Stuff reports:

A riot at Waikeria Prison is escalating, with inmates constructing makeshift weapons and raiding an equipment room for armour and batons.

Ministry of Corrections incident controller Jeanette Burns believes “violent” prisoners are planning to attack staff.

“The prisoners have continued to cause extensive damage to the facility, including forcibly accessing restricted areas including a room used to store tactical equipment that includes power tools, shields, batons and body armour,” Burns said.

This is why any incident like this should be dealt with firmly and immediately. By allowing the rioting prisoners the run of the place for days on end, they have managed to get access to a room which now makes it even more dangerous for the poor prison guards.

The riot began on Tuesday after 17 inmates started several fires.

It’s now Saturday. Why did they allow it to go on for so long?

Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi visited the prison in Ōtorohanga on Thursday night to speak with the 16 men who have taken over the prison in protest.

“They are clear that this is not a riot, it is a protest for their human rights for all inmates past and present,” he said.

Sure it is.

The Ministers of Corrections is Kelvin Davis. I assume he flew back to Wellington some days ago to receive regular briefings in the situation and to convey to the Department that they need to restore order in the prison to protect the staff and other prisoners.

Introduction

During the dead zone of the Christmas and summer holidays in NZ, I thought I’d report on what actual evidence there is of election fraud in the US Presidential election. This will be a 4 part series and will focus only on aspects of fraud that can be proven and that are consequential, by that I mean, on a scale sufficient to tip enough votes back to Trump to overcome a result in particular states. In my first post on this subject, it was a scattergun of all known and reported types of fraud and I did this only 7 days after the election when less was known and unearthed than is known now.

Let me preface this by casting Kiwiblog readers’ minds back to the 2008 Presidential election and the time when Republican nominee John McCain announced that Sarah Palin, the former mayor of Visalia, Alaska would be his running mate. It was a shock announcement designed to provide some kind of youthful foil to the aged McCain struggling to compete against the charismatic young Barack Obama. The mainstream media were intent on assisting Obama’s election and so took the Palin threat seriously and many large media organisations spent large sums on a cadre of investigative reporters who travelled to Alaska and literally dumpster dived for dirt on Palin and came up with a torrent of negative family and personal issues that were given front page prominence. We can see the same tenacity employed by the Washington Post alone in the initial months of the Watergate scandal in 1974, efforts that eventually led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation prior to likely impeachment from office. These stories illustrate that when the media want to get to the bottom of something, they leave no stone unturned to get to the truth.

When it comes to ensuring the election of Joe Biden, the mainstream media have excelled in running cover for Biden and excoriating Trump and so when allegations of voter fraud began to emerge on and after 3 November 2020, not only were they incurious, they soon joined forces to demand proof and then were disinterested in investigating or reporting on the proof except to report on all the failed law suits, to urge Trump to concede and to label his supporters as unpatriotic deniers of the reality of Biden’s election. Establishment Republicans soon joined the never-Trumpers as did establishment right leaning media (Fox News, National Review, and a number of centre right media people, even many who supported Trump), all adopting a view that even if there was fraud, it was hard to prove sufficient to overturn the election result and that Trump and his followers should move on to fight another day. Thus, it has been left to a group of lesser known conservative writers, bloggers, former politicians and media personalities and a bunch of forensic accountants, auditors, cyber security experts, statisticians, constitutional lawyers, and data analysts to crunch the numbers, look at the patterns and examine and report on the evidence, reporting that has gone almost completely unnoticed even ignored by the mainstream media. The mainstream media narrative on election fraud, despite the near blackout of reporting on evidence of the fraud (despite the constant hue and cry to produce evidence), has slowly evolved from: there was no fraud at all to, there was a little bit of fraud but there’s always been fraud so what’s the big to deal to, well perhaps there was more fraud this time than in previous election to, there maybe was more widespread fraud but not enough to overturn individual states’ results to, whatever fraud there was it’s too late now to do anything as all the officials and courts have ruled that the results should stand.

I am going to focus on 4 specific examples of proven fraud in each part of the series and will do so in detail and to look at the some of the attempts to rebut these specific claims.

1 – Retail fraud

2 – Mass Chain of Custody Infractions

3 – Forensic audit of voting machines in Michigan

4 – Video and statistical evidence in Georgia

These four examples are by no means the full and complete list of voter fraud as the list is long and growing. In the last part I will examine some of the court actions and resulting rulings.

Proving fraud to the level of proof required in a criminal case (beyond reasonable doubt) is not easy because those committing fraud go to extraordinary lengths to cover their tracks. Often the case has to be built incrementally with fragments of proof from different sources. Usually this means some documentary evidence like bank statements, invoices, and other paper trails, often there are unusual patterns of flow of funds and of behaviour of the accused, some of this can be proven by historical comparison and others by use of affidavits from persons associated with the fraudsters who report unusual behaviour. Then there are background interviews with persons acquainted with the personal circumstances of the accused to build up provable motives. Large fraud trials such as the Bernie Madoff giant Ponzi scheme took years to bring to trial and consumed huge resources of large Federal agencies such as the SEC and FBI. In the case of proving election fraud to a level that courts or legislatures will take the extreme step of ruling an election invalid and awarding a state’s electors to the opponent alleging the fraud, those are history making decisions that require more than just circumstantial evidence and the proving of it must be done in days and weeks because the Constitution requires that a new President be inaugurated on January 20^th after the election. It is a tall order no matter how widespread fraud might appear to be.

Retail Fraud

Retail fraud is defined as the counting of illegal votes cast by voters ineligible to vote or cast in an illegal manner as opposed to institutional fraud where portions of a state’s election procedures are unconstitutional resulting in whole categories of votes being counted when state electoral law says otherwise or industrial fraud involving possible manipulation of voting machines that count ballots. Retail fraud occurs in various ways. I am going to concentrate on provable instances on a scale that exceeds that of the narrow Biden current margins in the 4 of the 6 key battleground states (in bold) where widespread fraud is alleged (Arizona – AZ, Georgia – GA, Michigan – MI, Nevada – NV, Pennsylvania – PA and Wisconsin – WI). Note the current Electoral College Vote split is Biden 306 – Trump 232

1 – Ineligible voters in Wisconsin (margin for Biden 20,682 – 10 ECV)

Dane County, WI Circuit Court Judge Troupis testified under oath to the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on 2020 Election Irregularities on December 16^th and identified the following categories of illegally cast votes in WI:

* Absentee voters who escaped signature scrutiny by falsely claiming to be indefinitely confined

28,395 illegal voters are identified as falsely using this status (Wisconsin has enacted some of the strictest voter verification procedures in the country that were flagrantly breached in the 2020 election. If you want to vote via absentee ballot in WI, you have to apply to have a ballot sent so as to have your signature on file and you have to have furnished additional evidence of your mailing address and ID (such as a utility bill and driver’s license). You must also have a witness verify your application and the witness’ signature must also be verified. County Clerks in Democrat heavy Milwaukee and Dane counties (covering the largest city Milwaukee and the liberal WI capital and college town of Madison) made public suggestions on social media that voters could circumvent these strict procedures by registering as Indefinitely Confined (IC). Voters so designated are exempted from the witness and signature verification process due to their physical infirmity. Being confined by Covid was not deemed by the legislature as qualifying to be Indefinitely Confined. For the last 5 elections, the numbers of WI voters who registered as IC remained stable and low at around 70,000. The WI Supreme Court ordered the County Clerks to cease to promote such activity as being in contravention of WI electoral law. That however did not stop a surge in 2020 registrations for IC to over 200,000 voters. Furthermore, the Voter Integrity Project investigated the social media pages of 84 random recent IC registrations and found photo and video evidence of people biking, attending weddings, swimming, hiking, attending protests, some were registered poll workers and even one of Biden’s WI electors claimed this status! Of the 84 surveyed, 45% were shown to have fraudulently used the IC process to circumvent the signature matching process of absentee ballots).

* Absentee ballots with improperly completed envelope certificates that were counted

3,000 + (these were actual real votes checked during the recount. WI law is extremely strict, if the outside of the absentee ballot is not properly completed or was altered in any way, the vote must be discarded).

* Absentee ballots with no County Clerk check initials but still counted

2,000 + (absentee ballots must be checked on arrival at the Clerk’s office as being compliant with the law and the Clerk initials each ballot – this amount was just in Milwaukee and Dane Counties).

* Absentee ballots illegally cast in advance at non-authorized locations

23,293 (in just the City of Madison, this number of absentee ballots were put into 200 illegal voting boxes scattered at locations all over the city whereas WI election law states explicitly that absentee ballots can only be dropped off at an official polling location on election day or before election day, they can only be dropped off at County Clerk’s designated offices).

* People who cast absentee ballots who did not go through the statutory ballot application procedure

170,000 (Democrat County election officials arbitrarily deemed the signature on the outside of the envelopes of these ballots as an ‘application’ circumventing state election law that voters were required to submit an application for absentee ballots before the issuing of ballots specifically to enable the state to have a signature on file to compare the signature on the returned ballot with to ensure the absentee vote was legally cast).

Total illegal ballots cast in Wisconsin – 226,688. Despite submitting this voluminous evidence to election officials and to courts in litigation, Democrat officials and judges have just ignored the evidence and continued to maintain that the certifications of votes were accurate. Since Biden’s current margin of victory is only 9.1% of these illegal ballots, the Biden/Trump split on these illegal ballots only has to be 55/45 for Biden to lose. We already know that Biden won Milwaukee County’s absentee ballots by 79/20 so it would be safe to assume that had all the illegal ballots been disallowed, that Trump would’ve easily won Wisconsin.

2 – Ineligible votes in Georgia (margin for Biden 11,779 – 16 ECV)

The Trump campaign in Georgia investigated the state’s own official 2020 voter records and matched them to publicly available databases and unearthed the following list of voters who cast votes illegally. Please note this is an especially important point hence the bolding. These are actual lists of real 2020 election voters with names, addresses and sometimes dates of birth and matched against lists of convicted felons, PO Boxes and commercial mail locations, National Change of Address forms issued by the Post Office and death registers. In each category people have cast thousands of votes when they were not eligible under GA election law to do so and yet these illegal votes were counted:

* Felons who voted                                       

2,560 (it is illegal under GA law for felons to vote)

* Underage voters          

66,247 (people who turned 18 more than 6 months after November 3^rd and so ineligible to vote on 3/11/20)

* Unregistered voters    

2,423 (under GA law you must be first registered to vote before you can vote just like in New Zealand)

* Voting in two states   

395 (people who moved from GA and voted in their new state AND GA)

* Voters voting from other states

15,700 (people who filled out Change of Address forms with the USPS to locations out of state and yet still voted in GA. Once you leave GA, you cannot legally vote there anymore)

* Voters using PO Box addresses              

1,043 (GA law says you must register at a physical house address not a PO Box or a commercial mail clearance facility – note a GA Democrat legislator checked 2 of the people on the list and found the box was in an apartment building)

* Deceased voters           

8,718 (people proven to have died before 3/11/20 and yet votes were recorded in their name)   

The total of PROVABLE illegally counted votes in Georgia was 97,086. The Trump campaign have furnished the state with the lists of the voters concerned and the Secretary of State’s office could match the names to ballots cast and disallow all illegally cast ballots. The SOS has refused to do so because he maintains the fiction that the election was clean and fair and does not want to admit that fraud occurred under his watch and he hides behind the already granted certifications to not check these votes. If all these illegally cast ballots were an in fact an even Trump/Biden split then Biden’s lead would hold even with the discarded votes so officials would have nothing to lose if they support discarding the illegal votes. We can only conclude that the illegal votes that should be disallowed are overwhelmingly for Biden and so officials who have certified the vote for Biden would have to reverse their decision.

3 – Ineligible voters in Nevada (Biden margin 33,596 – 6 ECV)

Trump campaign attorney Jesse Binnell testified under oath to the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on 2020 Election Irregularities on December 16^th and detailed the following illegal votes counted:

On August 3^rd, 2020, the Nevada Legislature passed AB 4 into law allowing universal mail in voting. That meant that ALL voters on the electoral rolls (that were known to be inaccurate, poorly maintained and rarely updated) were sent mail in ballots whether they requested them or not (as is required in many of the other swing states like FL, OH, AZ, WI, and PA). Thus, mail in ballots increased ten fold from 60,000 in 2016 to 690,000 in 2020 (out of just over 2 million registered voters in NV). By checking public voting records, they were able to determine that there were:

* People voting twice

42,000 (found by actual checking of names, addresses and DOBs of voters and checking for things like use of name variants such as Bill then William or using married then maiden names)

* Dead voters

1,500 (found from comparing lists of mail-in voters with Social Security death records)

* Former NV residents voting from other states

19,000 + (this list excluded military voters and students and was found from the USPS Change of Address database)

* Voting by people with ballots sent to undeliverable addresses

8,000 + (found by matching voter addresses with a coding accuracy support system that threw up undeliverable addresses – US houses are not always numbered in sequential order like in NZ with the numbering often done to fit the number of houses into street blocks and keep house numbers in line with main streets that have numbers for names like 45^th street. Thus 5 houses on one side of a street might be number 2345, 2351, 2357, 2363 and 2369. An undeliverable address would be 2365 for example).

* Votes cast from commercial or vacant addresses

15,000 + (found from USPS official records – under NV law you can only legally register from an occupied home address)

* Votes cast by non US citizens

4,000 + (found from comparing Dep’t of Motor Vehicle records of non-citizens with voter records)

This is a total of 130,000 illegally cast ballots and the determination does not come from estimations or random samples, they come from lists of ACTUAL voters comparisons with public records most of which are publicly available or can be purchased from list brokers. These comprehensive lists of fraudulent voters were furnished to Clark County election officials (covering the Las Vegas metro area) and to the NV Secretary of State’s Office and they have never been refuted, only ignored by the elected Democrats who hold those offices. Clark County election worker whistleblowers also alleged voting counting machine irregularities, but these could never be verified because the election officials would never allow any Trump campaign people access to any voting machines for the campaign to forensically examine them.

4 – Voting irregularities in Arizona (margin for Biden 10,457 – 11 ECV)

Matt Braynard of the Voter Integrity Fund and former data strategist for the Trump campaign testified before a hearing sponsored by Arizona State Legislators on December 7^th in Phoenix and revealed the following about either ineligible voters:

* Nonresidents of AZ casting illegal ballots in AZ

9,500 (Analysis of National Change of Address data from the USPS showed 5,700 out of state voters cast votes in Maricopa County alone. Given MC has only 60% of all voters in AZ, the figure is reached by extrapolating the percentage of out of state ballots cast for the whole state).  

* People sent mail-in ballots whose votes were counted but they said they never returned a ballot

19,154 (The Voter Integrity Project randomly sampled 2,237 people who the Maricopa County elections database counted as a received and recorded absentee ballot vote and yet 1% of the contacted people said they never voted. In other words, somebody fraudulently voted and sent in an absentee ballot on their behalf).

Please note that Matt Braynard’s work has been challenged by experts brought in by Democrat Party defendants in lawsuits where Braynard’s statistical analysis has been submitted as part of the evidence. However, he has had other statistical experts go over his data and verify both the methods and findings here and here.

* Corrected Trump ballots miscounted for Biden

3090 (If a voter’s ballot was run through a vote tabulation machine and the machine could not read the ballot perhaps due to marks on the page or paper damage, election workers created a duplicate ballot to run that through. The Republican Party of Arizona suspected that some of these duplicate ballots were not properly transposed thus decreasing Trump’s vote tally. AZ GOP Chairwoman Dr Kelli Ward was told by Scott Jarrett, Director of the Maricopa County Elections Department on November 18^th at the Logic and Accuracy Test inside the Tabulation Center that 103,000 duplicate ballots went to digital adjudication. The AZ GOP sued in Maricopa County Superior Court and the judge ordered a sample of 100 duplicate ballots be audited and of the 100 duplicate ballots examined, 1 vote that was cast for Trump was given to Biden and 1 that was cast for Trump was discarded which means a net 3 votes for Trump out of a small sample of 100 so 3%. A larger sample of 2,500 was allowed by the Maricopa Superior Court Judge Warner but the Maricopa County Attorney ordered the analysis stopped part way through to prevent the GOP from looking at the election day duplicates which came later in this sample and is where the problems in the first sample were found. The MC attorneys continued to stall until the judge’s 8 December deadline passed and his court order expired.  This saga is detailed in a series of posts on the AZ GOP You Tube channel).

Given these anomalies, and various others identified in the AZ Legislators’ hearing, the AZ Senate issued a subpoena for Dominion voting machines, digital images of scanned ballots and stored ballots so that a professional external 3^rd party forensic audit of the vote in Maricopa County where the majority of Biden’s narrow lead comes from could be performed. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted 4 – 1 to ignore the subpoena and so the State Senate has gone to court to get the subpoena enforced, The same Superior Court judge who ruled on the original limited audit has ruled that the subpoena is enforceable and just yesterday, the Arizona Attorney General has filed an amicus brief supporting the State Senate and given a legal opinion supporting the legality of the subpoena. The next course of action will be to call in State Troopers to enforce the subpoena and to seize the subpoenaed equipment to enable the ordered forensic audit to proceed.

This is a total of 31,744 potentially illegally cast votes for Biden or three times his narrow margin. Flushing out these fraudulent ballots requires the cooperation of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors who govern the election process in the county that has substantially contributed to Biden’s victory. His 45,000 vote lead in MC overcomes the strong Trump leads in the rural counties. These fraudulent votes are mostly in Maricopa County and Democrat stronghold Tucson in Pima County, that has not featured in the AZ GOP lawsuits, where likely the same level of fraud occurred, there were 526,000 votes cast. If the vote management and count was clean, then surely officials would welcome audits not fight them.

Conclusion

4 states with 43 combined Electoral College votes have proven retail fraud of a scale in each state, if properly investigated and the illegal votes were disallowed, would result in an ECV split of Trump 275 – Biden 263. This does not include Pennsylvania (20 ECV) where institutional fraud against the State Constitution took place that can only be reversed by the US Supreme Court (unlike the Texas case that they voted 7-2 to refused to hear, they have docketed to hear this case…. but on January 22^nd) and Michigan (16 ECV) where industrial level fraud took place that can only be reversed by statewide forensic audits of the voting machines (unlikely to happen).

NOLA reports:

Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died Tuesday evening from complications with COVID-19, shaking the Louisiana political world weeks after his election to represent Louisiana’s 5th District in Congress as the state’s youngest U.S. representative. 

Letlow, 41, died at Ochsner-LSU Health Shreveport from “complications from COVID-19,” his spokesman, Andrew Bautsch, said in a statement. …

He was in critical condition but had recently shown signs of improvement when he “apparently suffered a cardiac event this evening that was refractory to all resuscitation efforts,” said Dr. G.E. Ghali, of LSU Health Shreveport. 

Ghali previously said Letlow was being treated with the antiviral drug Remdesivir and steroids. Asked if Letlow had any underlying conditions that would have made his death more likely, Ghali said in a text message, “none. All COVID related.” 

Incredibly sad to die aged just 41.

It is a reminder that Covid-19 isn’t the flu. It doesn’t just kill the elderly or people with pre-existing conditions.

The full list is here.

Two NZers have been made members of the Order of NZ which is restricted to 20 living members. These are meant to the greatest of the great – icons like Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Kenneth Keith, Sir Murray Halberg. The two new additions are:

Professor Emeritus Sir Mason Harold Durie, KNZM, of Feilding. For services to New Zealand.

Distinguished Professor Dame Mary Anne Salmond, DBE, of Auckland. For services to New Zealand.

I didn’t know that you can get an ONZ for writing regular columns for the Herald decrying John Key and neoliberalism but there you go.

DNZM

To be Dames Companion of the said Order:

Professor Juliet Ann Gerrard, of Auckland. For services to science.

Professor Cynthia Alcyion Kiro, of Onerahi. For services to child wellbeing and education.

KNZM

To be Knights Companion of the said Order:

The Right Honourable David Cunningham Carter, of Lyttelton. For services as a Member of Parliament and as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mr David Joseph Dobbyn, ONZM, of Auckland. For services to music.

Mr Ian Lemuel Taylor, CNZM, of Dunedin. For services to broadcasting, business and the community.

Professor William Te Rangiua Temara, CNZM, of Hamilton. For services to Māori and education.

Nice to see Sir Dave Dobbyn. Also well deserved for Ian Taylor and Professor Gerrard.

Often interesting to see what gets cited the most in an honours list as a reason. A quick word count finds:

• Community 39
• Education 21
• Health 15
• Maori 11
• Conservation 10
• Business 10
• Arts 8
• Pacific 8
• Science 6
• Music 4

Politico reports:

On the first day of Congress’ freshman orientation, four incoming GOP members realized they shared a special connection: All had first- or second-hand experience living in communist or socialist countries.

The crew quipped that their family histories with brutal dictatorships and their aversion to Big Government basically made them the opposite of the liberal “Squad” that has surged to political stardom in the House.

Taking a page from their social media savvy rivals, they took to Twitter to share the name of their own counterrevolution. And the Republican “Force” was born.

This is a great move. The squad are basically four female Congresswomen who want to turn America into a socialist country and the force are Congresspersons who have (or parents have) actually grown up in (or next to) socialist countries and know how awful they are.

The members are:

• Nicole Malliotakis. Mother from Cuba.
• Carlos Gimenz. Born in Cuba, left at age six.
• Maria Elvira Salazar. Parents are Cuban exiles
• Victoria Spartz. Born in Ukraine, under Soviet rule for first 13 years
• Young Kim. Born in South Korea.
• Michelle Steel. Born in South Korea.

TVNZ reports:

Monty Python’s Life of Brian is a cult comedy classic, but the film’s humour is so controversial, it was banned in some countries.

The 1979 film, which had an R16 rating in New Zealand, is 13-year-old Arlo Scholes’ favourite movie.

“My favourite scene is where people start arguing and then they get into a fight,” Arlo said.

However, it was only after watching the British hit that his family realised he wasn’t old enough to view it.

“Some of it is a bit adult, it still can be suitable for my age,” he said.

“There’s no explanation for why it’s rated R16. We think it should’ve been rated M because there are some adult themes, but not a lot of violence or sexual content or drug use or other concerning elements.”

Arlo proceeded to email Chief Censor David Shanks to have it changed.

“We agreed with Arlo. It was time for another look and a reclassification of the movie,” Shanks said.

Arlo filed an application – with help from the Chief Censor – to review the movie’s rating.

Its rating has since been changed to M, meaning the film is suitable for mature audiences 16 years of age and over. 

I’m astonished Life of Brian was an R16. It should be compulsory viewing for all children when they turn 13.

The NY Post endorsed Donald Trump for re-election in 2020. It was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 and has been owned by Rupert Murdoch for the 40 years or so. It has been described as Trump’s favourite newspaper.

So that makes their editorial all the more powerful:

Mr. President, it’s time to end this dark charade.

We’re one week away from an enormously important moment for the next four years of our country.

On Jan. 5, two runoff races in Georgia will determine which party will control the Senate — whether Joe Biden will have a rubber stamp or a much-needed check on his agenda.

Unfortunately, you’re obsessed with the next day, Jan. 6, when Congress will, in a pro forma action, certify the Electoral College vote. You have tweeted that, as long as Republicans have “courage,” they can overturn the results and give you four more years in office.

In other words, you’re cheering for an undemocratic coup.

Calling it straight. The Electoral College has voted and Biden has won. The role of Congress is to count the votes, not change the votes.

You had every right to investigate the election. But let’s be clear: Those efforts have found nothing. To take just two examples: Your campaign paid $3 million for a recount in two Wisconsin counties, and you lost by 87 more votes. Georgia did two recounts of the state, each time affirming Biden’s win. These ballots were counted by hand, which alone debunks the claims of a Venezuelan vote-manipulating Kraken conspiracy.

Yep hand recounts which found the same result.

Sidney Powell is a crazy person. Michael Flynn suggesting martial law is tantamount to treason. It is shameful.

We tend to use the label crazy too often but in the case of Sidney Powell, I think it is clinically correct.

We understand, Mr. President, that you’re angry that you lost. But to continue down this road is ruinous. We offer this as a newspaper that endorsed you, that supported you: If you want to cement your influence, even set the stage for a future return, you must channel your fury into something more productive.

He won’t listen.

If Georgia falls, all that is threatened. You will leave your party out of power, less likely to listen to what you have to say or to capitalize on your successes, such as expanding the Hispanic voting bloc for the GOP.

Democrats will try to write you off as a one-term aberration and, frankly, you’re helping them do it. The King Lear of Mar-a-Lago, ranting about the corruption of the world.

Great analogy.

I think the one on the left is marginally worse but it is very close.

TVNZ report:

Police believe almost 900 people joined a gang this year, a 13 percent increase on the year before.

Can’t think of any other industry growing as quickly as 13% a year.

Stuff reports:

Taxpayers have stumped up an extra $550 million to pay public-sector employees in the last year.

That was a 13 per cent rise in just one year.

In the last financial year a further 62 public service staff were paid salaries of more than $200,000, representing a 5 per cent increase.

Altogether, 1247 staff now earn above that amount.

No wonder Labour does so well in Wellington.

The common belief was that it would be impossible to get a withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU but Boris delivered one on 23 January 2020.

The common belief was that Brexit would never actually occur, but Boris delivered Brexit on 31 January of this year.

The common belief was that there would be no trade agreement between the UK and EU but Boris delivered one on Christmas Eve.

I wonder if one day people will stop underestimating him.

The part of the headline the Green MP is labelling ableist is “adopted country has many blind spots”.

So now the woke have decided that the term blind spot is ableist and hurts people feelings.

No doubt once the new hate speech laws have been passed, using the term “blind spot” will attract a $10,000 fine or up to six months in prison.

Eedookh Breekha everyone.

Stuff has made their annual predictions. I’ve copied them below, along with my comments on them.

1. Facing serious pressure on housing prices, Labour will extend the Bright Line Test, arguing this doesn’t qualify as a new tax – just a new way to crack down on people avoiding paying their fair share. DPF: agree they will break their promise and do this.
2. An electorate MP will leave Parliament, sparking a by-election. DPF: Disagree. Unlikely.
3. Congestion charging will be announced – or at least consulted on – for Auckland. National will struggle with whether or not to oppose it. DPF: Consulted on but not announced.
4. Local governments will continue to screw up, necessitating the appointment of at least one commissioner. The threat of an observer in Wellington will linger but not eventuate. DPF: Agree re screw up and a commissioner for Invercargill is possible.
5. The Government will implement a clean car emissions standard, but the EV fleet will remain below 30,000 by the end of the year, a tiny fraction of the overall fleet. DPF: AGree
6. Barring an outbreak, the trans-tasman bubble will open before the start of March. DPF: Disagree. 2nd quarter.
7. No one will resign from Cabinet in scandal or under pressure. DPF: Agree for 2021.
8. New Cabinet minister Peeni Henare will say something that he will live to regret. DPF: Pretty likely.
9. A new MP from the class of 2020 will greatly embarrass themselves on behavioural grounds. DPF: Fairly safe prediction.
10. A decision will be made on the future of light rail in Auckland, although don’t expect shovels in the ground. DPF: Is this a prediction? Saying there will be a decision but not what it is.
11. The drive towards a four year term will continue – but Labour will eventually concede that a referendum would be needed to make this change. DPF: Again not really a prediction.
12. New Zealand will sign up to a much tougher NDC under the Paris Agreement after the Climate Change Commission recommends it. National struggles to bring itself behind the Commission’s first emissions budgets, igniting a quiet civil war within the party. DPF: Agree re NDC.
13. The REINZ median house price in Wellington will hit $1m and prices will rise throughout the country. DPF: Agree and quite soon.
14. The Government’s books will be in better shape than feared with a deficit $10b-15b lower than what’s currently forecast. Unemployment will continue to rise, but it will peak below 7 per cent. DPF: Agree
15. The work towards a new intelligence agency, as recommended by the Royal Commission’s inquiry into March 15, is slow and unfinished by the end of the year. Incumbents within the system generally resist the change. DPF: Agree
16. The country will hear extremely little from Winston Peters or from the husk of a party that is NZ First. DPF: Hopefully
17. Oranga Tamariki will have a new chief executive before the year is out. DPF: Probable
18. The rollout of the Covid vaccine will be patchy and messy. By the end of 2021 there will still be people who want it who haven’t got it. DPF: Highly likely
19. The Government will come under serious pressure to open the borders widely as other countries get their vaccines fully rolled out. DPF: Of course

Stuff reports:

Queenstown hotel owners are distressed to learn that a proposed bed tax is being considered by the tourism minister while they struggle to survive.

In a letter to Queenstown hotel operator Nik Kiddle​, new Tourism Minister Stuart Nash confirmed he had spoken to Queenstown Lakes District mayor Jim Boult about the proposed visitor levy, which Nash understood was put on hold due to Covid-19.

The international tourism sector is almost dead but the Government still wants to impose an additional tax on them.