brrrrrrr

I was struck by just how many full-time people it took to make the content. Amazing that it kept going for so long.

My TV isn't hooked up to anything that would make that work.

Watching the last broadcast and being instantly reminded of why I haven't watched traditional media TV in years:

• irritating account signup process
• unskippable ad breaks, my god, the horror
• overly matey fake rapport between presenters
• overly political reporters
• unskippable unpleasant pieces about tragedies, violent attacks, missing persons
• unskippable basic-bitch surface-level reporting of US politics

Amazing to think previous generations are still getting large chunks of info through these old school channels

I have a different take: you are the problem here.

You agreed to take care of a teenager, and when they do normal teenage things (not coming home on time, not telling you everything) your response was to:

• Ground the kid with no electronic devices for multiple weeks (that's insane in 2024)
• Apparently ask the school to search their bag regularly (why?? for what??)
• Called the police on them multiple times, because they were ... breaking things in their own room? You describe being sworn at, but that's not enough reason to call the cops.
• Dragged them off to hospital, counsellors, etc (to diagnose them with what? medicate them with what? to what end?)

By your own admission this kid wasn't doing anything seriously wrong before this all kicked off - "no gang involvement, no drugs, alcohol, or anything illegal happening". The only thing you mention is that they ran away, because they didn't like your rules. This is a huge red flag. Kids don't run away from a loving home where they feel understood.

The problem here is your deteriorating relationship with this kid. They are a normal teenager doing normal teenage things. I get it, it's a tough time. But your heavy-handed approach is clearly making things worse. You need to be more empathetic to your kid, or this is just going to get worse and worse.

Also, NEVER call the cops on your own child. It can get them killed. This is deadly serious.

So, uh. I would be getting pretty ansty after a month of no electronic devices.

Trolley buses are attractive from an environmental POV but the council's decision made sense when looked at from the bus network management POV. A few things to consider:

• Overhead wires cannot cover the entire city / every route, which means a mix of diesel and trolley buses is required.

• Drivers needed specific training for the trolley buses, which meant increased cost and less flexibility in scheduling

• Only 12% of the bus route network was covered by wires, so any increased maintenance costs to keep such a small section of the network operating was difficult to justify.

• (The flip side of that is because the trolleybuses were a relatively small proportion of the bus network, scrapping them and moving to modern diesels meant a relatively small increase in emissions.)

• The wires made the network inflexible - it was expensive to add or change routes, and there more difficulties, eg the need to schedule diesel buses when roadworks are on wired routes.

• Also, the wires were ugly! Visual pollution throughout the city. The streetscape is much nicer without them.

• Overhead wire maintenance was costly and complex because, of course, all the wires were located over streets full of other vehicles and pedestrians.

With these facts in mind, hopefully we can have a more nuanced view of why the trolleybuses were scrapped.

I always assumed he was paid to do it

Yeah, I figure he is a paid Labour shill, likely working in Hipkins' office.

When are we going to have a population plan?

Dare I ask what you have in mind when you say this?

This from the same guy who blocked the removal of heritage status from Wellingtons Gordan Wilson Flats after the council voted to get rid of it.

Bishop is in favour of removing heritage status, but he was hamstrung by legal requirements around evidence supporting the removal of heritage status, which the Council did not provide:

The Council also asked me to remove ten buildings from the schedule of heritage buildings in the District Plan. However, the question of whether a building should be on the heritage schedule is an evidential one. In the original District Plan that was notified for public consultation, the Council’s position was that the ten buildings in question should be on the heritage schedule. The Council’s own heritage expert and planning officer supported this and provided evidence to this effect to the Hearings Panel. The Hearings Panel therefore recommended the ten buildings be listed or retained on the heritage schedule.

The Council has not pointed to any evidence to support its reasons for rejecting the Hearing Panel’s recommendations. No expert heritage evidence was lodged by buildings owners.

Given the evidence before me, and without the ability to seek further evidence, I have therefore agreed with the recommendations of the Hearings Panel in relation to the ten heritage buildings.

That said, I understand the Council’s position regarding the ten buildings and I have received separate correspondence from the Mayor around making it easier to delist heritage buildings. I have already asked for advice on this matter and I look forward to conversations with her and other councils regarding the issue of heritage and how it impedes development.

Too much rental housing? That's what we call a champagne problem, my friend.

A different perspective: public healthcare systems are a financial black hole that absorbs all the money you have available to shovel into it, and still looks for more. There is no real solution.

The only apparent alternative is US-style health insurance, which sees them spending even more than we do for broadly similar health outcomes, with horrible side-effects like medical bankruptcy and struggling to leave an unpleasant job because your family needs the health insurance it provides.

NACT are underfunding healthcare

If a multi-billion dollar increase is underfunding, I wonder how we can ever afford to fund it properly:

Budget 2024 invests $8.15 billion extra operating and capital funding in health services

Surely this is a direct result of free market ideology?

The NZ healthcare system (in terms of GPs, hospitals, etc) is so far removed from being a free market that your comment doesn't really make sense. It's taxpayer-funded, has minimal fees for users, is highly regulated by the Ministry of Health and controlled via Health NZ, etc. Training for doctors and nurses is tightly controlled by the government, and on and on.

If the NZ public health system sucks, it sucks because the NZ government has mismanaged it. We can't blame any failings here on the free market.

Absolutely no way this will backfire spectacularly as it has overseas, forcing yet another embarrassing about-face from National.

Good to see ACT taking a stand against this on principle.

I mean presumably Newshub and other large traditional media companies want government subsidies, so if ACT takes a position against such a subsidy, isn't that evidence that ACT isn't taking bribes from big media?

The only people I know who are putting forward these claims, are colonizers ... or hippies

Here's an example of 'in tune with nature' claims published in the NZ-government-funded Te Ara encyclopedia:

In Māori culture, humans are seen as deeply connected to the land and to the natural world. ... Humans and the land are seen as one, and people are not superior to nature. The natural world is able to ‘speak’ to humans and give them knowledge and understanding. Human life is about aligning oneself with the natural world.

Labour made changes which required local govt to allow increased density, but it takes years to build enough new housing to see any effects on house prices.

The COVID money printer, on the other hand, had a pretty much immediate effect on house prices:

Grant Robertson and the Government were warned in January 2020 that there was a ‘significant’ risk Reserve Bank money printing would push up house prices and deepen inequality.

Oh shit, called it !

Why are you asking us? This is what your lawyer is for.

a customer came back to return a packet that was full of maggots

Yeah, nah. At fridge temperatures fly eggs shouldn't hatch for several days, if at all. The only way the packet could be 'full of maggots' is if it was left out of the fridge for an extended period of time.

From what I remember, which is hazy, it wasn't that long ago that they were attempting to steal the private data of Mâori around the country without those people being alerted to it and without their consent.

You might be thinking of this

In 2021 Tamihere desperately wanted contact information for Maori enrolled in the healthcare system to promote COVID vaccinations, and threatened the MoH with legal action if they did not hand it over.

The Waipareira trust already had access to some of that data through their health contracts. I wonder if any of those people ended up in the TPM electioneering database?

Why?

Boy, that numbered list under 'What This Means for You' just screams 'written by ChatGPT'.