Meet George Tweedy. He did the following to his ex partner:
For the crimes of abusing a protected person, strangulation and aggravated burglary he got 12 months home detention.
This is very concerning as it is quite possible daily cases will be at that level in a fortnight or so. The slower contacting tracing is, the more community transmission there is, the more cases you have etc etc and it becomes a vicious circle.
There is no excuse for the lack of capacity. The Associate Minister of Health herself did the review (before she was an MP) stating we needed this capacity. Ministers should have been demanding reassurance on a regular basis that the capacity was there.
The Times of Israel reports:
After boosters, elderly Israelis who are fully inoculated have just one fiftieth of the chance of COVID death compared to unvaccinated people in the same age bracket.
According to Health Ministry data for the last seven days of September, there were 6.43 daily deaths per 100,000 Israelis aged 60-plus. For older people who were vaccinated three times, the average was 0.13.
The statistics indicate that the shift from a two-shot to a three-shot regime has saved many lives. When elderly Israelis who are vaccinated twice get their third shot, they eliminate eleven-twelfths of the risk of death.
The daily deaths over the last seven days of September for the double vaccinated elderly was 1.5, compared to the 0.13 figure for the triple vaccinated.
Basically being double vaccinated reduces the chance of death by 75% but a booster shot reduces it further to 98% for over 60s.
We should start rolling out booster shots to any over 60s whose first two shots were over six months ago. Doing so will save lives.
A guest post by Owen Jennings:
“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. For fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain…”- Edmund Burke.
Kiwis are being robbed. Politics and the media are the accomplices. Do not underestimate how effective the weapon of fear is in these hands. In more normal times this Government would be struggling to register in the polls such is the incompetence, lack of delivery and arrogance. By any measure, only the most stubbornly loyal would, in non-Covid times, be willing to support such an utterly dismal performance. But fear “robs the mind…. of reasoning”.
The failure of this Labour Government in almost every area of its administration has no parallel in our history. Despite an 19% drop in support Ms Ardern and her motley crew are hanging on to over 40% in the last poll. Here is why. It’s the female, fear vote. Research in the US by the women’s oriented group, Leanin.org shows that during Covid “women are more than twice as likely as men to be experiencing physical symptoms of severe anxiety, such as a racing heartbeat (25% vs. 11%). More than half (52%) of women are having sleep issues, compared to about a third (32%) of men”.
Labour is supported by 50% more women than it is men. Take away the ‘fear’ factor and Labour would poll at 30% or less. The fear factor is highlighted every day. Ardern and Hipkins talk big numbers, threaten lockdowns, leverage the fear factor. They have their little band of media hungry, publicity seeking, “experts” to supply the bullets(when else would non-descript modellers ever get in the news) and a compliant media with its well-greased palm faithfully headlining fearful numbers every day.
Here is something weird. Fear and love, the dominant emotions are fuelled by the same hormone, oxytocin. They work together well. One leader does the fear, frowny face, scary numbers, “I reject…”, bad news and one leader with the boyish face, the ready smile, the funny one-liners does more positives. Now the oxytocin is flowing. Those feminine instincts are alerted.
Fear comes in many forms. Today a media cartoon appears with Judith Collins pictured on the edge of a knife. It is not funny nor is it subtle unless you want to convey something about knives and hurting people. It is the umpteenth cartoon featuring Collins negatively.
Even longstanding National supporters are becoming convinced that Collins has failed and can no longer lead the party. They fear she could lose an election. Fear is robbing them of their reasoning. Watching Collins deliver National’s Covid recovery plan showed a very capable, strong, focused leader, confident in her own skin, relaxed, unflustered, happy and in control. Those who know her well are convinced she is Prime Ministerial material. Yet somehow that fear of another term with an unbelievably incompetent lot in control driven by young, immature, inexperienced journo’s aided by their artful editors is undermining the reasoning powers.
English was targeted – he had no charisma. Bridges was targeted – he couldn’t speak properly. Muller targeted himself. Collins has a huge target on her back, such is the anxiety her capabilities could outshine Jacinda’s. Swap Collins and the target moves too.
Knowledge conquers fear. Let the light shine in the darkness. Get the message out. Blogs cannot do it on their own. A new medium for reaching beyond TV1 news, Shortland Street and Breakfast is needed. An appeal to reason.
Our electorate is so dumbed down, so poorly equipped to think critically and to reason strategically that National needs to be straddling the centre. It has to package its message to attract middle New Zealand. Fear needs to be turned on its head. Fear that drives positive outcomes. Fear that low, failing education results create a bigger pool for gangs that raid your house, terrorise your street, feed drugs to your kids. But here is a policy that halts that trend.
Fear that your kids and grandkids will never get home to hug you, celebrate a milestone, support you when Pop passes on. But here is a policy that opens our borders.
Fear that covering the land in non-harvested trees kills jobs for your kids and destroys exports. But here is a policy that stops subsidising offshore tree planters.
Fear that hospitals without top quality nurses means suffering and limited service. But here is a policy that reinvigorates the health sector.
Fear that kindness without positive action is actually, cruelty.
Lockdown can be depressing. Depression is fertile ground for fear. Fear when there is no hope of something better emerging drives depression even deeper. It is time for strong, positive, uplifting messages conveyed to the electorate more strategically. Messages that stimulate oxytocin, especially female oxytocin.
d
TVNZ report:
A Nelson residential school for girls with high needs says it’s not their fault they have just three students.
They had 70 students a decade ago. To go from 70 to 3 will not be just bad luck,
Salisbury School is the only residential special school in New Zealand for girls. In 2012, Hekia Parata tried to close the school but was stopped by the court.
The school was set to be closed again before the then-new Labour Government saved it in 2017.
A decade ago the school had 70 students but that’s declined rapidly in recent years. Various changes have been made to enrolment criteria and processes but none seem to have made much difference.
The school is funded for 20 students and received almost $3 million in Government funding last year.
So because Labour put politics ahead of education, we have $3 million a year being spent on a school for three pupils. It’s like the Yes Minister episode about the hospital with no patients.
This shows the rolling average for Covid-19 community cases over seven days. The Government took Auckland out of Level 4 on 20 September and it is around a week after that the seven day average starts increasing.
Mike Yardley writes:
The overwhelming rejection of the Three Waters reform model, by councils across the country, has dealt a major blow to the Government’s grand designs.
The radical proposal for all council water assets and services to be hoovered up by four mega-regional entities, with a multi-layered co-governance and operational board structure, has demonstrably failed to gather any semblance of a mandate.
But one of the biggest casualties from this beleaguered model could well be the body that purports to represent the interests of territorial councils – Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ).
How could a representative body with a core role of advocating for the interests of its member councils and the power of local representation trample all over its central purpose, in such breath-taking fashion?
There is profound dismay that LGNZ blithely signed a heads of agreement with the Government, in July, in exchange for a $2.5 billion cash support package to sweeten the sell to councils. Signing that agreement without the engagement or consent of its member councils was a flagrant breach of good faith.
The Timaru District Council has formally led the backlash, with last week’s unanimous vote to immediately withdraw from LGNZ and demand its annual $55,000 membership fees be returned.
It does seem that LGNZ have got this one wrong. Instead of communicating the position of the Councils to Government, they agreed to communicate the position of Government to Councils. No wonder many Councils are mad.
I don’t personally think withdrawal is the right answer. The better solution is to elect different officers at the next round of elections – ones that will ensure LGNZ sees it job as keeping Councils happy, not the Government.
I had a nice exchange this week with a student I taught in the mid-1990s. I had seen a profile for him on Linkedin that shows him to be in the middle of an extra-ordinary career in South Korea and sent him a quick note.
Me: Very, very impressive work history. Brilliantly done!
Him: Thank you Alwyn. Bit of a different path to take and if you’d told me 20 years ago I would be living in Korea married with 3 kids I would have thought you were crazy. I have never ever forgotten my economics class with you back at TBC. Your teaching style and genuine interest in the students left a mark on me. A story you told about a rugby ball getting stuck between the posts because of the angle even today sticks in my mind. Thanks for messaging!
Me: No problem. I have loved being a teacher/educator and do not consider I have ever worked a day in my life. I still have that ball – grazes on both sides. Took ages to get down.
My two older children and their wives have welcomed their first child within the last 12 months. I haven’t attempted to give much advice. They either saw things they liked in the way Karen and I parented and will apply them or they will find better ways. The only thing I wanted them to know is that you don’t have a “baby” – you are bringing a human being into the world and your life will be invested in their existence from then on. (As an aside – imagine what these two humans will see in their lives as, in all likelihood, they will live the latter part of their lives in the 22nd Century).
Before I became a teacher I was fortunate to encounter the writings of C. S. Lewis. I have by no means always been perfect and lived up to the ideal – but one quote is in my head every day with students:
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit.”
I have just read a remarkable book called The Brain by Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman. It is not his explicit intent but the information he imparts about the brain and human capabilities makes it clear that a great deal of our parenting, all levels of education, and life expectations are very last century – if not the one before.
I have always told students that if they have learned to walk and talk they can learn Math, writing, reading of great literature, remarkable skills (carpentry, art, dance, music). It is not necessarily easy – learning something well requires significant purposeful practice. – but it is possible.
Eagleman states the importance of Parents as First Teachers:
“If developing brains are not given the proper “expected” environment – one in which the child is nurtured and looked after – the brain will struggle to develop normally. Without an environment with emotional care and cognitive stimulation the human brain cannot develop normally.”
For teachers/parents who have the opportunity to care for children who have missed that nurture there is encouragement:
“The brain can often recover, to varying degrees, once the children are removed to a safe and loving environment. … We know that the process of building the human brain takes up to 25 years.”
If parents/teachers ability label students in front of them – either with speech or in their own minds – they are negatively impacting to what may be a critical extent. Just as C. S. Lewis notes that “There are no ordinary people.” … there are no “thick” kids. They are incredible human beings with brains equipped and plastic – needing love, encouragement, guidance, knowledge and challenge.
In the same way – there is no such thing as an “appropriate pathway” based on some prematurely defined ability set. As the student communicated to me above … “if you had told me 20 years ago …”. I would have had no right to limit him – a true teacher’s role is to teach every child as if there are no limits … despite what may have gone before for that person.
The good news for us over 25 – Eagleman tells us is: “In adulthood our brain continues to change. Experience changes it. We can’t stop the process of aging, but by practicing all of the skills in our cognitive toolbox, we may be able to slow it down. We’re not fixed. From the cradle to the grave we are works in progress.”
Alwyn Poole
[email protected]
An interesting decision by the Media Council partially upholding a complaint against Newshub.
Basically Newshub ran a story that described Speak up for Women as being anti-trans. It didn’t quote someone saying this, it described it basically as fact in their news story.
The response from Newshub was an interesting display of hubris. Newshub said it has a view that trans people are the gender they identify as, and hence anyone who disagrees with them on this is anti-trans and they can report them as being anti-trans as a matter of fact.
The Council found:
Newshub is entitled to adopt an opinion on this issue, but it should be clear when it is doing so. In this case an opinion was simply dropped into a news story as though it was an uncontested fact, with no indication that an opinion was being expressed.
A clearly correct decision by the Council.
But to my surprise four members of the Council dissented, saying:
They are of the view that those representing trans women have made it very clear that being a woman is an essential and integral part of a trans woman’s identity. It follows that to say a trans woman is not a woman, as SUFW does, is to deny that identity and devalue trans women. In reporting SUFW’s stance as anti-trans,Newshub may be reporting its own opinion, but it is also reporting the strongly-held beliefs of those most affected by SUFW’s stance. This is hardly a matter of opinion.
This is an intriguing stance. The minority basically say that as those representing trans women think SUFW is anti-trans, then they can factually be described as anti-trans. Let’s put aside for the moment that I am sure there is no 100% common view amongst transpeople on anything – Caitlin Jenner is an example of that.
But let’s that the view of the minority and apply it to another controversial issue. Let’s saw the Jewish Council of NZ regards John Minto’s outfit as anti-semitic because it calls for boycotts of Israel (and the Jewish people have a 2,000+ year history of such boycotts). According to the minority view, Newshub could describe John Minto as anti-semitic as an incontrovertible fact, and this would be fine as that is the view of the Jewish Council.
I think we can all agree that this would also be ridiculous. Whether John Minto is anti-semitic is a matter of opinion, just as whether SUFW is anti-trans. But what the minority members are probably saying is that if they personally agree with a description, then they think it is okay for media to use that description.
It is probably no a coincidence that none of the four dissenting members are from journalistic backgrounds. It should be an open and shut case that you do not report opinion as fact.
NewstalkZB reports:
Sir John Key says he is “delighted” to hear the Government announce a “vaxathon” as part of the Super Saturday vaccination drive, an idea he raised in August.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today announced the “blast from the past” telethon-style event would take place between 12-8pm on various TV channels.
It would include real-time data on how regions are going, prizes, information from experts and competition between towns and regions.
Key raised the idea in an interview with Mike Hosking in August, saying the Government should adopt a telethon-style approach to boost vaccination numbers and open up our borders by Christmas.
The vaxathon is a great idea. It will bring the community together, and be a lot of fun. Good to see the Government take up John Key’s idea. But actually he wasn’t even the first to propose it. On 29 July, Chris Bishop wrote:
Setting a target in and of itself will make a difference. Kiwis are good at getting behind national campaigns and striving collectively to reach a goal: think telethons, America’s Cup red socks, even buying a beach. Let’s put the “team of five million” to work and get in behind a national effort to reach a goal.
So good to see Labour adopt National’s ideas a couple of months down the track. Hopefully they will listen to Key on this part also:
Key said, however, along with these initiatives there needed to be targets for people to get behind, including a minimum vaccination level and a date from which the New Zealand borders would start to open up.
He said he would suggest December 1 and a rate of at least 90 per cent fully-vaccinated.
“The question is what happens if a region or the country never gets to 90 per cent?
“That is why you have to get people a clear date, but if you reach a target like 90 per cent before that date then you would do it then.
“If you don’t put a date on it, then people don’t know what’s the urgency.”
I agree we should have both a target and a date.
Guest Post from Grounded Kiwis.
Grounded Kiwis File Judicial Review in the High Court
On Friday, Grounded Kiwis Group filed a judicial review claim in the High Court alleging the Minister of Health, Minister for Covid-19 Response, and Chief Executive of the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment acted unlawfully and unreasonably in respect of the design and operation of the Managed Isolation and Quarantine System (MIQ) system.
The group have engaged Paul Radich QC and Lucila van Dam, experienced public law barristers at Clifton Chambers in Wellington, to act for Grounded Kiwis.
Alexandra Birt of Grounded Kiwis announced this action in an interview with Radio New Zealand, and Paul Radich has also been interviewed about his approach to the case, one he describes as “in the public interest”.
“At the heart of our claim is our view that the Government has failed to take into account and protect the right of New Zealanders to enter New Zealand,” said Alexandra. The claim alleges the previous ‘first-in-first served’ allocation system, the current ‘lottery’ allocation system, and the emergency and group allocation systems are in breach of section 18(2) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The claim also alleges that various aspects of the system were not prescribed by law, and that the Minister for Covid-19 Response breached the public’s legitimate expectation that he would develop a sustainable, scalable model for isolation as a matter of priority.
To date, Grounded Kiwis has been supported by numerous lawyers and volunteers from many countries around the world. Paul and Lucila have prepared the group’s statement of claim on a pro-bono basis. On Friday, Grounded Kiwis launched a Give-a-Li ttle crowdfund campaign to raise fund to take the case to trial. As a result of generosity of so many people this campaign reached its $70,000 target in just 16 hours.
A guest post by David Garrett:
On Thursday 7 October, the Supreme Court issued the latest judicial assault on the Three Strikes (3S) law. In 117 pages of convoluted linguistic and legal gymnastics, it said what I could have in less than ten pages: that indecent assault being a strike offence was problematic, it had given rise to unintended results, and it should be removed from the list of 40 strike offences. The 40 strike offences are all offences involving serious violence for which the maximum penalty is seven years or more in prison.
Sadly nowhere in those 117 pages have any of the judges – their opinions are not unanimous on several points – found it appropriate to observe, as they certainly could have, that of the couple of thousand “strike” cases which have now come before the courts, there are only three that are truly problematic, and all of those are indecent assaults. Therefore if they were interested in seeing the law work better (in fact they, like the government, just want it gone) they could have recommended the removal of indecent assault as a strike offence. But I digress.
The judgment heavily relies on the supposed breach of the Bill of Rights Act (BORA) that is occasioned by third strike sentences – at least where a third strike is a low level indecent assault. While the Judges acknowledge that BORA is not a constitution like the American Bill of Rights, they have effectively given it that status – again, at least as far as cases like the present are concerned.
I must give credit here to my friend Graeme Edgeler, who opined 11 years ago – correctly as it has turned out – that indecent assault as a strike offence was going to cause problems because of the huge range of conduct which that offence encompasses: as Graeme put it at the time, everything from an unwanted pat on the arse to something just short of sexual violation.
The judgment just released is an appeal by one Daniel Fitzgerald, a serial low end sexual offender who apparently has mental health issues – but not to the extent, the Court found, that he was unaware of what he was doing. Nor was he unaware of the consequences of his actions (in fact immediately after the offence was committed he said “I’m in big trouble now”). He is simply unable to control his urges, and is to an extent more to be pitied than condemned.
All three of his “strikes” have been low level sexual assaults – grabbing women on the street and trying to kiss them and the like. His third strike offence – involving very similar conduct as his first two – involved him grabbing a woman in Cuba Street Wellington, and trying to kiss her on the mouth. She moved her head, resulting in the kiss landing on her cheek instead. Fitzgerald then shoved the woman’s friend who tried to pull him off the victim before another member of the public intervened.
Because of the “three strikes and the max” 3S regime, conviction for that offence in 2017 resulted – quite correctly – in a seven year sentence, that being the maximum for indecent assault. The sentencing judge – also quite rightly in my view invoked the “manifestly unjust” proviso – much abused in other cases, particularly murder – which meant that Fitzgerald was able to apply for parole, and thus not necessarily serve the full sentence.
It is notable that since the offence occurred in December 2016, Fitzgerald has applied for parole four times – and been rejected every time, because he is still seen as a risk to the public. All the judges who have considered his case are of the view – and I agree – that the proper place for Fitzgerald and offenders like him is a secure treatment facility and not prison. The problem of course is that all such facilities were closed 30 years ago. The only two alternatives now remaining to protect the public from people like him are prison, or for the truly “mad not bad”, a secure treatment facility like the Mason Clinic. The third option – letting him out each time he offends after serving a relatively short sentence – is not acceptable to me. All that does is create more victims – and one of these days his indecent assaults may not be “minor”.
Rather than contorting themselves at great and tedious length to condemn 3S, the judges would surely have been much better to highlight the fact that it is a lack of alternative facilities for men like Fitzgerald which is the problem, and not the 3S law itself. Being the highest court in the land, it would have been entirely appropriate for the Court to make recommendations regarding establishing proper facilities for men like Fitzgerald, or at least observing that they do not presently exist.
Let’s put this case in perspective. Since the 3S law came into force in June 2010, there have been about 13,349 first strikers, 640 second strikers, and only twenty-one third strikers. This pattern is exactly the same as transpired in California when their 3S law was passed 30 years ago: second strikers are a small fraction of the first, and third strikers a small fraction of the second. It is significant also that while 3S in California presaged a precipitous drop in offences of non-sexual serious violence, sexual offences were much less affected. While I am not a psychologist, I would opine that this is because sex is a fundamental human driver, while robbing liquor stores and bashing people is not. In short, it is much more difficult to deter people from acting on their sexual urges than from their thoughts of obtaining easy money through an armed robbery.
If we remove the three cases like Fitzgerald’s from the stats, what are we left with? Try though they most certainly have, the left wing media have been unable to come up with any equivalent of the American cases such as someone being sent to jail for life for stealing a set of golf clubs (the “sent to jail for life for stealing a pizza” case is an apocryphal story, which to the best of my knowledge never happened). In any event, such cases could never happen here because of the way our 3S law is framed.
The last “poor boy” case I recall being highlighted was that of one Elijah Whaanga, an unpleasant violent thug whose second strike involved the aggravated robbery of the victim’s cellphone, skateboard and a hat. The media – in particular RNZ – described Whaanga as “a playground bully” despite neither of his strike offences occurring in a playground, and the fact that Whaanga was aged 21 at the time of the second offence. They also conveniently failed to mention that Whaanga’s first strike offence – also an aggravated robbery – involved him kicking the victim’s teeth out, and stealing all his money.
For his second strike offence, Whaanga was given two and a half years without parole. The sentencing judge also warned him in no uncertain terms:
“When you next use violence or threats to steal a hat or a cellphone or a skateboard, you will be sent to the High Court and there you will be sentenced to 14 years without parole”
It would seem Mr Whaanga has learned his lesson; in any event he has not – so far as I know – been convicted of a third strike offence. Something the lefties never “get” is that you can be an illiterate thug and still clearly understand cause and effect, and it would seem Mr Whaanga has got the message.
The government has vowed to repeal the 3S law, and I have no doubt they will eventually do so – when they get around to it – despite the fact it is massively popular. In a poll done by our host’s company several years ago, even 45% of Green voters supported it. I thought that must be a typo, but it apparently was correct.
If the government was really interested in improving the law, rather than repealing it they would simply remove indecent assault from the list of strike offences. That would solve the problem the Supreme Court took 117 pages to address. But that won’t happen; instead ideology will triumph over the public interest with inevitable results. And if the judges of the Supreme Court are so keen on making law rather than interpreting it, they should resign their highly paid sinecures and stand for parliament. What they have been doing with three strikes is nothing less than a constitutional outrage – and I’m quite sure they well know that is so.
Update:
While I was writing this piece another case perfectly illustrating how judges are deliberately flouting the law was reported. This particular POS
stuck a sawn off shotgun up the noses of several different victims and assaulted and threatened others. He pleaded guilty to six charges of aggravated robbery which together constituted this third strike. The judge quite correctly found he had no option to sentence the offender to the maximum fourteen years for aggravated robbery – but then said such a sentence would be “crushing” for a delicate petal of his age, and therefore invoked the manifestly unjust proviso, meaning the prick can apply for parole in less than five years. This case and many like it mean the law as drafted and as passed by parliament never really had a chance to work as intended.
The Herald reports:
Drug company Pfizer pressed New Zealand government officials to meet and discuss its vaccine candidate in June of last year, some six weeks before a first meeting actually took place.
In a letter from Pfizer to Dr Peter Crabtree of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, the company described “actively scaling up our manufacturing capacity and distribution infrastructure”.
“We have the potential to supply millions of vaccine doses by the end of 2020, subject to technical success and regulatory approvals, then rapidly scale up to produce hundreds of millions of doses in 2021,” the letter, dated June 30 said.
However, in June MBIE was ill-equipped to pursue negotiations with vaccine-makers. It wasn’t until August 10 that the Cabinet appropriated any funds to either establish a team to negotiate advance purchase contracts with vaccine-makers or to fund such contracts themselves. MBIE confirmed that a first meeting between officials and Pfizer took place on August 14, 2020.
Incredible. You’re in the middle of a deadly global pandemic and the world’s largest drug company comes to you saying they’d like to meet as they are well advanced on a vaccine.
And instead of responding within six hours or even six days, they didn’t even respond for six whole weeks!!!
Kris Faafoi announced:
The Independent Review will look at elections rules such as:
These are good topics to be looked at by an independent review, and it is pleasing these areas will not be subject to change until at least 2026. Any changes should only be made with wide bipartisan support.
“The next step with the Independent Review is to put together a review panel. The panel will report back by late 2023 with recommendations for change,” Kris Faafoi said.
“I will be consulting with all parliamentary party leaders and Parliament’s Justice Committee on the Terms of Reference for the review before they are finalised. I am also writing to these and other groups, such as Māori organisations, youth organisations, universities and the New Zealand Law Society to seek nominations for potential panel members.
The composition of the review panel will be critical.
“Some rules could be improved before the General Election in 2023. For example, we’re looking at improving the transparency of political donations to make it easier to see where the money is coming from.
“Another focus is looking at when people can move between the Māori Electoral Roll and the General Roll. At the moment Māori voters won’t be able move rolls before the 2023 General Election.
“This work is a commitment signalled in Labour’s 2020 Manifesto to protect the integrity of New Zealand elections, and it is also part of the Cooperation Agreement between the New Zealand Labour Party and the Green Party of Aotearoa.
“We are looking to make progress on the work before the end of the year.”
The change around when voters can shift rolls will do the opposite of protecting the integrity of elections. It will enable massive gerrymandering by allowing those of Maori descent to choose one roll for the purpose of determining the number of Maori seats and then swap to another roll at election time in order to influence marginal seat outcomes.
NZ Herald Deputy Political Editor Derek Cheng has written about the time he fell off a mountain. I recall seeing his photos on Facebook of his horrific injuries at the time, but never knew the full story until he wrote this piece.
Pleased to say Derek is recovered and back climbing mountains again.
Stuff reported:
New Zealand has had 18 months to prepare for endemic Covid-19, but many in the health sector feel their most important weapon has seemingly been left out of the equation. Both new and existing healthcare professionals are struggling to get into MIQ. Louisa Steyl reports.
They’re not as important as a Minister travelling with nine staff, or a sports team!
Dalton understands that 100 of the 250 requests made by DHBs in recent months have been rejected – including an application from one overseas ICU nurse who has been rejected six times.
This is beyond crazy. Anyone needed by a DHB in a pandemic should be given priority.
The situation hasn’t improved. Southland is at risk of losing its only secondary birthing facility because its clinical director has been shut out of the country.
Dr Jim Faherty went to the United States to support his dying father in August after already losing his mum in March.
He has been stonewalled by bureaucracy, with three failed applications and one appeal.
“The system of MIQ allocation seems broken, non-transparent, inequitable, overburdened and flawed,” he says.
So Southland families may lose their birthing facility because of the Government’s management of MIQ.
MIQ capacity can’t be increased without nurses, but nurses can’t get into the country.
This shows the lunacy of what the Government is doing. People have been saying for many months we must expand MIQ capacity, and the Government says it can’t as we don’t have enough nurses. So rather than let some nurses in as a priority, they leave the health system short staffed and MIQ without the necessary capacity.
A Ministry of Health spokesperson says it has informed MBIE that access to MIQ spaces is a barrier for critical health workers to entering New Zealand.
So even the Ministry of Health is frustrated. What this points to is a failure of leadership by Ministers. If your Ministry of Health is saying that MBIE is blocking health staff from coming to NZ, then a competent Minister would push through a solution.
Jo Moir has an interesting profile of National MP Matt Doocey on Newsroom. Well worth a read.
Martin van Beynen has a good article (as usual) on the Peter Ellis Supreme Court hearing. There’s one area I want to highlight:
The allegations followed a comment by the 4-year-old son of a former creche parent that he didn’t like “Peter’s black penis”. His mother had authored a handbook on child sexual abuse and had recovered memories of being sexually abused herself. She would go on to accuse another male worker at another creche. …
The children were very young and had been asked to recall intimate details of events that happened when most of them were between 3 and 5 years old.
One issue was whether the children’s memories or accounts had been contaminated even before they attended their specialist interviews. Many of the children’s parents had questioned their children about possible abuse before the interviews and swapped stories. Some children had met for play dates, and social workers who worked with a core group of parents had spread information.
The interviews themselves were also open to criticism. Many of the children were interviewed multiple times. If children said nothing happened, they were not believed. More probing would ensue.
One child was interviewed five times, another six. Few of the children showed any signs of distress in their revelations, and as a matter of principle were almost never challenged on inconsistencies, impossibilities and contradictions.
Their often disjointed accounts were regurgitated by the interviewers in neat summaries and the child was then asked to continue.
Even without all the obvious contamination in the Ellis case, a child’s memory can still be a mixture of real and imaginary.
My four year old son insists he had a sister. He says she died a long time ago. He often tells other people about his dead sister. She normally died from falling into a volcano it seems. Once she was killed by dinosaurs. I have told him many times he has never had a sister. Sometimes he thinks it might be a cousin. But normally it is a sister.
This has taught me how very dangerous it can be to take at face value what a three or four year old says. Of course they often tell the truth, but also they often do not know the difference between imagination and reality.
An interesting paper by Lindsay Mitchell that looks at how key economic and social indicators for Mapori have changed over the decades. The points the paper stresses is that there has been huge gains, even though outcomes are still generally less favourable than Europeans. Some key data points:
The data brings up an interesting issue – what is more important – the absolute improvement in outcomes, or the gap between groups?
As I have observed before the Ministry of Education has gone full irony (retard) on their Mission Statement:
We shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes.
Some examples of their in-joke:
A Ministry contracted report (bet they are glad they did that!) by the Royal Society on NZ’s Mathematics teaching has concluded.
“That our maths education was in a “goddamn mess“. The system was widening the gap between rich and poor children and left Māori and Pasifika children falling behind at school – and ultimately at life.”
Does anyone remember that Charter Schools were not needed because we have a “world class education system”?
Does anyone remember that all that was needed to fix things was pay rises for teachers?
We are well on the way to further embedding a permanent underclass or lower decile taught Maori and Pasifika students. We are also well on the way to a permanently discouraged and disenfranchised group that contains the neuro-diverse, those who have been through trauma within the system (the world’s highest incidence of bullying), the anxious and school averse.
Who takes responsibility? Not Minister Hipkins – he is MIA on education and whenever you try and speak to someone with half a portfolio they refer you to him – it is like return Christmas cards. The Secretary of Education, Iona “$550k+” Holstead was appointed in 2016. Surely with this many losses and disasters she and her senior team must go.
The latest example of phenomenal stupidity is that they are doing such a poor job of oversight on three Special Schools are being funded at $890,000 per student per annum (read it twice – that IS the correct figure) – plus an $8m rebuild for one of them. It does not take a rocket scientist to know the new NZQA Board Chair Tracey Martin has to be involved somewhere.
When the Villa Education Trust applied to set up Charter Schools we were told by all of the usual suspects that we could always have set up as Designated Character Schools under Labour instead. Jacinda Ardern told me face-to-face that we had “shown them the inadequacy of their Designated Character School policy.” She told NZ in 2018 that work was being done on that policy.
In 2019 and 2020 we have applied (like Jacinda said to) for a Designated Character School, non-zoned and near an Auckland transport hub, for 480 students of the type (including neuro diverse and a high proportion of Maori and Pasifika students) that Cognition Education noted that:
“In summary we find and conclude that in both [Villa Education Trust] schools, the management and staff are actively involved in continuous development, and the delivery, of a unique programme of teaching and learning which is based on a comprehensive ‘local’ curriculum that is aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum, and which provides for the personalised needs of priority learners ‘many of whom have been failed by the current education system.”
What we didn’t know is that we were up against a new decision-making flow chart in keeping with other Ministry competencies and actions.
Please help and support!
Alwyn Poole
[email protected]
47 years ago today (10 October 1974 in the UK) Harold Wilson won a general election for UK Labour. This was the last time UK Labour won a general election without Tony Blair as leader. Today most in UK Labour despise Blair and they look likely to extend the non-Blair streak to a half century. Here’s their list of leaders in elections since 1974: