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?

Times have gotten rough for a lot of us and as a slave to a feline one of the things that I have found that has gotten completely overpriced is flea treatment.

I normally purchase Bravecto plus (3 month) and the average price is getting close to double what it was a few years ago (averaging $90 for each 3 month treatment).

Kitty was facing gaps in treatment due to other bills taking precedence but thankfully I came across a Tauranga vet service "MyVet" who are selling most of the common flea treatments (and other treatments & prescriptions) for about half the price of everywhere else.

In January I used some holiday pay and brought a years supply saving about $150.

Which may not seem like a big saving but it buys a whole lot of cat biscuits and soft food.

• Cat tax provided.

Her name is Matilda Sassy Pants, she is a tortoiseshell seal point tonkinese who I took in after my mum had to go into a rest home.

A Christchurch foodbank is "absolutely heartbroken", "mad" and "gutted to the core" after two thieves stole frozen and chilled food meant for hundreds of families in need.

On Sunday night, at 10.20pm, two individuals dressed in balaclavas and gloves broke the locks of Hoon Hay Foodbank's walk-in freezer and chiller.

"You have completely depleted [sic] all supplies of any meat and frozen and chilled items that were going out to hundreds of whānau [sic] who genuinely need the help to put Kai on the table... all you had to do was send a text and book in for a food parcel to access food if you were in need."

Financial literacy will become a core element of the New Zealand social sciences curriculum for Year 1-10 students from 2027. But what is being proposed presents a limited picture of the factors influencing people’s financial wellbeing.

The specifics of the curriculum have yet to be released. However, the government’s announcement emphasised a focus on individual responsibility. Young people will be taught what they need to live within their means and how to accumulate enough wealth for retirement.

When announcing the new curriculum, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said:

We are all consumers, and financial literacy can set young Kiwis up to be savvy consumers – whether it’s knowing how to invest wisely, choose the best loan at a bank, or even identify a scam.

However ... focusing only on individual responsibility risks ignoring the economic systems – and inequities – that shape young people’s lives.

Inequality in New Zealand has risen significantly in the past three decades. And the richest New Zealanders pay less tax than in similar OECD countries.

Knowing how to manage household accounts is, undeniably, an important skill. But individual skills can’t necessarily overcome the hurdles within the broader economic and social context.

...

The resources being used in the classroom also exclude any significant discussion of broader economic systems and policies. Much of what is currently available is created in partnership with banks and financial organisations such as ASB’s GetWise and BNZ’s SavY programmes. These focus on budgeting, saving, banking and paying off debt.

...

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Financial literacy will become a core element of the New Zealand social sciences curriculum for Year 1-10 students from 2027. But what is being proposed presents a limited picture of the factors influencing people’s financial wellbeing.

The specifics of the curriculum have yet to be released. However, the government’s announcement emphasised a focus on individual responsibility. Young people will be taught what they need to live within their means and how to accumulate enough wealth for retirement.

When announcing the new curriculum, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson said:

We are all consumers, and financial literacy can set young Kiwis up to be savvy consumers – whether it’s knowing how to invest wisely, choose the best loan at a bank, or even identify a scam.

However, as our research shows, focusing only on individual responsibility risks ignoring the economic systems – and inequities – that shape young people’s lives.

Inequality in New Zealand has risen significantly in the past three decades. And the richest New Zealanders pay less tax than in similar OECD countries.

Knowing how to manage household accounts is, undeniably, an important skill. But individual skills can’t necessarily overcome the hurdles within the broader economic and social context. Europeans, get our weekly newsletter with analysis from European scholars Focus on managing money

Financial literacy – under the term “financial capability” – is only briefly mentioned in the current New Zealand curriculum. The topic is positioned as a potential outcome of learning across different subject areas, rather than taught as its own distinct class.

Classroom resources focus on individual actions. Students are taught to manage money, set goals and manage risks.

There is no real discussion of economic inequality in the curriculum. And even the few references there are have a strong focus on personal responsibility.

Teaching resources available for senior economics, for example, explore topics such as income, taxation, product costs and the scarcity of resources.

In senior business studies, references to economic inequality are indirect. For example, the “key concepts” page alludes to ideas such as “supply and demand” and “scarcity” that can loosely be associated with economic inequality. But it is not explicit.

The resources being used in the classroom also exclude any significant discussion of broader economic systems and policies. Much of what is currently available is created in partnership with banks and financial organisations such as ASB’s GetWise and BNZ’s SavY programmes. These focus on budgeting, saving, banking and paying off debt.

...

Globally, there has been a growing emphasis on financial literacy education, partly because of the complexity of modern financial products. And, as one study observed, “the risks of, and responsibility for, financial decisions are being increasingly shifted from governments and employers onto individuals”.

As political economist Chris Clarke has noted, there is an “irreconcilable gap” between the aims of financial literacy education and people’s “actual success in securing their security and wellbeing through financial markets”.

Other economists have pointed out how issues of intergenerational wealth and entrenched socioeconomic disadvantage – the “racial wealth gap” – cannot be overlooked when talking about “poor financial choices and decision making”.

But another form of financial literacy education is possible. Young people could be taught to understand and analyse how governments make decisions for the financial wellbeing of their citizens. They could also learn the value of employment rights, labour and workplace safety laws, and the role of unions and other civic initiatives.

Rather than focusing on taxes and balancing household accounts, students could learn about their individual responsibilities within the economic systems they are part of.

Those people who have sought to deify our wilderness … those days are over. We are not going to sit around and read poetry to rare lizards, whilst our current account deficit goes down the gurgler,” Jones said.

Lol :)

As an aethiest, if you must be into the whole deity thing, deifying nature is no bad thing, it literally underpins everything.

New Zealand's first super-sized grid-connected battery - built at a cost of $186 million - will help improve Northland's energy resilience in future power outages, Meridian Energy says.

The company said its Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) would also help smooth out power peaks and troughs, by storing energy when electricity is cheap and releasing it at times of peak demand, such as early mornings and evenings.

The battery park consisted of 80 shipping-container-sized batteries spread over a two-hectare site at Marsden Point, next the former oil refinery south of Whangārei.

Project director Alan de Lima said at full capacity the giant battery could supply 100 megawatts (MW) of power, enough for 60,000 homes or about half Northland's population, for two hours.

It had been connected to the grid since the beginning of the year and would start operating as soon as final tests had been signed off.

It was also stage one of Meridian's planned Ruakākā Energy Park.

Stage two would involve building a $227m 130MW solar farm, with 250,000 panels spread over 172ha of land next to the battery.

Work was due to start in August with power expected to start flowing in early 2027.

For the first time in 20 years, Rotorua residents can wake up and officially breathe in clean air.

Bay of Plenty Regional Councillor Lyall Thurston said it had taken a collective effort from the community, councils, government and public health officials for Rotorua to officially shed its "polluted" air quality status.

Rotorua has long struggled with poor winter-time air quality, due to smoke from wood burners getting trapped by Rotorua's unique landscape.

For a time, Rotorua was the city with the worst winter-time air pollution in the country and in 2008 it recorded 37 days when PM10 air pollution exceeded the national standard.

To remove the polluted status, Rotorua was required to have no more than one breach of the national standard a year, for five years in a row.

In 2020 it recorded its first year with only one day exceeding the standard. The following four years it had no days exceeding the standard, meaning the "polluted" status can finally be removed.

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?

But I just say to people, 'Go home, regroup, heal, gather yourself, touch down with your whānau [family] … and come back with some more to put on the table here'."

She urged anyone considering moving to Australia to ensure they had a secure job, enough money, accommodation and understood their entitlements before making the move.

So, is it just me, or does this seem counterproductive? And surely the FMA has a method to track employees time already?

The new scheme, which came into effect in April, removed English-language requirements and lowered the investment threshold for the “growth” visas to NZ$5mn (US$3mn). Applicants must spend just 21 days in the country to establish residency, down from three years. The application process has also been cut to 11 days, on average, according to the immigration department.

No poors !

Ten thousand New Zealanders may have lost vision - sometimes permanently - due to toxoplasmosis, an infection triggered by a parasite spread by cats.

Otago University researchers estimate 40,000 people are affected by ocular toxoplasmosis - one in four seriously - but their efforts to develop new treatments are being hampered by a lack of funding.

"When there is inflammation in the retina, the vision becomes blurry, and sometimes we can see when the inflammation goes away, it leaves a scar, and the vision is never going to recover."

World-wide, up to one in three people are infected - but rates could be even higher in New Zealand: 43 percent according to one study in Waikato.

The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, reproduces in cat guts and is spread through eggs in their faeces.

It was not just a problem for people, Russell said.

"Toxoplasmosis is a killer of some of our precious native wildlife, including birds like kiwi and kākā, and our unique Hector's and Māui dolphins. It also causes big problems for sheep farmers, leading to the loss of lambs."

A Wellington man has been arrested as part of an FBI investigation into an organised criminal group which is alleged to have stolen cryptocurrency valued at $450 million.

Detective Inspector Christiaan Barnard said 13 people faced charges, after search warrants were executed in Auckland, Wellington, and California.

The man was arrested by the Financial Crime Group in Auckland, one of several people taken into custody following the search warrants, but the only one from New Zealand.

It is alleged that between March and August 2024, the cryptocurrency was obtained by fraud, namely, by manipulating seven victims, and subsequently laundered through multiple cryptocurrency platforms.

A Kiwi-built amateur rocket is believed to have set a record as not just the country's first but one of the fastest launched into space — all with home brewed beer and gin onboard.

Meraki II, a 4-metre long rocket, launched near Arthur's Pass on April 19, reaching a peak altitude of 121.6km.

The two-stage rocket travelled at mind-boggling speeds of up to Mach 5.6, or around 1.9 kilometres a second — fast enough to cover the distance between Cape Reinga and Bluff in just over 12 minutes.

"It's the first successful amateur non-US spaceshot, and the new velocity record-holder"

Neha Sharma appeared to be an honest, hard-working property manager at Oranga Tamariki. Her husband ran a construction company. No-one knew about their marriage until after they'd conned the Government agency out of more than $2 million.

Roughly eight months after Christchurch-based construction company Divine Connection was added to Oranga Tamariki's list of contractors questions began to emerge about the quality of its paperwork.

The issue was flagged with Neha Sharma, the property and facilities manager at Oranga Tamariki.

Unbeknown to her colleagues, Sharma had been living a double life. To colleagues, she was a trusted government employee. She was also the wife of Divine Connection's director - a serious conflict of interest that she'd kept concealed as she approved the company's invoices, got him jobs that could have been carried out by other companies, and even carried out work for the company during office hours.

In late March 2023, the Serious Fraud Office raided the couple's property, putting an end to their hopes of an early retirement. An investigation revealed the couple had obtained more than $2 million from Oranga Tamariki.

Earlier this month, Neha Sharma was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to a series of charges including obtaining by deception, money laundering and using a forged document.

However, media were unable to report on her pleas until Friday when her husband, Amandeep Sharma, pleaded guilty to obtaining by deception and money laundering.

As part of her job application, she provided two referees who worked at the Ministry of Education. Written references were provided from what appeared to be their personal email addresses.

The references were actually forged by Neha Sharma, and the email accounts were not theirs.

In her role it was possible for Neha Sharma to contact the National Accounting Centre and get them to add a new contractor to the system.

Nema Sharma was the budget manager for the properties that Divine Connection worked for and was therefore able to authorise all the invoices.

One of the invoices included a new television that had been purchased for her own home, rather than an OT home.

Other invoices were approved and paid to Divine Connection by Sharma despite her knowing there had been a markup of more than 150 percent.

November 2, 2022 was fairly eventful.

At 8.40am, Sharma received a notification she had a meeting on Teams for the following day. The meeting would relate to concerns she had issued jobs and approved works and invoices associated with Divine Connection. There was more - they had worked out the company appeared to be registered to her home address.

An hour later Sharma sent her resignation to her manager and two others.

After leaving OT, Neha Sharma got a job as regional delivery advisor at the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) Waka Kotahi, starting on 12 December, 2022.

She again used the name of a former colleague at the Ministry of Education as a referee.

However, when she tried logging into the email address, she had used to send the reference for her job at OT she could not sign in.

She then created another email address using the man's name again. The phone number she gave for the referee was actually her husband's.

She then submitted an online reference through NZTA's system.

On 25 November, Neha Sharma received a call from NZTA. Two minutes after the call she texted her husband to say he was about to get a call, but not to answer.

On 30 March, the Serious Fraud Office came knocking on the couple's door.

At the time of the raids the couple owned three properties and three cars. They also had about $800,000 in cash in their joint bank accounts.

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?

Stay away. There are better places to go. Maybe try Canada or Mexico.

New Zealand's latest measles case could have nightmare consequences from a medical perspective, a leading paediatrician says.

Dr Owen Sinclair is among many medical experts with grave concerns for vulnerable groups if there is a measles outbreak in Auckland.

Health alerts have been issued after a new measles case was confirmed yesterday, with people in Auckland asked to check if they could have been exposed.

Health New Zealand said the case was linked to overseas travel in Asia, and the person with measles had been at Woolworths Kelston, on Fullers360 ferries, and at an Auckland carpark during the time they could be infectious.

More locations of interest - including a second supermarket and a West Auckland pharmacy - were confirmed late this afternoon.

"The last time we had sort of an outbreak in Auckland, it was attributed to two deaths in New Zealand, and then the measles that occurred here moved to Samoa and 83 people died over there.

"We really thought we'd got rid of it, but now it's come back due to a number of reasons," said Dr Sinclair.

Dr Sinclair said low rates of vaccination were often caused by difficulty in accessing immunisation healthcare.

New Zealand's overall vaccination rates against measles is at about 80 percent, according to Health NZ.

Earlier this month, Health Minister Simeon Brown said the government was targeting 95 percent of children being fully vaccinated by 24 months.

Dr Sinclair said at 95 percent coverage, New Zealand would effectively have herd immunity.

Have you ever asked yourself: what would rugby look like if it was played in a pool? If the answer is yes, hold your breath for some good news. Underwater Rugby a very much a real sport, with a team from Auckland heading to the Australian National Championships this weekend in Brisbane.

There's no scrums, lineouts or goal kicking, but Underwater Rugby does share the contact, fitness levels and camaraderie found in the more well-known, land-based version of the sport.

Goals are scored by putting a ball (filled with saltwater to decrease buoyancy) into baskets at either end of the pool, which vary in depths due to whatever is available but generally around four metres. Being able to hold your breath is a key component, as well as special awareness.

The Auckland team will head to Brisbane with a feeling of the unknown, given that it will be their first tournament together.

"As coach I'm very excited, it's going to be a tough one because it will be the international [players] of Australia. The tournament will be three days, we will do our best and it will be tough one and we have to train a lot."

Fairly scathing

I don’t know why we’re not talking about this more. We have a steep decline in fertility, a rapidly ageing population, and, out of Covid, we are seeing the rise and rise of departures,” says Massey University’s emeritus professor Paul Spoonley, a leading sociologist.

“Parts of New Zealand are beginning to empty out, they will suffer stagnation or are in decline. The question for me is – will the number of New Zealanders leaving the country begin to come back?” Spoonley say

I ended up buying on the Gold Coast becase NZ housing was too unaffordable, back just before Covid.

Covid saw NZ housing prices then go from ridiculous to statospheric, so now I am in Tassie. Not been looking since but interested in the exoerinxes of others.

I'm an Aussie's that spent some time in NZ and was looking to move there full time, so a different take I guess and keen to here from locals.

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?