Running for cover
More 1% Americans are heading our way, according to Bloomberg. The Texas company building underground bunkers is getting more enquiries. They’re not running from the virus but fear the aftermath when the breadlines turn.
Economy
Posts on the economy, work, business, income, and labour
When Bridges’ social media goes wrong
Simon Bridges’s Facebook post criticising the extension of lockdown level 4 has been met with overwhelming opposition, including from people who are clearly National Party supporters.
Guest post – is it safe to lower the lockdown level?
Guest post by Karl Sinclair on what needs to be addressed before the country can be safely lifted out of lockdown.
Greens push for large intercity rail infrastructure to ensure sustainable post-COVID-19 rebuild
“The Greens are highlighting fast intercity rail improvements as the type of climate-friendly, job-creating project that should be prioritised for post-COVID-19 economic stimulus investment.”
Don’t plan on a vaccine or persistent natural immunity.
Don’t plan on a vaccine or persistent natural immunity. Unless we’re incredibly lucky, neither are very likely for much of the coming decade. We don’t have the bat immunity systems. Learn to embrace the bets of the future rather than the clinging to the comfy blanket of the past that has now gone.
The plan for Monday
Even if New Zealand gets out of the immediate Covid-19 infection better than most other countries, the result is still a wrecked world […]
Matthew’s Magic Numbers
Matthew Hooton has tweeted a series of numbers. They add up to good news for the Government.
UPDATE: Curia Polling reckons it’s even better for Labour!
No Right Turn: Climate Change – the need for a green recovery
The Climate Change Commission – the expert panel tasked with getting New Zealand carbon neutral – has written to the government asking it to apply a “climate change lens” to the post-Covid-19 spend-up.
What we were doing wasn’t working.
After the lockdown, it is tempting to try and go back to what we had before. To the familiar and comfortable, especially for us that were comfortable. Forgetting that for so many, things were anything but, comfortable. That won’t be happening. “Before” no longer exists.
What Is This Moment Teaching Us?
What is Covid-19 telling us about our response as a nation?
Are the Vultures Already Circling Above?
We cannot go back to business as usual after the lockdown but can we shape the way things will be for the greater good?
Please sort this out MoH
Frontline home care workers and their clients still don’t have adequate protection from covid.
New Zealand’s poor in this new crisis
Covid 19 is not some great leveller. To succeed the state has to completely redirect the economy to so that ordinary workers and working families are supported.
We are all socialists now II
The Taxpayer’s Union has applied for government support to pay wages during the lockdown.
Tourism is the elephant in the living room
Rather than saving an industry that has multiple sustainability and resiliency failures, how about we regenerate local economies and set them to serve our communities?
From the inside out
I feel that many kiwis are quite unaware exactly how exceptional our plague performance has been so far. It is interesting reading the perspective published in the Washington Post by a recently returned kiwi. Less interesting was the mathematical illiteracy on the MP David Seymour who managed to ignore all medical facts while advising on how to bulk kill our citizens.
The end of partisan politics?
Throughout the world there is an increasing consensus emerging that the free market approach is failing and principled intelligent leadership from governments provide the optimum result.
Depression looms as rapidly as Covid spreads
New Zealand, like many other nations, is hurtling towards economic depression faster than Covid-19 spreads. “We are going to have a depression”. “This is like an asteroid hit the global economy”. “We can print our way of this”. Reflections on what lies ahead by Simon Louisson, Bernard Hickey and others.
Two Bubbles Bridges’ Big Day Out
Simon ‘Two Bubbles’ Bridges feels he’s entitled to flaunt the rules because he’s, ahem, essential.
Beyond mere rescue
It’s time to plan the re-launch the very idea of New Zealand.
Bill Gates – lets prevent the next inevitable epidemic!
Bill and Melinda Gates have been plowing wealth into mitigating and preventing epidemics over the last decade. Like the World Health Organisation and just about anyone with any sense of medical history, he predicted very accurately the type of epidemic we are now facing – a worldwide respiratory pandemic. He talks about the current pandemic, and how to prevent the next one.
Children: the pandemic has only just begun
I’m always intrigued at the capacity of most humans to be self-delusional in the way that they favour to believe regardless of facts. Nothing else could explain the delusional idiots like David Farrar and his mischievous minions wanting to go back to their business as usual – their ministerial scalp collection. It’d be nice if such dimwits thought and established facts before they wrote.
What not to do in a pandemic
The Trump regime has this week plunged new depths in the handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic in the United States
It’s the end of main stream media as we know it …
The Covid-19 lock down has and will tip media companies already struggling to survive into closure.
Quick Snippets
The joys of bread rising far to fast through a warm autumn night is…this post.
The kind of imagination we’re going to need
More was achieved by and for Americas throughout the Franklin D. Roosevelt era than ever before or since in American history. This may provide us with a model for how we get things back on track.
No Right Turn: A new Ministry of Works
Idiot/Savant writes: “While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in”
What about Climate Change then?
Shouldn’t this global shock from this COVID-19 virus make us all wake up to the power of collective global action on climate change?
Holding the Government to Account or Concern Trolling?
When Opposition Spokespersons behave like concern trolls, we have a problem.
CTU launches online tool for reporting bad employers
The Council of Trade Unions has launched an online tool allowing employees to log complaints against ill treatment by employers during the Covid-19 lockdown.
New Zealand Tourism after 2020
Post Covid-2019 what is going to happen to New Zealand’s tourism market?
Please don’t have to bring out your dead.
Anyone who has read even briefly into written human history is going to be aware that it is as much defined by our epidemics and pandemics as by any of our technical and societal achievements. This post is essentially a quick range over the history of pandemics and epidemics with links and some focus on COVID-19.
We are all socialists now
It seems that the pure free market approach is ill equipped to provide the world with the leadership and guidance it requires.
Roll out the plans
Fairly soon every group and their dog are going to come out with recovery plans for New Zealand. First off the block – even before we went into lockdown – is the ten point plan from Infrastructure New Zealand.
UBI Now, Please
Universal Basic Income is on the Government’s Covid-19 survival agenda. NZ needs it now, and NZ will need it tomorrow too.
This changes everything
What will our future now look like?