The Newshub Reid Research poll has National slightly ahead of Labour:

• National 43.3%
• Labour 42.5%
• Greens 5.6%
• NZ First 3.6%
• ACT 1.8%

Governments often get a bounce over summer when political news dies down. This poll was also taken after the infrastructure announcement and Ratana but before National ruled out NZ First.

On this poll National and ACT would have 58 seats and Labour and Greens 62 seats – so a 2% movement would see a change of Government.

Another issue is Greens at the 2017 election did 0.8% worse than the Newshub pre-election poll. If that happened again it would be National 60 seats, Labour 58 seats and ACT 2 seats.

Also worth comparing how this compares to the Newshub poll at the same stage of the 1st term of the last National Government. That had National at 55% and Labour at 31% so hugely different to the tight battle this poll represents.

The Taxpayers’ Union asks:

Why are taxpayers funding astrology-based health services?

A good question.

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is alarmed to learn that taxpayers are funding astrology-based health services, in the name of “traditional Māori healing”.

In a comment to Stuff, the Ministry of Health says it is encouraging its Healthy Families providers to incorporate ‘maramataka’ into their services. Maramataka is the traditional study of lunar cycles.

The Ministry explains: “The work of Healthy Families NZ is part of the growing movement to place indigenous knowledge and practices on an equal level with western epistemologies.”

An example of this put into practice can be found on the Healthy Families website for Whanganui:

Healthy Families WRR are working with others in the community to bring back some of those practices that kept us connected and healthy.

One easy way that we can do this is by adjusting our activity levels according to the energy levels and pull of the moon. Everything has an ebb and a flow, including us, so by allowing ourselves to rest during the low energy phases and amping it up on the high energy phases we are placing ourselves in a position for optimum benefits.

Astrology is quackery and just because it is Maori astrology doesn’t make it any less quackery. Taxpayers should not be funding it.

The BBC reports:

The government is examining whether to move the House of Lords out of London, the Conservative Party chairman has said.

James Cleverly told Sky News the idea was among a “range of options” being considered to “reconnect” politics with voters outside of the capital.

According to the Sunday Times, York and Birmingham have emerged as contenders to permanently host the upper chamber.

I think I would die from laughter if Boris moves the House of Lords to Birmingham.

The Herald reports:

Emails apparently sent and received by Auckland mayor Phil Goff over a 12-year period have been offered with a $20,000 price tag and appear to contain deeply personal information alongside council and Parliamentary work.

The person trying to sell them is a criminal. The Herald should have gone straight to the Police and tried to get him identified and arrested. They could have done this by pretending to agree to pay him, and using the payment to track him or her down.

In 2011, Goff weighed into public debate over the use of a private email account by then-Foreign affairs minister Murray McCully, which had been hacked. Goff called it a “wake-up call” and was quoted saying: “Anything (of) an official nature should be going through protected channels.”

So this shows Goff is a total hypocrite. Not a huge surprise.

Among the emails provided were two dealing with campaign financing. One began with the line: “Team all emails should be on personal addresses or those that cannot be subject to an official information request”.

Goff appears to have received the email in his Xtra account and sent it to his executive assistant’s email account at Parliament.

This e-mail shows that Goff broke the law around the OIA. Any e-mails on personal addresses sent by Ministers or their staff are subject to the Official Information Act, and Goff would know this.

What Goff really means is that using personal accounts means they can simply deny the information exists, as unlike their official accounts there are no central servers with archives.

So Goff has contempt for the OIA we now know.

Spiked reports:

The ongoing fallout from Laurence Fox’s appearance on Question Time last Thursday is nothing short of staggering. It confirms, in a chilling way, how intolerant the cultural elites have become and how viciously they will pounce on anyone who deviates from their political and moral script. Actors, singers, artists and the rest of us, too, have been put on notice: ‘Disagree with us, the righteous woke people, and you will be destroyed.’

Fox, an actor and singer-songwriter, is now essentially a speechcriminal. Members of the actors’ union Equity have effectively called for him to be blacklisted, like PC incarnations of Joe McCarthy. Leading journalists have denounced him as ‘far right’ even though he said not one single thing that could be deemed ‘far right’. But then, the ‘far right’ insult is rarely intended to be accurate these days. Instead, it is a means of marking someone out as evil, as disobedient, as too questioning of correct-thought as defined by PC elites. Calling Fox ‘far right’ is another species of blacklisting, the foul intention being to discourage producers from ever employing him again.

And what, precisely, were Fox’s speechcrimes? This is where it gets genuinely scary. Everything he said on QT was perfectly reasonable. Great numbers of people will have been cheering him on. He said he was bored of the idea that the media criticism of Meghan Markle is driven by racism. He questioned the idea that the next Labour leader should be chosen on the basis of sex and said instead that we should judge politicians by their beliefs and achievements. He mocked celebs for lecturing everyone about climate change. He pushed back against an audience member who suggested he enjoyed white privilege, pointing out that it wasn’t him, Fox, who mentioned people’s skin colour, but them, his voluble detractors.

Not only is this not far right – it is also sensible and refreshing. It is the opposite of far right, in fact. In refusing to talk about people’s racial origins, and instead saying we should engage with people as individuals, on the basis of their character and their beliefs, Fox was expressing what would have been seen as a decent, progressive, essential approach to everyday life just a couple of decades ago.

Far right is a term now meaningless, as the woke left have used it to smear well basically everyone.

El Pais reports:

Venezuelans were the largest demographic immigrating to the Madrid region in the first half of 2019: 11,899, according to the latest data released by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) earlier this month. This marks a massive influx of people from a single country, one unparalleled in recent years. No other immigrant group has grown by more than 20,000 a year since 2008, when the INE began publishing relevant data. But over the past two years, Venezuelans have been coming in even greater numbers and there are now probably more than 100,000 living in the Madrid region. 

That’s a big number.

Madrid receives only a small portion of Venezuelans on the move. Others head for the US, neighboring Latin-American countries or other cities within Europe. According to the United Nations, 4.6 million citizens have left their homeland since 2015, a figure that could rise to 6.5 million this year.

That’s a huge number. Around 20% of their population has fled, due to well socialist economic policies.

From John Stringer:

Christchurch writer and illustrator JOHN STRINGER has a new book out published by “Maiden NZ” and IngramSpark (USA). A 2019 art historical review of Tintin parodies, pastiches and lampoons. 180 pages, more than 120 colour plates of new Tintins. Available on Amazon or TradeMe, a second volume (with another 222 Tintins) is due for release in 2020.

In Le Pastiche Tintin, New Zealand art historian John Stringer examines the phenomenon of the mass Tintin pastiches and parodies since 1983 when Hergé died and the adventures ceased with the incomplete Tintin and Alph-Art. Honouring the canon and legacy of Hergé, Stringer draws on hundreds of independent works in different languages to comment on the enduring pastiche phenomenon of Europe’s greatest comic (200 million copies, 70 languages). Having endured for 90 years, fans across the globe seek to invite Tintin art into their own contexts, giving him a second life while wrestling with modernity (cocaine abuse, cloning, ISIS terrorism, and space travel to Mars) but in the spirit of the twentieth-century Tintin. 

With an opus set and Tintin entering archival museum status, is he an artefact, high art, or an enduring children’s comic reinterpreted and extended by an adoring global fandom? 

Pastiche, perhaps more pronounced with Tintin than any other comic, expresses rich nostalgia for continuity and renewal.  As they said of Lincoln on his deathbed, “Now, he belongs to the ages.”

A good collection of 111 Tintins for people interested in Tintin ; packed with information on Tintin, Hergé and the art historical context in which Tintin emerged.

Written by a Kiwi on the greatest comic of all time from Belgium (200 million copies, 70 countries).

A nice contribution for any Tintin collection. Cheap at $32.00.  

I still have my childhood collection of Tintin books and am looking forward to introducing Benjamin and Samuel to them.

Bob Jones says his preferred Democratic ticket would be Amy Klobuchar for President and Pete Buttigieg as VP on the basis they are the smartest and least cliche dependent.

The main downside would be two candidates with surnames few can pronounce or spell!

The Guardian reports:

The man shot dead by police after he stabbed two people in London on Sunday left prison only days ago and had previously been noted by police as having a “fascination with dying in the name of terrorism”, it has emerged.

Sudesh Amman, whose attack on Streatham High Road left one person initially in a life-threatening condition, was under active police surveillance at the time of the attack. He had been freed after serving half of his sentence of more than three years for the possession and distribution of extremist material.

Jailed aged 18 in December 2018, Amman had been released after serving part of his three year and four month sentence, but was deemed sufficiently high risk that he was under special monitoring by police.

So he was sentenced to 40 months in prison but they let him out after 13 months, and within a few dozen hours he went on an attempted killing spree.

Call me old fashioned, but I think releasing people early who have expressed a clear desire to murder people is a bad idea.

Liam Hehir gives six reasons why it was good National ruled out the Winston First party.

1. Voters deserve a clear choice
2. It’s better to reject than to be rejected
3. It deprives Labour of the moral high ground
4. It’s immaterial to National’s big risk
5. It’s better in the long run
6. It’s the right thing to do

No 6 is the strongest reason.

Newshub reports:

Transport Minister Phil Twyford says by 2030, Aucklanders will “absolutely” be able to take a train from the CBD to the airport.

Twyford in 2017 promised there would be light rail to Mt Roskill by the end of 2021. They have made zero progress towards this.

Why would we be stupid enough to believe any of their promises or predictions?

Informed sources tell me that Labour’s Manurewa MP, Louisa Wall, is about to get challenged for the nomination.

The challenger is Ian Dunwoodie, who lost to her in 2010. I understand he has signed up lots of members and is likely to win the floor vote. It will then come down to whom the unions and head office support.

Will Labour drop a gay Maori woman (who got through the same sex marriage law change) for a white male lawyer?

If Clinton or Obama had done ever 5% of the misdeeds of Trump, every Republican Senator would have voted for them to be removed from office. With one exception they put party before country.

Mitt Romney will go down as the last honest Republican Senator. He had nothing to gain from voting to convict and will face massive abuse for doing so. So why did he? Here’s some pertinent extracts from his statement:

The grave question the Constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the President committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a “high crime and misdemeanor.”

Yes, he did.

The President asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival.

The President withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so.

The President delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders.

The President’s purpose was personal and political.

Accordingly, the President is guilty of an appalling abuse of the public trust.

What he did was not “perfect”— No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.

As they say these truths are self-evident.

In the last several weeks, I have received numerous calls and texts. Many demand that, in their words, “I stand with the team.” I can assure you that that thought has been very much on my mind. I support a great deal of what the President has done. I have voted with him 80% of the time. But my promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and biases aside. Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.

If only others were so brave.

I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced. I am sure to hear abuse from the President and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced. I am sure to hear abuse from the President and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?

Romney is very devout. He I suspect takes an oath before God quite literally.

The latest Gallup poll has Trump at 49% approval and 50% disapproval. In October he was at 39% approval and 57% disapproval.

If the next few polls keep him up there, his reelection chances are significantly improved.

Also I don’t think Pelosi ripping up his state of the union speech on live TV was a good idea. It gives Republicans a powerful image to use against Democrats.

Newshub reports:

Jones, the self-proclaimed champion of the regions and boy from the north, has put in a bid with his party to run in Northland, the seat his boss Winston Peters – leader of New Zealand First – seized from National in 2015 but lost to them again in 2017.

This has been long expected. So how has Jones gone in the past up North?

• 2005 – stood in Northland for Labour. Got 24% of the vote compared to 30% for Labour. Lost by 9,275
• 2008 – stood in Northland for Labour. Got 29% of the vote compared to 25% for Labour. Lost by 10,054
• 2011 – stood in Tamaki Makarau for Labour. Got 35% of the vote compared to 42% for Labour. Lost by 936
• 2017 – stood in Whangarei for NZ First. Got 19% of the vote compared to 14% for NZ First. Lost by 11,083

An impressive sequence of losses.

Stuff reports:

Independent MP Jami-Lee Ross has denied acting inappropriately with his staff and is alleging a “trial by media,” following a report published by Newsroom about his electorate office staff.

Ross told Stuff that his office involves “high pressure and stress at times”.

I’m sure it does!

Newsroom reported on Wednesday morning that Parliamentary Services was conducting an inquiry into misconduct allegations in Ross’ electorate office. The Newsroom report claimed the complaint involved bullying and had seen three of four staff in his Botany office placed on leave.

It is not unusual for an MP to fall out with an individual staffer. I can’t recall ever hearing of a situation where three out of four staff all had complaints/ that neccisitated them going on leave.

Ross went on to allege that his political adversaries – particularly his former colleagues in the National Party – had a hand in the story emerging in the press.

These are not staff from his time as a National MP. Those ones are all long gone. These are all new staff which he personally hired (or approved).

The NZ Initiative reports:

As part of The New Zealand Initiative’s transport research series, our second report, Pricing Out Congestion, focuses on the international experiences around congestion pricing, i.e. the use of road charges encouraging motorists to avoid traveling at peak times in busy routes. 

More than just a driving nuisance, congestion constitutes a serious global economic problem. By some estimates, congestion costs the world about a trillion dollars every year. In response, cities around the globe are turning to scientific research and empirical support around the use of congestion charges to manage road overuse. 

From the first congestion charging implementation in Singapore in 1975 to London, Stockholm, and Dubai in the 2000s to the expected 2021 New York City launch, a myriad of road pricing schemes are successfully harnessing the power of the markets to fix road overcrowding – and providing valuable lessons along the way. 

In short, congestion charging works. 

I think congestion charging is a no brainer, and am mystified we won’t use it in NZ.

It should appeal to those on the right and left. It is a form of user pays and a market force which appeals to the right. It is good for encouraging greater use of public transport that the left should applaud.

It’s time to make it happen.

Lindsay Mitchell blogs:

Minister Stuart Nash does a weekly session with National MP, Mark Mitchell, on the Mike Hosking NewstalkZB show.
This morning, before Hosking had even asked an opening question Nash waded in:
NASH: “Hey Mike I haven’t heard you comment on the December figures last year when 19,000  handed in their benefit and got back to work. Was that in one of your commentaries?”HOSKING: “It was actually Stuart. You shouldn’t come on this programme and say ‘I haven’t heard you’ because all that indicates is you’re tuned into the wrong radio station. You need to be where the number one radio show is and the audience is Stuart especially now that it’s election year and you need some votes.NASH: “Well when you think there are 19,000 more people in work than were on the benefit in the last quarter that’s pretty good news . That shows a great economy and good economic management I would say. Wouldn’t you Mike?”

Nash claimed there were 19,000 more people in work than on the benefit last quarter. That is absolutely false.

Yes 19,000 went from a benefit to work, but even more went from work onto a benefit. There is always a churn between welfare and work and what counts is the net numbers.

So what are the net numbers:

• there were 55,341 main benefit grants in the Dec 2019 quarter – the highest number since Dec 2015
•  in December 2017 – just after Labour took over – 9.8% of the working age population was on a benefit. By December 2019 it had grown to 10.5%. 
• In respect of the Jobseeker benefit the number grew from 4.2% to 4.9%