I am agreeing with you can adding to the argument that covid is rapid and smoking isn't (on the impact to the health system).
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https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...zealanders-out
"Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she has not ruled out sending the NZ Defence Force to Afghanistan to help New Zealanders leave the country."
Have to laugh .
And send our Air Force and one frigate as well?
The woman is delusional!
Maybe she could don the hijab to show solidarity and urge the Talibans to be kind - that may work.
To be fair, this just about sending a plane to evacuate NZ'ers and Afghan interpreters from Kabul.
All commercial flights have now ceased & military or defence force aircraft only option for people getting out now.
International community co-ordinating evacuations.
Like the fall of Saigon!
[QUOTE=westerly;900304]Maybe you don't understand the meaning of "incarceration rate", which would be prisoners per head of population. Your stats shows prisoners in absolute numbers ... not a surprise that countries with much higher populations than NZ have a higher number of prisoners.
I give you however that the NZ incarceration rate (with 197 prisoners per 100,000 in 2015, 168 prisoners per 100,000 now is much smaller than the US incarceration rate (639 per 100,000). However - I can't see a lot of Western countries sitting below the leading US in the stats I just found:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...0-inhabitants/
I probably remembered a statistic like the one published by NZ corrections:
Attachment 12841
https://www.corrections.govt.nz/reso...cidivism_rates
Attachment 12842
So - yes, we are not as bad as the US, but in the context of other free western countries we have absolutely no reason to be proud of our incarceration rates - unless you belong into the group of people who thinks that locking up everybody and throw the key away is a good thing ...
But maybe you don't understand "western world" either. The overwhelming number of countries leading your stats are run by power hungry despots, and not being part of the western world.
Ask Dr. Google:
Quote:
What is the meaning of Western world?
In the contemporary cultural meaning, the phrase "Western world" includes Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial origin with substantial European ancestral populations in the Americas and Oceania.
I saw some land yachts racing at Ardmore Aerodrome last Summer. I would like to see some Anzac class frigates there this Summer!
Many a world power has met a defeat in Afghanistan. Maybe Americans will have forgotten about this latest defeat by the time of the mid-term elections.
I heard Lyse Doucet reporting from Afghanistan last night on BBC World Service. Her plane had been trying to land at Kabul. The apprehension in her voice was obvious. The Taliban “claimed” they would not exact retribution on government personnel or women for not wearing the burqa.
The Taliban will be happy to let Westerners leave - they will not want to risk Western intervention and it's no big deal to allow Westerners to leave. That's what the North Vietnamese did as well when they took over Saigon.
But the Taliban have stated that Afghans will not be allowed to leave so the Afghans who had been helping the West are going to be left behind to their fate.
And we know what the Taliban are already doing to those who they view as collaborators in the areas they captured before Kabul.
We also know that the North Vietnamese systematically rounded up millions of South Vietnamese and sent them to re-education camps from which many never emerged.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...an-evacuations
Cindy imploring the Taliban to allow 'people' to leave Afghanistan.
For the sake of the Afghan people who will be considered to be in league with the Western occupying forces, let's hope the Taliban are forgiving and agree with her plea.
If not, she may have to don the hijab as the next step to plead for kindness?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kainga...DFINEJF4QYTC4/
Housing NZ added on more than 1,000 staff since Labour took office in 2017.
Instead of fixing the housing crisis, the additional staff have now made the crisis into a housing disaster.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/12...im-no-security
Warm home regulations resulting in less accommodation available for emergency housing - yet another mess created by Cindy & her useless Housing minister & staff.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr...order-facility
Government cannot provide infor on how many border staff are vaccinated at facility.
How long has the government been telling NZers that everything is fine at the border?
Healthy Rental Standards are one reason that properties are no longer available to the rental market. For sure. It costs much the same to upgrade a rural or small town rental as a similar metropolitan rental. But the rental income is almost certainly very very different. Couple of farm cottages in my family no longer rented out as uneconomical to upgrade. Some might say - good, cold damp and mouldy. But no, none of those. Cheap rent though.
Recent changes to rules around tenure are at least as important, probably more. They just don't get the same airtime. Landlords are now very restricted in how and when they can terminate problem tenancies, so are extremely careful who they rent to.
Then there are the tax changes ....
And those persistently late tenants could be given 90 days notice. End of. And the new rules require very precise documentation and timing, and an application to the Tenancy Tribunal that may or may not result in termination. How is that much easier?
Meantime, landlords are finding other ways to give notice to undesirable tenants.