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6:00 am, August 21st, 2026 - 47 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
So good to see my cousins in Northland take the Ranfurly shield again, for the first time since 1978, and win against Canterbury first time since 1999. How that fine new stadium working out for ya Christchurch?
They have good conditions for their games and will return to hosting test matches.
It's all good when 5 teams have (or win) the Shield in one season.
[deleted – no link, incorrect quoting]
55 percent of people said energy issues would affect how they vote.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/personal-finance/1068718/consumers-fed-up-with-power-companies-making-billions-as-bills-rise-market-commentators-say
Follow the dividends to understand why power prices keep rising
https://b2bnews.co.nz/news/power-profits-hit-744m-as-business-bills-climb/
Which political party has a plan to significantly lower power bills the quickest?
Sounds like there would be a lot of votes for a party that had a first hundred day plan that would significantly lower power bills.
The Green's one-year (but extendable) moratorium on data centres will help to prevent further hikes in power prices by putting rules in place that force massively power hungry DC's to pay for and provide all of the power they need.
Without this, supply and demand, and our profit hungry gentailers, will cause significant power price increases.
Labour should support the Greens on this.
The Greens should go have a talk with them. Take TPM along with them.
They're building the AI data centre in Makarewa without actually knowing who is going to occupy it or how the tenant is actually going to use it:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/southland/groundwork-has-started-but-more-rocks-need-to-fall-into-place-nbvu98ku (pay-walled)
Shows a remarkable confidence that they can build it and they will come.
It is quite possible that there is no AI sharemarket bust at all.
If it takes over 1,000 litres of water to make 1 litre of milk, how many litres of water does it take to make a Teams phonecall?
I'm a pretty keen surfer..3-4 times a week. I see Sir JK is buiilding one of those awful wavepools in Dairy Flat (my old hood)… and you guessed it the water will be heated by the tacked on data centre on the side… (which came first?) and I see my relly Wayne Brown wants to beat JK to get first wave.
Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye dah dah. We are saying goodbye to so much that we had achieved post WW2. I'm thinking of a different sort of wave other than the civilised kind in a pool complex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4U1SY6fITg
First the wave, then the war. We may get to repeat this so learn the words This is how it looked early on as the brave boys of the 20th century went off personally to fight. Now drones etc, in Palestine, no; different now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4U1SY6fITg
Thinking about Palestine in passing!; a piece on Scoop gives news coverage to keep in mind.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2608/S00051/no-coming-back-from-genocide-israels-global-counter-offensive-has-begun.htm
No Coming Back From Genocide: Israel's Global Counter-Offensive Has Begun
Friday, 21 August 2026, 7:15 am
Opinion: Ramzy Baroud
And if your power bill wasn't high enough to knock you over perhaps your new water bill will
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/community/1068372/wellington-residents-march-on-parliament-in-bid-to-get-rising-water-bills-lowered
In the last 5 years (Wellington):
The water bill is a complete joke. It's linked to the Rating Value, not about the amount of water consumed or other potential expenses, like distance to the main sewer. We're a 2 people household paying more than 8 people in three flats just next door.
Another Wellingtonian looking closely at rate rises which are fudged so Council can point to a figure that masks the facts. https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=182587
Our rates are up, their salaries are up August 19, 2026 12 comments
by Geoff Palmer
My Wellington City Council rates have gone up almost 18% this year. How about yours?…
Yep. You just duplicate the full organisation structure. Instead of one CEO, we have to pay two, instead of one HR department, we get two… down to one fancy office becomes two.
I'm also sceptical a split of gentailer into Generation and Retail companies is going to reduce the electricity prices. The main profits are in generation and unless someone is tackling those profits our electricity is not getting cheaper.
We only get a couple more (lower profit) retailers, the new ones have to duplicate their CEOs and executive structure, HR department, splitting the IT etc… the existing retailers might be happy, because it's a more even playing field, but I expect higher expenses and profit margins in retail as consequence… and some consolidation to follow.
Over the last couple of years most of the additional electricity cost comes from the distributors (infrastructure between Transpower and our homes), like Wellington Electric (owned by CK Hutchison Holdings Limited located in KongKong and registered on the Cayman Islands).
I guess at some point Wellington water will also be privatised…
The National plan is for buy up of the water companies – this is the real reason the Three Waters model was attacked (the structure did not make for easy sell-off – the Maori veto).
Thus began the programme to remove the Treaty in legislation, see off the Waitangi Tribunal etc.
That Geoff Palmer piece was good, Grey. Thanks for the link.
And sadly it doesn't end there.
Now the council is wasting money figuring out how to pass commercial rates on to households
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics/621221/public-to-get-their-say-on-changes-to-wellington-rates
Thanks for sharing.
Many out there drowning in bills and want to know when the help is coming?
Meanwhile, more line charges to come
https://b2bnews.co.nz/news/lines-companies-want-32b-as-govt-targets-monopolies/
Yep. The last paragraph of 4.1.1.1 above.
Yes, billing for water seemed rushed in Wellington. Most places put the water meters in first
Tiaki Wai estimated a draft cost of $500 million to $590 million to roll out roughly 140,000 smart water meters – ouch!
On one side, our household will benefit from a water meter, initially. The there will be a phase where people try to reduce their water consumption, which is good, we shouldn't waste high quality water.
One the other hand, this will "reduce" the water bills and therefore the revenue of the water company. This will lead to higher connection / standing / daily charge, something the customers cannot avoid by saving. Just following the electricity script (example, our household):
So the consumption part of the bill is the same, the daily charge increased fourfold.
Yes, the less water used the more the bill will go up to cover the shortfall.
The more the bill goes up, the more people look to reduce their water take. And around it goes.
A water company does not primarily charge for drinking quality water used.
There is the infrastructure of the water supply and there is also waste water.
Tenants would only be billed for the water they use, landlords would be billed otherwise.
Water meters reduce the charge on landlords (as did contracted out rubbish collection – which tenants paid for).
We are charged significantly more for Use charges vs Fixed charges. Our water bill:
Looking at totals, the fixed charges make up around 18%.
It looks like Use charges are linked to the CV, while Fix charges aren't, so this would change for lower CV values (fixed charges proportionally higher).
Yes, but they only meter the water provided by water supply use.
Water meters generally charge for water in and water out.
Incoming water is billed volumetrically. Outgoing is either calculated as a percentage of your incoming or set as a fixed rate
NZAO History 2000-2026>Wellington – 'among the first of the peasantry protests in NZAO. Follow for future further stirring-features'…
Song for the moment – Water – 1957 Sons of the Pioneers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDtCa8ZgAk4
People's History Museum https://phm.org.uk › protest-and-peterloo-the-story-of-16-august-1819
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Peterloo_Massacre
It's not the water bill, yet, it's the gentrification.
"Rates refugees"
I know a few looking to leave
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361021355/fact-checking-farmer-kev-and-landlord-larry-do-opportunitys-tax-tales-stack
Tops lost a few points with me on this, algood taking a couple days to answer a question about Kevin the farmer, but it feels rushed and uninformed, not many 100ha sheep blocks out there and if Kevin does own one he'll probably be either working off farm or leasing more land .
Yup, the gentleman farmers in OP protecting their patch by ruling all rural land out of the LVT.
They knew – Meta that is.
https://youtube.com/shorts/DzhL0B2H62s?si=svxOPDip5WXepBJH
Note the heavy lifting done by the word and
The government includes two parties ACT and NZF hostile to public media and is reducing funding year by year.
The same strategy as for food in schools – make it so risible, no one cares when it ends (dies off with boomers).
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/361066369/rnz-quietly-extends-podcast-ads-it-prepares-slash-jobs
Our banking sector
Labour could regulate that that credit card rates and the NIM rate be no higher than applied in the Australian market by the bank.
It could otherwise windfall profit tax them.
A wider tax change would to have a top corporate tax rate at 33% where profits were over $500Mpa (allowing a 25% tax rate for others).
https://www.thepost.co.nz/business/361065620/its-been-parliamentary-term-complete-inaction-over-banking
The impacted corporations
If it was $B for a top rate it would only impact the 4 banks
ANZ New Zealand Banking & Finance $2.3B – $2.5B Net Profit
BNZ Banking & Finance $1.4B – $1.5B Net Profit
ASB Bank Banking & Finance $1.3B – $1.4B Net Profit
Westpac NZ Banking & Finance $1.0B – $1.1B Net Profit
Infratil Infrastructure & Energy $500M – $1.2B+ (Fluctuates via asset sales)
Fonterra Dairy Co-operative $500M – $600M+ Net Profit
One NZ Telecommunications $500M+ (Peak operating indices)
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Medical Devices $500M – $565M (In peak guidance cycles)
Thanks SPC for bank and profits info. I have missed services cut by some of the companies ie 0900 phone/bank option for quick donation giving. Also phoning up and getting balance quickly from my landline.
Barking.
/
There has never been a Pentagon spouse quite like Jennifer Hegseth.
[…]
Mrs. Hegseth was for years Mr. Hegseth’s producer at Fox News as he built a broadcast career. Now, seven years into their marriage, she is his most influential adviser and his de facto producer at the Pentagon. She has prepped him for appearances, sat in on his meetings with journalists, interviewed potential members of his staff and brainstormed ideas for the Defense Department videos he — and sometimes she — appears in.
Last year she was in a highly sensitive meeting with her husband and top British defense officials after the United States temporarily stopped sharing military intelligence with Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal first reported.
https://archive.li/QbTWL
(https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/style/jennifer-hegseth.html)
Job sharing (the alpha male acolyte of Moscow Idaho has a Mrs Gilead), if she was formally employed she would be the only DEI hire they had.
Who would have thought adults having a debate in the USA. I agree the most likely situation is, Covid19 was a lab leak. We need to be prepared for another pandemic. This is not a case of if we will see another pandemic in our life time, but a when.
It's pretty immaterial. If so, it was accidental due to poor lab management.
The real sinner was China's government. It knew it had a big bad people-killing virus loose by then, and hid the fact from other countries and the UN. But, with it being Chinese New Year, when expat workers return to meet with their families, then go back overseas, instead of shutting that right down, they allowed New Year travel to continue. They should have quarantined the returnees. They probably knew by then the virus took up to 3 weeks to show symptoms.
The first cases in Europe were spread from these Chinese workers.
In the meantime, the government, which can by law co-opt the resources of any Chinese company overseas, had anyone and everyone buying up protective medical gear through Feb and March. I posted on this in 2022, a proper article showing Chinese firms based in Australia had bought up and sent 80 tonnes back to China.
There were military games held in Wuhan October 2019.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7813667/
That's a step too far. It was a very stupid plan, if planned. Why not slowly buy up PPE over the previous 6 months, rather than rush-buy, for example?
You have to be very careful of plausible-sounding conspiracy theories. And this idea has been cycling around since the start of covid.
Again, the epidemiologists would have looked at this one. If military personnel could be identified as patient zero on their county, it would have been front-page news.
I really do not get your reply.
If the original outbreak into humans was in Wuhan, when was this?
There is the possibility of dispersal from the Wuhan Games.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369650194_Was_the_Wuhan_Military_Games_a_Covid-19_Super_Spreader_Event
A Chinese perspective on the Wuhan Games and COVID spread.
https://english.cctv.com/2021/08/13/ARTICqS2FGEnqlDUcYyOZXsr210813.shtml
An article updates the most recent and comprehensive evidence from epidemiologists, primarily about the rate of evolution of progenitor virus sequences in animal populations that are reservoirs for viruses which somtimes change just enough to jump across into other animals or humans. One study aimed to
'map the selective [evolutionary] pressures on viruses across three phases: in their animal reservoirs, along the “stem branches” immediately preceding zoonotic emergence [just before they jump to humans], and during early sustained human transmission.
'The intensity of natural selection on stem branches leading up to human emergence was indistinguishable from that within animal reservoirs. Viruses show detectable changes in selection only after sustained human-to-human transmission begins—not before.'
[Summary, the rates of small changes in virus sequence in viruses known to have jumped naturally into humans are the same as other virus variants in the animal reservoir.]
The researchers then identified different rates of sequence change when zoonotic viruses were passaged in labs, either through cell cultures, or through lab animals.
'From the evolutionary perspective, we find no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was shaped by selection in a laboratory or prolonged evolution in an intermediate host prior to its emergence.” The framework is clear: If a virus had been extensively passaged in a laboratory, the evolutionary record would show it. In SARS-CoV-2, that signal is entirely absent.'
[Summary: Covid-19 is very close to its bat population roots].
'China’s conduct before and at the outset of the pandemic was not that of a government concealing a laboratory accident. Chinese scientists sequenced SARS-CoV-2 and shared the genome with the world within weeks of the outbreak—the foundational act that made every subsequent vaccine and drug treatment possible… What China declined to do was hand over additional biosafety records and staff health data to an international body operating in a political environment in which those same records were being sought not for science but as instruments of geopolitical prosecution—to justify sanctions, economic decoupling, and military buildup explicitly demanded by the Heritage Foundation and codified into US government policy. Under those conditions, China’s decision to limit further cooperation is comprehensible as a political response to a political assault.'
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/26/fnds-m26.html
Italy was one of the very first European countries to get covid. 'The outbreak of covid-19 in Italy officially started on 31 January 2020, after two Chinese visitors staying at a central hotel in Rome tested positive for the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. They had landed at Milan… on a flight from Wuhan on 23 January…A few days before [the1st Italian person] was diagnosed, cases of an unidentified but severe pulmonary disease were noted in the same area [as him]. Furthermore, the couple from Wuhan had reportedly driven to Rome through the regions where cases emerged three weeks later. It’s epidemiologically possible that either of them could have been patient 0. In which case, a couple of visitors flying from the primary origin of the disease are the most sensible explanation for the growing outbreak of covid-19 in Italy."
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m799
Hay spc why do you have fonterra in the mix , ?
Haha twig I’m a shepherd solo dad living on the edge of financial failure, ( 20 years drunk back in the day,) been called lots of things but gentle man farmer is a new one
A top rate of tax of 33% at $500M taxable profit would also catch 4 New Zealand corporates as well, one at a $B only the 4 Australian banks.