Chris Bishop broke the news that the Government has started to confiscate private stocks of RATs. This shows such signs of panic, and it was all avoidable. Many people had been arguing for many many months that NZ needed to get more RATs into New Zealand. They were asleep at the wheel, and having woken up they have just decided to confiscate stock from those who actually took the initiative.

But wait until you read the spin from the Government. George Orwell could not beat this.

They’re not confiscating RATs, they’re consolidating them!!!

The Herald reports:

A Taranaki man was at a family anti-violence retreat when he threatened to shoot one of the facilitators and injured another with a knife during a struggle.

So presumably he didn’t pass the course?

This ad ran in the Listener.

AP reports:

Meanwhile, the president of Ukraine has rebuked Joe Biden for a gaffe which was described as an “invitation for Putin to invade”.

Volodymyr Zelensky warned against distinguishing between a small or large Russian attack on his country as he criticised the US leader for saying a “minor incursion” may not trigger a Nato response.

“We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations,” Zelesnky said on Thursday.

“Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones. I say this as the President of a great power.”

At a White House press conference on Wednesday, Biden said he now believed that Vladimir Putin will “move in” on Ukraine, and reiterated warnings that such an attack would have “disastrous” consequences for Russia.

But he added: “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion, and we [in Nato] end up fighting about what we should do, not do.”

Biden basically said that if the invasion is “minor” then the consequences won’t be as severe. A massive foreign policy blunder from a President who was meant to be a foreign policy expert.

Stuff reports:

A Covid-19 saliva testing expert from Yale University is “terrified” at how unprepared the Government is for Omicron, and says it urgently needs to ramp up saliva testing of border workers before it is too late.

Yale University’s Anne Wyllie says New Zealand authorities need to test border workers daily, and pay attention to new research showing saliva testing is better at detecting Omicron.

“I’m terrified it’s going to be too little too late. New Zealand has had almost two years to straighten out its testing system, to get things in place.”

RATs are still banned from import and not widely available and publicly funded saliva testing is also near non-existent. And we have known for over a year both are needed.

A study from the University of Cape Town, in South Africa, finds nasal swabs, which performed well with the Delta variant, were less effective at detecting Omicron. It concludes nasal samples may be “suboptimal” for detecting the new variant.

Even if you are sticking with nasal polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, Wyllie warns testing high-risk border workers once or twice a week is nowhere near enough to get on top of an Omicron outbreak.

What worked well with other variants will crumble with Omicron.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer labels the hold-up on a wider roll-out of saliva testing as “bizarre”.

Last year, during the Delta outbreak, iwi in Taranaki largely gave up on the public Covid-19 testing system, instead training up their own volunteers to administer saliva tests from Rako Science.

She says the availability of saliva testing made a real difference to how willing people were to be tested.

It’s less unpleasant, and quicker.

Simeon Brown writes:

Finally, the project is dubbed as reducing Auckland’s carbon emissions from transportation. While this is a significant problem, a light rail is a very expensive solution.

The preferred option of the Light Rail Establishment Unit is option two – a tunnelled light rail that is anticipated to reduce carbon emissions by 980,000 tonnes over its lifetime.

Unfortunately, carbon neutrality will only be reached by 2053 after taking into account the carbon emitted in the construction of the project.

Overall this amounts to approximately $16,000 per tonne of carbon saved and will only reduce emissions by 4.5 days’ worth of NZ’s current emissions output.

The Government could spend the same amount of money and buy every voter in the Auckland Central, Mt Albert, Mt Roskill and Māngere Electorates a Tesla Model 3 and achieve a better reduction in carbon emissions.

The Auckland Light Rail project appears to be a solution looking for a problem.

Some alternative solutions I suggest are; building a rail spur from Puhinui to the airport to connect our airport with the main rail line; planning for a second harbour crossing to give more resilience to our city’s transport network and more public transport options for the North Shore; completing the Eastern Busway; and building a busway to the west to give more public transport choices to other parts of Auckland.

Much better ideas

I’m interested in the views of readers as to what they think would be the appropriate response to a disputed (some say stolen) election in the US by supporters of the losing party.

Let’s say it is 2024 and it is a close election where it comes down to one state being the difference between who wins and loses (like in 2000). Your candidate wins that state by a comfortable majority of 50,000 votes (over 1%).

The other party disputes the results in that state. They file numerous lawsuits, which all fail, and have zero proof of any fraud which would change the result. However the other party has a majority in both the state house and senate. The other party pass a resolution declaring the results of the vote is unclear due to fraud allegations and they vote for a set of electors from their party. The Governor (also from the other party) certifies a set of electors from the winning candidate (your party).

Both sets of electors meet and send to Congress votes for their respective candidates.

The other party has a narrow majority in the House and Senate. They use that majority to reject the set of electors from the Governor (reflecting the actual vote) and choose the electors from the State Legislature on the basis the Constitution gives the power to state legislatures to decide the manner of appointing electors. They certify the election for the candidate from the party you did not vote for.

The Supreme Court declines to rule on the issue, stating under separation of powers its job is not to second guess Congress, even though Congress has ignored the results of the actual election in that state.

So the candidate from the party you oppose is sworn in as President, despite clearly losing the election in terms of electoral college votes. The other party has just used its majority in the state legislature and Congress to ignore the result.

You regard the President as being illegitimate and what the other party did as partially ending democratic elections as the hallmark of the United States.

Vote below on what you think the appropriate response should be in this scenario. Would you just accept the result, or protest against it, and how?

A fascinating and moving profile of Shannon Kent, who was killed in Syria. Such an amazing woman.

Radio NZ reports:

Low-deposit lending restrictions and other lending law changes are locking prospective homeowners out of finance they would have qualified for weeks ago, financial advisers say.

The proportion of home loan applications that result in loans has fallen from 36 per cent to 30 per cent since the start of December, according to data from credit reporting agency Centrix.

Centrix estimated the lending slowdown amounted to almost $2 billion, with home loans dropping from an average of 30,000 per month to 23,000.

That’s a huge drop.

Financial Advice New Zealand chief executive Katrina Shanks said the changes were supposed to protect vulnerable borrowers from unscrupulous lenders, but had unintended consequences, putting would-be borrowers at a big financial disadvantage.

She said a survey of mortgage advisers identified a significant reduction in pre-approvals not being renewed and cuts to lending levels because of the new requirements of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA).

“Within two days we had 300 stories of clients who had not been able to obtain a mortgage or it had been more difficult, or had been reduced, or declined altogether,” she said.

The Government was explicitly warned this might happen, but ignored it.

The new law provides for hefty fines for lenders who make a loan to someone who can’t afford the repayments. And it states that senior directors and managers will be personally liable, and can’t even get insurance for any liability,

So of course senior management will massively tighten up criteria for loans.

“The issue with the CCCFA is that it’s a very wide net that’s captured all New Zealanders, not just those who are vulnerable. It’s made the affordability test so hard now that the average New Zealander who was not vulnerable cannot obtain the credit they could previously.”

In some cases, Shanks said banks were refusing loan applications or drastically cutting the amount they would lend because people were spending too much on takeaway food and coffees.

Huge own goal by the Government.

Newshub reports:

Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik gave a Nazi salute on Tuesday as he arrived in court for a parole hearing that will decide if he should be released after spending more than a decade behind bars.

There’s something wring with the Judge if he needs more than 247 zeptoseconds to decide not to give Breivik parole.

The Jewish Chronicle reports:

The British terrorist who took four people hostage inside a Texas synagogue ranted about the “f***ing Jews” in the final phone call he made to his family during the siege, a recording obtained exclusively by the JC reveals.

The FBI infamously said they didn’t think the hostage taking was anti-Semitic motivated. Maybe now they will see what has always been clear – of course it was. You don’t just happen to choose a synagogue by coincidence.

The Epoch Times reports:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a study on Jan. 7 which found that every one of the 189 vaccinated people who experienced a severe outcome after contracting COVID-19 had at least one risk factor, like being 65 or older.

Scientists affiliated with the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases studied approximately 1,228,664 persons aged 18 and over who completed primary vaccination from December 2020 to October 2021, receiving either Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, or an “unspecified mRNA vaccine.”

Among these, 2,246 contracted COVID-19, including 327 who were hospitalized, while 189 had a severe COVID-19 outcome. Thirty-six people had a COVID-19-related death, including nine persons discharged to hospice, the study found.

The key thing to note this is a study of vaccinated people. Basically it says if you are vaccinated and you have no risk factors, then you don’t die from catching Covid-19.

All those with severe outcomes had at least one of these risk factors, and 77.8 percent of those who died had four or more risk factors, the CDC said.

So if you are vaccinated and don’t have multiple risk factors, you will be fine.

The Government has announced an unscheduled press conference with the PM and Director-General of Health at 11 am.

It appears highly likely the entire country will move into Red.

Stuff reports:

Abigail Peden lies on a couch in Papua New Guinea moaning with pain as her father tries hard to keep it together.

But all Dan Peden has been able to do is wait and watch his 9-year-old daughter suffer for almost four days and hope she will be treated before the shattered bones around her elbow, caused by a fall, create a lifelong injury.

The Peden family, originally from Rotorua, are in Papua New Guinea as missionaries. Unable to get the surgery Abigail requires in the lesser developed Pacific nation, they desperately applied for an emergency managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) exemption to fly her home to New Zealand, and are now waiting for a decision to be made.

A doctor’s report seen by Stuff from the New Tribes Medical Centre in Goroka states Abigail’s young age means her condition is urgent, and she will need a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon in New Zealand to operate.

This is not a decision that should take days for the Government to make.

It is not a decision that should even take hours.

Within minutes of this landing on the desk of the decision maker, the decision should have been made to let nine year old Abigail return immediately.

On the 17th I exclusively blogged the story of a Kiwi family who got home without an MIQ booking by transiting through New Zealand, and exercising their right to stay. The Herald confirmed this story on the 20th.

On the 19th I ran a guest post from Tudor Clee who spelt out why and how New Zealand citizens have a legal right to enter New Zealand, and can do so through transit and only incur a $1,000 infringement fine.

On the 21st the Herald confirmed this, quoting a Bell Gully partner:

“Yes it does, in terms of the core provisions of the Immigration Act, citizens have the right to enter and be in New Zealand at any time,” says Bell Gully partner Willy Sussman, whose specialities include immigration law.

He said family members had, however, been stressed by comments made by joint head of Managed Isolation and Quarantine Chris Bunny, who said in a statement to the Herald: “It is a legal requirement to have a valid MIQ voucher to enter New Zealand. If someone arrives in the country without a valid MIQ voucher, then their case may be referred to NZ Police for enforcement action.

This is basically bullshit. The Immigration Act is very clear that citizens do not need an MIQ voucher to enter NZ. They may need a voucher to board a flight, but not to enter NZ. The reference to the Police is also bullshit scaremongering.

“We would be extremely disappointed by anyone who purposefully ignores the process, especially when there are thousands of New Zealanders, often in difficult circumstances, who want to come home and who follow the rules.”

Goode said the Auckland Airport Novotel MIQ facility had been “half-empty” during his family’s stay, “so we weren’t taking anyone’s place”.

MIQ management is so incompetent that they can’t match supply of rooms with demand. Half the rooms sit empty.

Stuff also has confirmed NZ citizens can legally enter via transit:

Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) has “zero tolerance” for Kiwis attempting to get into the country by posing as transit passengers – but an immigration lawyer say’s he can’t see any legal reason why they shouldn’t be able to do so. …

Arran Hunt, a partner with Auckland law firm Stace Hammond, said he had “a little bit of respect” for whoever came up with the idea “as it is an intriguing way for Kiwis stuck offshore to find a way into New Zealand”. …

Hunt said he can’t think of any legal reason why a New Zealand citizen entering the country on the proviso of travelling to another country should be denied entry, although they would still need to do their time in MIQ.

“Effectively it would be preventing a New Zealand citizen from entering New Zealand, and forcing them to leave the country.”

So three separate lawyers have said it is legal.

A smart idea from Shane Reti, and it may result in action.

A positive indication from Musk.

I’m pro-vaccine. I have just booked in my booster shot and my five year old is getting his first shot this week.

But while the anti-vaccine movement has its share of crazies, so does the pro-mandate movement, especially in the US.

A poll by Rasmussen found:

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Yep 59% of Democrats think unvaccinated people should be locked up and confined to home. Nuts.

Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications. 

And 48% think you should go to jail for questioning the vaccines!

Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Anti-vaccine camps!

47% of Democrats favor a government tracking program for those who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Big Brother is here.

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

Just sheer hysterical madness.

But it gets even worse. Here’s the editorial of the Salt Lake Tribune:

Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere.

Do you remember the outcry over Japanese internment in WWII? Here a semi-major newspaper advocates for the military to detain anyone unvaccinated.

Professor Gaven Martin writes:

There has been considerable debate around the intersection of NCEA, mātauranga Māori, and science. But it is the wrong debate.

I would like to offer a different perspective, informed by the review of mathematics education I chaired for the Royal Society of New Zealand and Ministry of Education recently.

So he is an expert in this area.

Like many of the significant shifts we have seen in education and NCEA over the last few decades, the current debate is underpinned by slogans and little if any evidence.

First, there should be no doubt that our national teaching of science, technology and mathematics (henceforth just “science”) delivers cruel results.

In 2018-19 our 13-year-olds scored their worst-ever results in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) (60 countries); and 15-year-olds had their worst-ever Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in reading, mathematics and science (about 90 countries).

Since 1994 we have gone from 64% of Year Nine students meeting the international benchmark for Maths to just 53%. For Science we have gone from 73% in 2002 to 63% in 2019.

We have been in both relative and absolute decline for more than 20 years. The economic costs to the nation and the impact on individuals of this are truly appalling. Read An empirical portrait of New Zealand adults living with low literacy and numeracy skills, by an AUT study group, and then weep – I did.

By the way, the slogan underpinning this declining performance in mathematics is “we (NZ) teach knowledge with understanding and they (everyone else) teach rote learning”. Evidently we don’t teach much at all, while other nations give their children life skills.

But surely the worst thing about our current education system is the way it exacerbates – indeed grows – inequity. The relative performance of Māori and Pasifika peoples in science education is a dark stain on our nation, and we simply must address it.

The current slogan for the NCEA changes appears to be, “Many Māori are disengaged from science because they don’t see their culture reflected in it”.

There is no evidence that such a claim has any bearing on education success rates. 

It’s an assertion made with near religious belief. But as the author says, what is the evidence behind it?

It’s about the way our children are tau​ght, and the knowledge and skills teachers bring into the classroom.

The notion that a curriculum change will lift our under performance is farcical. It is about how we teach.

• Perceived deficits. Frequently, the cultural background of both Māori and Pasifika students is perceived as a deficit within the schooling system. A recent study found that teacher expectations in New Zealand secondary classrooms were lowest for Māori and Pasifika students. Teachers referred to perceived deficits in home backgrounds and attitudes of this group of students by stating that Māori and Pasifika students lacked motivation, goals, aspirations and parental support. Studies decades earlier found exactly the same perceptions.
• The very strong correlation between socio-economic status, and the quality of teaching (and teacher knowledge of the disciplines, along with their own experiences in science – which they usually do not like teaching). Students in higher decile schools (7-10) are three times as likely to get university qualifications than those from lower decile (1-3)
• Poor preparation for schooling is identified as lack of ability and baked into a child’s education in perpetuity by our teaching methodologies including de facto streaming practices (slogan here is “student centred learning”, as if any teacher could manage teaching a class with 20 different centres – spread across years of the curriculum).

So focusing on these issues is far more likely to improve performance.