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David
/ 7th May 2020The committee was a good idea from Ardern given we had no parliament but it seems to have turned into a way of just keeping the opposition busy elsewhere while her government tightly control the narrative.
As Stuff have said where is the tourism minister, perhaps on a tramping vacation with the health minister. The messaging has been very tight with a largely compliant bought and paid for media who flip between asking inane questions about the trans tasman bubble and writing hagiographies of Jacinda.
“Bridges also questioned the Ministry of Health’s transparency and use of communications staff, which he speculated may be a 50-strong team being paid the “top dollar”.
He said the ministry had not answered written questions lodged by the committee two weeks ago, despite MPs following up with the ministry daily
“You could have more comms staff being paid more than almost any media outlet in New Zealand today … I can’t believe it’s a resourcing issue.
‘Why don’t you answer simple health questions, to the one parliamentary committee on this remarkably significant issue … You just aren’t answering despite repeated requests.
“I think it comes down to one simple thing, you don’t want to answer because you want to control the information flow.”
Bloomfield said he had to “reject that assertion” and would follow up on the unanswered questions. ”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121422694/coronavirus-ashley-bloomfield-pushed-by-simon-bridges-on-why-nz-isnt-in-level-2-yet
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020NOTE FOR LURCHY
hagiography
noun
the writing of the lives of saints.
a biography that treats its subject with undue reverence
plural noun: hagiographies
“a hagiography which is designed to serve a political agenda”
From Oxford
… … … …
Just to clear up any possible misunderstandings at the outset, & avoid any accidental unpleasantness, David is NOT calling her a hag.
No need to thank me, neighbour. Always happy to help. 😉
David
/ 7th May 2020Thank you, one appreciates a polite correction.
lurcher1948
/ 7th May 2020👍Gezza
Kitty Catkin
/ 7th May 2020It’s from the Greek hagios, meaning a saint. Hagios Andreas; St Andrew,
Kitty Catkin
/ 7th May 2020But the Virgin Mary is the Theotokos.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020You had to look that up.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020‘. The messaging has been very tight with a largely compliant bought and paid for media ‘
Yet we know media in NZ is dominated by privately owned organisations who dance to their advertisers tune.
They unashamedly promote the FIRE economy and right wing narratives with a daily assault of conditioning pulp.
They’ve now dusted off notorious anti Labour mouth Paul Henry and given him his own show as an electioneering initiative.
When I see how National demanded the removal of socialist commentators and were readily obliged it makes you wonder what on earth the Davids of the world base their prejudice on!
Journalists shitting themselves over employment ,especially the print ones are anti Govt clones.
I remember a very competent journalist with a socialist outlook, Tapu Misa, was a victim of political expediency,one of many.
Thank goodness for the rise of online sources of real information,vital to a democracy the right merely pay lip service to.
Pete George
/ 7th May 2020Another quick reverse from the popularity obsessed president: In reversal, Trump says coronavirus task force will ‘continue on indefinitely,’ shifts focus to reopening, vaccines
Effectiveness or necessity doesn’t seem to figure, as long as he does what he thinks is popular?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/06/coronavirus-trump-says-task-force-continue-indefinitely/5171043002/
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020So his popularity has gone up again?
Fight4nz
/ 7th May 2020Na, he’s no Ashley Bloomfield.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Truth hurts, F4NZ:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/politics/donald-trump-approval-rating-coronavirus/index.html
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020this is a Wellington gravy train I am not familiar with…the salary bands are incredible….
Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency Ltd-27 employees on over $100,000 !
Top sinecure $350,000….value for ratepayers money!!!
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020You can bet any contractors are creaming it too. 😠
Duker
/ 7th May 2020$100k isnt a lot of money these days for professional and qualified people at mid career point.
It just isnt.
$150-175k should be the start of the ‘Oh my god that much’ level
Kitty Catkin
/ 7th May 2020Even if it was $10,000, Blazer would think it was too much.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020What would you know. You think its o.k. to be a thief so long as the item you steal is not a large dollar amount.Hopeless.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020Depends. .when you have 27 on 100k plus and no doubt expenses at a rate payer funded organization. ..that does what? …..CBA!
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020First day of winter, clear and crisp on the dog walk. Socks and top dug out from storage.
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020Nice. Where’s that track, Al?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Start of our Orongo Bay usual walk.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020Nice pic. .is this one from your series. .images of a shithole country?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020So long as there’s not a cop, bureaucrat or politician in sight or earshot it’s wonderful, B.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Massive stuff up in immigration with laptops running old insecure software. 1000 staff unable to work from home. Yet another clueless, hapless Minister. Shame we don’t have any satirical tv any more – they would be having a ball through all these bsllls-ups.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12330098
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020Hang on, I’ll have a butchers…😐
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020I’m afraid there’s an irrelevant video there so you’ll probably get distracted.
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020No, I didn’t watch the video. I read the legend below & concluded it was yet another Jacinda &/or Bloomfield video that had nothing to do with the article.
Stuff do this all the time.
Duker
/ 7th May 2020It juices up Stuffs You Tube views …I think they might get a toaster this week
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020Sounds very messy & incompetent. Endless restructurings to produce efficiencies results in a management group of “professional managers” who don’t know anything about immigration, or IT, or anything actually useful, & deliver the opposite – inefficiencies & cinfusion – would be my bet.
Poor staff.
Wonder which version of Windows they’re running. Microsoft stopped support for Win7 on 14 January this year, but I’ve read that they’ve extended it for 3 more years for commercial users, which I assumed means government & professionals as well.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Must be W7 or surely not XP. Unbelievable except it isn’t.
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020That extended Win7 support for business customers comes with a price tag.
Apparently there ARE still a few companies still running XP. Must be bloody rare tho.
Duker
/ 7th May 2020They are on to it – Mar 2020
“Multi-tenancy flexibility sought for Immigration NZ cloud build-out
New Zealand’s immigration service is poised for a cloud makeover, with parent agency MBIE seeking an extensible and automated cloud platform to manage work visas and enable it to respond quickly to environmental and economic shocks.”
https://www.reseller.co.nz/article/671634/multi-tenancy-flexibility-sought-immigration-nz-cloud-build-out/
I suppose they were stuck with out of date desktop operating systems all through 9 years of neglect.
W7 was Jul 2009
W8 was launched in 2012
W10 was 2015
Heres what MBIE ( INZ home ministry)
https://www.mbie.govt.nz/home/mbiepeople/working-from-home/
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020I suppose they were stuck with out of date desktop operating systems all through 9 years of neglect.
If they were, my bet is that the neglect is by an uncomprehending, tits on a bull Management Group with no in-house IT expertise. MBIE looks like an unweildy overbloated monster of a department.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Poor immigrants trying to make a life strangled by immovable red tape and rules changing every few months.
A family friend has been trying to renew her foreign passport since October last. Still waiting in limbo.
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020That’s normally done via the relevant foreign embassy; not NZ Immigration, tho.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Certainly, nothing to do with NZ except making life difficult for people here trying to navigate the red tape.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020Did you warn them about what a shithole NZ is…Al?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020No, they come from one so they know what to expect.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020Well they won’t be disappointed if it all goes down the dunny then will they.
lurcher1948
/ 7th May 2020Interesting times in Young ACT, remember as the rightwingers love to say,it starts at the top with David Seymour
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12330137
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Looks like Bad Acts, Lurch. Is it a Wellington thing?
Pete George
/ 7th May 2020Post on this: https://yournz.org/2020/05/07/young-act-acknowledge-allegations-of-sexual-harassment/
There is no indication of any involvement by Seymour, he said the party would release a statement later today. A lack on involvement could be an issue.
lurcher1948
/ 7th May 2020Simon Bridges has a wee tantrum on his committee, not fit for PM yet and a,good editorial on Mr Bridges behaviour in the DomPost…today
https://t.co/xr8syLhSxo?amp=1
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Don’t like a few tough questions being asked, Lurch? Better get used to it. There’s a big flock of chickens coming home to roost.
Duker
/ 7th May 2020Tough questions ?
The committee under inquisitor in chief Bridges has asked 2 questions about elderly people and 23 about bailing out the media
NOEL
/ 7th May 2020Doesn’t strike me as Chair material either.
duperez
/ 7th May 2020I’d have to defer to AW’s expertise in understanding maths and stats. I don’t have the wherewithal to understand information coming from different sources and making sense of them:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
And at 20:45 on here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV7p5nllywM
🤔
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Your link has some of the necessary qualifications: “The difficulties of death figures” but probably greatly understates them – the biggest ones being differences in detecting and assigning cause of death and current degree of infection in the countries. Beyond that there are differences in age cohorts and genetic susceptibilities.
duperez
/ 7th May 2020Yes. Given the limits, questions and qualifications on figures, the White House briefing this morning was quite specific in using the available numbers.
‘We have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.” The list of countries has the USA with the 9th highest mortality rate. The bald figures show the claim was a barefaced lie.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Sorry, if I had realised you expected me to watch a video I wouldn’t have bothered commenting.
duperez
/ 7th May 2020It was about the difficulty in knowing which to believe when there are stats listing whatever and someone saying something which seems to be diametrically opposed.
I’d never seen the woman before but my conclusion from today is that if she were here I’d point out a paddock and tell her to go out there and bathe in the afternoon sun with the other lying cows.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Possibly. Did she say what rate she was talking about? Deaths/Cases is an alternative set.
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020Videophobia. Such a rare condition there doesn’t seem to be any body of work on it in the psychology or psychiatric fields yet.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020You might like (but probably won’t) to read this sensible take on the subject:
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/politics-explained/coronavirus-death-toll-second-highest-us-italy-boris-whitty-a9499821.html
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020Needed more bread; pooks, sparrows, & blackbirds are burning thru it – especially the pooks – must have hollow legs.
Anyway, whatever, needed more eggs, & might as well get more milk too. So I drove up to NW at 11.30 am. No queue! Nada, zip, zero, nobody waiting to get in.
Thought I might as well cruise all aisles & do a full shop, for stocks to last me till next week. Did it. 4 minute wait at automated self-serve checkout, exchange of pleasantries n ‘thank you’s with the staff. Back home at 12.55 pm.
Very civilised place is Tawa. 🏘
Kitty Catkin
/ 7th May 2020My birds know that when the cubes are gone, there’s no more. Waxeyes are on the rosemary bush and a couple of trees; how sweet they are.
I went to P & S, no queue but there was a bit of a one when I came out. But that’s becaise they make us wash our dirty paws before we go in. Then off to the Countdown nearby for my favourite brand of coffee sachets on a great special, no queues there, either. A few spaces on the shelves, but that’s not unexpected at CD at any time.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020So we continue on the horrendous farce of having the DG Health prescribe what is safe for everyone in every circumstance. The tragedy of central planning continues:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12330222
As for mindless stupidity, the assumption that an indoor gathering of 100 people has the same risks as an outdoor one is mind-blowing.
lurcher1949
/ 7th May 2020Poor old Alan Wilkinson a Bridges fan, im watching parliament, and im watching Simon Bridges, what a waste of space, with his strange voice accent he was trying to nail SAINT PM Jacinda Ardern down on a wealth tax, and other taxes, simons a sad person,he got slightly above single figues in a public poll in the past,NOT NOW,and PM Jacinda Ardern HAS JUST REMINDED SIMON BRIDGES OF A STATEMENT HE MADE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN about releasing private bill details.Simons driving towards a cliff edge and theres no safety rail
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Keep clutching your straws, Lurch. Your boat’s going under a tidal wave of redundancies.
Kitty Catkin
/ 7th May 2020I read that the Official Information Act has been suspended; does anyone know about this ?
Duker
/ 7th May 2020Its rubbish…we have told you that before
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020where did you read it?
[deleted accusation]
Alan Wilkinson
/ 7th May 2020Proposed but not implemented officially? Journalists were complaining departments were ignoring the time limit though.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/121237698/coronavirus-officials-pitched-oia-suspension-during-covid19-lockdown
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020At a time when the Government has been given sweeping powers for the Covid-19 response, officials suggested the Official Information Act be suspended during lockdown – a proposal which led to the Chief Ombudsman stepping in.
Government officials proposed suspending the Official Information Act during the coronavirus lockdown – a suggestion that was headed off after the intervention of the country’s official information watchdog, Newsroom can reveal.
Blazer really ought to go stand in front of the mirror & give the person he sees there a five minute bollocking for continually making him look like such a right blimmin twat lately.
Blazer
/ 7th May 2020?
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020See below. Another RWW Effect event.
“[deleted accusation]” should’ve been in quotes.
Gezza
/ 7th May 2020[deleted accusation] ?