Checkpoint shroud-waving over Queensland politics?

Today’s Checkpoint descended into shroud-waving in the case of a New South Wales family not able to visit their dying father in Queensland because of the strict border closure. As our health officials note, “bereavement issues” are where most care is needed to prevent the virus spread.

Daily review 10/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

Covid, the US President and the Evangelical churches

There has been disturbing local news that some members of a local evangelical church, influenced by American equivalents, refused to accept the threat posed by the virus. And in America a new book from Bob Woodward suggests strongly that Donald Trump knew how big a threat Covid would be but chose for political reasons to downplay the risk.

Open mike 10/09/2020

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Daily review 09/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

Labour announces tax policies

Labour and the Greens have both recently announced taxation policies.  Meanwhile there is no sign of any fiscal policy or alternative budget from National.

Open mike 09/09/2020

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Daily review 08/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

Will NZ First make it back into Parliament?

One of the most interesting questions about the current election campaign is will New Zealand First make it back into Parliament after the election, with polling and a slew of not dissimilar parties on the right suggesting that Winston’s time may be up.

Open mike 08/09/2020

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Daily review 07/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

Open mike 07/09/2020

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Assange’s torture and the death of journalism

On the eve of Assange’s extradition hearing in London, award-winning freelancer Jonathan Cook has written a scathing indictment of corporate journalism’s collusion in ignoring his official torture. I posted an example of that here last year, where Richard Harman denied Assange was a journalist at a panel convened at Parliament by the British High Commissioner.

Open mike 06/09/2020

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Labour’s two tier welfare plans

As the covid crisis deepens Labour appear to be committed to entrenching the underclass and giving a helping hand to the middle class.

Will our cities revive?

Our cities are the nation’s lungs; they recycle and accelerate external goods and transform them internally into faster circulation. Auckland and Christchurch have had tens of billions invested in them over successive local and central governments, but has this improved our strength or wealth as a country at all?

Open mike 05/09/2020

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Daily review 04/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

“Reds under the Bed”.

Everyone has recently had an education on  “Socialism” working in practice.

And a graphic illustration of the shortcomings, of under regulated “Free market” Capitalism, Globalism, tax cuts for the rich, and the mania for monetising everything in sight, and “running it like a business”.

Will Jacinda Ardern meet her promise to transform?

Neoliberalism has run its course and displayed its profound inability to address inequality issues. It makes the poor get ever poorer while the affluent top 10% ticks of society get bloated and increasingly insufferable on untaxed capital gains. In 2017 Jacinda Ardern set a goal of bringing all children out of poverty within six years. So how is that going? And what are the next steps?

Open mike 04/09/2020

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Daily review 03/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

Hitting the political spot

Markey accomplished what no Democrat or Republican had ever done: He defeated a Kennedy in Massachusetts.

What are the lessons here for lefties in New Zealand?

Open mike 03/09/2020

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Daily review 02/09/2020

Daily review is also your post. This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

The background traffic is loud.

Along with the grey weather, the weather around our local net is downright annoying at present. There are a massive increase in attempts to break into this site via backend systems and brute force front-end logins, a surge in scans from the search engine spider bots, and a lot of requests for putting up paid content. All of which have been ignored or dealt with. Good thing that we aren’t a target like the NZX, banks, mainstream media and the MetService are. 

The Herald’s idea of balance

The Herald yesterday posted a story suggesting that Aucklanders were split over the second lockdown when the actual reality was the vast majority were supportive.  And a subsequent article pointing out how positive the result was does not clear the perception of negative bias.

Open mike 02/09/2020

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