Thomas Coughlan reports:

The unemployment rate plunged to 3.4 per cent today, lower than it has been at any time since before the global financial crisis, but one group warns that official unemployment statistics may be undercounting Māori.

A report by Sense Partners has looked into how the unemployment rate has diverged from another measure for unemployment – the number of people collecting a benefit.

Normally, you would expect these two numbers to trend roughly in the same direction – as the unemployment rate goes down, you should see the same thing in jobseeker numbers.

Instead, the opposite has happened, Jobseeker numbers climbed and stayed high, while the unemployment rate fell to record lows following the first wave of Covid-19.

Sense Partners economist Shamubeel Eaqub said that just five years ago, benefit statistics registered 6,600 more people than the Household Labour Force Survey or HLFS, the official measure of unemployment collected by Stats NZ.

Today, the number of people on a benefit is 45,500 higher than the HLFS, suggesting a widening gap between what Stats NZ was surveying, and what is actually happening.

“Five years ago, jobseeker numbers and unemployment numbers were pretty much the same, and now they begin to diverge,” Eaqub said.

“It is concerning that benefit statistics and the official unemployment rate are telling such a different story,” he said.

While jobseeker numbers were high for all ethnicities, they were far higher for Māori, despite Māori making up far less of the population than other ethnicities like Pakeha.

“The divergence between HLFS and benefit statistics is acute across ethnic lines, and the largest for Māori,” he said.

This is a fascinating revelation that the gap between those on the dole and the official measure has increased to 45,000, when they used to be consistently very close.

The reasons is simple to divine.

Stats NZ has not changed their definition of unemployed. It is that you are all of the above:

1. Not employed
2. Available for work
3. Seeking work

This is a globally consistent measurement. And it tells us that 3.4% of the working age population is out of work, available to work, seeking work yet unable to find a job.

So why has there been such a growth in those receiving an unemployment benefit, so that the two figures are no longer close.

Well previously you needed to actually be looking for a job to get the dole. Now, under the new kindness regime, this is not applied in practice. The Government doesn’t believe in requiring people who get welfare to make a genuine effort to get a job.

So this means that the official measure of unemployment drops as those 45,000 are not looking for a job, but the numbers in welfare increase as they can get welfare without having to try and get a job.

Barry Soper writes:

But like everything with this Government, transparency is like mud in your eye. 

Asked about her decision to can the European jaunt, the Beehive spin-doctors simply said: “Options have been looked into but nothing has been confirmed.” 

Perhaps they were waiting for an American diplomat to tweet her impending trip to Europe, as one did just before Trade Minister Damien O’Connor headed off to the UK last month.   Up until that point no-one had been told he was about to climb on a plane. 

This week has been a terrible one for this Government, culminating in the shemozzle over how Aucklanders are going to travel out of the city for Christmas. 

Jacinda Ardern set the ball rolling saying the borders would remain in place but citizens have been told they can leave the congested city, but how they are going to manage it at the borders is beyond comprehension. 

The Minister of everything, Chris Hipkins, let slip they were thinking about having cars turn up at allotted times at the borders, imagine it, making it to the border on time with thousands of cars before you and thousands more following. 

Ardern’s 2IC Grant Robertson expressed hope there wouldn’t still be borders in place and pooh-pooed the idea. 

The thought of the Government telling you on what days you are allowed to have a holiday is something you expect to read in a dystopian novel, not in the NZ media.

Stuff reports:

An Auckland councillor is being criticised for likening the intensification of housing in the city to “gang rape”.

During Thursday’s Planning Committee, former mayor of Auckland and Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa ward councillor Christine Fletcher said the Medium Density Residential Standards, which would approve three-story development across most of Auckland, were equivalent to “rape”.

The bill follows new intensification rules passed by the Government and National, allowing buildings of this height on most sites in cities without any need for resource consent from August next year.

When told by chairman Chris Darby to withdraw her comment, Fletcher doubled down, stating the proposal was akin to “gang rape” because it was being done by both major parties.

Sometimes we can over-react to dumb or bad analogies, but in this case the analogy is pretty damn offensive – especially to actual rape victims.

I’m glad they told us it was about the three water reforms, as it could apply to so many issues!

It should be a no brainer that we have a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Covid response. The economic cost is well over $100 billion, let alone the health costs. If we have a RCI into Cave Creek and the Christchurch Earthquake of course we should have one into the largest pandemic in living memory.

Judith Collins has said that such an inquiry should look into:

The reasons for the slow vaccine rollout

•         The performance of the vaccine rollout itself, particularly for Māori

•         The preparedness of the health system for the outbreak, particularly ICU

•         The MIQ and quarantine system

•         Failure to adopt testing technologies like rapid antigen testing and saliva testing

•         Preparedness of the education system for the outbreak

•         Spending from the Covid Response Fund

•         The decision-making behind Alert Level changes and new step and traffic light systems

And of course all these areas should be inquired into, so we know how to do better next time. But there is no chance the Government will agree – because it goes to the heart of their decision making.

When an earthquake or a mine disaster occurs, the Government will hold an inquiry because it is highly unlikely it will find Ministerial decision making is at fault. Sure it will identify law changes needed in the future, but that is less sensitive.

But in the case of Covid-19, the entire issue is about how the pandemic occurred (as that was totally outside out control), but how the Government responded. And the last thing the Government wants is a report detailing all the areas of poor performance.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph:

A team of mathematicians at Oxford University has carried out the world’s best study so far of the economic windfall to be had from a turbo-charged decarbonisation based on unstoppable leaps and bounds in known technology. 

It concluded that the net gain is $26 trillion (£19 trillion), or $14 trillion under cautious assumptions. The faster it happens, the bigger the benefit. It can be achieved in 25 years, beating the global target of 2050. Most changes do not require lavish state funding any more than public money is needed to make mobile phones. 

“I know that there are some who say we are going too fast. I say to them first that there is a force out there stronger than government. That force is the market. And the market is going green,” said Boris Johnson, before rolling out his Net Zero Strategy on Tuesday.

With the right rules and policy signals – and seed money to bring the newest technologies to scale – free enterprise will take care of the problem, guided by Adam Smith’s Hidden Hand. 

Renewables will prevail because fossil fuels cannot compete. They will slide rapidly into obsolescence so long as the market is not obstructed, or so long as the authorities stop “standing on the hose”, in the words of Andrew Forrest, Australia’s former polluter-in-chief and now hydrogen king.

Cathie Wood from the technology fund Ark Invest likens it to the fate of the whale oil industry in the 1860s, once the fifth-largest sector of the US economy and chief source of lighting fuel. Within a decade whaling had mostly vanished because something better came along: kerosene.  

The Oxford report, by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, said global solar costs have been falling by 15pc a year since the mid-1990s in a textbook case of Wright’s Law, the so-called learning curve of innovation. 

The models long used by governments and agencies to predict solar performance assumed on average that costs would fall by just 2.6pc a year. It is why the establishment has been so fantastically wrong.

https://cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk/b4eb6e75-ce1d-42d5-89dc-b55a662569eb.html?i=0&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fbusiness%2F2021%2F10%2F20%2Ftechnology-saves-us-oxford-sees-26-trillion-gain-net-zero%2F&channel=business&id=b4eb6e75-ce1d-42d5-89dc-b55a662569eb&isapp=false&isregistered=true&issubscribed=true&truncated=false&lt=false Ditto with lithium batteries. The “learning curve” has been 13pc a year since the 1990s. Electrolysers are only just starting, moving from toolshed phase to factory-scale production with advanced robots. They will track the same trajectory.

Unsubsidised new wind and solar have reached parity with fossil fuels across most of the world, cheaper for most of mankind, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Wright’s Law of technology still holds, so they will become even cheaper, subject to the supply of critical minerals. 

However, Wright’s Law does not hold for fossil fuels. The Oxford group found that coal, gas, and oil have traded at the much same level in real terms for 140 years, with ups and downs along the way but no structural fall in cost – a “random walk”, in academic jargon. 

Once the cost curves cross, the game is up. The collapse becomes unstoppable, or to borrow the Hemingway dictum, you go bankrupt two ways: “gradually, then suddenly”. 

It is a good reminder we don’t need hundreds of costly policies. We just need an Emissions Trading Scheme and a free market.

Claire did this four minute video on Facebook on Thursday. It has gone viral with a huge 4,200+ shares. She is so forceful she makes her brother look like the wimp in the family!

Graham Adams writes:

Rasch seems unable to see that the snipers she refers to might actually be the ones who are holding power to account. Nor does she seem to understand that fund guidelines limiting how the Treaty should be viewed mean a hugely important area of public discourse is off-limits for questioning, no matter how energetically journalists criticise the government in other areas.

Critics say the media has been very slow to spell out the fact that Three Waters will hand iwi 50 per cent governance of infrastructure paid for by ratepayers; or that the Maori Health Authority will have the right of veto over the plans for the other 84 per cent of the population; or that the blueprint Nanaia Mahuta published last week for reforming local government defines the Treaty as “an agreement to share authority in Aotearoa”.

In fact, each of the debates mentioned above turn on a view of the Treaty as implying a 50:50 partnership. To rule this interpretation out of bounds for discussion makes a mockery of the claim the government is not influencing editorial coverage through the media fund — even if it is not directly involved in day-to-day decisions.

Yep this is the crux of it. It isn’t that the funds buys journalists off. It is that the NZ on Air and the fund have effectively banned discussion of the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi. If you disagree with their interpretation, you can’t get funded.

In July, Rasch justified the Treaty guidelines this way: “Many media organisations do not understand Te Tiriti and the conversations they are curating run the risk of being biased, racist and not delivering to the Te Tiriti partner — Māori, or tangata whenua.”

In other words, if the implications of the Treaty are contested, it could only be because of racism, and not because reasonable people might see the push for a 50:50 partnership between Maori and non-Maori as fundamentally undemocratic and leading inexorably towards an ethno-state.

I want to improve the outcomes for Maori New Zealanders, but I also don’t want to turn New Zealand into the 1970s version of Fiji with power being based on ethnicity.

Last month, former Act MP and political analyst Dr Muriel Newman appeared on Sky News Australia to raise her concerns about the implementation of the recommendations set out in He Puapua — a process she said was happening rapidly.

One of the areas of concern she addressed was the Public Interest Journalism Fund: “[New Zealanders] see changes every day and wonder what on earth is driving it and unfortunately we’re in a situation where the government has spent $55 million on a public interest broadcasting fund.

“[This] is something the media can apply for to get grants and one of the conditions of doing that is they have to, if you like, speak out in favour of this Treaty partnership agenda.”

Newshub, which linked to the interview, claimed to have fact-checked Newman’s statement. It asserted: “There is no condition of the $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, announced in February, for journalists to report favourably on ‘this Treaty partnership agenda’.”

Newshub’s fact-checker was, in fact, dead wrong. The section describing the fund’s goals recommends “actively promoting the principles of Partnership, Participation and Active Protection under Te Tiriti o Waitangi acknowledging Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”. And the first of the general eligibility criteria requires all applicants to show a “commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and to Māori as a Te Tiriti partner”.

Getting an important fact so completely wrong in a fact-check is hardly likely to convince an increasingly sceptical public that the media is not biased — especially around Treaty issues.

And again this is why trust in media keeps declining.

Kate MacNamara reports:

The taskforce itself was created in May 2020, but only in August did the Cabinet give the group, led by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the money and the mandate to begin negotiating with international pharmaceutical companies. At that point, most of the countries to which we typically compare ourselves had already begun their advance buying.

Ultimately, a negotiating team led by Bell Gully lawyers hashed out four agreements to buy vaccine candidates for New Zealand, inked between October and December of last year.

This was good news after the slow, unfunded winter months in which the taskforce focused on other efforts, including multi-lateral buying that ultimately fell short and developing domestic vaccine manufacturing capability that never came to fruition.

Along the way, the public was fed a soothing version of events shaped by outside PR help, the funds for which the Cabinet signed off in May.

So the Government in May signed off funding for PR around the vaccine but took another three months to sign off money to actually buy the vaccines!!

The agreement with Pfizer was signed on October 6, and that news was held for six days, and released by Ministers Chris Hipkins and Megan Woods on October 12, the Monday of the election week.

Again PR trumps over substance.

A PQ shows the average waiting time for public housing for those deemed Priority A (in urgent need).

In September 2015 it was 202 days. The former National Government set a target to reduce the waiting time by 20%. In September 2017 it was 104 days – so basically gone from six months to three months.

What has it done under this kind caring Labour Government? It is now 293 days or almost 10 months.

Michael Wood has proposed spending $14.6 billion on trams to Mangere – so around $30,000 per Auckland household. The Taxpayers’ Union has calculated what else you could spend that money on:

• Every house in Whanganui
• A second Waitematā Harbour crossing
• Four new Transmission Gully motorways
• Ten new Dunedin Hospitals
• 540 flag referenda

They also calculate the cost being:

• $608,000,000 per kilometre
• $608,000 per metre
• $6,080 per centimetre
• $7,978 for every Kiwi household from Kaitaia to the Bluff

Yes Labour are proposing something that will cost over $6,000 per centimetre – and all with your money!

The Government is consulting on a change in the rules for the PBRF or Performance Based Research Fund. This is meant to ensure excellent research in the tertiary sector. But now it is being changed to reward people for their ancestry. The changes are:

Partnership: the PBRF should reflect the bicultural nature of Aotearoa New Zealand and the special role and status of the Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi; 

Equity: different approaches and resources are needed to ensure that the measurement of research excellence leads to equitable outcomes; 

Inclusiveness: the PBRF should encourage and recognise the full diversity of epistemologies, knowledges, and methodologies to reflect Aotearoa New Zealand’s people; 

› apply a funding weighting of 2.5 for Evidence Portfolios submitted by Māori staff; 

› apply a funding weighting of 2 for Evidence Portfolios submitted by Pacific staff; 

› increase the subject area weighting for Evidence Portfolios assessed by the Māori Knowledge and Development panel from 1 to 3; and 

› increase the subject area weighting for Evidence Portfolios assessed by the Pacific Research peer-review panel from 1 to 2.5. 

Note that you get extra weightings not just for choosing a Maori or Pasifika subject area (which reasonable people could debate as useful or not) but you get a weighting purely on the basis of your skin colour or ancestry.

If you are a professor of classics who does research about the Roman Republic, then if you are Maori or Pasifika you will get a weighting of at least twice as much as a European or Asian professor of classics who submits the exact same portfolio.

Professor Elizabeth Rata has submitted the following:

Point 1: The Equity Principle and Funding Weighting

The enactment of the equity principle by increasing the funding weighting for Maori and Pacific researchers will actually increase inequities between science[i] researchers on the one hand and Maori and Pacific researchers on the other hand.

This is the case because:

Two different categories are conflated – those of ‘scientific research expertise’ and ‘distributive politics’. Academic research refers to knowledge generated “by people with specialist knowledge about the theories, methods and information concerning their field of enquiry” (Consultation Document, p. 11). ‘Equity’ refers to the politics of resource distribution. But what is being redistributed by the proposed PBRF funding weighting? It is the measurement being redistributed not the scientific expertise. Redistributing the measurement criteria will not achieve equity. The only way to achieve equity is to increase Māori and Pacific access to the scientific research expertise that is being measured.

It is illogical to use the PBRF (a measurement tool to evaluate knowledge expertise) as a means to achieve a political objective. Redistributing the measurement of knowledge expertise is not the same as redistributing access to knowledge. It is an unconscionable sleight of hand to a) alter the funding weighting and b) claim that the altered measurement criteria increase research expertise.

Support programmes for Māori and Pacific academics can help build expertise but the PBRF is not a support programme. Using it as one destroys its integrity as a scientific research expertise measurement tool.

The issue is the research expertise itself, not its measurement. This takes me to the principle of ‘Inclusivity’. What research is considered to create the expertise that is worthy of funding as science?

Point 2: The Inclusiveness Principle and Funding Weighting

The claim that there are “epistemologies, knowledges, and methodologies” equivalent to science is false.

There are two belief systems:

1. Beliefs that are subject to “enquiry of an experimental or critical nature driven by hypotheses or intellectual positions capable of rigorous assessment by experts in a given discipline etc” Consultation Document, p. 12.  The knowledge produced by this universal scientific method is science[1].

• Beliefs that are the “epistemologies, knowledges, and methodologies” of “New Zealand’s people”  (Consultation document).  This is the cultural knowledge described by the NZ Royal Society in its definition of mātauranga Māori:  

“Mātauranga Māori is the intellectual capital generated by whānau, hapū and iwi over multiple generations. It is a shared community knowledge that is embedded in lived experience and carried in stories, song, place names, dance, ceremonies, genealogies, memories, visions, prophesies, teachings and original instructions, as learnt through observation and copying of other community members. It is a holistic system of orally passed knowledge, concepts, beliefs and practice”.  

Royal Society Code of Professional Standards and Ethics in Science, Technology, and the Humanities: Interpretation. Commencement Date – 1 January 2019. Page 4. Footnote 10.

The Consequences of the PBRF Review

• The decline of science in New Zealand
• Damage to New Zealand’s international research reputation
• The diversion of Māori and Pacific researchers away from science to the cultural knowledge of mātauranga Māori.

[1] Science’ is used as defined by the International Science Council, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman. “The word science is used to refer to the systematic organization of knowledge that can be rationally explained and

reliably applied. It is inclusive of the natural (including physical, mathematical and life) science and social (including behavioural and economic) science domains, which represent the ISC’s primary focus, as well as the humanities, medical, health, computer and engineering sciences.” (Science as a Public Good, ISC Position Paper, October 2021, page 1, footnote 1.)

A reader writes in:

The Walk to Freedom

I’ve looked at the data and the facts and done the math and sadly I am still confused as to the
direction we are taking and why. Based on what I have researched I am led to believe that the
one thing that will contribute most to our future freedom is self testing. So here’s how I arrived at
that conclusion. I haven’t shown the source of info but it has all come from publicly available and
official sources. So it’s accurate and reliable.
What exactly is the problem and how can we solve it?

The Problem

The initial problem statement was the potential for 80,000 deaths. So pretty frightening. For
context in 2019 there were 34,000 deaths in NZ. Heart Disease, Diabetes and Cancer account for
around 70% of deaths. The number of deaths in 2020 after a year of lockdowns and Covid was
32,000.
The death rate in NZ for Covid is a little under 6 per thousand infections. For the current outbreak
it’s a little over 1 per thousand. For context the US death rate is 160 per thousand. If NZ’s public
health system was as bad as the US then at 160 per thousand NZs total deaths right now would
be around 800. In Sweden which avoided lockdowns the death rate is 14 per thousand. It would
seem that a lot of deaths in the first year of Covid were as a result of poor isolation in retirement
villages. This has since been addressed in most countries.
So those are the facts. We have over the last 18 months relied on experts manipulating data to
provide forecasts in order to predict our possible future in order to take corrective and
preventative action. Like the initial 80,000 deaths number these forecasts have proven inaccurate
yet they appear to be the single most important input to our Strategy.
So what are the possible solutions to be considered?

Lockdowns
Vaccinations
Testing
Treatments
Health Care Capacity

Lockdowns clearly helped in the first stage of elimination. Of course there are economic and
social downsides to a Lockdown. The second lockdown has been less successful. Partly due to
fatigue and for many a frustration of a strategy that for many makes no sense – especially when
comparing projections to reality. A case in point is “Delta is more deadly” – it may be more
infectious but the facts show that it has caused less deaths.

Vaccinations may have started relatively late – maybe because we stood aside for more needy
countries to get early supply. Actually it was probably a good thing to let others effectively test a
new virus. The worst aspect of the vaccine roll out is the insistence of control from the
government and MoH. Vaccine roll out would have been much faster if it had been more localised
via trusted health advisors – GPs. Not only is this logistically more effective but would probably
have been more successful in addressing mis-information. The 2018 survey by the government
identified GPs as by far the most trusted advisor for health – yet ignored this for the roll out.

According to our PM today 5% of people with first doses don’t get the second. Another reason
why a locally trusted resource may well be the most effective method of ensuring people
complete the vaccination process.

Testing like vaccinations have been centralized. During times of infection large queues for testing
seem to go against the grain given the isolation strategy of a lockdown. Home test kits are cheap
and have been available for over a year. They are a good complimentary solution to a full test.

Given the actual infections per number of tests this is both logistically and economically more
effective. Rapid testing is also more effective for testing essential workers. The current process
expects a negative test within the last 7 days which permitted and unvaccinated truck driver to
travel to Palmerston North and then test positive. Rapid testing minimizes this risk, but for some
reason has been avoided as part of our strategy.

Home/Rapid testing is effectively used in the UK to re open schools.
Treatments have been slow to evolve but it would appear that experience over the last 18
months has enabled the world in part to reduce the death rate. New treatments have now been
tested and are available which will presumable reduce the death rate even further and reduce
hospital time.

Health Care Capacity has not increased given the projected number of deaths. One would have
thought with an initial projection of 80,000 deaths, emergency health care capacity would have
been planned and executed across New Zealand. It does not appear so and NZ is at the bottom
of the list globally in terms of ICU capacity. A quick glance at the MoH website shows the last
update for NZ ICU beds is 11th June – 2020. This does not inspire confidence.
What does this all mean?

Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing but overall it would seem to me that the problem was
significantly over exaggerated from the get go and subsequent updates have been equally as
inaccurate. This has created unnecessary fear that many are now questioning the resulting
strategy.

The Team of 5 mil has fallen in behind the government, but any team requires trust both ways.
Trust has been missing. GPs should have been trusted to administer the vaccine which would
have been better informed and quicker. Trust should have been place in individuals to self test
which would have been way more effective in identifying and isolating infection and cost less in
time, resources and money.

What we should not trust are the predictions being made by the experts as they are notoriously
inaccurate and feed strategies and activity that fall woefully short of what is required to return
New Zealand to as close to a normal way of life as possible.

So my summary is that 18 months in, we need to use the knowledge we have gained to
understand how we can do things differently and how these 5 solutions can be combined to give
us freedom. Lockdowns are being eased in place of vaccinations, but if 5% don’t get the second
jab then our target needs to be higher than 90%. New Treatments are hard to define but it would
seem there is a lot of positivity in this regard. Hospital Care is surprisingly under planned given
the severity that was indicated at the outset. The people were scared but maybe not the
Government.

So that leaves us with testing. Of all of the options, the self and rapid test is probably the MOST
effective way of protection and prevention. So the government should empower us all to take
ownership of our own destiny. Effective and timely testing is the single most effective way of
moving forward not only because it clearly detects risk from what until now has been a hidden
enemy, but it also impacts positively on the other four options. The best option is to “go hard and
go early” to identify and flush out the enemy. The silence is so far deafening on any change to
testing yet it is clearly the best option. Will the people in control listen and give New Zealanders
the freedom to self test and manage their own walk to Freedom?

Africa Brooke wrote an open letter on why she is leaving the cult of wokeness. It has been read by almost five million people, and has struck a chord. And no she is not an old white male (an oppressor), she is a young black female.

If there’s one thing I’m NOT afraid of, it’s being ‘cancelled’.

​If being cancelled means me living in integrity as a human being who thinks for themselves, CANCEL ME TODAY!

​I repeat; I am not afraid.

​What I’m truly afraid of is existing in a world that forces me to submit to an ideology without question, otherwise I’m to be shamed (or pressured to shame myself) and cast out of the community.

​A world that tells me that because I inhabit a black body; I will forever be oppressed and at the mercy of some omnipresent monster called ‘whiteness’.

​That because of the colour of my skin; I am a victim of an inherently racist system by default – and me rejecting the narrative of oppression means that I am in fact, in denial.

She continues:

What I’m truly afraid of is existing in a world that forces me to consider the colour of my skin and my gender (and that of others) at every fucking turn, instead of living by Martin Luther King’s teachings and prioritising the content of mine and other people’s character.

​I dread the prospect of a world where context, nuance, critical thinking, meritocracy, mathematics, science, and rationality are considered tools of ‘white supremacy’, and the rule is that you’re not allowed to question or argue this senseless statement – especially if you’re white.

​A world that is conditioning you and I to believe that we will always be trapped in some weird hierarchy because of our race, our genitals, our physical abilities, our neurodiversity, our sexuality, and our politics.

​And that if we do not agree on every single thing, it’s a sign that we are interacting with an enemy – or at the very least, someone to be wildly suspicious and judgmental of…instead of another complex human being worthy of being seen and heard.

​We’ve seen this in NZ. I’ve seen strong left women be shunned from the rest of the left because for example they have a different view on gender identity issues. Doesn’t matter that they may agree on everything else – you must agree on everything.

This absolutist, authoritarian world is being fiercely crafted under the guise of ‘social justice’, and I want no parts in this. I AM OUT.

​As someone that, politically speaking, leans left on most things (although I’m neither left or right) – the current state of affairs and this push for obedience at all costs is NOT what I signed up for.

​I never signed up to be hit over the head with disempowering narratives that tell me that I need to refer to myself as a ‘person of colour’ (how is this different being called a ‘coloured’ person?), a minority, a marginalised person, and BAME (UK version of BIPOC).

​I cannot stand any of these terms.

At least she isn’t hispanic, as in the US mainly white activists lecture hispanics on why they should identify as Latinx!

​Read her entire essay. It is worth the time.

d

Item 1: Another International Award for NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Talk Radio TV UK late last week presented Ardern with the Plank of the Week for clarifying the medical class-system in our nation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCO8tJ6MKiU&ab_channel=TheBuzz

Interviewer: “… two classes of people. If you’re vaccinated or unvaccinated … “

Ardern: “That is what it is! Yep.”

In making the award the panelists had a great understanding of aspects like – the single source of truth and don’t talk to your neighbour. They mention coercion and even hint towards a tourism award too when the host says – “I always wanted to go to NZ but now I don’t want to waste my time going there.”

Item 2: The Prime Minister has put herself out in the public this week.

Kawakawa was a classic with: “People need to be able to ask questions.” So someone does and the PM’s response is to say that he can’t because he is not an accredited journalist. She then closed the press conference down and moved it indoors so the pesky public can be kept out.

Karen and I grew up in Wanganui. Yesterday it was good to see that the peasants are still revolting.

The PM’s event didn’t even start down in The Nui.

Item 3: Christmas may well be cancelled.

People are starting to use the Grinch word. C.S. Lewis is more apt from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe where under Queen Jadis (aka The White Witch) it is always Winter but Never Christmas.

“How dare you ask me a question you’re NOT accredited. You minion!”

Item 4: The USA has gone from TDS to BBR

It has surprised commentators that Joe Biden could sleep at all when in Scotland (along with the 400 private jets, and those in his 85 car motorcade) when his approval ratings have dropped below 43%. Also of note is that 71% of the US population believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction and it became clear that the new Virginia Governor was going to be Republican.

Welcome to the new world of Biden Buyer Regret (BBR) and Let’s Go Brandon.

Item 5: The Cost of a Single Health Focus

• A $75.8 million mental-health programme that was ANNOUNCED has achieved nothing.

• There are now 24,456 people on the Social Housing Waiting List (5844 in September 2017). In the last four years the wait time has gone from 104 days to 293. Grant Robertson show behavioural traits of twins separated at birth and often do pinky finger snaps when the repeat “Nine Long Years of Neglect” but forget to add “followed by Four Rapid Years of Carnage.”

• The NZ education was at demonstrable tipping point two years ago. This utter mismanagement of the decile 1 to 3 schools in the last two years has been like piling the aspirations of thousands of kids into a bus and driving it off a cliff. Young people have lost their sense of purpose. In 2020 just 58% of NZ students attended school 9/10 days. In the UK it was 87%. For decile 1 – 3 student in NZ it is now below 40% – even when out of lockdown.

• As at September there were 81,000 delayed hospital treatments or appointments. There have also been at least 85 cancer treatments cancelled or delayed.

• Internationally Standford’s Dr Jay Battacharya has detailed to impacts of the Western nation lockdown decisions and the return to the 2008 phenomenon of “deaths of despair”. The UN has estimated 250,000 child in Asian have died of starvation due to lockdowns and worldwide the starvation estimate from the same cause is 130 million. He also details the increase in alcohol & opioid abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, mental illness and suicide.

Item 6: Clarity on THE most Dangerous Job in the World

It has become clear from recent media items that the most dangerous job in any country – or indeed the whole world is to be the Oldest Person.

Just in the last month there have been recorded Oldest Person deaths in France, Brazil, California, New Zealand and one in Saudi Arabia who died at 120 and left behind 477 family members.

Having cancelled my Teacher Registration over the mandate I am looking at options; Oldest Person is not one of them.

Item 7: Can New Zealand defeat Afghanistan?

Like many in the Team of #%$@^%@# I love cricket and clearly the last 6 years has been the best time to be an NZ fan. The Black Caps under Brigadier General Williamson have to beat Afghanistan to make the semi-finals. Can they do what Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British Empire, the USSR and the USA could not achieve?

Everyone thought the Virginia election would be close, despite Biden winning it by 10% last year, but no one really thought New Jersey would be close as Biden won that by 16%. As I write this the Republican candidate for New Jersey Governor is 600 votes ahead of the incumbent Democratic Governor. The Democrats will hang on, but to be neck and neck in a state that was 16% ahead last year shows how much the tide has turned.

In Virginia, the Republicans won all three state wide offices – Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney-General. Youngkin won by over 2%. It also looks likely the Reoublicans have won the majority of the Virginia House of Delegates.

The Democrats made the mistake of running against Donald Trump. That worked in 2020, but not 2021. And the Republicans have identified a backlash against identity politics which will be potent in 2022. Having Democrats complain that parents want too much of a say in their kid’s education is not a winning strategy.

51% of voters in Virginia think parents should have a lot of say in what their local school teaches and Youngkin win that group 76% to 23%.

I’m not sure if the Government wants 50,000 people to turn up to the next protest rally in Auckland, but they seem to be doing everything possible to create a horrific wave of resentment.

First of all you have the PM saying the Aucklanders who refuse to get vaccinated may be banned from leaving Auckland over summer. I’m all for incentives for vaccinations, but internal travel is a fundamental human right. It is in the UDHR:

Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Now you can have justified restrictions such as everyone is locked down due to a pandemic, or that people have to have had a negative test. But considering that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people can spread Covid-19, a policy to lock down 10% of Auckland because they have not been vaccinated is grotesque, and almost certainly unlawful.

Of interest is that the demographic most unvaccinated is Maori, so the Government’s view of the Treaty of Waitangi is that it will disproportionally imprison Maori in Auckland while disproportionally allow Pakeha to travel around.

But the PM’s brain fart diminishes in comparison to Chris Hipkins who is working out how to carry this out, and he said said:

The old maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is proving itself correct. The Government is looking at dictating time slots to 1.5 million Aucklanders as to when they can and can’t leave Auckland. Can you imagine it – think of the MIQ lottery but 10 times worse. You have been allocated a departure time of 3.35 am – 4.15 am on 25 December.

They really have lost the plot.

Madness 1:

A mariner who has spent 36 days in Covid isolation – more than twice the required time – is begging authorities to release him from MIQ so he can be with his cancer-stricken partner and her children.

Daniel White, a fumigator of Tauranga, thought he’d be able to go straight home after the ship he travelled on from China arrived in Wellington on October 16, because time spent at sea can be counted as isolation as long as a negative Covid test is returned.

White had been at sea for 23 days and was symptom-free throughout that time, keeping daily temperature records.

But no-one from local health authorities was available in Wellington to test White and the foreign crew. The ship sailed to New Plymouth and there was no-one available there, either.

White said he was told health staff were too busy giving vaccines on Super Saturday to carry out tests of shipping crews.

Eventually the ship’s agent arranged a spot in MIQ for White, and he was bussed to Rotorua, where he was put into isolation at Rydges Hotel.

The rest of the crew left New Zealand with the ship.

White said he had since returned three negative tests.

“If anyone who’s waiting overseas for an [MIQ] room, if they knew I was sitting here on day 36 taking a room when I don’t need to be here…,” White said. “It’s unbelievable I’m here at day 36. You’d think common sense would prevail here.”

What a waste of an MIQ room and shameful he is being kept from his wife who has cancer.

Madness 2:

In less than 24 hours, Brad Stephenson has been let out of quarantine in Auckland, driven to Tauranga, driven back to Auckland, only to be officially released from quarantine after a final night in his isolation hotel.

“I did try and push the point when I got this one day release that would it just not make more sense to release me 18 hours early,” he said.

“It makes no sense.”

Stephenson’s case has been highlighted by opposition MPs as an example of how unfairly MIQ is being run with National Party leader Judith Collins calling it “utterly cruel”.

MBIE is blaming a points system for the situation, saying the formula it has created means he is assessed as high risk despite being double vaccinated and having returned more than four negative tests in 14 days.

A top lawyer says it will take a lot for the courts to intervene, but we might be reaching such a point.

Stephenson arrived in New Zealand from Britain on October 15. He had travelled home to see his 71-year-old dad, Alex, who is fighting liver cancer.

He expected to do the full 14 days in quarantine, but on arrival Alex developed an infection and was given days to live.

But Stephenson’s application to leave the Crowne Plaza facility early was declined on the grounds he posed too great a health risk to New Zealand.

This is what you get when you empower the bureaucracy to decide if family members are allowed to see dying relatives. It is inhumane. The risk of a double vaccinated person who has tested negative four times is close to zero. The fact there are over 1,000 people who have actually tested positive to Covi19 isolating at home makes the decision to not give him full early release even more bizarre.

Konstantin Kisin writes:

You’re struggling to understand where all this vaccine hesitancy comes from. Let me help you.

I was interested in this because I am puzzled by the level of vaccine hesitancy in the community. This is a US piece, but relevant elsewhere.

You’re more concerned with how best to protect yourself and your family from this deadly disease than with its origins at this point anyway. You consider buying surgical masks, or using homemade ones—you’ve seen visitors and tourists from Asian countries wear them, and they’ve been through things like this before, so maybe it’s best to follow their lead.

But the country’s chief medical experts tell you not to wear masks, and to focus on washing your hands instead. As lockdowns are introduced around the world, you diligently follow all the rules. You stay at home. You only go out once, and live off savings or government grants. You do your best to keep your hands clean, to not touch other surfaces that other people touch. Some political representatives make the solemn decision to shut down beaches, parks, and playgrounds, encouraging everyone to stay indoors.

You are proud to be doing your part. Thanks to you and millions of your fellow citizens, the first wave of the pandemic overwhelms certain hot spots, but it does not devastate the health care system at a national level. While thousands sadly die, you’ve helped to protect those around you.

Imagine your confusion as the same people who spent three months telling you not only that masks don’t work, but that there are several reasons you shouldn’t wear or purchase them, suddenly introduce mask mandates. We’re “following the science,” they tell you. This seems to make little sense, but a pandemic is no time for questions. And who knows, maybe our understanding of the science evolved?

As you cautiously go to the supermarket, you notice that masks have made people less likely to socially distance. You remember reading somewhere that bicycle helmets work similarly: They give the wearer more confidence, and the result is often more accidents and injuries, not fewer. “Silly people,” you say to yourself. “If only they would follow the experts.”

You turn on your TV and learn that shoppers at your local supermarket aren’t the only ones who have been ignoring the rules. Nancy Pelosi arranged for a salon, shutdown by government decree, to open privately for her—then publicly blamed the business owner for violating the lockdown. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is seen eating dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in America with a large group of unmasked people indoors. In the U.K., Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose projections were used as the basis for lockdowns, appears to have broken his own rules to get some action with his married lover. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, drove halfway across the country to ensure he had a better place to isolate. The journalists who berate him for this are later found to have attended an unmasked, indoor birthday party in breach of the rules. The lockdowns continue.

And in NZ the then Minister of Health broke the rules.

While the lockdown rules remain in place, the protests against injustice spill out into public spaces. Tens of thousands of people crowd into the streets of major cities. Few of them wear masks, and social distancing is nonexistent. Clashes with police ensue, and in the United States, protesters loot stores, destroy businesses, attack residents, and start fires. A retired African American police officer from St. Louis named David Dorn is among dozens of people who are murdered in the chaos.

The media describes these events as “mostly peaceful protests,” as broadcast reporters stand in front of burning buildings. 

This actually happened.

After months of harsh restrictions, the media and political class offer no criticism of protests that violate every element of lockdown policy. 

Same in NZ. Anti-racism protests are good during a lockdown, but anti-lockdown protests are bad.

It is at this point that vaccines become the main focus of government policy and media commentary.

The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don’t, that masks don’t work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of “health intervention,” that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a “mostly peaceful” form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are “still learning,” that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn’t have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn’t, that you shouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another … are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don’t, you will be a second-class citizen.

There is a reason trust in traditional authority figures has declined.

Stuff reports:

The statistics tracking how long government agencies take to answer Official Information Act requests are “close to useless”, a Stuff investigation reveals.

The OIA generally requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 working days. However, the statistics count extensions as “on time” responses.

So some agencies who report 100 per cent compliance “within legislative timeframes” are actually extending half of their requests, or taking up to five times the 20-day timeframe.

An advocate for open government says the statistics incentivise extensions and are designed “for nice headlines for government, not better results for requesters”.

In September, Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes announced that, in the six months to 30 June, 61 government agencies completed 100 per cent of their OIA requests within the legislated timeframe.

Overall, agencies responded to 97.8 per cent of requests “on time”. In the face of increasing requests, the numbers were “a good result”, Hughes said.

But those numbers mask a very different reality. The SIS reported that 100 per cent of its responses were returned within the statutory timeframe. During the same period, however, 54 per cent of those responses were extended beyond the 20-working day benchmark.

The Education Ministry also reported 100 per cent compliance, and told Stuff they were “very proud of our track record regarding the quality and timeliness of our responses”. Their average response time was 25 days, and almost half their responses (47 per cent) were extended.

The PSC should report more useful information in future on the OIA. Sure it is good to know what percentage of OIA requests are completed within the legal requirements, but they should report more than this bare minimum. I’d love to see.

• 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile for each agency in terms of time to supply a response
• How many complaints about that agency go to Ombudsman
• How many requests take more than 90 days