Pasta News Network - New Zealand

For starters emergency housing is in the social development portfolio. The take-over of motels leading to social mayhem (think Rotorua) has been a tragedy for those housed in them and those in their surrounds. The waiting list for public housing has sky-rocketed since Sepuloni has been Minister.

Worst of all Sepuloni has overseen a rise in children living in unemployed homes. The damage to their outcomes is well researched and documented. But unheeded by this government whose sole focus has been to lift incomes with their fingers firmly in their ears over the unintended consequences of paying people to do nothing ... except have children.

If all of the above is "excelling" I hate to envisage what failing looks like.

Sounds like "Diversity Hire" was more important then competence.

This week I might just as well have sat back and let Pfizer shoot itself in the foot, except mainstream media was missing in action. Project Veritas managed to record a senior Pfizer executive admitting they were conducting experiments aimed at mutating even more virulent strains of Covid. The video accumulated more than 20 million views over 48 hours, but among MSM only Tucker Carlson and briefly the Daily Mail ran with this astounding story. Nothing here in New Zealand, as if the most prolific serial killer in history had been caught in the act, but it was judged unnewsworthy.

Answering a question in the House of Commons this week about record levels of excess deaths, the UK Minister for the Environment Therese Coffey replied briefly that it didn’t matter because it was happening all over Europe. Then abruptly sat down. She said this despite the crisis necessitating the construction of temporary morgues across the UK. It is comments like this, along with the Project Veritas sting, which reveals a striking failure of commonsense behind the official pandemic response. So how could this have happened?

The money shot:

Time to rein in governments intent on extending their power far beyond any recognised remit. Time to annul freedom from legal liability, they lied to us..

Yes, I understand the issue of tainted product, of substituted product and of toxicity, and the need to regulate dietary, or food supplements. But sweeping dietary and food ingredients with a long history of known use, in the same legislative framework as these technologies:

• new chemical entity – Compound never regulated or approved (not an active moiety).

• new molecular entity - active moieties (biologically active) not previously approved

• new active substance – new substance, or mixture of isomers which differ from previously authorised.

• new biological entity – contains human or non-human cells, bacteria, viruses, and material derived from those cells or viruses. Can be modified or engineered (including gene-edited).

...is wrong. And from the start, Andrew Little’s Bill downplays the degree to which the safety and risk from new drugs & biologics remain profoundly uncertain. Iatrogenic injury from medical inventions and drugs is far more extensively documented than dietary and food supplements.

The Bill is so messy, so complex that there is not a clear line of sight to understand how and who is responsible, when something goes wrong.

Long read, but to be expected as this is not a simple topic.

While I am becoming increasingly cynical about New Zealand Farmers’ ability to influence their own destiny given the government’s dishonest representation of this country’s responsibilities to the rest of the world populations, there is good reason to believe things are about to change.

But it will be a while before kiwis finally realise our mistake of placing the country’s future in the hands of this bunch of destructive vandals.

The country is being deceived by its own leaders - and they’re not all politicians with a secret agenda. Newspaper editors are responsible for much of the misinformation that appears on the front page of the daily rag.

Farmer Clive is not wrong.

The backstory to this resignation is a tale of woe. Ardern said she wants to be remembered as someone who tried to be kind. The subtext is: the country is in an unprecedented mess but don’t blame me.

Last year school attendance was reported as running at just 67% on any given day. Machete wielding teenagers are ram raiding liquor outlets, vape shops, dairies, and jewelry stores daily in a frenzied crime wave. The health system is overwhelmed. Ardern’s government promised to build 100,000 new homes over three years. It has delivered just 1500 to date.

Our tourist, farming, and hospitality industries have not recovered from lockdowns and border closures. It now takes weeks to get a visa to visit New Zealand (it used to take two days) and the government says it only wants rich people to come. No wonder, we are all poor now.

Guy being on point is an understatement.

Worth reading in full.

As another year in Clown World ends, many are casting their mind forwards to the future. VJM Publishing has taken it upon ourselves to bring the light of edification to the Anglosphere masses, in opposition to the great stupifying force that is the mainstream media. To that end, we offer some ideas on what might happen in 2023.

The general prediction is that basically everything will get worse, save for a few things. And those few things will be subtle and not appreciated by all.

The money shot:

Trust will reach all-time lows. Already, at the end of 2022, there is almost zero trust for politicians and journalists. This will spread to other professions traditionally considered trustworthy, such as professors and doctors. The ability of mainstream media to manufacture trust in authority figures will decline. This will lead to rapidly increasing support for the alternative media.

The big issue is one of electoral mandates. Will New Zealanders feel that Prime Minister Chris Hipkins – or whoever is chosen on Sunday – has a truly legitimate right to govern the country? Of course, constitutionally and legally the new PM will be able to govern – the role of PM is merely the choice of the ruling party. And, when Bill English took over from John Key a year out from the 2017 election, there was no expectation that an early election was necessary.

The problem for Labour is that it was elected as a majority government under the leadership of Ardern with 50 per cent support in 2020. People didn’t vote so much for Chris Hipkins, Kiri Allan, or Michael Wood. It was Ardern that won that support – more than any other party leader in New Zealand’s political history. It was Jacindamania, not Labourmania.

A spicy take by Bryce Edwards and a very valid point is made. Moving the elections forward makes perfect sense to validate whoever Labour chooses for leadership.

The outgoing Prime Minister's net favourability rating (that is the percentage of New Zealanders who tell our pollsters they have a 'favourable' view less the percentage who say 'unfavourable') has been gradually declining for quite some time. Back in September 2021, she was on +32% but this month, her ratings went negative for the first time. She leaves office with a score of -1%.

Christopher Luxon similarly scores a result of -1% this month, but his trend over the same period has been upwards. In September 2021, before he took on the National leadership, he was on -33% and he has slowly managed to turn this around.

This month, with much media speculation about New Zealand First re-entering Parliament, we asked respondents for their favourability towards Winston Peters. He scores a very poor -40% and does badly across voters of the four largest parties.

The "Favourability" graph is quite something.

This and more entertainment to be had from todays TPU post.

Hello, if you are reading or listening to the Hatchard Report for the first time, it is possibly because someone has forwarded this message to you. You may have received mRNA vaccinations against Covid-19 and are now starting to ask questions about its effectiveness and possibly also wondering about safety.

I read and analyse scientific papers published in journals, and I am increasingly concerned that our politicians, media, and health system are falling behind in their research. Here in New Zealand, we are still on the receiving end of an unvaried diet of encouragement to vaccinate and treat the unvaccinated like the plague.

Mainstream media reacted with derision to a poll showing that 57% of us want unvaccinated health professionals to be allowed back to work.

Good for red pilling normies and some nice refs.

The outgoing Prime Minister's net favourability rating (that is the percentage of New Zealanders who tell our pollsters they have a 'favourable' view less the percentage who say 'unfavourable') has been gradually declining for quite some time. Back in September 2021, she was on +32% but this month, her ratings went negative for the first time. She leaves office with a score of -1%.

Christopher Luxon similarly scores a result of -1% this month, but his trend over the same period has been upwards. In September 2021, before he took on the National leadership, he was on -33% and he has slowly managed to turn this around.

This month, with much media speculation about New Zealand First re-entering Parliament, we asked respondents for their favourability towards Winston Peters. He scores a very poor -40% and does badly across voters of the four largest parties.

The "Favourability" graph is quite something.

This and more entertainment to be had from todays TPU post.

Duncan Garner’s analysis also looked at what he considers Luxon’s big weakness – being unwilling or unable to explain what his party would do in power. He says Luxon will “need to be more decisive and be clear about what National will prioritise and get done. I detect voters are unconvinced by Luxon and may even be suspicious – I’m mainly talking about swinging voters here. And I am still confused about what National’s key policies are, what it stands for, and what it will prioritise.”

Others on the political right are also sceptical about National coming up with a convincing alternative to the current Government. For example, Ben Thomas writes this month that National “will surely have to put up some sort of agenda of change. While some of its MPs have been tweeting change is on the way, National hardly has an agenda to get voters excited. Its platform so far is largely based on scrapping initiatives Labour already has underway.”

National, at this point remains Labour-Light.

Worth reading in full.

This, of course, is going to be a very different election from that in 2020, when the nation was still afflicted by the trauma of Covid and Ardern had acquired the aura of saviour. NZ had not been afflicted with anything like Covid since the Great Flu of 1918.

But if the Ardern government captured the gratitude of NZers at the height of the pandemic, it seemed to forfeit it just as rapidly. And, as a year of burgeoning inflation ended, political pundits were predicting the Ardern government was heading towards an election with the word “DEFEAT” written in capital letters.

Sniffing the political breeze during the summer break, Ardern and Robertson may think otherwise, even if the public polls indicated support for Labour had drifted to levels not seen for some years.

Make Ardern Go Away.

This just in: Ardern is going away.

The Māori Health Authority, Three Waters and Māori seats on councils were achievements Ardern said the Government was proud of. Ardern said she was “comfortable” the government was doing its best to fulfil obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi. –Will Trafford, New Zealand Herald, 10 January 2023

The prime minister needs to look carefully at the documents we have signed up to and need to honour, before she pats herself on the back for her divisive, dishonest and undemocratic policies. In 1840 the Crown agreed to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) and in 1948 the then Labour Government signed The United Nations International Declaration of Human Rights. A few years ago a journalist asked Ardern if could recite a particular Article of the Treaty. She couldn’t.

Two-tier society? This is fine.

By early October 2021 the media started to run stories that promoted the New Zealand government’s new Covid line - ‘Two Shots for Summer’ - meant to encourage all young people to get their two doses of Pfizer vaccine in order to be able to enjoy their summer with some freedoms after months of lockdown.

One such article in RNZ began: “That’s the edgy, and somewhat boozey, tag line the government’s relying on to encourage better vaccination rates in our younger population”.

The only problem was that that was not what the government’s technical experts were recommending. In fact, the minutes from the 7 December meeting of the Covid-19 Technical Advisory Group (CV TAG) and its subsequent memo setting out their recommendations to government represented their strongest worded advice during all of 2021.

Part 2, going deeper down the rabbit hole.

Excellent work.

Polices own Data shows "Theft from Retail" has accelerated by 300% over 5 years. Its not a spike, its a trend before the pandemic. Woke policing has cultivated and emboldened crime in NZ and is directly caused by #bekindtociminals policy deployed by #NZlabour #nzpol pic.twitter.com/bhrt4s3q9L

— Dave Williams (@DaveWilNZ) January 14, 2023

Two interesting facts in these charts. The first is that retail thefts have gone from around 2,000 to 6,000 which is a tripling since 2018 (and was steady before that).

The second is that less than 8% of retail thefts have resulted in court action. This probably explains why retail crime is out of control – no consequences for the criminals involved.

Full credit to David Farrar.

Hit the link for the comments.

Since early 2020, premium mince for one million meals has been donated by New Zealand farmers through Meat the Need, supported by processing partner, Silver Fern Farms. The mince is distributed to food banks and community organisations throughout the country.

Sarah Gagliardi, Operations Manager of Meat the Need, says food insecurity, especially access to high quality protein, is a “very real” issue for many people.

“Meat the Need provides a platform for farmers to donate some of what they produce, when they can, which is then put into the hands of those who need it most. It means farmers across the nation are playing an important role in helping our communities struggling from food insecurity.”

Organising that which the government is not capable off.

Flying under the radar, the BBC has been accused of orchestrating an alliance of legacy media outlets and social media sites to suppress competition from alternative media. This is entitled “The Trusted News Initiative”.

An antitrust lawsuit filed on January 10th 2023 in the US has obtained documents which they say indicate that the BBC joined with the Washington Post, Reuters, AP, Meta, Google, Twitter, and others in order to protect their business models from competition. Whilst publicly talking about suppressing misinformation, documents indicate that the real intention was to exclude other information platforms, whether their reports were true or not.

"The bill comes due." - Baron Mordo

Waka Kotahi is understood to have flagged concerns directly to Government regarding the frequency of its policy U-Turns saying that it ‘sets a bad example’ to the nation’s drivers as we head into the Christmas holiday period.

“We always recommend that you plan your route ahead of time. U-Turns waste a lot of energy because you end-up just driving back past stuff you’ve already driven past!”

Worth a chuckle, NZTA would be perfectly capable of saying these things though.

Covid is a controversial and emotive topic. People hold strong views often based on bitter or difficult personal experiences. In the midst of the pandemic there were no perfect solutions but experts and officials worked under intense pressure to provide their advice to government. A broad array of recommendations covering numerous issues needed to be synthesized into coherent pandemic policies for approval by Cabinet.

My intention is not to second-guess the science or the decisions made by experts but to examine what recommendations were made by the relevant technical committees and then compare those with how the government decided to act and how those actions were presented to the public by the Prime Minister, the former Director-General of Health, Dr Bloomfield and others.

The Precautionary Method was ignored over fear. The only thing to quell that fear was to try and vaccinate everybody regardless of the safety signals.

Excellent citizen journalism by Cranmer.

The final version of the New Zealand History Curriculum contained no significant changes in spite of widespread concerns. The consultation process was an exercise in window dressing. The review panel was stacked, dissenting historians were silenced, the terms of reference limited, the period of consultation constricted, and the outcome predetermined.

What has been produced is not a "history curriculum" as such. What has been produced is a perspective on history that is fundamentally based on Critical Race Theory.

Expect homeschooling parents to increase in numbers as everything continues to be tainted by identity politics and woke machinations.

That’s the findings from a human clinical trial done for the Pasture Raised Advantage research programme to explore the health and wellbeing benefits of eating pasture-raised beef and lamb as part of a balanced diet, compared to grain-finished beef or a plant-based alternative.

The project, which involved researchers at AgResearch, the University of Auckland, Massey University and the Riddet Institute, shows that red meat is probably a better source of protein for the body than highly processed plant-based products promoted as meat alternatives.

Plants are for ruminants, not humans.

I don’t want to put too fine a point on this, but all this obfuscation, hiding, sweeping under the carpet, and trumpet blowing about non-existent achievements amounts to lying. There seem to be a great many ‘great’ people in the public eye who have gotten used to lying comfortably. Many among our great and good rulers have difficulty admitting that they don’t know much about something; they are quite happy to have us believe they know all about biotechnology safety. For the record, it is not safe.

In fact, biotechnology is busy shaking up the arrangement of the ancient building blocks of life and coming up with surprises almost every week. Here at the Hatchard Report we come across published studies almost every day and write about them (with links). A little known study published in August 2022 by PubMed reports that Botox injections are less effective after Pfizer Covid-19 injections. I haven’t had one myself, so I am not in a position to recommend them, but I want to say that no one knows why Covid-19 injections interfere with Botox.

Hatchard on point, as usual, with a strong ending.

That’s the findings from a human clinical trial done for the Pasture Raised Advantage research programme to explore the health and wellbeing benefits of eating pasture-raised beef and lamb as part of a balanced diet, compared to grain-finished beef or a plant-based alternative.

The project, which involved researchers at AgResearch, the University of Auckland, Massey University and the Riddet Institute, shows that red meat is probably a better source of protein for the body than highly processed plant-based products promoted as meat alternatives.

Plants are for ruminants, not humans.

An emotionally moving short film released this week, “Silent No More,” documents attempts by Covid vaccine-injured people in New Zealand to obtain recognition of their injuries, treatment, compensation, and a halt to the mRNA vaccine rollout. This factual and simple documentary of personal experiences was banned by YouTube before it was even released. Why?

This is a deep question that encompasses what is so challenging about the pandemic response around the world:

• Why has scientific debate been censored and cancelled by the media sources that the general public view?
• Why have scientists asking questions been cancelled?
• Why are so many concerned professionals still remaining silent?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

This year, taxpayers paid public servants for over 167,000 days that they weren’t even at work, excluding the four weeks that they are legally entitled to and public holidays. This equates to more than 457 years.

We struggle to believe that public servants are working so much harder than the non-government workers who pay their salaries that they need all this additional time off.”

The "worst offenders" and the entities that declined to provide a response should not surprise.

Political commentators and journalists have nominated their politicians of the year, and it’s telling that the three main nominees are all from the political right: Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis, and David Seymour. The brickbats, in contrast, are almost universally for Labour Government Ministers – especially Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, deputy Grant Robertson, Nanaia Mahuta, Willie Jackson, and Andrew Little.

Whether this indicates that the media and commentariat have turned against Labour is an interesting point. But it certainly does reflect that it’s been an awful political year for the incumbents, and an encouraging turning point for the Opposition.

Excellent round up by Dr. Edwards.

Stuff lavishing Robertson with praise is hilarious but completely expected.

in November, a group of Meta employees revealed that they had devised an AI program capable of beating most humans in the strategy game Diplomacy. In Shenzhen, China, officials are using “digital twins” of thousands of 5G-connected mobile devices to monitor and manage flows of people, traffic, and energy consumption in real time. And with the latest iteration of ChatGPT’s language-prediction model, many are declaring the end of the college essay.

In short, it was a year in which already serious concerns about how technologies are being designed and used deepened into even more urgent misgivings. Who is in charge here? Who should be in charge? Public policies and institutions should be designed to ensure that innovations are improving the world, yet many technologies are currently being deployed in a vacuum. We need inclusive mission-oriented governance structures that are centered around a true common good. Capable governments can shape this technological revolution to serve the public interest.

According to the latest Rabobank Rural Confidence Survey - completed late last month - farmer confidence is significantly down on the previous (September) quarter. The net confidence reading slumped to -71% from -31% previously.

Rabobank says this net confidence reading is the lowest in the 20-year history of the survey and far exceeds the previous low of -45% recorded amid the dairy downturn in 2015.

In Monash University in Melbourne’s Engineering Garden stands a sobering monument: twisted fragments from the wreckage of the Westgate Bridge collapse in 1970, one of the world’s worst bridge collapses. The tortured chunks of metal are meant to remind engineering students of the devastating consequences if they screw up.

A great many politicians and activists could benefit from the same reminder. The same people who witter about “the precautionary principle” when they’re trying to stop a mining development, throw caution to the winds when it comes to their green-left monomanias.

It’s all very easy to gaily skip off down the primrose path of forcing everyone to adopt electric cars. Much harder to do the hard thinking about what all the consequences will be.

It all comes tumbling down.

Is transgenderism the most openly misogynist ideology this side of Islam? What can we say, after all, about an ideology that asserts that men are better at women at everything, including being women? An ideology that reduces women to “birthing persons”? An ideology that tells lesbians that they must have sex with men, or be labelled “transphobic”?

Or, indeed, an ideology that brands women raped by men as “bigots”?

On 14th December 2022, Medsafe (NZ Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority) released its 46th report into the safety of Covid vaccines entitled “Adverse events following immunisation with COVID-19 vaccines”. The report covered safety signals up to 30th November 2022.

This report contained new advice about the risk of death following mRNA vaccination. Medsafe’s assessment began as follows:

“By chance, some people will experience new illnesses or die from a pre-existing condition shortly after vaccination, especially if they are elderly. Therefore, part of our review process includes comparing natural death rates to observed death rates following vaccination, to determine if there are any specific trends or patterns that might indicate a vaccine safety concern.”

The report comes after months of speculation concerning record levels of excess all cause mortality in New Zealand affecting all ages, currently running at 15% above historical levels.

Imagine my shock.

In the all-important leadup to Christmas, MetService is forecasting unsettled, thundery weather, followed by a generally improving trend. A low pressure centre in the Tasman Sea has been gradually moving eastwards and is expected to travel over central Aotearoa/New Zealand on Friday. The low is followed by a developing ridge of high pressure which brings more settled weather.

Although there are currently no broadscale warnings for severe weather for tomorrow, MetService has issued two Severe Thunderstorm Watches for Thursday afternoon and evening, one covering most of the North Island from Waikato to northern Wairarapa, and the other for inland parts of Southland and Otago. This means a particularly severe thunderstorm could pop up in any of those areas.

MetService meteorologist Alwyn Bakker warns, “Severe thunderstorms can bring localised downpours with intensities of 25 to 40 mm per hour.Rainfall of this intensity can cause surface and/or flash flooding.” For the North Island watch area, there is also a possibility of small tornadoes associated with any severe thunderstorms.

There is an ambivalence in New Zealand towards freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is guaranteed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. It guarantees not only the expression of information – the outward flow – but also the receipt of information – the inward flow. The ambivalence has been growing. Freedom of expression has been pushed to the margins. Although, with a few exceptions, the Government has not actively or outwardly restricted freedom of expression it has nevertheless narrowed the scope of what may be considered acceptable. The narrowing of scope has been led by the Prime Minister, Ms. Jacinda Ardern. Ms. Ardern is a trained communicator in that she holds a degree of Bachelor of Communication Studies (BCS) in politics and public relations.

Public relations is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization – in her case the Government – to the public in order to influence their perception. Ms. Ardern has done this very successfully. But in managing and disseminating the Government message she has been very careful to ensure that contrary views, criticism and contradiction are pushed to the sideline, so that those views are diminished and devalued and are of no account.

No spoilers, but numbers 5 and 20 though.

As we finish the second year of Jacinda Ardern’s premiership of the only majority Government to have been elected outright under our MMP voting system, two polls and a by-election spell bad news for Labour.

Taken chronologically, Monday’s 1News Kantar poll showed support for Labour continues to slide, down 1 to 33 percent – the lowest ranking since before the 2017 election. National increased 1 to 38, ACT rose 2 to 11, the Greens were steady on 9, and the Maori Party steady on 2.

On those results, National and ACT would have the numbers to govern with 64 MPs.

Jacinda Ardern is also on the slippery slope in the preferred Prime Minister stakes, falling from the heady heights of over 60 percent support to 29 – her lowest rating since becoming Prime Minister. Meanwhile National’s Chris Luxon is on the rise, now ranking at 23 percent.

Make Ardern Go Away

It was an astonishingly brutal tongue-lashing on air but it’s hard not to suspect there will be much more of it in election year as the mainstream media reflects the intense frustration the public has with a government perversely determined to give them more of what they don’t want.

Whether it is the widely despised Three / Five Waters project (supported by only 23 per cent in a poll); the merger of RNZ and TVNZ (22 per cent support); the compulsory unemployment insurance scheme (35 per cent support), or adding religion to existing hate-speech laws (after earlier proposals had been roundly rejected), the government’s policy prescriptions read like one of the longest and most bizarre suicide notes ever produced by a government hoping for re-election.

Alongside this, it has failed to give many voters what they actually want — not least a tougher stance on crime, and better health care and public infrastructure.

In November 2021, the Department of Statistics sought feedback on their LGBTQ Statistics reporting changes. These proposed changes included collecting sex and gender data but using the "gender as the default" method for reporting...

The result seemed to be that there was no way to differentiate between a lesbian and a man who said he was a same-sex attracted woman...I sought confirmation...

You can only make decision based on correct statistics. Seems to be a trend lately to mis-interpret / mis-inform data. Almost as if, on purpose.

Tim Nguyen, (Unit Head – High Impacts Event Preparedness) speaking to the WHO in 2022, advised that anyone who received one of these repurposed smallpox vaccines should be part of a clinical trial as not very much is known about them.

It is known that there is a risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) with them though. We wonder if that risk is highest for young men as it is for covid-19 shots and how well people will be informed of this risk. We hope the informed consent process is substantially better than that undertaken for covid-19 injections.

It’s interesting how doctors are being encouraged to prescribe an unapproved medicine under Section 29 of the Medicines Act, when the company producing it hasn’t even made an application to have it licenced in NZ, while at the same time being forbidden from prescribing fully approved, safe, long-standing medicines such as Ivermectin. Something strange is afoot.

This.

There has been no buzz from the Beehive since January 9, when Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall announced that a vaccine for people at risk of mpox (or monkeypox) will be available to people who meet eligibility criteria from January 16.

The ACT Party today exploited the public’s increasing disquiet about crime by launching the next phase of its ‘We hear ya’ campaign’ (a slogan which should disqualify ACT politicians from taking over the Education portfolio in any future government in which they are a coalition partner).

Labour has shown little interest in law and order, which shows with crime going up. Campaigning on cost of living and crime is always a safe bet.

The Christchurch City Council-owned economic development organisation is spending half a million dollars on a global agency to come up with the city’s “narrative” and “destination management plans.”

Despite ChristchurchNZ employing 92 staff members, none had the necessary skills to do the work.

A spokesperson said “ChristchurchNZ is not a creative agency. This type of work, which is primarily creating engaging videos, requires specialised skills and equipment that we don’t have.”

Teenager on TikTok with a modern smart phone streaming in 1080p: "OH MY GOD This city is amazing! Go on holiday here! #ChCh".

Well funded business entity: "Video is really hard and we do not have a copy of Adobe Premiere."

I am pretty sure there are local agencies that could have fulfilled this role rather then outsourcing overseas.

But as TV One reported, the vaccine has not yet been approved for use here, which limits any big promotion or marketing.

It is illegal to promote or advertise unapproved medicines, the TV One report explained.

The government therefore won’t specify the name of the vaccine, even though it’s about to become available.

Meanwhile at the Beehive, it can be mentioned in a press release:

In addition Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) is also working with Pharmac to secure a supply of a smallpox vaccine known as Imvanex or Jynneos, which is effective against monkeypox.

Not that it is hard to guess, only 2 vaccines available for Monkeypox on this Earth.

At the end of the day, maybe discourage high-risk sexual activities with individuals you have no relation with to prevent spread in the first place.

Usually we have our eyes on how the Government is wasting taxpayers' money, however in this case taxpayers are being rear-ended by their fellow countrymen and women. Kiwi taxpayers are paying more per annum and per capita for people putting objects up their bottoms than their equivalents in Great Britain.

The Union has uncovered through the OIA that in the past five years the cost for active ACC claims related to foreign objects being inserted into anuses is about $302,660.00 excluding GST. The 2018/19 financial year was the most expensive costing $110,505.00; this is more than 2020/21, 2021/22, and the 2022/23 year to date combined. Despite the costs being higher in 2018/19, the number of individual incidents of objects in anuses was highest in 2019/20 followed by 2020/21 and 2021/22.

OIA title: "Claims and costs for objects in anus between 2017/18 financial year and present"

Auckland is responsible for approximately half the "situations" per annum.

Sides > Orbit

The Green Party has a habit of sabotaging their election-year campaigns, risking electoral oblivion. Could the same thing happen in 2023?

The last two election campaigns were particularly painful for the party. In 2017 then co-leader Metiria Turei had her story about her past as a welfare beneficiary unravel during the campaign, raising questions about her integrity. This led Jacinda Ardern to rule Turei out as a future minister and the party split, plummeting in the polls.

In 2020 James Shaw jeopardised the Greens’ re-election chances when he went against his own party’s policy and dished out government funding to a private school as part of his ministerial role. Once again, the party was divided, sinking below 5 per cent in the polls, before recovering for election day

No matter in which country you are, the Greens follow the following pattern: useless and having the balance of power because someone on either side of the chamber needs their vote.

By and large, New Zealand elects governments that then set about doing what they promised, in some form or another. But sometimes we end up with a government that goes off-piste for whatever reason. Sometimes it is a rogue element and sometimes it is deliberate circumvention of considered norms, but mostly it is driven by adherence, often blindly, to a political ideology.

There have been two recent examples of such off-piste behaviour. The first was the hijacking of the Lange Government by Finance Minister Roger Douglas. The second is this current Labour Government’s descent into race-based politics.

Usually pieces by Cam Slater tend to have a "radio shock jock" vibe to them, but this is nuanced and straightforward. Fair all 'round.

Following three years of pandemic control, governments are not stopping there. Here in New Zealand, the government has introduced the “Therapeutic Products Bill,” which will control how products which appear to benefit health are manufactured, prescribed, imported, advertised, supplied and exported. According to Health Minister Andrew Little:

“It will enable New Zealand to take advantage of advances in medicine, such as cell and tissue therapies, emerging gene therapies, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning software. Having risk-proportionate approval systems will improve access to necessary and life-saving medicines, such as vaccines in a pandemic.”

An important part of the bill aims to regulate the natural health products used by more than 50% of our population.

If the bureaucrat at the regulator office has a bad day there will be no more cinnamon on your coffee lest you receive any health benefit from a cheap compound that cannot be patented is one scenario that could play out.

We have also seen how poorly "emergency use" has been handled, to which an entire clause has been dedicated under this new bill.

Seems like something that costs a whole lot of money and has a-lot of potential vested interests that are up to no good.

As we look into the New Year, there are a lot of crucial issues facing the country – how do we deal with the ongoing unaffordability of housing (notwithstanding the recent fall in house prices); how do we increase our rate of productivity growth so that we can afford the good things of life that wealthier countries take for granted; how do we improve the serious problems in our education and health sectors; how do we deal with the longer-term fiscal crisis caused by our ageing population.

But of all the problems we face, perhaps none is as important as this: do we want to continue to be one of the few democracies in the world where every citizen has equal political weight, or do we want to become a society where political influence is determined by who our ancestors were?

Put another way, what did the Treaty of Waitangi really say, whether in the Maori language or in English?

Don Brash, on point and on the nose.

One of the most popular moves Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ever made was the pay freeze her government imposed on politicians back in 2018. The freeze may have only been grudgingly agreed to by other MPs and parties, but it had universal public support.

The pay freeze is due to end this year, and new rules for setting politicians’ pay mean MPs are likely to get a huge increase to make up for six years of standing still. The move should spark debate about whether we pay our politicians too much, and whether it’s appropriate during a cost-of-living crisis for politicians to receive a major pay increase.

Money for me, but not for thee.

It's an election year and pundits from across the spectrum are safely predicting a close election. Many elections are (or rather are made to seem) close. Pundits seem reluctant to see a proper recession start until after the election. The Reserve Bank is keen to push unemployment up, but as long as immigration remains muted, we're not so likely to see that happen. Labour shortages are good for New Zealand workers and families: as long as jobs are secure and higher wages can be negotiated to deal with inflation then the people will be happy. Negative GDP figures will be shrugged off. This may be Jacinda's saving grace. We can know with certainty that a National/Act government will open the floodgates and depress wages via immigration the moment they hold the reins of power. Voters won't be rushing to embrace that outcome.

They will do their best to keep Pandora's box closed till the election is over. Whoever gets voted in, has the dubious honour of dealing with what is coming.

A wonderful summary by Dieuwe de Boer.

It is surprising what tripe you read in the newspapers, and more surprising—the government is funding it. Te Punaha Matatini hosts the government’s Disinformation Project, which is hitting the headlines again. According to Principal Investigator Kate Hannah (MA in history), the government should be allowed to dictate to high street stationer Whitcoulls which magazines it can sell to the public. Correct me if I am wrong but isn’t this a bit close to book burning?

Hannah is concerned that the magazine New Dawn has questioned the efficacy of the Covid vaccines (among other things like Atlantis and fake Moon Landings). I don’t read New Dawn, but if there is one thing that the public has figured out, it is the lack of efficacy of Covid vaccines. They don’t seem to prevent transmission, hospitalisation, or death.

Your tax dollars, hard at work.

The people that scream the loudest about disinformation are seemingly also the ones that seem to promote it the most.

"They are desperate" indeed.

It can become necessary when the enemy is simply too strong and an army needs to leave the battlefield to avoid a crushing defeat, or it can be simply to pull back to reach an area that is easier to defend.

Trailing National in the polls, Ardern has decided to retreat and present a smaller target to opponents by postponing the implementation of contentious policies or reducing their scope.

These have already included delaying a draft plan in response to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples until 2024, while watering down “hate-speech” legislation, and immigration restrictions for nurses.

Anything that is unpopular and unwanted will have the volume turned down until after the elections, should Labour win they will resume their scheduled program. A program that will only continue to further extremism (on both sides of the spectrum), identity politics and division.

Great read with a lovely ending.

David Farrar comments on the 21 predictions made by Stuff for 2023.

Short and Churr.

My picks: 12 and 14

Jeremy Fleming, the head of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), one of three leading spy agencies in the UK, has publicly discussed that the agency wishes to promote “pre-bunking”—feeding the public with information designed to undermine narratives before they even appear on social media.

In other words, spy agencies originally tasked with monitoring events are now engaged in spreading propaganda about things that haven’t actually happened and probably have been doing so for a long time. They appear to be pre-empting the truth with their own imagined version of events.

"They don’t care if you die as long as no one works out what you died of."

(((They))) do not like the truth, therefore, we have to peacefully remind them what the truth is.