The Covid-19 Royal Commission has broadly backed the decisions taken during the pandemic, while identifying areas for improvement.
10.03.2026 18:13
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The Covid-19 Royal Commission has broadly backed the decisions taken during the pandemic, while identifying areas for improvement.
He was: www.beehive.govt.nz/release/gran...
Grant Illingworth bridged the two (though he was there only for the latter part of phase one)
It's pretty consistent with Phase 1. I think both reports are balanced and sensible. I disagree with each on some points, but certainly the overall thrust of both is "the response was fundamentally good but there are specific areas where it struggled".
In particular re: transition from elimination.
The Covid-19 Royal Commission's second report has been published, I've read (almost) all of it and here are the key takeaways:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/10/l...
Mazda says it plants five trees for every car sold, but a climate expert says 41,000 trees would be needed to offset the vehicle’s CO2 emissions.
Mazda has now been taken to the Advertising Standards Authority over the allegedly misleading promotion.
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/09/m...
Diesel pays RUC, same as EVs. Basically all passenger/commercial diesel/electric vehicles (under 3.5 tonnes) pay same RUC rate.
Just a broken fuel excise system. Will be rectified by universal RUC.
Govt gets more road tax from EVs than many petrol cars
In this case, I understood Meager's argument to be that he is protecting the free and frank expression of *his* opinion to the AI, which I agree could potentially be covered. I did make your point in my complaint though - that the AI cannot have "opinions" and therefore doesn't get protection.
This was a large part of it. If the law was a problem, the Govt could (and did) change it. Like a lot of what went wrong in 2021/22, the difficulty was in the unclear transition from elimination to something else (which the Govt had not articulated internally, let alone externally).
Over summer, I OIA'd every minister for their AI chat logs.
Here's what I found:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/06/h...
The authority that Trump has asserted in taking America to war against Iran is, like many of his other power grabs, an expression of the very tyranny the Framers were seeking to prevent. “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object,” a young congressman named Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1848. This was “understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.” This quote, incidentally, is immortalized on the House’s website, if any members of Congress are looking for it.
The design of the Constitution divided warmaking authority between Congress and the executive to prevent a president to take the country to war by themselves for any petty or self-serving reason. You know, like a king would. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
I spent two days delving through Transpower data to understand what the grid owner and electricity system operator thinks our energy future might look like.
Here's what I found:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/04/c...
requiem for vanished birdsong
the war is unpopular but it's also illegal but it also doesn't serve any purpose but it also undermines diplomacy but it also is set to produce the opposite outcome as intended but it also already has hundreds dead and threatens more but it also will not make anything better for anyone but it also
I promise you that the government that murdered Alex Pretti and Renee Good does not give a flying fuck about the protests in Iran.
Do you think FIFA will revoke his peace prize
illegal use of force by every measure, domestic & international
the congressional authorization thing is bad but honestly for me the whole "the crime of aggression is the supreme international crime" thing is what keeps me up at night
This is fake news from RNZ. Unfortunately, G-I-Z is not how the birding term referred to here is spelled.
www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
art of the deal, baby
Whatever real journalism you like, please pay for it. The stuff you don't pay for is transforming into propaganda with incredible speed.
After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
A blind Rohingya man survived a genocide in Burma, escaped to the United States, and then died because immigration officers treated him with such callousness. This story is a tragedy www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/20...
democrats should internalize that this is what their colleagues think of them and act accordingly
Never say the American dream is dead. Only in the United States can a Grand Wizard of the Klan give a State of the Union address.
Is your export graph export from grid to battery? Or export from the BRB0331 node to the grid?
I think that's probably right. But the data is available in other jurisdictions – potentially they have regulations requiring its gathering and publication?