@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@Godder said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@Paekakboyz said in Coronavirus - Overall:

@MajorRage have we seen the nz govt say it's an eradication goal? I haven't caught that anywhere as yet.

I think the NZ goal is elimination, not eradication, as people will still travel here with it from time to time (and be quarantined on arrival).

Those 2 words are synonyms, I even went to the dictionary to check.
Your post sounds like govt PR spin. Swap elimination with eradication in your sentence and vice versa and nothing changes.

In epidemiology, eliminate means to have no cases in a region, and eradicate means to have no cases anywhere in the world.

An example of a disease which NZ has eliminated is rabies - can't get it here other than from overseas sources, but obviously it's still around in other parts of the world.

Smallpox is the only disease to be eradicated under the epidemiological definition.

No spin, just science.

Bowls reminds me of an awful joke... In rugby, they have referees. In cricket, they have umpires. What do they have in bowls?

Cereal...

I must say they seem extremely sorry they got caught.

We had an accident 15 years ago, but unfortunately he was stillborn. We were still young and poor, so figured we'd stick with the plan to build a life (house, careers etc) and continued with contraception.

We stopped the contraception after we bought our house in 2013, but no luck since. We're both 40 now, so the odds are pretty low at this stage. Haven't really discussed adoption, but our lives are pretty good without kids and we have plenty of nieces and nephews...

@gt12 said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

We got my parents' done today, but it was a bit ridiculous, as each person needs their own email address.

My parents don't have a separate email address and I imagine many country couples don't.

A bit annoying to have to start them a new gmail just for that.

There are a few options with Gmail without making new accounts - this might be useful for others with older family in this boat. Gmail doesn't differentiate addresses with and without full stops (.) e.g. firstnamelastname@gmail.com and firstname.lastname@gmail.com will both go to the same mailbox. Another option is to add + and another word e.g. name+first@gmail.com and name+last@gmail.com will both go to the name@gmail.com inbox.

Not sure if this is of interest to anyone, and it's quite long, so I apologise in advance, but incoming wall of text about the US judicial system...

@Winger It's not just a matter of there being or not being some evidence of irregularities or imperfect conduct of aspects of election law such as observers/scrutineers, or even actual fraud.

The courts operate on the fundamental legal concepts that any issues raised have to be actionable under the law, have to be proven to a relevant legal standard by sufficient admissible evidence, have to be material to the outcome, and the damages/relief sought and/or awarded has to be proportionate.

The courts didn't always say there was no evidence at all or no issues. Rather the cases fell short for a variety of reasons based on those concepts, from some issues not actually being legally actionable (i.e. not unlawful or not raised by anyone actually affected - this is referred to as 'standing'), or insufficient evidence presented to meet the legal standard, or issues with the evidence itself leading to it being discounted (this is referred to as 'admissibility'), or weren't material to the outcome e.g. the issue related to 10 or even 100 votes but the margins were hundreds of thousands, or the relief sought was wildly disproportionate e.g. 1 person wasn't offered a chance to 'cure' their vote, so the whole county's votes should be discounted (the court offered them the opportunity to cure their vote instead, which seems relevant and proportionate relief), or all parties' observers weren't present for every minute of every count, so the whole state's electoral votes should be discarded.

US legal precedent is that voting is serious business, and that disenfranchising anyone requires excellent legal reasons. This pertains to all of the above, but particularly that judges consider that only massive, widespread fraud is sufficient reason to overturn large numbers of ballots or a state's electoral college votes, and that the evidentiary standard for such action is high. Coupled with materiality considerations, court cases are very unlikely to be successful in these. This approach was reflected in Pence's speech to reopen the Senate when he said (paraphrased) that it was not his place as 1 person to ignore the votes of millions.

For the sake of completeness, I note that affidavits are evidence but typically require corroborating evidence to get further than just lodging a court case. Videos can be evidence, but because altering videos is so easy, they typically require additional technical information to show that they are genuine. I won't write more about evidentiary standards as that is an essay-length topic by itself, and I have written quite enough.

I'm sure many Trump supporters genuinely believe in good faith that the case is completely proven, but as the outcomes of dozens of court cases show, it wasn't, and while I don't expect the average voter to understand the legal ins and outs of legal challenges, especially in elections, party lawyers and experienced politicians should know at least the basics. These cases went nowhere (some judges were even quite sharp in their language in some decisions), so I conclude that there was a lot of bad faith nonsense going on from people who should know better. This is particularly borne out by the challenges not being raised at the time laws were passed, or not centring around the states with the same issues (such as mail-in voting), but waiting till after the election and only filing in states where the Trump lost.

@kirwan said in NZ Politics:

Indefensible in short.

It's not entirely unknown to requisition supplies in times of emergency - I certainly remember requisitions following the Canterbury earthquakes by Civil Defence, and the USA has legislation for war time which it was using for Covid. That said, this smacks of trying to salvage a terrible decision after the realisation dawned of how terrible it actually was.

Here are a few highlights of Labour's term(s) to date - I'm sure some of these aren't popular here, but they did get done:

• Cancelled National Parties tax bracket moves and increased Working for Families and Accommodation Supplements substantially

• Added a new tax bracket for the very high income earners

• Bright line test extended

• Property losses ringfenced

• Property interest deduction reduced

• Overseas investment in property mostly banned

• Increased benefit rates by the most seen in a generation (still work to do of course)

• Indexed benefits to average wage increases rather than CPI

• Introduced Winter Energy Payment

• Free lunches in schools

• Increased Student Allowances

• Fees free scheme (1st year at tertiary institutes, free apprenticeships)

• Restored adult night class funding

• Kainga Ora building more than 2,000 houses/year

• Improved tenancy legislation by eliminating no-fault terminations by landlords

• Credit contract reform

• Increased minimum wage to $20

• Extended paid parental leave to 26 weeks (from 18)

• Increased sick leave to 10 days p.a.

• Matariki

• Improved Employment Relations Act – union delegates now specifically protected, collective agreements must include pay, 90 day trial removed for medium and large employers, breaks reinstated

• Pay equity legislation and settlements e.g. social workers, admin workers, teacher aides, nurses and ECE teachers coming, others in the pipelines

• Feebates for electric cars

• Reduction in prisoner numbers by over 15%

• Restored voting rights for prisoners with less than 3 year sentences (I think that's a net positive, but acknowledge that others will disagree)

That's some off the top of my head, there are others. For all the Covid doom and gloom (and there is plenty of weakness to judge them harshly on), we have close to the lowest Covid death rate in the world and a negative excess mortality rate, so they must have got something right somewhere.

I'm not sure how to handle the public service being slow and bureaucratic - that's what they do, but it's also a feature of large organisations generally, it's not unique to government departments. There's something about large numbers of people that creates annoyingly large amounts of middle management of one sort or another that just turns processes into molasses. Any attempts to cull managers always seem to result in reviews later which create more management positions...

@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Hooroo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Hooroo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Baron-Silas-Greenback said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@voodoo said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Godder would personally make me very happy too!!!

How would that happen? The govt has put us (at great cost) on the road to total elimination of the virus, unless Aus can do the same then we cannot let them i without 14 day quarantine. We have been told repeatedly the dangers of exponential growth, now the govt is going to pay a price for the line of scare mongering.
By taking this path when nobody else has, then we have no option but to remain isolated as the rest of the world forms its own networks.

I am curious as to your thoughts on how the New Zealand economy is going to be different given everything that is happening in the world despite our lockdown. Do you think the New Zealand economy would be significantly different had we done it under your thought process?

Yes.

Significantly? I don’t. Somewhat? Yes.

Cool you don't think having all businesses open and tourist ventures helped would significantly change the economy. Ok

Tourism was dead in the water even if we did nothing - nobody is coming here for a holiday while Coronavirus is rampant, because everywhere else is doing distancing and lockdowns and quarantines. Who would come here for a holiday when they have to pay 2-3 times as much for a seat to have distance on the plane because it's required by their home country anyway, and then sit in quarantine for 2 weeks on arrival back home? Flights and airlines have stopped operating. Airlines are insolvent and collapsing all around the world.

Overseas trips are among the first luxuries to be cut by people who have lost jobs or have uncertainty about their future prospects and there's a whole lot of that now.

Domestic tourism is not happening in any sort of volume either, even without a lockdown - too much fear and uncertainty.

12% of the economy, 13% of our jobs, mostly gone overnight (we'll keep some for domestic tourism). Required isolation and border controls sped it up a bit, but even without those, it was going to be a quick end.

Related but separate from tourism, domestic business travel (and associated accommodation/restaurants) is taking a huge dive - people discovered online meetings long before we reached level 4 (my employer worked that out before levels were instituted). It could be years before that level of travel is back, if ever. Likewise, if working from home becomes a lot more prevalent, how much does leasing of commercial office space reduce over time?

This is all relatively direct spending. What about indirect spending? Conservatively, we have already wiped 10% off GDP and increased unemployment to 10% (from 4%), and probably increased underutilisation to 15% (from 10%). GDP is simply a measure of spending in the economy, and if $31 billion didn't get earned or spent, that's a lot of money not available to buy a coffee with, to go out for dinner, to buy clothing, get a haircut (people still get haircuts, but fewer in a year). It's not going to be essential spending that gets cut, it's the discretionary spending.

If we just opted for social distancing and quarantining/isolation for border arrivals instead of lockdown, how many small businesses go to the wall in a year anyway because their income is down 20-30% and falling with no way to make it viable because their bank and landlord won't assist them? How many business owners increase their hours to 70-80 per week in an unsustainable and ultimately futile attempt to make it work? How many broken marriages, mental breakdowns, suicides do we get in that pathway? Is it more or less than the current pathway? Do we get worse or better outcomes from going tough now and soft later, or from going softer now but tougher for longer?

The premise of the current plan is that the total pain will be less if we get it done quickly than if we drag it out, especially because government can provide a lot more support in a short space of time than over a longer time frame.

We should see the next part of the government's financial support package this week - our current support is a good start, but hopefully this week provides a lot more support for small businesses especially as they need it.

Side note - a lot of owners of small businesses are in personal financial trouble because of personal guarantees. One of the reasons for companies as a legal entity was limited liability, but personal guarantees have made that a lot less of a reality. I would like to see personal guarantees banned to make limited liability companies actually limited liability, or if that isn't done, at least make them void if the failure was due to the pandemic (similar to the safe harbour announced for trading while insolvent if the insolvency is principally due to the pandemic). If someone added mortgages on residential property to fund business, I wouldn't be upset about that either...

Got home safely, so that's good.

I hope we don't over or under react. I wouldn't deport the terrorist any time soon - Aussie won't be able to imprison him so he'll just walk. He might get life without parole - if there was ever a case for it, this is it.

@canefan said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@godder said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

13 cases today, all in Auckland, hospitalisation, ICU and ventilator numbers have dropped.

250,000 Pfizer doses en route from Spain, should arrive in Auckland tomorrow morning, bigger deal in the works, hoping to announce shortly.

Vamos!

Apparently nobody expected the Spanish Requisition...

Merry Christmas to everyone, hope the holiday season is equally epic and relaxing!

@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:

@godder said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:

@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:

@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?

Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.

In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers,

Isn’t it possible that admitting transwomen could make that bad situation worse?Is it possible that any girl who is uneasy about their presence would opt not to make a scene and risk social ostracism and just drop out of sport? Has any independent research been done on the relative increase in trans participation vs a potential reduction in girls’ participation, or is even the suggestion that it is possible in itself transphobic?

mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople.

That may be true. But every action has a price. I just wonder if that price has been fully and honestly assessed in this case. Does a cis 12 year old’s mental and physical health matter?

Sport NZ research on 12-17 year-olds dropping out of sport shows that both boys and girls drop out as they get older, and that girls drop out at a higher rate than boys. That research provides a few main reasons, being time commitments (that's a big one), over-emphasis on competition and lack of social and participatory options (these two points are obviously linked), body image (uniforms have also been mentioned in other research as girls with poor body images are not keen to play in skimpy sports uniforms, and white pants/shorts/skirts are also highly unpopular). Activities like running and dancing are popular instead of competitive sport, but there is still an overall reduction in sport and physical activity as girls get older.

Issues with transgirls outcompeting cisgirls doesn't feature in any of it which is not surprising because time commitments are obviously unaffected by that, and if girls aren't interested in competitive sport and prefer non-competitive social and fun activity, being outcompeted isn't an issue in that environment.

There's also a pretty obvious question that given professional women's sport exists and men apparently have the much-feared ability to become women and play pro sport at which they will dominate easily, why haven't professional women's sports been dominated by transwomen for years already? Why hasn't a top youth male tennis player transitioned to take over women's tennis for all the money instead of bothering with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic? Surely there's some young guy in the top 1000 or even 2000 who could transition and become top 50 women's tennis and win far more money, and surely this could have happened any time in the past 10-20 years.

All this seems awfully reactionary about a perceived problem that doesn't appear to be there in anything like large enough numbers to warrant totally overhauling everything.

Would be lovely if it could happen but most sports with gendered divisions are gendered by international rules, so open competitions can't be sanctioned by the local bodies unless their international body allows for it. NZRU aren't going down this pathway unless the IRB go there. Likewise for FIFA etc. Seems remarkably unlikely to happen in any of our lifetimes.

Also says to transwomen that as far as sports are concerned, they are not women.

@bayimports said in Cricket - best ever, trivia etc:

@godder said in Cricket - best ever, trivia etc:

@dogmeat said in Cricket - best ever, trivia etc:

@mn5 Boycott and Gooch opened together in the late 70's early 80's until the ban for touring South Africa. Although they are both great openers the partnership never really thrived. Gooch and Atherton was more successful and Boycott and Edrich in the 60's.

'Modern' partnerships - Smith and de Villiers is worth a mention.

Further back Wright and Franklin actually averaged over 50

The opening pair of Wright and Franklin are underrated because everyone remembers Wright and Edgar (who scored more runs because they played together more, but at a lower average partnership). Granted, Franklin's main contribution was scoring not much off enough balls that Wright's class would take them to a decent partnership (Wright's average from 1988 to retirement in 1993 was over 47 which was excellent for an opener in that era), but 12th highest average ever of pairings with 1000+ runs is still impressive. Looking back at some of our opening pairs after they both retired, one suspects the selectors would happily have taken that.

From memory wasn't Franklin replaced with another test supremo in Blair Hartland?

Yes, going by Cricinfo, Wright played 3 more series after Franklin's last series at home vs Sri Lanka 1990-1 (famous for the first test in which Crowe got his 299). Hartland was the other opener for 2 series, then for Wright's last series (at home vs Australia 1993), Greatbatch was the other opener (did OK, better than Hartland at least). Hartland did one more series after that (tour of England 1994), then was dropped permanently. He probably made the selectors regret moving Franklin on.

While I'm waxing effusively about Wright, his average as captain was 48.63 compared to 35.83 when he wasn't captain, so his batting apparently thrived under that pressure.

@bovidae said in Cricket - best ever, trivia etc:

Looking at that list Graeme Smith probably doesn't get the praise he deserves (outside of SA).

Agree, that list shows Smith and Gibbs are top drawer as well for modern partnerships.

@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:

@godder So in a nutshell, the people who said this legislation was the thin end of the wedge were right?

Hard to tell, it's pretty recent stuff, and while there will no doubt be some bad faith actors who deserve all the opprobrium they get, my sense of the submissions (written and oral) on the legislation and other material on the subject was that the vast majority of the people using this type of process are using it for genuine reasons that don't impact anyone else.

In terms of impact on sport, there aren't that many trans people (3% is a high estimate in NZ) and Sport NZ research shows their participation rates are lower than for the general population. It's already an issue that girls who turn 12 (or whatever age the sport has for gendered competition) sometimes can't play their sport any more because there is no local girls team or competition due to lack of numbers, mandating separate transmen and transwomen sections/competitions would have the effect of banning gendered sports for much of that population because it is so small. Quite hard to promote sport as the great place of cameraderie and team spirit etc when it comes with a caveat of "except for transpeople."

@dogmeat said in Cricket - best ever, trivia etc:

@mn5 Boycott and Gooch opened together in the late 70's early 80's until the ban for touring South Africa. Although they are both great openers the partnership never really thrived. Gooch and Atherton was more successful and Boycott and Edrich in the 60's.

'Modern' partnerships - Smith and de Villiers is worth a mention.

Further back Wright and Franklin actually averaged over 50

The opening pair of Wright and Franklin are underrated because everyone remembers Wright and Edgar (who scored more runs because they played together more, but at a lower average partnership). Granted, Franklin's main contribution was scoring not much off enough balls that Wright's class would take them to a decent partnership (Wright's average from 1988 to retirement in 1993 was over 47 which was excellent for an opener in that era), but 12th highest average ever of pairings with 1000+ runs is still impressive. Looking back at some of our opening pairs after they both retired, one suspects the selectors would happily have taken that.

@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:

@godder Ah well, we reap what we sow I guess.

A legal paper on the subject and related matters.

This is from Auckland University slightly before the most recent law change on gender ID, although it probably doesn't affect the paper much. It gives some food for thought for sports, particularly at the competitive/elite level.

Not really covered in there, but something I would say from an administrative standpoint as someone who has been involved in national selection for international competitions and sports administration generally, if someone turns up with ID with their gender/sex on it, it's very difficult to make a case that they aren't the gender/sex on the ID.

Personally I'd say the best ever test opening partnership was Hobbs and Sutcliffe, but agree that Greenidge and Haynes will always at least be on the short list in the ODI era (as will Hayden and Langer).

Drawing a line somewhere in the 90s makes some sense as ODIs switched quite dramatically somewhere after the WC 92 when NZ and Greatbatch really turned the ODI opening concept on its head, and by the WC 96, that was standard.

That had some impact on scoring rates in tests especially, as 2-3 RPO was replaced by 3-4 RPO, and the widespread adoption of helmets in the 70s-80s also had quite an impact.

@jc said in Trans in sport / Laurel Hubbard:

@godder That’s based on a false premise, i.e. that there if there is an obligation to legislate it is to define what a trans athlete is so that they can compete. It ignores that there is another legislation option. You can legislate to protect natal women’s sport and trans athletes become just another class who are shut out, along with us uncos and geriatrics.

It’s perfectly possible to legislate on the basis the you need to provide the best outcome for the greatest number of people, which at the end of the day is what underpins the concept of democracy.

Under NZ law, we've already done that - transmen are men and transwomen are women (particularly if their legal ID says that) and the onus is on the sport (or whatever activity) to show why that doesn't apply.