Many Alexanders but only one Boris

The flaws of Boris Johnson, Britain’s jokey PM, have been highlighted through the Brexit saga, and he has many haters.  Fine material you might think for Tom Bower, the UK’s pre-eminent investigative muckraker, notorious for coruscating biographies of Richard Branson, Robert Maxwell and Jeremy Corbyn.

But funnily enough he hasn’t made that much of a splash with Boris Johnson The Gambler published in the midst of the UK’s Covid epidemic at the end of last year.

It’s not that Bower shuns the negative.  He scrupulously documents the driving ambition, rhetorical evasion, monumental self-centeredness, serial infidelity and inability to buy a round.

But these traits are not entirely absent from many leading politicians.  And Johnson managed to emerge through the pages as a ferociously intelligent and curiously likeable character, who pulls off these stunts more colourfully and successfully than most.

Indeed, Boris’s enemies tend to suffer in the comparison.  Former PM, Theresa May is portrayed as an over-promoted machiavel; while the head of the Foreign Office, Simon Macdonald, comes across as unctuous and incompetent. The next-door neighbours who snitched to the press on Boris’s domestic rows appear as uptight ideologues, determined to expose “the ugly edifice of capitalist heteropatriachy’”.

Roll up for more money, says Nash, but the Nats remind him tourist companies must keep their doors closed

We are sure Tourism Minister Stuart Nash thought it was big deal, when he announced details of how businesses can apply for help under two initiatives from the $200 million Tourism Communities: Support, Recovery and Re-set Plan announced in May.

On the other side of the political divide, National’s tourism spokesman, Todd McClay, harrumphed that this was a “reannouncing” of a business support scheme for some South Island regions which provides nothing new for struggling tourism operators.

More particularly, McClay reminded the Minister that much of the country will be dropping to Alert Level Three late tonight.  This does not mean a return to business as usual.

The announcement (or reannouncement) was one of two new posts on the Beehive website since your Point of Order monitors last checked.

The importance of being Ernest – our royal society is using him to inspire youngsters to redesign our $100 bank note

As I observed in an article posted on the  AgScience blog earlier today, the 150^th anniversary of the birth of Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand’s most celebrated scientist and the country’s first Nobel laureate, was noted by RNZ, and by some newspapers and universities.

On RNZ’s Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan, the programme host talked about Lord Rutherford with  Professor David Hutchison, the director of the Dodd Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies.

Stuff featured an article by Nelson reporter Tim Newman under the headline Ernest Rutherford: From humble beginnings to New Zealand’s greatest scientist

This referenced an obituary in the New York Times on October 20, 1937, which described Lord Rutherford as one of the few men to reach “immortality and Olympian rank” during his own lifetime.

Debacle in Afghanistan – NZ can’t escape criticism for its role in the West’s shameful exit from Kabul

“Biden’s  Debacle”:   The  Economist said  it  all  with those words on  its  cover  page  headline  last  week.  The  Guardian  Weekly   chimed  in   with “So Long: The  End of  the  American  Century”.

In its editorial, The Economist said: 

“If  the  propagandists of  the Taliban had  scripted the  collapse  of the  20-year  mission to  reshape  Afghanistan , they  could  not have come up  with more  harrowing images….Afghans were  left  in  such  a  horrifying   bind   that  clinging to the  wheels  of  a  hurtling  aircraft seemed  their  best  option.

“ It is  an appalling  outcome for  Afghanistan’s 39m   people”.

A NZ-UK trade agreement will be another – albeit small – step in the re-ordering of global trade

There is increasing chatter in London that the NZ-UK trade deal will be announced in days, with invitations to briefings being diaried for Tuesday.

But it’s worth noting that the UK commentators seem to be excising the prefix ‘free’ from the ‘trade agreement’, perhaps reflecting better understanding that these days there is no free trade without a substantial regulatory component.

While NZ’s producers will no doubt be grateful if they get an Australian-style phased reduction of tariffs and quotas as has been briefed, the non-tariff/quota regulatory barriers will be just as important in the long run.

That at least would seem to be the view of the eminent organ, the Irish Farmers Journal, in its assessment of the currently-fraught implementation of free trade arrangements between the EU, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain (ie, the UK minus Northern Ireland).

See how Maori have fared under colonisation (not too badly) and how Ardern has fared in averting criticism

We commend social issues commentator Lindsay Mitchell, who tirelessly digs up data that put a different perspective on matters reported by mainstream media or brings government policy and its implementation into question.

Two splendid examples have been posted on her blog in the past few days.

One post (using graphs to underscore the argument) contends the progress of Māori social and economic indicators that has occurred under the process of colonisation stands in stark contrast to the constant barrage of contrary claims

The second post challenges the Ardern Government’s claims to be the most open and transparent government ever.

MPs (socially distanced) will be back in Parliament tomorrow – meanwhile Ministers have been appointing and spending

It looks like Parliament will be sitting again tomorrow – whoopee – although the MPs who turn up will be socially distanced rather than sitting virtually.

Who made the decision seems to be a matter for conjecture.  Thomas Coughlan, reporting in the NZ Herald, noted the ACT Party announcement that Parliament will return to sit this week in socially distanced form.

 But that was news to speaker Trevor Mallard who, along with many MPs this morning, found out about Act’s plans via press release.

Act leader David Seymour said he “welcomed the parliamentary business committee decision that a socially distanced Parliament will go ahead next week”.

Mallard, however, said Parliament’s business committee had not actually decided anything when it met on Friday night. Rather, it had not decided to delay Parliament or progress with another plan.

Ports of Tauranga deserves plaudits for its performance in Covid-troubled times

The  latest Covid lockdown  has   delivered  a sharp  jab  to   many  NZ businesses, but  not what they had  been encouraged to think our wellbeing-focused government  was  planning  for them.   It  has  taken  the  gloss  off  what  might   otherwise have been regarded   as a  strong  reporting  season  for NZX-listed  companies.

The spike in coronavirus cases has led to NZ falling 26 places in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Rank.

We  had been the longest-running first-ranked country on the Bloomberg watch-list, since the inception   of the ranking  in November 2020. The plunge follows the spread of the Delta variant in Auckland and Wellington, which (when we checked yesterday) has resulted in 347 people testing positive for the virus across Auckland and Wellington.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says lockdown is starting to work  and  she   insists   she is  acting   on  the  “best advice”  in  keeping  the  whole country  locked  down until  Wednesday,  when  there  will  be  a  slight  easing  with the  rest of  the  country  south of  Auckland moving  to level  3.

NZ is now ranked 29th on the Bloomberg ladder, two places above Australia which announced 1000 new cases on Thursday – Australia’s worst day of cases since the pandemic began.

Pugging and pragmatism – Feds welcome winter grazing proposals but SAFE blasts continuance of “mud farming”

One of two ministerial announcements posted on The Beehive website over the past two days was denounced by the SAFE animal rights group in a statement headed Mud farming continues in the South Island.

Federated farmers headed their press statement Pragmatism finally prevails on winter grazing.

The tone struck in the headline on the Government’s press statement was much more in harmony with the feds’ statement than the SAFE one.  It read Proposed intensive winter grazing regulations updates are more practical for farmers.

It was posted on The Beehive website along with news about the end of NZ Defence Force evacuation flights from Kabul.

Latest from the Beehive

 Final Kabul evacuation flight completed

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Defence Minister Peeni Henare said the last flight by a New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) C-130 Hercules evacuating people from Afghanistan’s capital Kabul landed back in the United Arab Emirates last night, prior to reports of explosions at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

Proposed intensive winter grazing regulations updates are more practical for farmers

Proposed changes to intensive winter grazing regulations are being consulted on that will make them practical for farmers to comply with while ensuring improved environmental outcomes, Environment Minister David Parker and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today.

Oops – our PM’s halo has slipped in overseas critiques of NZs Covid elimination strategy

The  Ardern government is  clinging  to  its Covid elimination strategy, even  as  the  Ministry of  Health   is  looking  at the  need for  booster shots for  those  who were  vaccinated  six months  ago.

A new  study  by researchers  in Britain has found that  protection offered  by the Pfizer vaccine,  which is 88% effective  in  the first  month,  begins  to  fade  within five to six months  of  the  second injection.  By  then  it is  only  74%  effective   The Astra-Zeneca  vaccine   is  only  67%  effective   after  about  five  months.

New Zealand’s Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, today confirmed officials are considering booster injections for those who received their Pfizer vaccines in  February, March  and April.

Among NZ  experts  there  has  been debate  on  whether    booster  shots   would be  necessary. They  agree the Pfizer vaccine is highly effective at preventing serious disease, hospitalisation and death.

Vaccines continue to perform well, including against the Delta variant, and serious cases worldwide are generally only occurring in the unvaccinated.