A reader writes:

Cost and benefit

Personalising risk and personalising cost.

NZ – Covid risk

Based upon current average death numbers at 1,500 per million, over 2 years.
Average age of death being 82 – life expectancy without Covid interference an additional 3 years.
So 1,500 x 5m pop. = 7,500 x 3 years = 22,500 life years.
On average at the end of life – low quality life years in most circumstances.

Expediture on Covid

Lets say it’s only 1 Billion – the cost of a single week of lockdown.

Comparative expenditure

In this example we will use the funding for Keytruda immunotherapy.
Ironically funding negotiations for this were cancelled by this Government citing the cost of Covid.
Only funded currently for inoperable melanoma, we will use it as required for cancers of the head, neck, edometriotic, lung and other cancers for which it has a proven performance.
30-50 people per week (say 40) given, on average, an additional 3-5 years of life (say 4).
Figures quoted for funding are $50-200m for 3-5 years. Lets say $100m for 4.
So:
40 people per week (say 2,000 people per annum) funded for 4 years = 8,000 people,
getting 4 years extra life on average, 32,000 life years in total.
$100m = 32,000 life years – average onset age? (lets say 65) higher quality of life years than Covid.
However we have only spent $100 million, so multiply the results x10
1 billion = Keytruda funded for 40 years saving 320,000 life years.
Note: It is not clear in the figures I have what length of time the treatment is applied, I have used 1 year.
Though it was worded as 3-5 years accumulative, So else – use between 80,000 and 320,000 life years.
Have we spent 50x times that on our Covid response? Or even more?
All public health decisions are ultimately $/risk/benefit analysis, how can this be justified?

Personalising risk and cost.

We hear at the moment things like “You are killing your Gran” etc.
Fine – but that statement personalises the risk, it does not personalise the cost.
Using the costs above as an indication – and I doubt they can be wrong by a factor of 50x –
A more honest statement might be …
“Save your Gran – but kill 10 other members of your family: children, siblings and/or cousins”.

Points on conclusion.

This is of course based on a zero sum game that assumes the budgeted money would be spent where it does the most good. The fact is it would probably not be spent at all on boring diseases.
Has anyone asked anyone over 80 whether they would prefer another year of life on the basis that they deny one of their children another year of life at age 60 – let alone?
My personal opinion of a preferred action would be to vaccinate often the 70 plus age group and the vulnerable. Then carry on as “old normal” zero restrictions. Perhaps take $10B and sprinkle a few modern base hospitals about the place. Spend another $5B on the like of Keytruda above and clearing some of the elective surgery lists. Of course there is still the other $35B!
What would you do?

A Blair Jones started a petition calling on the PM to resign four months ago. It didn’t have many signatures but in recent times it is gaining around 1,000 a day. It has no chance at all of having any political impact, but could be an interesting unscientific barometer of how many people are pissed off enough to sign it.

Stuff reports:

Wellington city councillors will split a retired colleague’s six-figure salary amongst themselves rather than appoint a replacement or donate the difference to charity.

The contempt for ratepayers is staggering.

The council also voted down an amendment by councillor Iona Pannett suggesting councillors pay back the equivalent amount of additional remuneration to the Council or some other charity.

The amendment would have been non-binding, on the advice of council staff.

Pannett​ said she felt uncomfortable voting to give herself a pay raise while many workers and businesses were struggling due to Covid-19.

On this issue Pannett is dead right. The extra remuneration should simply be paid back to Council.

The amendment lost 10-4, with Iona Pannett, Laurie Foon, Sarah Free, and Mayor Andy Foster in favour of donating the salary difference.

Well done those four.

A guest post from Jeremy Callender:

Dear 21^st Century NZ,

You exhaust me.

I want to care about you and your continued existence – I really do.  My own existence is, after all, somewhat bound up in it.  But you do make it so very hard.

And it’s not the endless news stories of endless state/group/family/individual violence, the nauseating ubiquity of celebrity worship, or the cultural embracing of narcissism as if it were the virtue next to godliness.

It’s the noise.  It’s just the [insert adjectival colouration of choice] noise.

You just don’t seem to know how or when to bite your tongue.  When to pause and consider your response.  When to quietly refrain from sharing your every thought.  When to just shut the hell up. 

You just have to have your say.  You have to get your ten cents in.   To share the bottomless depths of your Google-fuelled wisdom.  To raise your banner proudly in the crucial swing-state of Facebook and on the bloody battlefield of Twitter, confident in the sanctimony and self-righteousness that are so deservedly yours.

And I understand.  I get it – I really do.  After all, there are so many issues about which to sanctimoniously and self-righteously speak.  Here are just a few of the issues:

• Poor people are lazy bastards who live to defraud the taxpayer
• Rich people are lying bastards who live to defraud the taxpayer
• Brown people are whinging bastards who do all of the above
• Yellow people are an insidious peril and must be stopped
• White people live a life of undeserved privilege built on the spilt blood and trampled souls of innocent indigenous peoples who – prior to white people turning up – had never ever done anything remotely discourteous or otherwise warranting disapproval 
• Black lives matter
• White lives matter more
• Yellow lives probably matter, but secretly we’d prefer if they didn’t
• [insert name of preferred celebrity] has an opinion about something
• Somebody somewhere said something about something – and I was offended
• Donald Trump is alive
• There’s a housing crisis
• There’s a methamphetamine crisis
• There’s a poverty crisis
• There’s a pandemic
• Minorities have rights
• Animals have rights
• Old people have rights for now, but think how convenient it would be if they didn’t?
• White people (especially white men) shouldn’t have any rights at all

So many issues.  So many topics about which to sensibly converse in an informed, restrained and respectful manner.  

Flight of the Conchords used to sing about the issues:  “Think about it – think, think about it.”  I miss them.

See, the thing is, there have always been issues.  For as long as this ridiculous troupe of B-grade circus freaks that we call Humanity have been in charge of things, there have been issues.  The threat and reality of war. The possibility and reality of famine, plague, pestilence, immigration, emigration, social upheaval, injustice, poverty and inequality.  Overpriced avocados and underpaid sex workers.  

Et cetera and ad infinitum.

There have always been Donald Trumps and Kim Jong-Uns. There have always been environmental challenges to deal with.  There have always been people and groups of people who have possessed more and less than others.  There have always been people thinking and saying and doing things with which other people vehemently disagree.  There has always been pain and suffering and difficulty and unfairness and unhappiness.  This may come as a surprise to you, but there really is nothing new under the sun.

And in saying so, I am by no means implying that I think such things are great and wonderful and we should all be really stoked about it.

What I am saying is this: enough already.  Just …… enough.  Enough with the Facebook posts and the tweeting and the memes and the moral outrage and the hand wringing and the righteous vitriol and all of the other completely pointless and thoroughly unhelpful bullshit.

None of these things are going to go away.  They will always be with us in some form or another.  There will always be objects of fear for those who wish to fear.  Sources of offence for those who are determined to be offended.  Opportunities for exploitation by those with the will and the means to put their own desires first, irrespective of the cost to others.  There will always be the possibility of suffering, struggle and ultimate doom.  There always has been – just ask the dinosaurs.

Do you really think it matters in the long run if you’re Left, Right, up, down, black, white or yellow with purple stripes?  Conservative or liberal?  Casually religious or militantly less so?  Hetro He-Man archetype or ‘flaming’ homosexual?  Rich or poor?  

‘Coz it doesn’t.  

We’re all still incredibly imperfect human beings – isn’t that enough?  Aren’t we a sufficiently wretched species already?  Do we really need all of this other rubbish as well?  The cyber-fortresses of absolute righteous certainty?  The razorwire-topped walls of pseudo-ideological division?  The endless streams of senseless rhetoric and brain-dead invective in the “Comments” section of [insert name of preferred propaganda outlet], borne of ignorance and hurt and stupidity and fear?  

Do we need them?

Why is it so important that we each get our moral oar in?  Why is it so hard to accept and admit that we may all be as ill-informed and deceived as each other?  As biased as each other?  As bloody stupid as each other?  As lonely as each other?  As mortal and as scared as each other?

Why are we so determined to fight the possibility of smoke with the actuality of fire?  To crush any and all who dare to have a different point of view?  A view perhaps based on an experience of life that has been nothing like our own…

Is it fixing the problems?  Is it healing anyone’s pain?  Is it making us better people?  

Are our little online echo chambers helping us to sleep better at night?

Please tell me that they are…

Here’s a random theory that’s probably worth disregarding entirely:

If your journey brings you into contact with people whose opinions differ from your own, consider treating them gently: hearing them out and trying to understand them.  I mean, at the very least, you’ll be following Sun Tzu’s (and Rage Against The Machine’s) advice to know your enemy.  And if there are people around you who are living their lives in ways that just don’t quite gel with your ideas of how things should be, consider asking yourself – or, God forbid, respectfully asking them – why it is that they do what they do the way they do it.  

Who knows?  Their reasons might be better than – or the same as – yours…

Alternatively, you might just try quietly minding your own [insert adjective of choice] business.

If your ‘enemies’ – or their children – are hungry, then instead of bad-mouthing them to your friends, blogging about it or writing to your local representative, maybe you could consider taking them a meal.  If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.  And if they’re clearly not going to win the annual award for The Visual Embodiment of Perfect Middle Class Parenting any time soon, perhaps you could offer to babysit their kids from time to time.  

And if you’re deeply fearful that the condition of their front lawn may be negatively impacting property values, then perhaps consider pulling your fat head out of your righteous arse and offer to mow it for them. 

I think I remember once hearing about this guy who suggested that we should try loving our neighbours as we love ourselves……yes, yes I’m fairly certain I read that somewhere. 

But then again, what could a Jew have possibly known about suffering…?

Flaglouriously yours,

Jeremy Callander

Chris Bishop and Chris Luxon announced:

National has forced the Government to back down on an electoral power grab buried in a Covid bill.

“The Government proposed to give itself the power to repeatedly delay local body elections through a change hidden quietly in the Covid Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” says National’s Local Government spokesperson Christopher Luxon.

“The bill allowed the Government to adjourn local elections multiple times without constraint – and not just in an election year, but the year after as well.

“As an example, it would have let the Government delay one of next year’s council elections by six weeks at a time, right through to the end of 2023.

“The Government has now buckled under the pressure and will delete that clause from the bill.

They were trying to sneak this law change through under urgency. Good to see the backdown.

Stuff reports:

The incumbent centre-right political group has repeated its clean sweep of the election for Entrust, the consumer trust which owns the majority of the electricity lines company Vector.

But the dismal turnout in the triennial postal ballot has fallen to a record 9.64 per cent, compared with the previous record low of 12.44 per cent in 2018.

The National Party-leaning Communities and Residents (C&R) ticket retained all five seats on Entrust, with the new trustees including two former National MPs Paul Hutchinson and Denise Lee, a former party board member Alastair Bell, and Michael Buczkowski and William Cairns.

The highest polling unsuccessful candidate was Emma McInnes, from the newly-formed More for You, Better for Climate group, who missed the cut 838 votes behind re-elected trust chairman William Cairns.

I was interested in the results of this election, as I thought it might be a useful reminder of how unrepresentative Twitter is.

The MFUBFC group were everywhere on Twitter. I saw tweets and hashtags for them hundreds and hundreds of times. If Twitter was your world, then they were everywhere. I’m not sure I can even recall a single tweet or hashtag for the C&R team. The ration of profile between the two was probably at least 50:1.

Yet the C&R team won in a clean sweep.

Even though the MFYBFC team was from the left, that didn’t mean some of their candidates weren’t impressive. In fact I even have some money invested with a fund managed by one of them. I regard him as a very smart business operator. So the problem for MFYBFC wasn’t the quality of their candidates – I think it was that they seemed to spend so much time online preaching to the converted rather than reaching out to those not on social media.

The Taxpayers’ Union has made a TV ad and is crowdfunding to get it in front of millions of Kiwis online (using paid Facebook and YouTube ads) plus on TV.

To chip in to the advertising fund, they’ve got a secure website for confidential donations here.

Hopefully they hit their fundraising goal and we get to see it on TV!

Stuff reports:

Just one guest stayed at the Grand Mercure managed isolation hotel in Wellington last week, where dozens of staff were working.

It’s understood the person arrived on a private plane following a family issue in New Zealand.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Managed Isolation and Quarantine confirmed the 102-room hotel had just one guest between October 21 and October 28.

It meant 88 isolation rooms went empty over that period, as well as 13 quarantine rooms.

Up to 50 staff were still working at the facility during that time, looking after the single guest.

I’m not sure what is more outrageous – the huge waste of taxpayers money or the fact 20,000+ Kiwis can’t get home because the Government is so incompetent at managing MIQ.

A guest post by Shadow Attorney-General Chris Penk:

Conflict within the judiciary must be addressed urgently by the Attorney-General.

It is highly troubling to read reports that certain judges have sought to influence the conduct of a court case being heard by another member of the bench, Judge Callinicos.

Readers of Kiwiblog may have seen reports that Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu and Principal Family Court Judge Jackie Moran entered into discussions with one of the parties to the “Moana” case – the party being government agency Oranga Tamariki, no less – while it was still in progress.  It has also been reported that those Heads of Bench then proceeded to contact Judge Callinicos about his handling of the case.

If these reports are accurate, both senior judges have acted in a manner that is entirely inappropriate.

Judge Taumaunu surely cannot credibly claim that he was merely seeking to engage Judge Callinicos with concerns over the latter’s “in-court conduct”, rather than his decision-making: a judge’s conduct of a trial is an exercise in judicial decision making in itself.  Certainly such intervention was ill-timed, at the very least.

It is difficult to disagree that these senior judges’ actions represent “a breach of judicial independence”, as Judge Callinicos himself has characterised it.

There are appropriate ways for complaints about judicial conduct to be made.  None of these involve private discussions taking place behind closed doors between judges uninvolved in the case being heard, especially while the matter remains live.

Judicial independence is critical to safeguarding the rights and freedom of citizens under the rule of law.  Open justice is a cornerstone of New Zealand’s system of government and must not be casually corrupted.

This situation is extremely concerning, not only because it brings in question the judgement of some of our most senior judges but also as it will undermine public trust in the courts system.

In addition, it is very unseemly, to say the least, that judges are now litigating the matter in the public arena.

It is unfortunate that the most senior levels of our judiciary have demonstrated a lack of leadership in the matter.  This being so, the Attorney-General is the constitutionally appropriate figure to resolve this situation of conflict between judges.

I acknowledge that the involvement of the Attorney-General could itself be considered an intrusion, given that powers of New Zealand’s branches of government should generally be exercised separately.  I would support the Attorney-General actively providing leadership in this matter, however, as the judiciary is proving itself incapable of regulating its own affairs properly.

Indeed I would strongly urge the Attorney-General to step in.

So far, the signs are not promising.  I have asked Written Parliamentary Questions of the Attorney-General regarding his possible involvement. First, I asked whether he had received advice in the matter, intending then to seek a copy of such advice by way of OIA request.  His answer was “no”.  I then asked Mr Parker if he has sought any advice about the situation.  His answer, which I have just received, was again “no”.

The Attorney-General should be taking note of issues of judicial conflict.  Simply turning a blind eye to them will prevent justice from being seen to be done.

Trying to make sense of what you can and can’t do now and in the future is damn hard. The Government has managed to take what was a simple system and turn it into one with 13 different variations. There are four alert levels, three steps, three traffic lights and three variations based on vaccination certificates.

Just to understand it myself I started to do an excel spreadsheet. I figured others might be equally puzzled, so am publishing it here. Note this is unofficial advice based on my interpretation of the Government websites.

NV means no vaccination certificates. 1m means 1 metre social distancing.

I find it amazing that bodies that once professed to care about human rights (Council for Civil Liberties, Human Rights Commission) are almost silent on the human rights implications of vaccination mandates.

I’m not saying there isn’t a case for vaccination mandates, certainly in areas such the healthcare system. But deciding that a barista can lose their job if they don’t agree to a particular medical procedure has huge implications in terms of the Bill of Rights. The bodies that should be leading the debate are silent.

Does the right of an employer to be able to be more profitable and allow more than 100 customers in at a time, exceed the rights of an employee to not have a particular vaccination? Does the CTU have a view on this?

One can make the case for a vaccine mandate for primary schools and ECE as students there are not (yet) able to be vaccinated. But does the logic hold up for secondary schools and universities? Is the right to an education contingent on vaccination status?

The NZ Bill of Rights Act says that everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment. Is that right contingent on an employer being able to retrospectively insist of vaccination or you lose your job?

These are massive issues and they are being rushed through without any of the bodies that claim to believe in human rights leading a debate on what the right balance is.

Stuff reports:

An 18-year-old woman, who had been trespassed from a Ministry of Social Development office, slipped into the building and assaulted a staff member so violently that she broke her hip and wrist.

Latia Tipa-McQueen assaulted the staffer at Work and Income New Zealand’s Sydenham branch in Christchurch on July 30.

Tipa-McQueen had previously been trespassed from the office but “ghosted” in with a staff member and then forced her way through a door and past security. When a woman staffer recognised her and confronted her about the trespass, Tipa-McQueen charged her and pushed her over before kicking her three times.

On Wednesday, the Christchurch District Court was told the 64-year-old victim’s injuries were severe and recovery would be slow. The woman had sustained a broken hip and wrist, and extensive bruising.

So this 18 year old thug broke a trespass order, made her way into a WINZ office and beat up a 64 year old so badly she broke her wrist and hip.

In her victim impact statement, the woman told of being unable to walk without a walking frame or crutches, and having to have her house modified because of her mobility problems, after previously regularly walking, cycling, and enjoying social outings with friends.

She may never fully recover.

Tipa-McQueen had earlier admitted a charge of intentionally injuring the woman, as well as charges of threatening and assaulting staff at a bank branch when she was refused a debit card because she did not have enough money.

The bank staff had not been seriously injured, but were left shaken and remained “unsettled” when out in public because of threats Tipa-McQueen made to have members of two gangs deal with them.

Tipa-McQueen had also been convicted for failing to come to court while she was on bail. She was on bail at the time of the Work and Income assault.

So she has also assaulted bank staff, threatened people with gangs, has failed to turn up to court and broken bail conditions at least twice.

Tipa-McQueen explained that she did want treatment, but she did not want rehabilitation in a group setting “where I am forced and pressured into admitting I have got a problem”.

Judge Quentin Hix said Tipa-McQueen’s offending warranted a jail term of 47 months, but reduced it for her guilty pleas, her youth, and for personal factors, to an end-sentence of 18 months.

Judge Hix granted leave for Tipa-McQueen to apply for home detention during her jail sentence if an arrangement became available for a good rehabilitation plan, either with support from an alcohol and drug rehabilitation organisation, or at a residential programme.

And she gets home detention!!

Item 1: Good news out of Britain for the Vaxxed and Unvaxxed.

Although the double-vaxxed are catching Covid at higher rates than the unvaxxed in the UK they are still having lower incidents of serious illness. However, for both, death rates for people who have had positive tests are now very low.

Under 18s: Zero for both categories (classes?) – and yet to play 1^st XV Rugby in Auckland now you need to be vaccinated.

18 to 29: 0.1/100,000 vaxxed, 0.5/100,000 unvaxxed

30 to 39: 0.2/100,000 vaxxed, 0.9/100,000 unvaxxed

40 to 49: 0.6/100,000 vaxxed, 3.5/100,000 unvaxxed

50 to 59: 1.7/100,000 vaxxed, 12.8/100,000 unvaxxed

60 to 69: 5.5/100,000 vaxxed, 26.7/100,000 unvaxxed

70 to 79: 15.8/100,000 vaxxed, 56.4/100,000 unvaxxed

80+: 56.3/100,000 vaxxed, 144.1/100,000 unvaxxed

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1025358/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-41.pdf

So – the advances in treatment, etc, means that if I was a man in my 50s and choose not to have the vaccine and was then unlucky enough to get covid – I have a 0.0128% chance of dying within 60 days.

Item 2: Ardern lifts the profile of New Zealand around the world – either through pushing around interpreters, redefining the class system, or seeing to it that some teachers & health workers get the sack.

Daily Mail on the argy bargy: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10130755/Jacinda-Ardern-FINALLY-explains-barging-sign-language-interpreter-way.html

CNN on the argy bargy: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/10/25/new-zealand-interpreter-moos-pkg-vpx.cnn

The Telegraph on the sackings: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/10/27/jacinda-ardern-gives-new-zealand-customer-service-workers-month/

The Telegraph on the new class system: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/10/24/jacinda-ardern-admits-covid-plan-creating-two-tier-system-new/

Paul Joseph Watson on her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNY4nI_rtdQ&ab_channel=AnythingGoes

Hitler on hospital preparedness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTpXUMl7Stw&ab_channel=AtomAntBoy

Item 3: The NZ Ministry of Education ranks third most secretive in terms of OIA extensions.

1. The GCSB
2. The NZ SIS
3. The Ministry of Education – with nearly 50% of OIA requests extended despite having 3,400 staff members.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126720470/official-oia-statistics-are-close-to-useless

Item 4: Disaster in NZ for many families and children.

In July the Villa Education Trust had a Designated Character School proposal for 480 neuro-diverse students turned down. Why? The Minister (Hipkins) and Ministry formally told them that:

  “there are available supports for all learners in existing state schools”

Since July things have obviously gone very badly and yesterday in the House ex PPTA head Angela Roberts and ex NZEI and Primary Principal Jan Tinetti (ass. Minister of Education) had this exchange.

10. Angela ROBERTS to the Associate Minister of Education: What work is she progressing for students with the highest learning support needs?

Jan Tinetti: We know that some students aren’t getting the right support they need and when they need it … the changes we are making will benefit 50,000 to 80,000 students in that situation.

Where have 80,000 high needs students suddenly come from?

Stuff reported:

Wellington City Council has voted 10-4 to retain its stake in Wellington International Airport.

The vote came as a surprise because it was initially intended to be held in secret during a session of the council’s finance and performance committee that excluded the public.

The vote was revealed after a last-minute vote to open the meeting to the public.

The council owns a 34 per cent holding in Wellington International Airport. The remaining 66 per cent share is owned by Infratil.

This was a very disappointing decision, especially as WCC could have used the cash from any sale to help finance infrastructure that the Council actually needs to own. There are many reasons why WCC would be better off selling the 34%.

1. As a minority shareholder you end up at the mercy of the majority shareholder. They decide how much money goes into dividends, into expansion, into capital etc etc.
2. Any directors you appoint have to act in the best interest of the company, not WCC. More often than not they end up representing the airport to the Council, rather than the Council to the airport – on fact they are basically legally obliged to. So it is a myth that appointing a minority of directors gives WCC meaningful sway over decisions.
3. When the airport faces regulatory issues, the Council is conflicted between its role as regulator and part-owner and will tend to favour the airport over residents.
4. When the airport makes requests for funding, the Council is even more hopelessly conflicted and rather than regarding funding requests with a sceptical eye, bend over backwards to give the airport or airlines money, in the belief that it may drive tourism. Hence the money to Singapore Air for flights to Canberra etc.

The problem is Council has so many leftish ideologues that won’t look at the ownership on its merits. They are wedded to the status quo no matter how stupid it is. What they should be doing is looking at it from a opportunity viewpoint. If the Council suddenly had say $400 million would it really think the best use of that money is a 34% share in an airport as opposed to water infrastructure, housing etc.

The Herald reports:

Kiwi singing legend Sir Dave Dobbyn has come out in support of the Covid vaccine – but says the fight should be against the virus, not people.

The 64-year-old has taken to Facebook to express his views and to declare his own vaccination status.

“I am double vaccinated. I encourage it for everyone. But I call out the unkindness directed at those who haven’t yet taken the step.”‌

He ended the post, shared late this morning, with the hashtag: “Fight Covid not humanity.” …

Responding to a tweet by writer Hamish Keith, saying the unvaccinated will feel isolated and picked on and “so they bloody well should”, Dobbyn said: “I thought we’re fighting Covid, not humanity.”

To which Keith replied: “I hope you missed my point. There are a number of people for reasons against reason putting the health of the rest of us at risk – that is I believe a dangerous and possibly lethal point of few – should we simply shrug it off?”

Hamish Keith is wrong, as well as nasty. And poor old Dave Dobbyn had to endure a Twitter lynch mob because he dared suggest we be kind to people.

As I have said many times I regard the vaccines as great, and I have been fully vaccinated. I’ll be keen on the inevitable booster shots next year also.

Those who seem to get most angry at the unvaccinated are the vaccinated, and that is actually pretty stupid as the vaccinated have little to fear from the unvaccinated. If you are vaccinated you are less likely to get Covid-19, more likely to not get any symptoms from it, less likely to be hospitalized and far less likely to die.

The people who should worry about the unvaccinated are the, well, unvaccinated. They are the ones far more likely to get Covid-19, be hospitalised with it, and die from it.

So vaccinated people should chill out a bit. No need to treat the unvaccinated as some sort of mortal threat to you – they’re mainly a threat to themselves.

Sure I want as many people to get vaccinated as possible, but that is more about lifting lockdown restrictions. The notion that any of us will not be exposed to Covid-19 in the next few years is farcical. It is when, not if. Look up the word endemic.

Again I want as many as possible vaccinated to stop lockdowns and to reduce the strain on the health system. But as a fully vaccinated person I do not intend to treat unvaccinated people as lepers or some sort of sub-class of humanity. It is inevitable I will be exposed to Covid-19 one day, but thanks to vaccines the chance of it hospitalising me is greatly reduced.

Stuff reports:

The cost of the Waikeria Prison riot has been released and is in the millions of dollars, according to a National Party MP.

Simeon Brown said in a statement that the Department of Corrections’ Annual Report shows the costs of the six-day riot is $46 million.

The riot at Waikeria Prison, about 40 minutes south of Hamilton, started on December 29 and lasted six days.

The rioters set fires, about 200 other prisoners had to be evacuated, and the structural integrity of the 110-year-old “top jail” was seriously damaged.

So the taxpayer gets a bill for $46 million because authorities wouldn’t send in a riot squad to end the riot. Tear gas and water cannons are there for a reason!

Stuff reports:

The Government has decided to push ahead with Three Waters reforms and take control of water services and assets from local councils, despite considerable opposition.

The proposed reform of the country’s three water services – drinking, waste, and storm water – has caused outcry among political opponents and some local councils, which currently have ownership of billions in water assets, have loudly opposed proposed reforms.

Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta on Wednesday said the Government would legislate in early December to create four new water entities that would take on the water assets currently owned by councils.

This is the Government announcing it will pass legislation to legally steal billions of dollars of assets from democratically elected Councils.

The Government claims that it is not theft, as the Councils will still own the assets – just not manage them. This is farcical as ownership without control is not ownership. Imagine if you own your house and the Government announces that you will still own your house, but you have to move out and any decisions about who lives in it will be made by some committee, Would you regard that as satisfactory?

The four megawater entities will be as far removed from community influence as possible. Basically the proposal is:

• Residents will vote for Councillors
• Councils and Iwi will appoint a regional representative group on a 50:50 basis.
• The Regional representative group will appoint set up a selection panel
• The selection panel will appoint directors

So the actual water entities will be multiple levels away from the community and accountability. And unelected Iwi will have the same amount of voting power as the democratically elected Councils on the regional representative group. In the South Island Ngai Tahu will appoint six representatives – the same as the 27 local councils.

You can sign the petition against the Three Waters asset grab here. A background paper is here. And you can donate to the campaign against here.

Also NZTU have launched a dedicated website to stop the theft here.

Duncan Garner writes at NBR:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her government have been exposed. The myth has been busted and only the truly deluded and card-carrying sycophants surely now think they’ve handled this pandemic well.

Just before half-time in the battle against Covid, Ardern left the field to take selfies and sign autographs, thinking the game was won.

The rest is called Delta. Can someone please pass this on to the luvvies who see her as a demi-god?

Ardern’s crew got lucky when Covid hit us the first time. But not now.

The sham has been revealed, the pandemic has turned nasty, and I suspect the voter worm is heading south too.

Put simply, this government had a couple of jobs to do once it realised we had dodged the first bullet. It had to prepare our health system for the well-documented second coming called Delta. And it had to secure a vaccine and get it into our arms as quickly as possible.

The result was no extra staffed ICU beds and until the Delta outbreak we had the slowest rollout in the developed world.

[Rest of quoted column deleted, to stay within fair use law. You can subscribe to NBR to see the full column]

I posted this challenge on Twitter and enjoyed reading for the next couple of days, people responding with praise and more for people from the other side of the political aisle.

I strongly think this is important. I think the United States faces huge problems as people’s political identification has become more important than their shared citizenship. As each side considers the other side as treasonous, then anything is justified to claim or hold power.

New Zealand is lucky that we are not there yet, and I hope we don’t end up there. I will vehemently critique the policies, beliefs and performance of MPs where I think they are bad for New Zealand. But that does not mean I think those MPs and their supporters are bad. We just disagree. The moment you become incapable of seeing good in those you disagree with, then you become the problem.

Some of the responses yesterday were (starting with me):

My challenge to readers is to do the same in the comments, and cite someone you like or respect despite them being someone whose politics you disagree with. And I mean genuine compliments, not along the lines of “X because they are too incompetent to do real harm”.