the house and refuse to do any work from home. Basically paid leave without having to take leave. I just wonder how many of these people will actually quite get used to the idea and feel it’s their entitlement long term.

The systematic demolition of the NZ economy which will take a couple of decades to fix is hard to watch. Good we have a decent benchmark of how things could have been if we look to aussie and compare GDP and unemployment stats with them in the next couple of years.
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April 19, 2020 1:59pm
- Ruahine
  
  Many of us are getting high sick of the punitive actions that are behind a lot of the unreasonable decisions that have been made that are nothing to do with health.
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:06pm
- Poppa
  
  Cindy cares not about the economy. In fact she doesn’t understand it really
  
  On the other hand Robertson has a horrified look on his face as she prances around smiling at the camera
  
  The true extent of the carnage is down the track a couple of months & then we will see if she is so smiley when the little people start putting the boot in
  
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  April 19, 2020 3:15pm
- Gravelroad
  
  Going by the number of people who say that the shut down should carry on for a longer period (for our own safety of course), I think a lot are already conditioned into lockdown and are quite enjoying it.
  And if they can get paid by the taxpayer to stay home and paint the spare room, why not?
  
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  April 19, 2020 3:15pm
Benedict Yu

Yeah that makes me terrified. Thanks for that.

“Live: Ardern says NZ ‘carving our own path'”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121111833/coronavirus-live-update-from-pm-jacinda-ardern-and-director-general-of-health-ashley-bloomfield
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April 19, 2020 2:06pm
- RW Capitalist
  
  “Live: Ardern says NZ ‘carving our own path’”
  ???
  “Live: Ardern says NZ ‘carving our own RUT’”
  
  There, fixed it.
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:16pm
- fernglas
  
  That’s a nice change. Previously we would take the worst ideas from other countries, tinker with them then abandon them. Now we are coming up with our own bad ideas.
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:45pm
RW Capitalist

Q;
Should we consider the opinion of the flat earth society?
That world wide social distancing, will push some people over the edge.
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April 19, 2020 2:14pm
- RW Capitalist
  
  Sorry….it’s Sunday.
  
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  April 19, 2020 2:14pm
Benedict Yu

Oh my God. No. Just no.

“Keep a diary of where you’ve been and who you’ve been with to help contact tracing, Ardern says.”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121111833/coronavirus-live-update-from-pm-jacinda-ardern-and-director-general-of-health-ashley-bloomfield
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April 19, 2020 2:15pm
Maggie Pie

Bored sitting around?
One of my twitter besties comes up with a brilliant idea 😀

https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1251669412932976640
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April 19, 2020 2:33pm
- smttc
  
  There is some serious hating on Ivanka on that thread.
  
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  April 19, 2020 4:56pm
Swifty

Indian holy men observing social distancing:

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=YsaS_1587215430

Good to see.
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April 19, 2020 2:50pm
chukar

There needs to be an urgent review of where and to whom the wage subsidies are going to.

Some very wealthy recipients I have heard of including business owners.
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April 19, 2020 2:52pm
Nickc2

Your government has been using Google to spy on you! NZ Herald reports:

Ardern said there were 371 lockdown breaches in the past 24 hours up to 8pm last night.

She said it was hard to get a true sense of lockdown compliance with the variations in frequency of police patrols, but Google data showed that compliance was very high.

“New Zealand has done exceptionally well.”

New Zealanders had stayed home and saved lives, and Google data backed that up by showing fewer visits to beaches and parks.”

“I know it hasn’t been easy but it has been working.”

Did you know this was happening? Isn’t this a breach of the privacy rules? What else has this Marxist government been using Google for to spy on it’s citizens? Scary shit huh? Thanks Winston!
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April 19, 2020 2:58pm
- Batman
  
  No it is not. Google has made anonymous location data publicly available to show how communities are moving around less.
  
  You can access it here: https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/
  
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  April 19, 2020 5:26pm
  - Nickc2
    
    It’s still spying! Google will know the ip addresses.
    
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    April 20, 2020 8:16am
curry4me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn555ft-ro4
Karens rise up. There’s even a shadow minister for Karens
In the UK parliament. I guess we all know a Karen.
Entitled, arrogant, and obnoxious.
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April 19, 2020 3:10pm
- Komata
  
  Curry4me@15:10
  
  ‘KAREN’ Adern perhaps?
  
  The pointy finger, ‘I want to see the manager’ attribute seems to fit…!
  
  (Just asking)
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:21pm
curry4me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ6MJShdI4Q
China thought it could become the next super power. One third of the worlds’ manufactured goods
Are made there. Three years ago, he was the hero of Davos. Now, not so much
Governments, and businesses want to move supply chains elsewhere. Millions of
Consumers will boycott Chinese products.
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April 19, 2020 3:10pm
Chuck Bird

The spreadsheet does do work too well but I hope you see Oz is doing almost as good as NZ.

Below are new cases and cases per million.

11-Apr 12-Apr 13-Apr 14-Apr 15-Apr 16-Apr 17-Apr 18-Apr 19-Apr

NZ 97 36 44 49 38 33 47 42 38
3.88 1.44 1.76 1.96 1.52 1.32 1.88 1.68 1.52

Oz 29 18 19 17 20 15 8 13 9
5.94 3.68 3.89 3.48 4.09 3.07 1.64 2.66 1.84
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April 19, 2020 3:36pm
Chuck Bird

I sorted it out with fewer days. Oz appears to be doing better than NZ.

14-Apr 15-Apr 16-Apr 17-Apr 18-Apr 19-Apr

Oz 49 38 33 47 42 38
1.96 1.52 1.32 1.88 1.68 1.52

NZ 17 20 15 8 13 9
3.48 4.09 3.07 1.64 2.66 1.84
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April 19, 2020 3:48pm
info@cruzpro.com

I’m a lot closer to 73 than 72. Not done a lot of exercise for the last ten years. Not a good candidate for survival if I get this nasty virus. Sure hope that if we go from lockdown level 4 to level 3 that the bottle shops are going to be allowed to open.

🙂
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April 19, 2020 5:31pm
Jack5

Social damage from Covid-19.

Discrimination alleged in China against foreigners – and racism against black-skinned folk.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3080545/china-urged-ease-coronavirus-curbs-foreigners-and-speak-out
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April 19, 2020 5:44pm
Fletch

Are ventilators life saving or not? One doctor says no, that they may do more harm than good.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8230775/Is-proof-live-saving-ventilators-actually-deathtraps.html
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April 19, 2020 5:52pm
- cmm
  
  Not all people are going to cope with ventilation. Ventilation is very hard on frail people, especially those with COPD (emphysema) and other lung conditions. That’s likely why the first lady to die in Greymouth refused ventilation and went with straight oxygen instead.
  
  Ventilators are not deathtraps. They are highly valuable in many cases (eg. trauma such as car crashes), but frail, sick people that have deteriorated so far that they need ventilators are only getting about a 50/50 chance at survival.
  
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  April 19, 2020 6:25pm
  - mikenmildagain
    
    It seems that even after recovery, patients who needed ventilators have poorer outcomes. As this is well-known, the chances are that if a patient needs a ventilator, if really is a necessity.
    
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    April 19, 2020 6:34pm
    - cmm
      
      From my limited understanding, the long term impacts of ventilation will depend very much on your general health before you needed it.
      
      Ventilation is pretty hard on your lungs and such. If you already have COPD, or are frail, then ventilation can cause further damage. Of course, if you are frail and on death’s door anyway then it is going to be hard to attribute shortened life to ventilation.
      
      Long term ventilation can also lead to infections etc.
      
      Ventilation does not just involve stuffing a tube down your throat. Ventilated patients are often in an induced coma and are often fed through a nasogastric tube which adds its own complications.
      
      People often lose bodyweight when ventilated and that does not help underweight frail people.
      
      If, on the other hand, you were otherwise healthy then you probably bounce back fine. I knew a pilot who was ventilated after an air crash in the 1980s and he came back fine. He lived for another 25 years after his crash during which time he passed all his pilot medicals and kept flying.
      
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      April 19, 2020 8:10pm
Poppa

Its like Xmas Eve waiting for our glorious leader to deliver her speech tomorrow

I for one will not be watching, I will let my beloved inform me of our fate

I am concerned that I could throw something through the TV screen & then can’t replace it because Cindy says
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April 19, 2020 6:36pm
- Maggy Wassilieff
  
  We won’t be tuning in either.
  
  Level 3 = Level 4 as far we are concerned.
  
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  April 19, 2020 8:59pm
  - GoVege
    
    Not if you’re gagging for a McDonald’s McDonald’s drive-thru coffee, Maggie. 🙂
    
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    April 20, 2020 7:43am
- Alex13
  
  “…I could throw something through the TV screen…”
  Looks like some people do find it hard to stay home for a few weeks.
  
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  April 19, 2020 9:40pm

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