Everything is going as planned with this government "starve the beast" strategy. They want to destroy the healthcare system so that people will accept privatisation as a possible cure.

The nation as usual is utterly ignorant of what's going on.

I disagree with introducing tipping here. It feels like the public is being asked to prop up the hospitality industry and cover for low wages. If workers aren't being paid enough, that's an issue employers and the government need to fix, not something customers should take on.

What do you think? Should tipping become the norm in New Zealand?

Last weeks thread here

Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!

This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.

It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:

• Something interesting that happened to you
• Something humourous that happened to you
• Something frustrating that happened to you
• A quick question
• A request for recommendations
• Pictures of your pet
• A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
• Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)

So how’s it going?

Write up from my old mate Max Rashbrooke on the success of the school lunch program, and the likely impacts of the cuts to the program from the National-Act-NZ First government.

I think I posted the story about the original break in, but what an operation. It sounds like they were importing the tobacco in bulk, then manufacturing the cigarettes, as well as forging the packaging.

For those reading this that aren't in NZ, cigarettes are very expensive here, over $2 a cigarette for some brands, and it's mostly tax.

What arsehole teachers.

I empathize with the mum, worrying about the government cutting the program.... They will be looking for any excuse

Archived link

Next week a New Zealand woman will sit before a committee at The Hague and try to convince them to help her brother, locked up in a Chinese prison for the past seven years. Rizwangul NurMuhammad talks to Paula Penfold about her fight, her guilt — and her hope.

Rizawangul (Riz) NurMuhammad returns to the theme of guilt at least half a dozen times during our hour-long conversation.

She’s a New Zealand citizen granted asylum in 2011. She’s Uyghur, a member of the Muslim minority in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province.

And she feels guilty because she’s watched cases internationally where imprisoned Uyghurs have been freed, and she feels she’s failed her brother Mewlan.

[...]

Mewlan was a fibre network engineer for China Telecom in Bole City. One lunch break in January 2017, he was taken by plain clothes police. “They didn’t provide an explanation for why they were arresting him. He was taken for questioning and then we expected he would be freed soon because he has done nothing wrong.”

[...]

China’s Embassy in Wellington told Stuff he was sentenced in August 2017 to nine years in prison for “separatist activities”. It did not specify what those activities were.

Budget documents show the government was told of "profound" wellbeing benefits from the free school lunch scheme months before it decided to trim its funding.

The research was supposed to be published in June but was still under wraps.

However, Budget papers published this week referred to the study's early findings.

"Emerging findings support previous evaluation findings, but also highlight further benefits of the programme, including improvements in achievement and the importance of universality," said a December briefing note to Minister of Education Erica Stanford.

"This includes that learners are more settled and able to engage with classroom activity and learning, with some schools showing increased academic achievement resulting from an enhanced learning experience from being more settled and less distracted. Initial findings also indicate that the programme is having a profound impact on the wellbeing of learners," it said.

Earlier this year, the government cut annual funding for the scheme by $107 million, reducing the per-student spend for children at intermediate and secondary schools to $3.

A March briefing paper about changing the model for Ka Ora, Ka Ako said it was not clear whether lunches could be provided at that price.

"The most significant risk from the proposal is that we have not market-tested or otherwise analysed the proposed $3 per head price. We do not know whether sufficient supply exists to offer lunches to the specified standard at this price across the full range of schools," the document said.

I was curious to hear what people think of the telecom breakup into chorus (and wasn't there a third party as well?) after all these years?

I was working there at the time, so some of the staff training was entertaining. I felt like they seemed to be on board with the general thrust of the changes, which I was a little surprised about (I expected a little more lip-service, I guess?)

Has it been a good change? I feel like the national fibre has been great but that's not actually related (but may have relied on the breakup as a precursor?)

"Is this one motorway really worth one-tenth of our entire country's spending on schools, hospitals, houses and public transport infrastructure?"

What the actual fuck!

This guy sound like such an utter tosser.

I've bought a bunch of stuff from Cactus Outdoors over the years, but I'm finding that their cuts don't really fit me very well and are also a bit on the higher end price-wise. Love their bags though. Do you have any NZ-made brands that you can recommend?

The Commerce Commission has given carriers a year to lift their mobile coverage map game and wants simpler plan exits within six months. Customers are more satisfied with mobile than broadband. Amazon's New Zealand LEO plan emerges from stealth mode.

This is a blatant self promotion of the latest newsletter from my site. If that's not allowed, I'll stop, but I wanted to see if there is any interest in discussing the main topic in today's newsletter.

We're paying higher prices, specials are confusing and loyalty schemes aren't delivering overly significant rewards.

Those aren't just the musings of a frustrated supermarket shopper - but are some of the findings in the Commerce Commission's first annual grocery report, issued on Wednesday.

Rewards schemes were only giving a return of between 0.71 percent for Flybuys and 0.75 percent for Everyday Rewards.

Between 2007 and 2019, the average weekly spend on grocery food increased 7.3 percent every three years but the latest data showed a leap of 28.9 percent.

The commission's report said supermarkets would point to their own rising costs as the reason for price rises.

But it said margins had continued to grow - all of the major supermarkets had experienced an increase in price-cost margins, which meant that retail prices were increasing faster than the cost of the goods.

The report said supermarkets "continue to achieve higher levels of profitability than we would expect in a workably competitive market".

It was not likely that Costco would be able to expand to the point where it could become a serious third supermarket contender, it said.

The report said the Warehouse could be an option - its network of shops meant it was in a good position to encourage shoppers to split their shopping in many cases - but it had said it had no intention of raising the capital needed to compete.

The "five things" don't work that well as a list, but they are:

• High prices aren't in your head
• Competition is not bringing down margins, or prices
• Other competitors aren't finding it easy
• Innovation, but is it what we want?
• Would fines make a difference?

Unfortunately that's behind a paywall, but there's ways and means of reading it, eg via RSS subscription to NZ Herald.

A couple of notes for the benefit of those that can't read it. Two lecturers in maths education have pointed out that Luxon's claim that there is a crisis is misleading as the achievement data is "based on a new draft curriculum, with a higher benchmark compared to previous years."

ie, the standard for achievement is higher, not the level of maths knowledge declining suddenly. In fact "We’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at Year 8 for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline."

More alarmingly for me, a ministerial advisory group was setup which has recommended a new curriculum even while acknowledging there is a lack of evidence for teaching maths the way it proscribes.

That advisory group is chaired by an NZ Initiative idealogue, Dr Michael Johnston and the article almost infers he is basically pushing his own manifesto on how education should be conducted into the curriculum - again, despite evidence it has application to maths education.

For anyone that doesn't know, the NZ Initiative was formed by merging the Business Roundtable and the NZ Institute. They are far right neoliberal idealogues and you'll see people cycle through the organisation before going into political reporting or lobbying, or in Nicola Willis case being placed into political party roles.

Police don't even know whose money it is, or where it came from. I think they should be able to keep it.

Peter Beck shares a photo of the factory.

Source: https://x.com/Peter_J_Beck/status/1830782638136926332

I'm guessing the author doesn't know the difference between a BB gun and a pellet gun/air rifle, because I doubt a BB would reliably kill a pigeon.

"More people are going to have to rely on cars and trucks to get around because we don't have a pipeline of alternatives like rapid transit, inter-city passenger rail, public transport and safe walking and cycling in our communities”