Deeply reassuring that our response to the worst flu season in a decade, supported by telling kids to go to school when sick, $30 vaccines, no clean air, chronic (and very deliberate) underfunding and under resourcing of the health system, is a collective shrug while these headlines keep occuring 👇

Middlemore Hospital swamped in 'appalling' late-night surge of patients

Staff say flu-related demand left Middlemore Hospital's ED under pressure.

nzherald.co.nz

Or historians, apparently! Waiting time for Archives records requests has already gone from a couple of hours pre-COVID to 2 or 3 days. I don't know how the staff are going to cope with this gutting. RIP the remnants of the digitisation programme and I expect further reduced reading room hours.

FWIW, since reviews for a prominent Theoretical CS conference are now out: if your contribution to a PC is a bunch of verbatim AI-generated reviews and basically nothing else, I believe you should never be invited to a Program Committee again. This isn't even about AI, this is about doing your job.

RBNZ hikes OCR again, as most expected, & as the NZ-invented inflation-targeting model forces it too. But it will scar our jobless youth even more, curb investment & worsen capital cost inflation. #nzpol thekaka.substack.com/p/an-unfair-...

An unfair, unnecessary & counterproductive rate hike that exposes NZ’s broken economic model

RBNZ hikes OCR again, as most expected, & as the NZ-invented inflation-targeting model forces it too. But it will scar our jobless youth even more, curb investment & worsen capital cost inflation.

thekaka.substack.com

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Freelancers are getting buried with ‘soulless’ AI slop cleanup: ‘It’s a shame we need to do it’

As more companies turn to AI, they’re hiring freelancers to clean up its mistakes rather than create original work

theguardian.com

👀😂😉

…now add in the $1.4bn the govt plans to magic up to backfill their watering down of fuel taxes… …and that’s $4.8bn of our collective wealth spent on making driving easier, THIS YEAR. Dunno about you guys, but I would *love* a bit more scrutiny on this direction of travel? bsky.app/profile/nzdo...

Jolisa Gracewood@nzdodo.bsky.social · 2d ago

The heart of this column makes two tidy points: 1) if govt *can* rustle up $1.4bn to lure votes, it should invest that in FAR more vital things (hospitals/childcare/etc)... 2) ...which are WAY more collectively valuable than a pack of gum each. That's how tax works! www.stuff.co.nz/politics/361...

Schrödinger's investor class; can't force them to stay, can't tax them or they will leave

Mountain Tui@mountaintui.bsky.social · 2d ago

Erica Stanford says we shouldn't "force" wealthy immigrants to live in NZ for any length of time. But they will be able to vote, buy houses and land, and run our businesses #nzpol #newzealand #kiwi

Wealthy "immigrants" pay the Nats and ACT's bills, so of course they are getting what they asked for here.

Mountain Tui@mountaintui.bsky.social · 2d ago

Erica Stanford says we shouldn't "force" wealthy immigrants to live in NZ for any length of time. But they will be able to vote, buy houses and land, and run our businesses #nzpol #newzealand #kiwi

It's hard to fight for a sustainable planet when you're fighting day after day to sustain YOURSELF. Meanwhile, billionaires profit from climate destruction. Economic security and wealth taxes are key to climate strategy. UBI and M4A would give people more freedom to think and act on climate change.

Yup

Sony says "reasonable consumers" know they don’t own the digital PlayStation games they buy. It argues that it's "not plausible" to suggest that when they buy a digital game they actually believe they're "obtaining ownership" of it. www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sony-sa...

Sony says ‘reasonable consumers’ know they don’t own the digital games they buy | VGC

It’s “not plausible” to suggest people believe they’re “obtaining ownership”…

videogameschronicle.com

The cost of the PPP Warkworth boondoggle would have; - gold plated iRex and battery electric ferries - full Dunedin Hospital build - fed every schoolkid around the country for a decade - funded the flu jabs for U-12s - half price public transport for U25's AND HAVE WALKING AROUND MONEY SPARE

Wealthy people can donate $100k to ACT but as soon as you ask them to pay taxes they’re like WE ARE NOT ACTUALLY RICH OUR ASSETS ARE TIED UP IN SHARES. Sure Jan

Shocking. "The same money would fund the recently scrapped Marsden research fund ($77m) for 121 years, for example, or any number of hospitals, schools, resilience projects, repairs for damage from weather events. New Zealanders are locked into spending billions on one road" #nzpol

Warkworth to Te Hana deal to cost us over $9,000,000,000? - Greater Auckland

A few weeks ago, I asked This differs from the ‘nominal value’, aka the amount of money that is actually paid (without adjusting for change in value due to inflation). In the MCERT documents, the brea...

greaterauckland.org.nz

'Fair' RUCs are many years away until then petrol will be getting subsidies from EV drivers www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

'Hugely complex': Road user charge law change could be years away - AA

The Automobile Association says a "complex" law change that would see petrol taxes replaced and all vehicles charged for the distance they drive is years away.

rnz.co.nz

"NZer" in the news...good run down of his links to monsters and his own morally dubious companies, though: www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

British Museum hosted Palantir founder Peter Thiel in private viewing of Bayeux tapestry

Concern among staff that fragile artwork’s scarce ‘light hours’ given to someone with no known interest in museum

theguardian.com

At last a different plan: "He will use the statement to put public control of services at the heart of his priorities for the coming months, sources told the Guardian, saying he would make the case that it would unlock investment, jobs and growth." www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Burnham to tell Commons more public ownership is only way to grow UK economy

Exclusive: Prime minister wants to ‘bring back hope’ by tackling cost of living as MPs call for electoral reform

theguardian.com

The real puzzler is that even the one job most laypeople concede "Okay, it's good at that" - software development - turns out not to be true in most cases. The average dev team is taking longer to ship worse software using it, and there's no credible evidence of real returns.

Finland: eight years running as #1 on the World Happiness Report. Top income tax rate 57%. Tax-to-GDP 42%. New Zealand: not in the top ten. Top rate 39%. Tax-to-GDP below the OECD average. The high-taxes-hurt pitch keeps arguing with the countries beating us. #nzpol

Advice from the world's happiest country, as NZ misses top 10

Don't complain too much, mind your own business and be happy about it.

rnz.co.nz

1. Because they dont use public transport and hate those that do 2. Because EVs reduce fuel use, they hate that Its almost like they want us to continue to use fossil fuels for as long as possible!

Peter Thiel is getting a very cold reception outside his new mansion in the exclusive Barrio Parque neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Argentinians are chanting: “Out, out, Peter out.”

I think it's a fantastic explanation, but it misses the key point: This isn't the government being 'bad with money.' This is the government knowingly stealing from the public in order to give money to their mates, under the excuse of brutalising kids who happened largely not to be white. #nzpol

@lindaosborn.bsky.social · 4d ago

Craig Renney explaining how Nats and crew are very bad with money.

FUCK YEAH This is great, especially as Miss NORMAL Sr is a second year nursing student😉 #nzpol

Labour promises guaranteed jobs for every nursing graduate if elected

The Labour Party is promising a job to every resident that graduates with a nursing qualification in New Zealand.

stuff.co.nz

Nats are a one trick pony - tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts 45 years of tax cuts have brought us: ~ record homelessness ~ extreme youth unemployment ~ elderly poverty deciding heating over eating ~ working poor class ~ exacerbated climate destruction If it was going to work it would be by now #NZpol

The Herald announce proudly that they are going to start publishing big scary debt numbers as we head into the election. Way to go guys. I suspect that Liam is embarrassed by the crude summation, but, that doesn't excuse some of the reckons in this article, Liam! Let's get stuck in... [🧵 1/n]

Seymour goes against expert advice and evidence to create potential mass disability events, undermining the public school and health systems -then criminalises parents who try and keep their children safe with authoritarian attendance rules. #NZPol www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/educati... #NZPol

'Too sick to learn': Schools warn parents to keep kids home as viruses surge

Cost-of-living pressures are forcing parents to send sick children to school because they can’t afford time off work as a wave of winter illnesses grips th

newstalkzb.co.nz

Andrew Dickson@andrewdickson13.bsky.social · 4d ago

In July Seymour celebrated the best Term 2 attendance since 2016. In August, NZ hit its worst flu outbreak in a decade. Severe respiratory illness in Auckland at the highest level since surveillance began. St John's busiest day in history. These facts are related. 5/

'Wages caused inflation' , this 2024-26 Wages 4.4% Rates 22% Elec 21% Fuel 17% Health ins 40% House ins 9% Mince 28% Butter 41% Milk 26% Bread 67% So perhaps its time to re-evaluate that first statement .. www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3610...

Wages rose 4.4%. Look what happened to the cost of actually living

Mince, milk, butter, power and rates have all climbed much faster than wages over the past two years.

stuff.co.nz

A multi-millionaire on a $520k salary (plus perks) sanctimoniously telling parents on $67k that they have to financially support adult children who cannot find work, thanks to the youth unemployment crisis his government created - so infuriating. I couldn't hate him more #nzpol

Watch: Christopher Luxon defends cuts to benefits for youth

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has defended tightening eligibility for jobseekers benefits for young people and encouraged them to do "whatever it takes" to get a job.

rnz.co.nz

One of the things I find most frustrating about modern politics, after the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, is that it's not as if we've forgotten what came before. We can literally see what Government was able to achieve previously. It's still visible all around us!