Safe better than essential
This approach is more logical. It is ludicrous that Briscoes and Noel Leemings can open, effectively encourages people to leave home, but small locally owned businesses are penalised
The government is deciding what is an essential business or service, Act says it would be better to determine what is safe:
. .. If the objective is to stop the spread of COVID-19, then the test should be whether something can be done safely, not whether it is essential. Moving to a test of safety rather than necessity would be a much better way of fighting the virus while salvaging businesses.
‘Essential’ Compromises ‘Safety’
The Government rightly says it is essential to have food available. Once food is available in an area, no other activity is permissible. But making people travel further to visit a smaller number of bigger and busier stores undermines our goal of reducing the spread of the virus. Supermarkets have remained open because they are essential but they have only undertaken safety mechanisms more recently. Under a safety approach, only food stores with safe processes…
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Never waste a crisis #1
A message that Green zealots have clearly taken to their hearts as we see this. As if the economic damage wreaked by Coronavirus was not enough, EU leaders now want to inflict this on their populations. Madness,absolute madness
All #govts should be making plans for #covid19 recovery around a #GreenNewDeal #greentransition this is the only responsible thing. https://t.co/QvSKbrWgkg
— Kate Sutton (@Kateannasutton) March 31, 2020
Today’s Ardern luvvies inanity #8
You can fool some of the people all of the time
after this is all over, can jacinda still give us daily briefing on just general things please? it’s kinda nice.
— leah (@friesfanclub) March 31, 2020
Al Jazeera – The Listening Post: Controlling the coronavirus narrative: China’s propaganda push
March 15,2020
On The Listening Post this week: As COVID-19 goes global, China’s propaganda plan is to turn the tide of negative press in their favour. Plus, the B-scheme movie of apartheid South Africa.
Controlling the coronavirus narrative: China’s propaganda push The coronavirus story took a turn last week when a government spokesman in Beijing told journalists to stop reporting that the COVID-19 virus originated in China.
Ever since last year when the first case was reported in the city of Wuhan, the origin of this outbreak has not been a point of contention, not even in China’s state media – until now.
Why the change of tack? It comes down to the numbers. More than a hundred countries are affected. The number of cases keeps climbing, so does the death toll. The cost to the global economy is already in the billions of dollars and it could reach trillions. Those are the kinds of figures no government wants to be associated with.
Contributors: Liu Xin – Host and journalist, CGTN Yaqiu Wang – China researcher, Human Rights Watch Shelley Zhang – Writer, China Uncensored Professor Steve Tsang – Director, SOAS China Institute
On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about the charges brought against the Slovak businessman on trial for the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak.
The propaganda films of apartheid-era South Africa Like many governments, South Africa’s apartheid rulers offered subsidies to the film industry. The ‘B-scheme’ was one such subsidy. In order to qualify, filmmakers – who were mostly white back then – had to produce films with black casts, for black audiences in a black South African language such as Zulu, Xhosa or Tswana. From around 1973 to 1989, as many as 1500 of those films were produced. But in many cases there was a prevailing theme; one that would explain why the apartheid government would help bankroll movies that were made – ostensibly – for the entertainment of black South Africans. The Listening Post’s Nic Muirhead reports on the B-scheme subsidy and the effect it had on film making in apartheid-era South Africa.
Contributors: Charles Mokatsane – Cinema owner Benjamin Cowley – CEO, Gravel Road Productions Gairoonisa Paleker – Senior Lecturer, University of Pretoria Tonie van der Merwe – Filmmaker
From March 31
Stuff’s headline ran “Vaccine hopes push sharemarket higher”.
An intriguing one, and sure enough Wall St had rallied on news the drug giant Johnson & Johnson had reported it expects to begin human clinical tests on a vaccine candidate for Covid-19 by September.
Point of Order went in search of other international developments being reported in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the UK, the BBC reported a breathing aid that can help keep coronavirus patients out of intensive care has been created in under a week. University College London engineers worked with clinicians at UCLH and Mercedes Formula One to build the device, which delivers oxygen to the lungs without needing a ventilator.
Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) devices are already used in hospitals but are in short supply. China and Italy used them to help Covid-19 patients.
The BBC said 40 of the new devices…
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Talking Politics: Adam Tooze on the Crisis #2
OK, this has been delayed, but there are some good points here
This Episode – 19 March 2020
We catch up with Adam on the latest twists in the crisis: from the ECB’s change of heart to new threats in emerging markets. What is happening in Germany? How vulnerable is the UK? Can anything shake the hold of the almighty dollar? Much more in the weeks to come. MORE AT LINK
Wikipedia
Talking Politics is an audio podcast hosted by British academic David Runciman, Professor of Politics at the University of Cambridge. It was launched on 27 March 2016 by Runciman. It is also regularly co-hosted with other Cambridge academics, especially Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and also Christopher Brooke, lecturer in political theory Chris Bickerton, reader of modern European politics, and the late Aaron Rapport.
David Runciman is a long-time contributor to the London Review of Books and Talking Politics is in a partnership with the journa
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