Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.
Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.
EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, Qanon lunacy, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics, 5G conspiracy theories, the virus is a bioweapon, some weird bullshit about the UN taking over the world and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.
I noticed just today that Parliament had passed the ‘Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Act 2022’, a completely useless bill that they allowed only a few days of public comment on, and which will achieve absolutely nothing.
The bill says that electoral advertising doesn’t have to have the address of a candidate on it. This will make it easier for the likes of the ‘Taxpayers Union’ and other 1% front groups to put up attacks on even local government candidates.
The supposed ‘protection’ that this provides to local government candidates is meaningless. If you look at your local mayoral candidate and decide he’s a white c**t because he’s got a sik mustache, or that she’s a woke Maari because she’s got a moko, you can just go to your local library and look up the electoral role and find out where they live.
I can see how maybe this ‘protection’ could protect against kids throwing TP at your house because they don’t like your face on a billboard- but not against any serious threat to the safety of candidates. It’s criminally useless against violent threats. And there’s no way to fix that without changes to the regulation of electoral rolls.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/BILL_124104/local-electoral-advertising-amendment-bill
NZ First, Found Not Guilty.
Defendants found not guilty in New Zealand First donations trial
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/defendants-found-not-guilty-in-new-zealand-first-donations-trial
Good news – water bottling consents granted for different use – quashed.
The arguments that sank water bottling consents
Why did the Court of Appeal quash consents for water bottling? David Williams delves into the decision
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/the-arguments-that-sank-water-bottling-consents
Can the Labour government please show they are responsive to what is going on around them in our wee world and bring bavk border tests and controls as appropriate for Omicron. I think listen to the many professionals who are thoughtful and expert in their fields in this matter and DO it..
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/471424/covid-19-cases-at-border-skyrocket-after-pre-departure-testing-scrapped
Covid-19 border cases have increased nearly fivefold since the government scrapped pre-departure testing for international arrivals in June.
This is unsatisfactory about the controls at NZ borders on Covid.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/471424/covid-19-cases-at-border-skyrocket-after-pre-departure-testing-scrapped
[University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker] Baker wanted pre-departure testing reinstated and said airlines could take the reins.
“One of the options would be having a service that is provided by the airline at the airport. A RAT test that’s administered while people are waiting to board the flight and if they test positive then their travel is deferred for a period.”He said while it would have minimal impact on community transmission rates, it would reduce the number of infectious people on the flight and slow the arrival of new variants into New Zealand.
He said a negative pre-departure test should only be a requirement for long-haul flights, particularly those departing from countries in the Northern Hemisphere.
“You’re looking at a whole day, or more, of travel to New Zealand. That’s a lot of time where you’re going to be potentially exposing other people to your virus.”
Te Pūnaha Matatini contagion modeller Dion O’Neale said pre-departure tests had previously caused a lot of unnecessary hassle for international arrivals, with not much pay off.
“At a national level it wasn’t doing a huge amount to keep people safe once we had Covid spreading in the community here anyway. At an individual risk level, it’s still a sensible thing to do.”
However, he said that pre-departure testing could be beneficial to making air travel safer for both passengers and crew, but he thought it should be encouraged rather than enforced.
“Most people do want to do the right thing.”
O’Neale said that the latest outbreak had increased the risk of catching Covid-19 across the world.
“We’ve had an increase in case numbers, both in our turnover and in other countries as well. And this is mostly driven by reinfections, with BA.5.”
In a written statement, Covid-19 Response Minister Ayesha Verrall said she was confident the measures in place were sufficient.
“Pre-departure tests were never a guaranteed way to keep Covid-19 from making its way here, especially due to the infection risk during transit to airports and on people’s journeys.”
Verrall said the recent increase in border cases was not high enough to have a significant impact on spread in the community “especially in comparison to the number of new daily community cases”.
Let’s face it, there are no guarantees with Covid Prevention. But lessening its spread and reducing mutation possibilities are essential so why is this politician so light-hearted about it? Who is and what is, Te Pūnaha Matatini* contagion modeller Dion O’Neale? This is the problem with adopting a new language for important strategic assets. How can we quickly understand what is going on? And this person O’Neale is new on the scene. Sounds laid back. This is no time to be kind, to encourage rather than enforce. What about the opinions of our previous advisors? Is it a case of not liking their opinions, so ‘I have a different opinion from another advisor’? And the pay-off from controls is not in money I should think,g it was in steady state infection rates not x5 as now. My opinion sterms from the part of NZ that was hoping that we were going to sit on Covid and weight it down, and that with mask use and dropping numbers we could find a precarious balance.
*Te Pūnaha Matatini – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_P%C5%ABnaha_Matatini
(Funded by the New Zealand Government, Te Pūnaha Matatini is hosted by the University of Auckland …)