These are the latest ABC figures. We don’t know how much the Herald has dropped, because they no longer take part. That in itself is telling. Their figures must be disastrous if they no longer get them audited. To have the leading newspaper in NZ no longer reveal audited circulation is huge.

The main Stuff newspapers have all declined a further 16% or so since 2019, which is huge. Within a couple mroe years they won’t even qualify as a major newspaper (pver 25,000).

What I find interesting is comparing them to the ODT. In 2008 the Dom Post and Press had circulations twice as large as the ODT. Today they are almost the same size.

Newshub reports:

The Government has promised to improve mental health but the number of prisoners attending drug and alcohol programmes has plummeted by 75 percent in five years. …

And despite health being one of prison’s biggest issues, the number of prisoners in drug and alcohol programmes is plummeting. Five years ago, about 6300 programmes were started, but in the last year that fell to just 928.

And this is a Government that talks about rehabilitation!

Stuff reports:

Wellington Mayor Andy Foster says the council needs to rethink a controversial parking change over fears it could spell the effective end of the city’s famed culture and hospitality industries.

His comments come after 16 high-profile Wellingtonians wrote to their city council on Monday imploring them not to impose the new parking limits, which they said would hinder their already-hurting industries.

The letter was signed by a former mayor, as well as heads of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, World of WearableArts, Creative Capital Arts Trust, the Royal New Zealand Ballet, the Restaurant Association, and others.

Wellington City Council will vote this week on changes extending paid parking from 8pm to 10pm in the central city and, crucially, putting a two-hour limit on parking in a single spot.

Foster said he had never been in favour of extending parking hours and the two-hour limit was a particular concern because most shows and concerts run longer than two hours.

I’ve got no problem with extending the hours in which you have to pay. Parking should be user pays. But it is crazy crazy to have a two hour time limit after 6 pm. Do they want to kill off the central city?

It is very very rare that you will be out for less than two hours if going out for dinner, a movie, a play etc.

To force people going out to risk huge parking fines because they can’t move their car while they are at a movie is, again, crazy.

The Government said it would abolish homelessness. The Priority A waiting list for social housing has increased 432% since they took office.

The Herald reports:

A week after excitedly announcing Chaplin: The Musical as its spring show, the University of Canterbury Musical Theatre Society (MUSOC) cancelled the planned performance after concerns were raised about his scandalous past.

Announcing The Addams Family Musical will replace Chaplin, the society said on Facebook some members had raised concerns about the selected show.

“Members of the club have raised concerns about the selected 2021 spring show Chaplin: The Musical, with regards to the predatory and inappropriate conduct of Charlie Chaplin during his life and career,” it said.

Julius Caesar was also a notorious womaniser and worse an alleged ar criminal. Should plays about him also be cancelled?

Totally up to MUSOC as to what they perform, but dropping a show you had already agreed to do because no doubt one person complained is silly. Doing a play about someone isn’t endorsing everything they ever did. It is reflecting they had a huge impact on society and Chaplin was one of the most important figures in the history of film. He rose out of poverty where he was a child labourer at age nine. Ironically he was a prominent leftist whom the FBI smeared as a communist.

Anyway the real irony is that they have cancelled Charlie to replace him with The Addams Family Musical. Guess who the Producer of that was?

Yes Harvey Weinstein. He probably gets some of the 10% royalty for performances so by cancelling Charlie, they are funding Harvey during his prison stint. What a great blow for justice.

TVNZ report:

The Government is set to pay $1.35 million in ex-gratia payments to prisoners and Corrections’ staff following a riot at Waikeria Prison over the New Year.

The payments cover prisoner and staff personal property which was lost during the riot due to smoke and fire damage.

A Cabinet paper states about $1.3 million would go directly to more than 800 prisoners – with about $21,000 having already been paid out.

Meanwhile about 190 Corrections’ staff are eligible to receive almost $50,000.

The Department of Corrections allowed this riot to continue for six whole days, during which time the damage was done. If they had sent the necessary force in to suppress it early on, then there would be no need for taxpayers to fork out $1.3 million to the other prisoners.

It should not take six days to regain control of a prison. It shouldn’t even take six hours.

I miss Jon Stewart.

This so called weight-loss device is basically a magnet that only allows you to open your mouth two mms.

Why don’t they just sew the lips together?

The Guardian reports:

Rudy Giuliani is suspended from practicing law in New York state following disciplinary proceedings over his misleading statements to courts and the public following the 2020 US presidential election.

The New York supreme court issued its decision on Thursday, saying that it had found “uncontroverted evidence” that Giuliani made “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large”, on behalf of his client, then-president Donald Trump, and created a “narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client”.

So sad. Rudy used to be one of my heroes. He used to be a great lawyer. He was an Associate US Attorney General to Ronald Reagan and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (the most powerful legal district in the US). He prosecuted the mafia and oversaw a huge drop in crime in New York, turning it from one of the most dangerous to one of the safest cities in the US. He was a great Mayor of New York.

But now he has become pitiful.

The decision of the New York Supreme Court is worth reading. They give numerous examples of the lies he told, and how there wasn’t even a sherrick of evidence for them.

First have a look at the Minister of Justice.

Faafoi doesn’t rule out millennials could be convicted of hate speech if they say they hate boomers for keeping house prices high. Also expressing your view on whether trans athletes should compete at the Olympics. Even thating a biblical view that homosexuals go to hell, the Minister wouldn’t rule out.

And we also have Tova fisking Jacinda Ardern for her false claims:

Jacinda Ardern is wrong about her own hate speech law. Completely and utterly wrong.

Not only is the Prime Minister wrong about the basic facts of the proposal, she was wrong to shut down debate on hate speech on The AM Show this morning with her glib, inaccurate dismissals. 

Tova points out:

Ardern is now contesting that, saying the law will only apply if it ‘incites violence’. That is wrong, the proposed threshold is as low as ‘insulting’ someone. 

We already have laws against inciting violence.

The Prime Minister was dismissive about the interview and said we were trivialising the need for the law change – the terror attacks on March 15. 

It is insulting and irresponsible to pit journalists – or anyone who questions or debates the legislation – as somehow being in opposition to the needs of the victims of March 15th. 

March 15th was beyond terrible. But nothing in these proposed law changes would have prevented what happened.

“In the interview from the Nation they implied political opinion is included it is not”

Wrong. The proposal seeks to protect more groups. According to the discussion document, “this may include some or all of the other grounds in the Human Rights Act. These grounds are listed in section 21 of the Act”.

Section 21 of the Act includes:

(j) political opinion, which includes the lack of a particular political opinion or any political opinion: 

The irony of including political opinion, is it will allow white supremacists to claim people who criticise them are directing hate speech towards them for their political opinions. In the past I have called a group of neo-nazis a collection of men with very small penises. Under this law the neo nazis could complain I am inciting hatred towards them for their political opinion.

When host Duncan Garner put forward an example of offending a staunch christian by saying christianity is over the top and mad. The Prime Minister said it wouldn’t be included because, “You’re not inciting someone to go out and take his life”

What??? Wrong. She’s now re-re-writing the law on the hoof, strengthening her already made up threshold of ‘inciting violence’ to now be inciting death. This is getting weirder by the second. 

It is clear that one can not take anything the PM says on this issue as the truh.

Audrey Young also comments:

In the four days since the Government outlined changes to “hate speech” law, it has become obvious from comments by the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, that she does not understand them.

Either she doesn’t understand them or she is lying about the, I tend to side with Audrey and think it is ignorance not malice.

Incredible. The CEO of the Masterton District Council has been caught on CCTV ripping down posters on private property that were promoting a protest against the Council.

The protest is against a new $30 million building for Council staff!

This must be regarded as an employment disciplinary event. You can’t have Council CEOs removing posters on private property.

Guess which country, NZ is? Yeah the one in last place at the right.

And the Minister said we would be front of the queue!

Data from here.

Stuff has a very interesting article on how close NZ got to commencing negotiations with the US on a free trade deal. I am a huge fan of free trade agreements but when you read the detail, you realise that what we were looking to agree to would have been terrible for NZ.

On February 12, Peters and Trade Minister David Parker were given another paper, which would give the go-ahead for “technical talks” with the US “ahead of potential formal negotiations of a digital trade agreement” – now given the name DiTA.

Such an agreement would have been of no benefit to NZ, in fact a huge detriment.

I was quite closely involved with the civil society push against the US proposals for Internet services and intellectual property in the TPP. I blogged about it in 2015 here. It would have meant no parallel importing, longer copyright terms, guilt upon accusation termination of Internet accounts, making software patentable etc. All of this would have been harmful to NZ.

Now look if in TPP we had got massive reduction in barriers and tariffs on all our agricultural exports, then possibly you might swallow the proposed IP chapter, In negotiations, you have to compromise and negotiate.

The final TPP saw almost all of the nasty IP chapter watered down, so the TPP overall was worthwhile as we got some moderate gains in tariff reductions.

But what Winston and Parker were on the verge of agreeing to was an agreement on digital services only. I shudder. Basically this would be giving the US pretty much everything they tried to get in the TPP IP chapter, and us getting nothing in return. It would have allowed the Government to claim we finally had a free trade deal with the US, but in fact it would have been a deal that would have imposed more restrictions on us, not liberalised us.

So thank God the deal fell apart.

Thomas Lumley writes:

We’ve got a cap (more or less). One of the non-intuitive aspects of having a cap rather than a fixed price is that parallel efforts to reduce carbon emission don’t work the way you’d expect them to. If I replace my gas stove with an electric one, my kitchen will emit less carbon (modulo the impacts of making the new equipment).  If everyone did it, everyone’s kitchen would emit less carbon (again, ignoring the impacts of making the new equipment).  What would happen to NZ’s total carbon emissions? Nothing. We have a cap.  Less of the cap would go on carbon coupons for burning natural gas; more of it would be available for cars or trucks or coal-fired power stations.  The impact of our kitchen-renovation decisions would be cheaper emissions rights for other polluters, not lower emissions.

In principle, I could keep buying emissions rights for the natural gas I wasn’t using. That would turn my lower emissions into reductions for NZ as a whole. Or, the government could monitor the sales of induction cooktops and withdraw emissions rights to compensate (or, more realistically, track kitchen conversions through some sort of subsidy).  But if nothing happens to the total ETS carbon budget, nothing will happen to total emissions. A big enough change in demand could change emissions — if cars were suddenly banned, the government might not be able to sell all its ETS coupons — but a modest change won’t.

When the government says that new subsidies for low-emissions cars will reduce carbon emissions by some large number, there’s a gap in the explanation.  Having more low-emissions cars will lower carbon emissions by cars, but unless the government withdraws the corresponding emissions rights from the carbon budget, it won’t reduce carbon emissions in total. The reduction will go to lowering carbon costs for other polluters.

This is what the NZ Initiative and other business groups have been saying. People might not trust it coming from then, but they may when it comes from one of the leading statistics academics in NZ.

The bottom line is the feebate will not reduce carbon emissions in total. It will merely lower carbon costs for other “polluters”.

A couple of weeks ago in a Kiwiblog post I included a compliment to Andrea Vance for pointing out how closed shop this government was. I really thought ANDREA  (lets go for the one-word name thing) had turned an identity politics corner. A week later ANDREA flipped right back around the corner she had just come from.
“Boomers, Karens, middle-aged, gammons … whatever verbal eye-roll we use, they are unnerved by climate change policies, cycleways, gender inclusivity and te reo Māori greetings.”

You see – I married a real, live, literal “Karen” – as in that is her name – she can’t escape it. To have ANDREA misuse it in NZ is one thing but, in 2020 Chicago had been suffering the worst gun violence and highest murder rate in 45 years. In one June weekend 85 people were shot and 24 killed. The mayor there is the first openly gay African American woman to be elected in a major city. She clearly has overcome stereotypes and prejudices. As this crisis builds White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany encouraged Lightfoot to request Federal help – Lightfoot’s response (on that hub of intellectual discourse called Twitter) … “Hey Karen. Watch your mouth.”

Sensing these things were meant as deep insults I felt the need to know why my wife would be dragged into it. We have for many years negated the disease of stereotyping – and for good reason. As Karen O’Leary (of NZ TV comedy Wellington Paranormal fame) said in an interview; “Labels disable.”

It got worse this week with a Hollywood movie – called – you guessed it … Karen. Here is an appropriate treatment of it.

Even though I am incredibly chivalrous – the last thing the Karen I married (and “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”) needs is for me to defend her. She is strong, assertive, intelligent, a phenomenal business-woman and leader for the good of others (once a finalist in the Charity category of Woman of Influence). Karen has been a brilliant life partner for 32 years and was an incredible mother to our three grown up children and new grand-mother to two. The youngest of our children – our daughter – is currently a PhD student who not only has the wonderful traits of her mother – but also has Karen as her second name.

Sensing the need for deep research I went to Wikipedia – to find out what Lightfoot (and ANDREA) were talking about.

“Karen is a pejorative term used in the United States and other English-speaking countries for a woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary. A common stereotype is that of a white woman who uses her privilege to demand her own way at the expense of others … As of 2020, the term was increasingly being used as a general-purpose term of disapproval for middle-aged white women.”

Emily Brookes of Stuff summed it up as: [I]t’s the result of a few years of cultural aversion to the name as it became associated with a certain type of privileged, white, middle-aged woman whose mantra is “I want to speak to the manager.”

I immediately thought of the assumption of being “white” and those we make about heritage. Not judging people by the colour of their skin surely remains valid. Karen’s skin is olive – as far as we can tell through Spanish heritage in the family of her father – possibly even Crypto Jewish. Karen’s father survived as a child in Nazi occupied Netherlands and came to New Zealand in 1951 – with a suitcase and hope.

Karen was the youngest of four in a home without much. They were what we now call “working poor”. They called it normal. Their one treat each year was a Trumpet from the Castlecliff dairy on Guy Fawkes. The youngest gets stepped on becomes strong, assertive and independent. No one seemed to understand this driven little girl.

I met her when she was fourteen. Like another strong New Zealand woman did – she was working in a fishn’chip shop – to buy a bike, save for a car, save for university (the first in family).

Her work ethic is legend as are her expectations for the 65 people who are her employees (including myself). There is a difference from the stereotype though. Her demand is for the good of others – especially those marginalized in our education system. People love working with her for the vision she brings and the encouragement she provides.

She is now “middle-aged” – and she does have one of those “bob-cuts”. But her energy has not flagged for a moment. I am in awe of her daily and can only imagine how good the world would be with many more of her type.

Children are learning way too fast about social media pile-ons and bullying stereotypes. We are endangering any hope on intelligent discourse and genuine social progress. We are heading towards; “Waiter there is a fly in our soup – but we would hate to make a fuss so we will just passively eat it. Please don’t bother the manager.”

ANDREA – Karen deserves apology. To associate yourself with such stereotyping was beneath you.

Some good ideas from Amanda Kvalsvig, Nick Wilson, and Michael Baker on upgrading out Covid-19 response. They include:

• Having different settings for mask usage, to try and prevent doing a lockdown. At low risk have masks required on public transport, flights, rest homes, taxis and healthcare providers. At high risk require masks in indoor workplaces, secondary schools, universities, shops and social settings.
• Make the Covid-19 app mandatory to use in cafes, bars, gyms, churches
• Ensure all border and frontline staff are vaccinated and tested regularly
• Have enough vaccine stock available to mass vaccinate a region that has an outbreak
• Pay people to stay at home if they are a contact of someone with Covid-19
• Mandatory use of Covid-19 app for arriving travellers

All these proposals would make it less likely we have another outbreak and/or a lockdown.

Nadia is a Danish football player who plays for both Denmark and in the US professional soccer league. She is 33 years old and has represented Denmark 93 times, and was Denmark’s Person of the Year in 2017.

She also speaks nine languages and is one semester away from graduating as a reconstructive surgeon.

She was born in Afghanistan and her father was executed by the Taliban when she was 12. The previous year they stopped her going to school. Her family (mother and five daughters) fled to Denmark and she started playing football in the refugee camp.

An amazing story of an amazing woman. And her sisters are doing well also. One if the No 1 boxer in Denmark (and 3 in the world). Two others are also studying medicine and the fourth nursing. If they had stayed in Afghanistan they wouldn’t have been allowed to go to school under the Taliban.

The Michigan Senate, controlled by Republicans, has spent six months investigating the dozens of claims of election fraud. Their conclusion, is there was none at all. The report is extensive. Specifically they say:

• The Committee concluded that there was no voting by deceased people or non-residents
• There was no evidence presented to the Committee indicating that hundreds of thousands of absentee voter ballots were mailed to Michigan voters without previously being requested.
• A complete hand recount in Antrim County validated the original, official results as accurate.
• Ideas and speculation that the Antrim County election workers or outside entities manipulated the vote by hand or electronically are indefensible
• The Committee recommends the attorney general consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.
• The Committee finds those promoting Antrim County as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election place all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility.
• Trump claimed there were more voters than votes in Detroit. The committee found only 50% of registered voters voted, being 37% of the total population.
• The Committee finds these postulations strain credulity and are simply preposterous.
• Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan.

Again this committee was set up by the Republican controlled State Senate and had three Republicans and only one Democrat on it.

The claims of fraud are because Trump is psychologically incapable of admitting he lost. He lost 60 court cases about them, and every single claim made by him or proxies has been debunked.