Stats NZ reports:

Net migration from Australia continued to rise, with a net gain of 1,600 migrants. This is the highest annual net gain of migrants from Australia since the September 1991 year and the fifth consecutive month to show an annual net gain.

We all know that there has been a big change from a few years ago, but the trend is still continuing.

• Arrivals from Australia for year to February are 9.6% higher than the previous year
• Departures to Australia for year to February are 7.1% higher than the previous year
• Net migration to Australia has gone from 2,390 net to Australia to 1,720 net to NZ.

Radovan Karadžić managed to evade justice for a decade, and his trial took another decade but the 70 year old now has a 40 year jail sentence for his war crimes.

One of the things he was found guilty of was genocide for the Srebrenica massacre. They aimed to kill “every able-bodied male” in the town and systematically exterminate the Bosnian Muslim community. Over 8,000 men and boys were killed.

At first they sound not so good:

Luxury supermarket chain Farro Fresh is docking the wages of checkout staff whose tills don’t tally.

The posh food chain said the wage deduction policy cuts down on employee mistakes and deters theft.

But unions insisted the practice is outdated with most of the big supermarket chains, fast food industry and banks steering clear of the controversial practice.

I’m not a huge fan. I recall working at Woolworths when I was 14 and being massively offended when a manager told me the till I had worked on was out, and if it happened again I would have it deducted from my pay.

The problem is I was not the only staffer who worked on that till. So they just assumed the mistake (or theft) was from me. I would have quit rather than accepted a deduction for something I did not do.

Back then the tills didn’t tell you how much change to give, so you had to work it out yourself. I was pretty good at maths and enjoyed doing so, and was confident any mistakes didn’t occur when I was on it.

Draper explained that no deductions were made without the consent and permission of the staff member.

He said: “A checkout operator counts and signs out their float and this needs to balance at the end of the day.

“After each transaction, the till tells the checkout operator exactly how much change is to be handed over. This reduces human mathematical errors, and ensures tills balance.

“Unders and overs’ are tracked for every person on every shift. If the balance at the end of a month is greater than an allowable amount, then a meeting is held with the staff member. If it is less then no action is taken.”

He added: “If the staff member does not agree to a deduction then none is made, and it has to be 100 per cent transparent it is operator error.”

If you’re going to do it, this sounds a fair way to do it.

FarroFresh had grown from having just 12 employees in 2006 to over 350 today. Draper said staff got many perks including instore discounts, birthdays off, staff sandwiches, free coffees and hot chocolates via our baristas.

“For many employees this is at least two a day, at a cost of approximately $4 each.”

And, he said: “For the past two years all the turnover on Labour Day has been given back to the employees. Not the profit but the total turnover.”

That’s very generous. They sound like a good employer.

Stuff reports:

The lawyer defending the prime surviving suspect for the November 13 Paris attacks said on Sunday he would sue a French prosecutor for divulging Salah Abdeslam’s private admission that he planned to blow himself up with fellow Islamic State militants.

Speaking two days after Abdeslam was captured during a police raid in Brussels, his lawyer Sven Mary accused the lead French investigator of violating judicial confidentiality by quoting Abdeslam’s statement to a magistrate in Brussels at a news conference in Paris on Saturday evening.

Oh poor little terrorist, his privacy got breached.

The BBC reports:

Chancellor George Osborne has used his Budget speech to say all schools in England will become academies and extend the school day.

Schools must become academies by 2020 or have official plans to do so by 2022, he told MPs. …

Mr Osborne said: “Providing schooling is the single most important thing we can do to help children from a disadvantaged background to succeed.”

It was also the single most important thing that could be done to boost the long term success of the country, he added.

Therefore, he pledged to “set schools free” from local bureaucracy, so by 2020 all schools must have converted or be in the process of converting to academy status.

This is huge.

Academy schools are very similar to charter schools. They have enhanced flexibility. They were set up by Labour and have proved so popular that half the schools are now academy schools.

Today is the 1,983rd (or 1986th) anniversary of the crucifixion of Jesus. There is overwhelming historical evidence that this occurred. What happened next is open to more debate, but the crucifixion has been well established.

Later today we will get the results of the flag referendum. I have little doubt the current flag will win comfortably. If I’m wrong, I’ll be very happy, but I don’t think I am.

As I’ve got better things to do at the start of Easter long weekend than wait for the results and write the blog post tonight, I’m doing it in advance. Why do I think the status quo won.

First of all, let me say that it is very possible that regardless of all the factors, it is more than likely the vote would have been for the status quo. There has never been a poll showing a majority for change, and few if any countries have ever ever voted to change their flag. It is normally done by fiat from Government, or as a result of constitutional change such as becoming independent.

I’m proud of the fact we are one of the few countries where we have actually got to have a vote on what our flag will be.

However it may have been a lot closer than what the actual result will be. A number of factors basically doomed any chance there was of a change. Here’s what I think they were:

Partisan Politics

If the referendum had not been been advocated by John Key, then it might have gone very differently – say if it has been a CIR.

But the parties of the left were so obsessed with a chance to give Key a loss, than they did everything possible to ensure a no vote.

Almost universally it is the more progressive side of politics that is keenest to throw away colonial symbols.  You would normally expect the biggest support to be from the Greens, then Labour, then National, then NZ First. NZ First as a nationalist party was always going to oppose any change. But look at how Green and Labour MPs declared they would vote.

Only one Green MP out of 14 and one Labour MP out of 32 are backing a change. This is purely because they see the referendum as about bashing up Key, not the best flag for NZ. It is impossible that 44 out of 46 left wing MPs really prefer a flag with the union jack over one with the silver fern.

And their supporters have gone along. If you are on the left and support a flag change, you get monstered on social media. Anyone supporting a flag change gets vile messages on social media.

Normally I would say support and opposition for a flag change would be approx:

• National: 35 for/65 against
• Labour 70 for/30 against
• Greens 80 for/20 against

Instead I’d estimate support and opposition is around:

• National 55/45
• Labour 25/75
• Greens 30/70

So the maths is simply impossible. National voters are divided more or less equally (Key in favour has shifted some to favour) but Labour/Green voters are almost block voting against. Unless National voters backed it 75/25 it can’t pass.

The Process

Overall the process was very sound. I do have some niggles, but the Government did everything possible to have it non partisan. Basically it was:

1. Form a cross-party group open to all parties
2. Have them decide broad process and nominate independent panel
3. Select panel and have them run detailed selection process

Labour created a nonsense campaign that there should be a yes/no vote before you know what the alternate design is. This was bonkers but created lots of noise to have a backlash against the process. It is bonkers because it is impossible for peopel to vote to change the flag without knowing the alternative.

Eventually this will bite Labour as it means they can now never ever in the future hold a flag referendum without having a yes/no vote at the beginning, which will automatically fail. In fact I think there is no prospect of there ever being another referendum until NZ becomes a republic.

But I do have one significant criticism of the process. It was around selecting the short-listed flags.

I would have had the panel select three of the four (or five) flags and have them run a public “poll” to decide the 4th and/or 5th designs. They’s day these are the three we have selected and you select the last one or two. People could vote on their website, on Facebook, on twitter, via e-mail, via text. This is how flags like Red Peak could have got into the 1st referendum without a law change.

The fact the voting isn’t scientific doesn’t matter – it is only choosing one or two extra options for the referendum. If they don’t have the most support, they wouldn’t get through to the 2nd referendum. If one of them won, then it would shaw they should have been there.

I think if the panel has done that, it would have resulted in a much greater sense of ownership of the options put forward for the first referendum, and helped significantly.

The designs

I have some criticism of the final four/five designs but let me say that I think there is a large amount of insincerity from people saying they want change, but want a better design than the Kyle Lockwood one.

Can they point to any of the 10,000 designs submitted that they say was better, and had any public support at all? Red Peak trailed massively to the Lockwood designs. The Lockwood designs had a massive 82% of the vote. It is unlikely any other design would ever have won the 1st referendum.

But I do think the panel made a couple of errors with their selections, which alienated some.

The first is putting two similiar Kyle Lockwood designs forward. I know why they did this – half the panel liked the red one, and half the black one. I liked both, and went backwards and forwards on which one I preferred.

So I can see why the panel put both forward – to let the public choose which one they preferred. But the problem is that blocked another design from making the referendum, and made it look like less of a true choice,

The other critique is not selecting the design which was most like the wonderful Canadian Maple Leaf Flag. The simple silver fern on black. They let worries about it being too close to Islamic State, to stop it being selected. I think it should have been one of the first referendum options, to let NZers decide. That is the design I would most have liked to see, and still do, as our flag. It is our de facto national symbol.

So overall I’d have had five flags in the 1st referendum, and they’d be:

1. Simple silver fern on black
2. A Kyle Lockwood fern an southern cross flag
3. A Koru flag
4. Selected by public vote (maybe Red Peak)
5. Another selected by public vote

I think that would have been a better range of choices.

The future

There will be no flag change for at least a generation, and probably longer. No Government will want to go near this again. I’d like to think NZ will become a republic in the next 20 years, but I doubt it.

The parties of the left have been hoping this will be the start of the end for John Key. I think they will be disappointed.

There certainly has been a lot of anger and opposition to the referendum and its cost. But this has been more polarising than changing people’s opinions of Key. Those who dislike him, dislike him even more. But there’s been no sign of a change in the polls, and it has been apparent for some time there will be no change. The cost has been known for over a year, and is an issue with many. It will give other parties a cudgel when the Government won’t fund something, but again they’ve bene trying to use the cudgel for the last year and it hasn’t worked.

National in February averaged 47.8% in the polls to 29.5% for Labour. A year ago it was 49.0% to 30.5% and three years ago it was 47.4% to 33.4%. So the gap has been:

• Feb 2013 – 14.0%
• Feb 2015 – 18.5%
• Feb 2016 – 18.3%

The big winner from this has been NZ First. It has allowed Winston to be de facto Opposition Leader for a few months and get much more publicity than normal. NZ First has gone up consistently in the polls and may be able to stay up. They could even replace the Greens as the third largest party.

This is not necessarily good for the left (or NZ). Peters hates both Key and the Greens. He could go either way. But what he likes most is power. He is far more likely to go into a two party coalition than a three party one.In a two party coalition he can demand a policy or funding win for every bill the Government wants passed. In a three party coalition Labour can’t guarantee Greens support on any legislation, so Winston is in a weaker position to demand stuff.

Peters may get 10% next election. If he does, Labour is really only viable as a partner if they are at around 38%.

UPDATE: The result is 56.6% for the current flag and 43.2% for the alternative flag. Closer than I expected. 0.2% informal and 2,119,953 votes (so far).

Voter turnout was a massive 67.3%.

Six electorates voted for the new flag – Tamaki, Selwyn, Bay of Plenty, East Coast Bays and Ilam.

The electorates that least voted for change were the Maori seats and South Auckland.

Look at what these international gurus Labour rely on are actually saying:

Robert Reich, who said he once dated Hillary Clinton before she married, told a Labour Party conference in Auckland today that a guaranteed minimum income for all was “the only way of dealing with where technology is taking us”.

“When technology is going to be replacing most jobs, how do we get the money back to people so they can buy the technology?” he asked.

He said technology was heading towards what he called an “i-everything” that would be able to use 3D printing to print out anything a consumer wanted.

“The problem is no one will be able to afford that, because nobody will have a job,” he said.

So Reich things the future is so bleak we’ll have 100% unemployment, and the Government should just pay everyone $200 a week.

Professor Standing said a universal basic income should not be a policy for “the distant future”.

“We always have to act and speak as if it’s tomorrow, not say kick it into touch and we’ll deal with it later,” he said.

He said a basic income could be justified on the principle that most of our current wealth was created by our ancestors, and it was only fair to share some of that common wealth with everyone.

Oh, wealth belongs to our common ancestors. Right. In that case, I’d like Professor Standing’s house and car.

“You allow private inheritance, Mr Prime Minister,” he said. “They have done nothing for something, they are given the right to incomes and wealth. Can we have a modest social amount?”

Note the views of the hard left. Private inheritance is something the Government allows! His view is all property belongs to the Government, and us plebs are lucky enough to have a Government allow us to keep some of it.

He regards private inheritance as getting something for nothing. Let’s have 100% death duties!

Finance spokesman Grant Robertson picked up a comment by Mr Reich that any national basic income scheme might be 10 or 15 years away.

“It’s some way away,” Mr Robertson said.

That is the sound of backing away as quickly as possible.

Mr Reich suggested that a basic income could be funded by “a small share of the revenues from intellectual property”.

If you profit from intellectual property, you pay income tax on it.

Is Reich saying that all intellectual property should belong to the state, and be split between the state and the creator?

After three more primaries, victory is getting closer for Trump.

On the less interesting Democratic side, Clinton has 1690 delegates (64%) and Sanders 946 (36%).

Of the remaining 2,129 delegates Clinton needs to win only 33% and Sanders would need to win over 67%. Not going to happen.

On the Republican side the count is:

• Trump 739 (48.8%)
• Cruz 465 (30.7%)
• Rubio 166 (11.0%)
• Kasich 143 (9.5%)

To win Trump needs 51.9% of remaining delegates – not a huge amount more than he has been averaging.

Cruz can’t get a majority – he would need 80.5% of the remaining delegates. Kasich would need 114.1%, which is impossible.

So again it is either a contested convention or Trump.

If Trump is short of a majority by a decent amount (say 100+) then it may not go to him. But if he is only say a dozen short, hard to see him not getting it.

If he maintains his 48.8% he will get 1,207 delegates, just 30 short of the 1,237 he needs.

A very interesting article by Jared Savage on how blackmailer Jeremy Kerr was caught.

His key mistakes:

• Used a type of 1080 which came from a cluster he had previously supplied to Landcare
• Sent a retraction letter directly to the cop who interviewed him, allowing them to realise it was probably from one of the suspects that cop had interviewed
• Left DNA on the 2nd letter
• Didn’t shred a 2nd unsent retraction letter

The Police obviously did a very thorough job, and the testing of the 1080 to narrow down the batch would have been a huge help in getting the suspect list down from 2,600 to 60.

Kerr sending the retraction letter was a huge mistake. He was obviously spooked after being interviewed. But very dumb to send it directly to the officer who interviewed him, as that really narrowed it down.

NBR reports:

Businesses’ responsibility to moderate comments on their social media pages has again come into sharp view, with an Online Media Standards Authority (OMSA) ruling against Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

Offensive statements about Prime Minister John Key and his late mother were posted on a video on RNZ’s Checkpoint with John Campbell Facebook page, attracting several OMSA complaints.

One complainant, M Lubbock, said the comments went “far beyond any legitimate criticism of John Key and into territory inciting his murder and comments about wishing his mother had died in the gas chamber.”

The comments were incredibly vile. And they were up for several days.

Multiple complainants expressed concern about their “seriously offensive” nature, as well as the time it took for them to be deleted. They provided links to WhaleOil and KiwiBlog posts outlining the threatening comments, which OMSA accepted as evidence.

The value of screenshots!

They were posted between Friday, February 19 and Sunday, February 21, with the bulk being made over the weekend. RNZ’s community engagement editor removed all offensive posts on Sunday afternoon and raised the page’s profanity filter to block out any further comments containing expletives.

In multiple responses to the complaints, RNZ repeatedly told OMSA it took down the comments as soon as it saw them appear. However, OMSA ruled RNZ should have instructed staff to actively monitor the page from Friday, when it first became aware of any offensive comments.

If they were aware of them on Friday, that is when they should have taken them down.

I don’t think publishers should be liable for comments that they have not seen. But an organisation with $35 million in taxpayer funding should be more pro-active in checking than Radio NZ was.

The OMSA ruling is here. Some extracts:

The Publisher removed several offensive comments on Friday, 19 February. However, further comments were made on Saturday and Sunday. RNZ said once they were made aware of the new comments they were removed, several people were banned from the Facebook page and some comments were reported to Facebook. RNZ also confirmed that as a result of comments made on Saturday, 20 February and Sunday, 21 February, it raised the Facebook “profanity filter” to help in automatically moderating the user generated content.

Some of the worst comments were made on Friday or even Thursday. They were obviously not removed.  And you would thin that if they had seen where it was heading on Friday, they would have kept an eye on it.

This was not one or two inappropriate comments. Over 100 comments (out of 400) had to be removed. It was basically an antire page dominated by vile threats and hatred.

However, taking into account the extreme nature of the user generated content, the Committee found the steps taken by RNZ were not sufficiently timely. It held that RNZ must have been alerted by the tenor of comments posted on Friday, 19 February and, therefore, should have alerted staff to actively monitor the page from that time.

Exactly.

This is an extraordinary letter. John Terris was the Labour MP for Western Hutt for four terms – 1978 to 1990. He was also Mayor of Lower Hutt from 1995 to 2004.

His key paragraph is:

Despite old allegiances, I would vote for him (Bishop) at the next election because we need a new face and new ideas, not an old attack dog with no teeth.

Bishop, despite being a List MP, has done an amazing amount in the Hutt in the last year. He’s set up awards, supported local businesses and community groups, taken issues to the Council, and done more as a List MP than many electorate MPs do.

He deserves to become the MP for Hutt South and I am confident he will do so.

The Herald reports:

University of Otago terrorism expert Richard Jackson said attacks in Europe and the rest of the world would continue until world leaders changed the way they responded.

Yeah don’t respond to them, and they will stop!

He said they often reacted to terror by increasing security, intensifying military attacks on regions terrorism was thought to be coming from, increasing restrictions on civil liberties, increasing surveillance and targeting of Muslim communities, and introducing “draconian” legislation.

“And the only thing that has achieved is more terrorism,” he said.

Classic victim blaming. It is all the fault of the West, and nothing to do with the world view of the terrorists.

“It’s impossible to secure everywhere in modern society from these kinds of attacks. So to say we are going to make our society secure by increased security measures and by vigorous military action is either a lie or it’s a delusion.”

When asked what the alternative to that would look like, he said: “The first thing to do would be to undertake an honest and rigorous investigation into the root causes of this violence – to try and understand where it comes from.”

So what is his alternative?

ISIS wants a global caliphate and the world run on 7th century fundamentalist beliefs where women are sex slaves.

Should we give them just some of what they want?

Labour has released their 10 big ideas for the future of work:

1. Building digital equality – through ensuring Kiwis can access technology regardless of where they live or how wealthy they are.
2. Accelerating technology in business – through developing new models of capital raising and investing in research and development.
3. Developing Business Clusters – by creating regional partnerships of business, councils, research organisations and iwi to get the best out of local and emerging industries.
4. Building wealth from the ground up – by encouraging new models of business, including entrepreneurship and cooperatives to create a more sustainable economy.
5. Establishing a just transition – through creating a social partnership model and strong and flexible social and re-training programmes.
6. Ensuring greater income security – through investigation of new models of income security for New Zealand, including considering a limited trial of a universal basic income-type system in a town or region.
7. Reforming the transition between education, training and work – through comprehensive reform of career guidance and creating a school leavers’ toolkit to prepare them for the practical requirements of work.
8. Labour’s Working Futures Plan – in which all New Zealanders receive three free years of post-school education, phased in from 2019. 
9. Partnering with Maori in a post-Treaty settlement era – through the Government facilitating strategic partnerships between iwi, business, and third parties to develop the Maori economy.
10. Establishing a Pasifika working futures plan – by working with the community to focus on the transition between education and work and identifying and eliminating the barriers to entrepreneurship. 

Many of these are good ideas, but will probably happen without the Government. The new methods of capital raising have already evolved are are being used. Regional business clusters can and do occur without central Government.  And the last things entrepreneurs need is Government encouraging them to be more sustainable.

So some of the ideas are not bad, but basically platitudes.

On trialling a UBI, I don’t think the numbers add up. But yeah lets trial it in Gore, and see how many people move there in order to get $200 a week in exchange for not working.

Sadly there is nothing at all about recognising the need for more flexible labour markets, or helping small businesses by retaining the 90 day grievance free trial period.

Liam Hehir wrote:

The Godfather Part III is the weakest film in the series, but it is not wanting for great lines. One of my favourites is the admonition given by Michael Corleone that one should “never hate your enemies” because “it affects your judgment”.

This is one piece of advice that has a lot of salience for the present moment in New Zealand politics.

Those of us on the centre-Right have been appealing to the term “Key Derangement Syndrome” for some time now. For the uninitiated, this phrase describes angry and often vulgar displays of personal hatred for the prime minister. The phenomenon has come into sharp focus of late through spiteful reactions to flag referendum and burgeoning music career of the prime minister’s son.

There are very few people in politics I hate. No one in Labour. Never hated Clark.

I am not sure who appropriated the phrase for New Zealand use, but the concept is borrowed from American politics. “Bush Derangement Syndrome” was a neologism coined in 2003 by Charles Krauthammer, a political commentator and former psychiatrist. As described by Krauthammer the phrase referred to, “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency – nay – the very existence of George W. Bush”.

Defenders of the Bush presidency seem to be thin on the ground today, but it cannot be forgotten that he was decisively re-elected in 2004 despite searing criticisms by significant political and cultural figures.

In fact, it is generally considered that the over the top condemnations of the man in 2004 actually assisted his being returned to office. The shrill and emotional attacks did not resonate with ordinary voters and this created a backlash against Bush’s harshest critics.

And so it is with Key in New Zealand.

KDS is helpful to Key because MPs on the left spend so much of their time with people suffering from KDS, they think the way to victory is denigrating the PM, rather than convincing NZers they can manage the economy well.

What it does do, however, is reinforce the existing hostility that partisans have towards John Key as a National Party prime minister. It misleads them into thinking that their disillusionment is widely held. When that  misconception collides with reality (in an election, for example) disorientation and bewilderment is the natural human reaction.

Consider the various filters that political news goes through from the perspective of a partisan Left-winger.

In the first instance, reporters cover some story that opens the Government to some criticism. The overall validity or significance of the story may be open to question, but the reporter strives to be measured and balanced. There is no real derangement here.

Then the professional columnists, commentators and analysts chip in with their opinions on the news. By their very nature, these are more likely to be coloured by personal political preferences and bias. These views are often well articulated but commonly involve noticeable concentrations of sanctimony, sarcasm and smugness.

Then the story gets to the fringes. Bloggers and social media activists are not bound by the constraints of traditional opinion journalism. They what the commentators have written and dial it up to eleven. The sanctimony, sarcasm and smugness quotients fly right off the charts.

Sometimes things can go even further. Any semblance of reasoned critique go out the window and are replaced by an inchoate loathing. Examples include Kim Dotcom’s profanity laced chants prior to the last election and musicians writing songs about actually murdering the prime minister and objectifying his daughter.

Actually that song went way beyond objectifying.

If you’re a Left-leaning politician, journalist or news consumer who has been exposed to all that, your instinct is probably to take it as validation of your own view that the Government is deeply controversial.

Then a public poll comes out that shows National remaining at historic highs. How do you react? Do you re-evaluate your core assumptions or do you double down on your antipathy? Reason counsels the former but human nature points towards the latter.

This benefits John Key. Voters who do not hold strong views either way (which is most of them) are easily turned off by self-righteous and strident denunciation. A less hypercritical approach to opposition might lack passion, but it would probably be more effective.

Long may KDS continue!

Stuff reports:

New Zealand’s oldest purpose-built police station is up for sale.

It is the first time the historic Wellington landmark, with a Rateable Value (RV) of $1.5 million, has been placed on the open market

The Buckle St, category A heritage listed commercial premises, was built in 1894 by prisoners. It was home to The Dominion Museum and National Art Gallery until the completion of Te Papa in the late 1990s.

Why not make it the home of the Police Museum? No one ever visits the Museum at the current site in the Police College.

You could have a memorial to fallen police officers there, which would fit in with the other memorials next door.

In that venue, it would get huge number of visitors.

The Police should look at this. Would be fantastic to have the Police Museum get more profile and visits.

Stuff reports:

David and Collet Stephan have a beautiful family. On that, at least, there is little debate. In the many photos they have posted online, the devout couple and their children are blond and brightly smiling and often dressed in matching outfits. Collet is pretty with a graceful posture and almond-shaped eyes. David is tall and handsome with a mane and a beard, like a classical painting of Jesus Christ.

The Canadian Rockies surrounding their home in rural Alberta complete the picturesque family portraits. …

On March 5, the Canadian government opened criminal proceedings against David and Collet. The charge: failing to provide their 19-month-old son, Ezekiel, the necessaries of life.

According to prosecutors, David and Collet stubbornly refused to take their sick son to see a doctor, instead giving him home remedies such as smoothies containing hot pepper, ginger root, horseradish, onion and apple cider vinegar. Even after warnings from a family friend who is a nurse, the anti-vaccine couple took him to a naturopath for echinacea instead of to a doctor for an exam. Echinacea is an herb “used for colds, flu, and other infections, based on the idea that it might stimulate the immune system to more effectively fight infection,” according to the National Institutes of Health. “Study results are mixed” on its usefulness, the NIH says.

It was only when Ezekiel suddenly stopped breathing that they rushed him to a hospital.

By then, it was too late.

Ezekiel died from bacterial meningitis and empyema, two conditions routinely cured with antibiotics, a medical examiner told the court last week, according to the Lethbridge Herald.

If convicted, the parents could spend up to five years in prison.

They failed to protect their child and neglected him. They imposed their beliefs on him, at the expense of his life. They should be prosecuted.

Prison would be a step too far.  They are no risk to the community. But it does need to be made clear that refusing to seek medical treatment for a sick child is child abuse.

The Telegraph reports:

The shadow chancellor’s comments prompted criticism after he said he draws inspiration from those responsible for the mass murder of their political opponents.

Rob Hosking writes at NBR:

Andrew Little and Grant Robertson’s embrace of the very Winston-esque policy of what amounts to political control of retail interest rates was stupid opportunism. …

Parties in opposition often say irresponsible and silly things, and pander to what they think is popular sentiment.

This is particularly the case when those parties cannot see any improvement in their fortunes, and desperation kicks in.

Jim Bolger, leading National, toyed with the death penalty in the run up to the 1987 election and even in 1990, when the outgoing Labour government was about as popular as a banker with paedophiliac tendencies and swine flu, made some desperately foolish policy pledges. But Mr Little’s Labour is making so many of these and so many that are completely at odds with the Labour Party’s supposed values and principles.

Maybe Andrew and Grant subscribe to the Groucho Marx view of principles:

Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.

Some examples:

Last year’s  “Chinese Sounding Names” database for foreign investors was one.

The abandonment of free-trade principles was another, which was accompanied by the call from Labour grandee Bryan Gould for the governor-general to refuse to sign into any Trans Pacific Partnership laws passed by Parliament.

Mr Gould is a senior member of Labour’s brains trust, yet here he was calling for the governor general to behave as if the Divine Right of Kings is still part of the New Zealand constitution.

It was the sort of stuff you expect from screaming protesters, not a senior Labour Party stalwart.

Mr Little’s more recent foray into anti-immigration sentiment this week confirmed what has happened: Labour has been intellectually colonised by Mr Peters.

It only remains for the New Zealand First leader to take his natural place as finance minister in a Labour-led government.

Winston may be aiming higher than that?

Why doesn’t Labour go the whole hog and make Winston leader? They seem to be adopting all his policies.

The 15 researchers involved in the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study have done a statement explaining why they have asked the questions they did for the TVNZ study. The key part is:

It is important to scientifically measure and track change in racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice over time. This is the only way to know how many people hold such beliefs, and to see if racism is going up or down over time.

The typical way that researchers measure racism is by presenting people with a set of statements of opinion and asking them to rate how strongly they agree or disagree with each statement. This is known as a Likert scale. A lot goes on behind the scenes in developing the Likert scales used in the New Zealand Attitudes and Value Study (NZAVS).

The key to attitude measurement is to have a good set of statements that measure the underlying attitude. There are a number of things to consider here. For a start you need statements that are worded in each direction, for example, “People from group X cannot be trusted” and “People from group X are trustworthy.” This is to control for something called agreement bias, where people may tend to agree with things a bit more than they disagree. Some people may read the statements in the negatively worded direction “People from group X cannot be trusted” and argue that the statement itself is offensive and hence the survey itself is racist.

If we want to do the science well, and measure attitudes validly and reliably, then we need to include statements like these in our surveys. A good metaphor for this is that a set of statements is like a ruler that measures an attitude. You need to get your ruler straight. If we can’t get our ruler straight then we can’t measure levels of racism scientifically, and in that case we can’t know whether we have a problem with prejudice in our country, or whether it is going up or down over time.

Those politicians and activists attacking the study are basically anti-science. It is part of the culture of offence where they think their right not to be offended by a question is more important than finding out if people agree with it.

Some of the critics don’t even seem to know the difference between “treatment” and “outcomes”, such as Oscar Kightley who wrote:

I can’t believe there’s a survey question that asks whether Kiwis think Maori get special treatment – of course they do.

Everyone’s at their wits’ end  over all the special treatment they get.  

Maori comprise around 15 per cent of the population; one in seven citizens, about 700,000 people.

And yet just look at our institutions, which are overwhelmed by the multitudes of Maori doctors, lawyers, professors, bankers, directors, politicians, and high-ranking businessmen and women.

They’re clearly all fed with a silver spoon and clothed in nappies of woven gold thread as soon as they begin their lives of privilege.

Look at our prisons, where there are absolutely no Maori people at all.  Mind you, one of the big drivers of crime is poverty, so it’s no wonder there are no Maori in jail.

Everything Kightley mentions (which is correct) is about outcomes. That is very different to receiving special treatment (and it is beyond dispute that Maori do – such as Maori seats).

The political issue is whether the special treatment is justified by the fact Maori have less favourable outcomes. That is a debatable issue.

UPDATE: I’m told this study is different to the TVNZ one, but the arguments are the same.

Stuff reports:

1080 blackmailer Jeremy Kerr will spend eight years and six months behind bars after his blackmail attempts cost businesses and the Government $37 million. 

Good. That is a decent sentence that should act as a deterrent to others, and is appropriate punishment for this venal selfish man.

If he hadn’t pleaded guilty it looks like he would have got over ten years.

The Guardian reports:

A deadly scramble for the last boats over the Aegean to the Greek islands began after a €6 billion (£2.3 billion) aid-for-deportations deal with Turkey was agreed in Brussels.

Turkish police on Friday intercepted 3,000 migrants attempting to cross on land and sea in a major operation involving coast guard and helicopters, as Ankara at last showed a willingness to halt the human tide.

From Sunday morning, any asylum seeker who lands on the holiday islands including Kos, Lesbos and Chios with no longer be able to catch ferries to Athens, but will be swiftly interviewed by asylum officials or judges at new detention camps.