The Guardian reports:

Martin McGuinness, the former IRA chief of staff and a key figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, has died just two months after stepping down as deputy first minister.

The Irish republican died after a short illness in Derry’s Altnagelvin hospital surrounded by his family. He was 66, and had a rare genetic disease caused by deposits of abnormal protein – amyloid – in tissues and organs.

Gerry Adams, his closest political ally, confirmed that McGuinness had died. Speaking on Tuesday morning, Adams said: “Throughout his life, Martin showed great determination, dignity and humility and it was no different during his short illness.

I found Martin McGuiness a fascinating character. As IRA Chief of Staff, he killed or ordered killed many people. He was a terrorist.

But after the peace settlement, he was an instrumental figure in good government in Northern Ireland and was a respected Deputy Prime Minister to a protestant Prime Minister – something that would have been unthinkable once.

Stuff reports:

The British Parliament is in lockdown after a police officer was stabbed and witnesses reported seeing a car hit a number of pedestrians in a serious and still unfolding incident in central London. 

London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed an incident at Westminster Bridge, outside the British parliament, on Wednesday (Thursday NZ Time) which they are treating as a “firearms incident”.

UK Commons Leader David Lidington has told MPs a “police officer has been stabbed” and the “alleged assailant was shot by armed police” following a “serious” incident within the parliamentary estate.

Terrible news. Hopefully there are no fatalities amongst the pedestrians or the Police.

Roger Partridge writes:

It is easy to understand the teachers’ unions’ objections to performance-based pay. At least if this means basing teachers’ salaries solely on the performance of their students in end-of-year tests. As ACG Sunderland principal Nathan Villars pointed out in this newspaper, that would hardly be fair on the teachers with the less able students. Nor would it incentivise the best teachers to teach in the schools where they might be needed the most.

As the Post Primary Teachers’ Association argued last month, it would be like basing doctors’ pay solely on their surgical success rates. This, the PPTA observed, might discourage the best surgeons from taking on patients with poor prospects.

Yep performance pay based only on exam results would be a bad way to do it.

Modern performance-based pay systems like the Impact system, adopted in 2009 in Washington, DC, recognised that students’ abilities and starting points differ, both across classrooms and across schools.

To address this, they take into account the level of attainment, specific learning needs and the family circumstances of the students entering a teacher’s classroom. They also take into account differences between classrooms such as the number of students a teacher has. A teacher’s performance is then assessed based on their students’ progress throughout the year. It is not just a matter of year-end attainment. It is the “value add” that matters. In the Impact appraisal process, other qualitative measures like classroom practice, and core professionalism round out an overall assessment of a teacher’s performance. And because collaboration is a key component of the system, teachers remain highly incentivised to work with their peers and as a team, despite their remuneration also reflecting their own individual performance.

It is the value add that matters.

This might all seem alien to teachers used to a one-size-fits-all approach to remuneration that rewards time in the job, rather than success in the classroom. But it will not seem strange to anyone else. After all, aren’t most of us rewarded for how well we do our jobs, and not simply for how long we have occupied them?

It works in almost every other profession.

Liam Hehir looks at what happens to minor parties in Government:

• Between 1996 and 1999, New Zealand First went from 13.35 to 4.25 per cent.
• Between 1999 and 2002, the Alliance went from 7.74 to 1.27 per cent.
• Between 2002 and 2005, United Future went from 6.62 to 2.67 per cent.
• Between 2005 and 2008, New Zealand First went from 5.72 to 4.07 per cent.

So if the Greens do make Government, will they survive it? They have no electorate seats as a life boat.

Stuff reports:

In a surprise move Labour’s Maori seat MPs have opted to stand as electorate MPs only, and not go on the party list.

Labour Leader Andrew Little said the party was backing a request from its Maori electorate MPs in a move that was “a direct challenge by the Maori MPs to the Maori Party”.

“We’re confident our outstanding Maori electorate MPs will win their seats.

No, you’re worried they will lose their seats, which is why they are going electorate only. It is a signal to voters that they have no list parachute, so it is important to vote for them.

It is a tactically smart thing to do, as it may help them hold in in seats where the Maori or Mana parties are likely to run them close.

But it may be less smart strategically as now none of the Maori MPs have any incentive to campaign for the party vote, and they will focus on the electorate vote only.

The latest Newshub Reid Research poll is blogged at Curia.

Andrew Little has fallen to 4th place as Preferred Prime Minister behind both Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern.

As far as I can tell the TLDR summary of the Hager book is that NZ soldiers in a war zone, killed some people and six of them were civilians.

This is of course totally unheard of in war zones. The civilian deaths in recent conflicts were:

• WWI: 4.5 million
• WWII: 30 million
• Korea: 400,000
• Vietnam: 627,000
• Gulf War: 5,000
• Iraq: 66,000
• Afghanistan: 26,000

So it is possible NZ forces were responsible for six out of the 26,000 civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Yes, of course it is.

Would they have intended to kill them? No.

Should they have been open about the casualties, *if* they did cause them? Yes.

The Herald reports:

A woman jailed for her role in the abuse and death of murdered Rotorua toddler Nia Glassie is pregnant again, just months after Child Youth and Family removed a child from her care at birth.

Oriwa Kemp was 19 when she was sent to prison for her part in Nia’s brutal death in 2007. …

Since Nia died Kemp has had three more children, all removed from her care by CYF soon after birth.

The Herald on Sunday revealed in November that Kemp’s fourth child was born late last year and was also removed by CYF at birth.

What is wrong with this woman. She knows any child she has will be removed at birth, yet she keeps getting pregnant. Why would you go through all the trauma of pregnancy and birth for a baby you won’t get to keep. You can get a contraceptive implant in your arm that lasts for five years.

Instead she keeps having babies that go into state and foster care.

Agent Auction announced:

AgentAuction empowers New Zealand vendors with a free tool to obtain competitive real estate agent commission quotes and home appraisals online.

At AgentAuction.co.nz home vendors can enter in their property address, see the top performing local agents and choose agents to offer them competitive commission quotes for their property.  CEO and co-founder Andreas Heuser says this is the first genuinely unbiased, free, real estate agent comparison service in New Zealand.

At the core of the website is an auction system. After submitting property details, AgentAuction facilitates an auction between up to five agents who submit “bids” of competitive commission quotes together with home appraisal assessments tailored to that property – all within three business days. Vendors just need to choose their favoured bidder with no obligation.

This seems a great initiative. I’d use it if I was selling.

AgentAuction is the brainchild of economist/lawyer Andreas Heuser and medical doctor Henry Milne. They are driven by a desire to improve outcomes for everyday consumers. CEO Andreas Heuser has a background in economic policy, law and finance, both in New Zealand and Europe, most recently at the New Zealand Treasury.

Heuser says “New Zealand consumers already make great use of comparison websites for power and gas and KiwiSaver. The power of price transparency and competition is enormous and we saw an obvious gap for real estate commissions.”

Again a very good initiative

Mark Krikorian of the Centre for Immigration Studies writes:

Are you now, or have you ever been, a “hate group”?

This is the question at the heart of an attempt to delegitimize and suppress views regarding immigration held by a large share of the American public.

Since 2007, the Southern Poverty Law Center has methodically added mainstream organizations critical of current immigration policy to its blacklist of “hate groups,” including the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Immigration Reform Law Institute and Californians for Population Stabilization, among others. In February, my own organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), got its turn.

The wickedness of the SPLC’s blacklist lies in the fact that it conflates groups that really do preach hatred, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Nation of Islam, with ones that simply do not share the SPLC’s political preferences. The obvious goal is to marginalize the organizations in this second category by bullying reporters into avoiding them, scaring away writers and researchers from working for them, and limiting invitations for them to discuss their work.

Exactly right. The SPLC once upon a time provided a very valuable service. Today it has become an organisation that seems to exists to stigmatise groups they merely disagree with.

CIS has testified before Congress more than 100 times over the past 20 years. We’ve also testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and our work has been cited by the Supreme Court and the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. We’ve done contract work for the Census Bureau and the Justice Department. Our director of research was selected by the National Academies of Sciences as an outside reviewer for last year’s magisterial study of the fiscal and economic impacts of immigration. Our authors include scholars at Harvard, Cornell University, Colorado State University, the University of Maryland and elsewhere. We are one of the most frequently cited sources on immigration in the media (including in The Post).

Equating a group that has such a track record of engagement in the public policy debate with, for instance, the Holy Nation of Odin has nothing to do with warning the public of “hate.” The SPLC’s true purpose can only be to deprive the American people of points of view they need to hear to make informed and intelligent collective decisions.

Is the SPLC itself becoming a hate group?

This attempt to narrow public debate is harmful to our civic life. Widely held concerns among the citizenry don’t just go away because gatekeepers of public debate decide not to allow them to be aired. As the cliche has it, this is why you have President Trump. And further attempts at suppression will yield worse.

Yep, the more the self-appointed guardians of what is acceptable speech try and enforce their views, the more the overall population gets sick of it, and decides time for a change.

Lloyd Burr at Newshub writes:

Labour and the Greens are in la-la land if they think they can use $20 billion earmarked for a long-needed Defence Force upgrade as a slush fund for their election policies.

The Defence Force has been on the bones of its backside for long enough, and another round of austerity would see it lose many of its key capabilities.

The 15-year $20b plan will see a whole range of old and expired ships and planes and other gear replaced with new ones that are fit-for-purpose, reliable, and more efficient.

Labour leader Andrew Little says there’s no point in having state-of-the-art defence equipment if there are people living on the streets, or if there’s underfunding in schools.

Well Mr Little, there’s no point having an Air Force if it doesn’t have planes to fly, or a Navy that doesn’t have the right ships, or an Army that doesn’t have the latest digital battlefield equipment.

Greens co-leader James Shaw is also sceptical about the planned spend, and would like to see it re-prioritised.

Well, Mr Shaw, here’s the reality: The C-130 Hercules fleet is 52 years old. The P-3 Orion fleet is 51 years old. The Boeing 757 fleet is 35 years old. The HMNZS Endeavour is 29 years old. The HMNZS Manawanui is 37 years old.

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Nick Cohen writes:

On current polling, Labour will get around a quarter of the vote. Imagine, though, how the Labour party will fare in an election campaign when its leaders are Corbyn, John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott, and its second XI consists of Clive Lewis, Angela Rayner, Richard Burgon and Rebecca Long-Bailey. The Tories have gone easy on Corbyn and his comrades to date for the transparently obvious reason that they want to keep them in charge of Labour.

In an election, they would tear them to pieces. They will expose the far left’s record of excusing the imperialism of Vladimir Putin’s gangster state , the oppressors of women and murderers of gays in Iran, the IRA, and every variety of inquisitorial and homicidal Islamist movement, while presenting itself with hypocritical piety as a moral force. Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour MPs by the end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve it.

One senior Labour figure told me he thought Corbyn was endangering British democracy. It depends on the opposition being a government-in-waiting. Labour looks now as if it will never be in government again. The 60% of the population who do not want Conservative rule are faced with Conservative rule without end, with the only pressure for change coming from an ever-more audacious right.

On current polling Labour would drop from 232 seats to 186. And that is before you take account of the new boundaries and how Corbyn would do in an actual campaign.

Here’s how many seats Labour has won in recent elections:

• 1997 – 418
• 2001 – 413
• 2005 – 355
• 2010 – 258
• 2015 – 232

My pick is Labour will get reduced to around 150.

Phil McCaw of Movac writes on NZ Innovation:

• Innovation A+ – We’re world class innovators and there’s plenty of evidence to support this:  Rocket Labs, LanzaTech, Xero, PowerByProxi, Weta Studios, 8i, Aroa Biosurgery, Pushpay, Vista to name a few
• Execution B+ – This is where we face several significant challenges.  But, let’s be realistic, the leap from a great start to a great ($100m+ revenue) business is huge, there will be lots of fallout and that’s natural.  There is a shortage of capital in New Zealand but my experience is the best business do get funded.

His solutions:

1. Fewer, better Accelerators
2. Continue to grow Angel Investment
3. Realign the balance between taxpayer supported research vs development funding
4. Continue to build and support a domestic Venture Capital industry
5. Don’t constrain New Zealand funds to New Zealand only investment
6. Establish a public/private partnership to help develop our Great Founders into Great Leaders

Stuff reports:

New Zealand bars are joining in a boycott of Coopers beer, after it featured in an Australian Bible Society video about marriage equality.

The family behind the brand has been donors to the Bible Society for many years and the brewery put out a commemorative beer marking its 200th anniversary.

The society said it had teamed up with Coopers Premium Light for a new campaign to help “reach even more Australians with God’s word”. 

Accompanying this was a video of a conversation between Australian MPs Tim Wilson and Andrew Hastie in which they outlined their positions on marriage equality. WIlson is for it while Hastie is not.

That sparked a social media backlash.

Several bars in Australia announced a boycott of the beer brand.

In New Zealand, Auckland’s The Wine Cellar said it would no longer stock its products.

It was reported on thewireless.co.nz that five bars in Wellington –  Bad Grannies, Vinyl, Eva Beva, The Fat Angel and Ivy –  had also decided to stop selling Coopers beer and would donate 50c from every sale of the remaining stock to No Pride in Prisons.

This is just bonkers.

The video was not advocacy for or against same sex marriage. If a company does take a stand on a political issue, then yes it may face a backlash.

But the video was showing two MPs debating their opposing views on the issue. The whole point was to say we should be able to discuss issues we disagree on, over a beer. It was a video in favour of civil discussion.

And the response from the social warrior fascists is to boycott the company that was promoting civil discussion. Thus proving the original point.

Stuff reports:

The subject of Tickled, David Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s 2016 documentary about “competitive endurance tickling”, has died aged 55, according to a post on Farrier’s Facebook page.

David P D’Amato was alleged, by Farrier, to have been involved in the production of online videos featuring tickling, as well as some allegedly shady practices around hiring and pressuring of participants in the videos. 

“We are incredibly sad to learn that David P D’Amato, the subject of Tickled, has passed away,” a joint statement in Farrier and Reeve’s names said.  …

Farrier’s statement concluded: “While making Tickled we always thought it was important to portray David D’Amato not just as an online bully, but as a person… Ultimately we’ll never know all the things that made David the man he was. Like all of us, he was complex and complicated.”

Reading between the lines, it looks like D’Amato may have killed himself, which is very sad – especially for his family and friends.

But D’Amato was a man who had done terrible things to many people, and his death does also mean that their harassment will now cease.

Still a sad way for this to end.

Stuff reports:

A new book by Dirty Politics author Nicky Hager is poised for release, setting tongues wagging about its timing in an election year and as former prime minister John Key prepares to leave Parliament.

An invitation to Hager’s book launch on Tuesday was widely distributed on Sunday.

The invitation said it was not a sequel to Dirty Politics “not related to the election”.

“It is a completely different book but nonetheless gripping and important.”

Yet one he is releasing the day before John Key does his valedictory speech. If it is about Key, I doubt it will bother him anymore than the last one, or the one before that.

The NZ Initiative released:

The New Zealand Initiative says Phil Twyford’s infrastructure bonds are a workable policy that could solve the funding problem that is choking off housing supply in New Zealand’s fastest growing cities.

The Housing Spokesman for the Labour Party recently announced a policy that would allow homeowners to pay off the core infrastructure over the life of the asset using bond financing.

“We’ve been advocating for this policy since 2013. As long as councils are a monopoly provider of water pipes, roads and core infrastructure, the ability of our cities to grow is always going to be held back by their funding constraints,” said Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director at The New Zealand Initiative.

“Given how tight these debt limits are, it is hardly a surprise that core infrastructure expansion is being trickled out. This feeds directly into house prices in fast growing regions, where supply has no hope of keeping up with population growth.”

Hartwich said that these types of arrangements are the bedrock on which major urban expansion has been built in the Southeast of the United States, where house prices have largely remained flat for decades after adjusting for inflation.

“Although the details around where the bond funding comes from are still open to debate, the merits of breaking the infrastructure bottleneck are clear. This is not radical thinking, but a practical and sensible policy if we want to put housing within reach of first home buyers again.”

Twyford has produced some good policies in the area of housing – specifically this policy, plus abolishing the Auckland rural urban boundary.

Chris Milne writes:

By a margin of 10-3 Hutt City Council has moved a step closer to adopting a living wage policy. This will cost ratepayers about $700,000pa for no increase in service levels or improvements in key metrics such as absenteeism and staff turnover – this was the advice given to Council by the CEO and the HR manager.

The motion tonight was adopted without the Full Council discussing any legal advice or Council even obtaining its own advice. There is a real risk that paying the Living Wage is in breach of the Local Government Act.

Many ratepayers are expressing anger at significant rates rises – well here comes another one. …

To add insult to injury, Council morphing into an extension of WINZ sees about $400,000 of that $700,000 go straight to central government by way of GST, taxes and abatement of benefits such as working for families. A huge own-goal for Hutt ratepayers.

It’s not that those who voted against the Living Wage don’t care about people on lower incomes. Rather they look through the policy to how it really plays out in practice. It’s sounds caring and kind, but it’s a double edged sword, and the other side is pretty sharp.

There are all sorts of problems with the Living Wage, well summed up in the Taxpayers’ Union report “Best of Intentions, Worst of Results”. In a nutshell, the Living Wage hurts those who it is designed to help. Happy to expand further if readers wish to know more about this. The best way of informing yourself further on this is to go to the Taxpayers’ Union website and read the summary of their report.

I can’t work out why any sensible body would outsource their wages policy to a self-appointed entity with no accountability.