@Frank said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@No-Quarter said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

So now that I've had time to reflect on this, I'm even more angry at the government.

They took 100% of our rights away for more than a month while they implemented the most draconian lockdown in the world. We all went along with it for the greater good, and we got rid of Covid altogether.

And for what? If the virus spreads again, and based on what we are seeing it seems almost inevitable that it will, what then? We can't go back into lockdown. There was debate about whether the cure was worse than the disease with the first one, if we do it again that will almost certainly be the case.

So what was that lockdown for? What was their long term plan? Close the borders until an unlikely vaccine is created? But then if that was the plan, why are they granting exemptions when it only takes one person to spread it far and wide again?

Or are these politicians so hopelessly out of touch that they think they can just do the lockdown again if need be?

I don't see anything coherent around what our long term plan is for this.

Wonder what Baron is thinking?
Can we let him back on for one day just to read the blistering critique?

He wasn't banned, it was self isolation.

Meanwhile in Brazil.

“The better team” never loses a game 19 - 3.

Worth a try

I'm an old fashioned git too.

Useful or not as a rule, I suppose it does get kids used to following appearance rules for when they matter later in life. Be it hi-vis vests, or realising that facial tattoo's are fine so long as you don't then expect to work for Emirates, etc etc. I guess I'm also a grumpy old git who gets fed up of all such media stories trying to fuel outrage on relatively trivial matters...

Today was always going to be the happy/sad day of lockdown for me.

Happy: today is Mum's 80th birthday!
Sad: her rest home is only 1.5km away, but it may as well be on the moon for all the good that is at the moment.

The very very slight silver lining of Alzheimer's is that covid-19 is mostly a background thing on the news to her, and she's not worried about it at all.

Work has been busy in lockdown, which has certainly made the time fly. The downside is that there are people out there in some pretty difficult situations, and where there are answers for them - the answers often aren't happy ones.

Vaea Fifita: the Akira Ioane that they do pick...

@ACT-Crusader - Weka was one of the Thames Valley Mafia along with @Fonzie and Bart, but we co-opted them in as Bay fans . @aucklandwarlord was also on the terraces at Eden Park on a certain day that we might have mentioned once or twice. @King-Goober-XL was another regular Bay fan around that time.

In 2004 @bayimports finally got to (mostly) bury the memories - and end of game footage of him - from the stands at Eden Park in 1996...

Unlike Steve Braunias with his ongoing 'Secret Diary' series, @JP & I eventually figured out that there's only so many Day in the Life satires that you can write before you start repeating the same gags in a different guise. Think we did either five or six of them in the end - they were all a huge amount of fun to write - with plenty of stifled laughs at work as iterative e-mail versions were sent back and forth. The one for Phooey included a couple of local knowledge lines about the Hong Kong rugby scene from @BartMan - it was the first one we did and the content flowed quickly!

Mountie @brain-man made a few Bay related posts from London in the mid 2000's but was sadly lost to a car accident on the Kaimai ranges in 2009. For those in Hamilton there's a memorial bench dedicated to him outside College Hall on the Waikato Uni campus: https://www.wu.ac.nz/fmd/memorial_trees_plaques.shtml - Brains was a good keen Varsity man and an absolutely top bloke.

"Varsity W.U.R.F.C. Eat, Laugh, Drink, Play, Nude. In loving memory of Varsity Legend Matt 'Brains' Goodlet"

There's an impressive army of vehement Facebook posters who would have completely locked down the NZ border to everyone four weeks ago.

I'm not sure how they found to time to study medicine alongside their qualifications in volcanology and mine re-entry, but they've found a way....

'He doesn't play for the Crusaders?'

"Saving the furniture" gets unintentionally easier for National - there won't be many left to save at this rate.

@taniwharugby by some pretty severe city level lockdowns by all accounts.

@voodoo rightly or wrongly that seems to be Victoria's approach too. Not sure about the others.

No idea what the end game is, but some tough decisions lie ahead...

I think there's an assumption that despite whatever processes, people will be people and the virus may be back, e.g.: (https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/next-steps-covid-response)

We only need to look to Victoria, New South Wales, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea to see examples of other places that like us had the virus under control at a point in time only to see it emerge again.

This does not mean anyone has failed- it means perfection in the response to a virus, and a pandemic, is just not possible. That is certainly the case as we see this pandemic continue to grow.

Hurry up with that vaccine, rapid test, magic antiviral, or whatever...

Collins says the club’s hierarchy remains “100 percent behind this coaching and playing group’’.

Should've gone to Specsavers.

@Kiwiwomble said in Chiefs v Highlanders:

@Duluth its not unreasonable, we only just scrapped past at home and we've had a few injuries since then

It is unreasonable on Chiefs form since

Bunter as deputy... interesting.

National is probably at the saving the furniture stage, Collins might do that to a degree.

@dogmeat said in NZ Politics:

He did look all at sea though almost from Day 1. Job was clearly much harder than he expected it to be. Corporate world clearly wasn't preparation for the death stare politicking no matter what Winnie says

I have a half baked theory that 2020 has taken a lot more of out of some people than they realise, and when they go to step up a few gears all of a sudden they can't quite do it the way that they once would have. Todd isn't the only one I've seen along those (very broad) lines.

@gt12 Interesting paragraph from Audrey Young this morning:

Just how bad it had got is evident in the press statement saying continuing in the job has "become untenable from a health perspective".

The words "mental health" have not been used but Muller has had a breakdown, to the extent that he was unable to even make the emergency teleconference caucus call this morning to tender his resignation.

@taniwharugby said in NZ Politics:

Todd is a good man, unlike most of his colleagues he does have commercial experience, and he will bounce back.

From the few times that I've met Todd, I reckon Winston's line here is on the mark.

For anything else, he was a better option than Simon.