I fear Sir Geoffrey may be even more correct now than when he said this a few days ago.

Admin of ‘Bad Tenants’ Facebook group hit with legal bill for ignoring privacy request A former tenant who feared he had been blacklisted by landlords was blocked from a Facebook group and ignored for years after asking to see the personal information held about him.

NZ Human Rights Review Tribunal has ordered Wayne Wilson, admin of Bad Tenants, NZ (Landlords Only) Facebook group, to pay $7500 for a “total failure” to respond to a privacy request. HRRT says social media groups should be treated the same as other agencies.
#NZpol
www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

Based on David's follow-up post, it's pretty clear that what's driving the disconnect is heavy bias in the business sector - i.e. political preferences, incumbency bias (which direction?), and sexism.

Not here.

For #30DayChartChallenge day 15, the topic is correlation. So with discussion "what even is US consumer confidence", and local stuff, here's a graph I made in 2019- for the supposed leading economic indicator of Business Confidence, NZ business confidence is least correlated to the NZ economy.

I think this is an even better ending (albeit not for the climate...). I assume the 1986 quote was a practice run, which he refined for use in later (1988 Cyclone Bola?).
Also: whether or not it's what he said back then, he has now said specifically this, so I can cite 'personal correspondence'.

Sir Geoffrey has replied! He says:

What I said was "New Zealand is an irredeemably pluvial country." Of course because of climate change it is even more pluvial now than when I said it.
All the best,
Geoffrey

I keep reading it as "Roger Scrotum..."

So it's just "New Zealand is a pluvial country", or, if you can't bear to lose the adjective, "The irreducible fact ... New Zealand is a pluvial country".
(But not "New Zealand is an irreducibly pluvial country". It is the fact that he is calling irreducible, not the pluviality).

Possibly Palmer revised and reused the phrase following Cyclone Bola, but in 18 March 1986, following floods in South Canterbury, he is quoted as saying
"The irreducible fact of these matters seems to be that New Zealand is a pluvial country".
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/p...

I emailed the venerable Professor. I have not yet received a reply. However, a colleague suggested trying Papers Past.

Friends, we all have misremembered multiple things.

Many of the current online references to the quote claim it was said following Cyclone Bola in March 1988.

Oh yeah! I must have forgotten I live in New Zealand 😁

Citation needed: I have seen Geoffrey Palmer's famous quote reported as variously that "NZ is an [irredeemably/ irreducibly/indubitably] pluvial [country/nation]". Does anyone have a definitive source for the actual quote?

I am sickened by all the revisionism that's going on. Our Covid-19 response was world-leading - and overall meant less economic disruption than in other places. Yes, we can learn for & do better next time (there will always be a next time), but you don't learn by treating our response as a mistake.

Butchers were ‘hidden in car boots’ during Covid-19 lockdown, supermarket boss says “You just found ways to do what you needed to do to make sure the store could open full, fresh and friendly and help a community feel normal.”

In more news that's not news: Big Food boss confesses he doesn't care about public health & thinks he knows more about what's safe for public health than people whose job it is to know what's safe for public health.
"'they could’ve perfectly safely traded,' he said."
www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3609...

It was meant as a public service: I see a bunch of people immediately leaping to thinking the fuel crisis will mean their electricity will shut down or be rationed as well. It's really important that people know that (apart from risk of occasional brownout during peak demand) it doesn't mean that.

Why ask me? I know/hear a reasonable amount about electricity supply, and know plenty about public health. I don't pretend to be any kind of expert in non-electric energy systems. So I would be advocating finding the people who know what they're talking about, and asking them.

Free public transport and lower speed limits are good and worthwhile even when not in a crisis.
Private boat fuel limits: sure, it's hardly necessary use.
Private aircraft limits: maybe? But avgas is a different product, right? So use wouldn't affect petrol prices or availability?

The electricity is not going to go off. We do not use oil to produce electricity. We do not use imported gas to produce electricity. We have plenty of spare parts. Fuel for maintenance vehicles would continue to be supplied as critical infrastracture.

Is anyone estimating future fuel prices at the pump?

(I'm wanting to estimate petrol cost for a long drive up country about 3 weeks from now).

Iran could spell the end of the gas levy: Government changes messaging on LNG plan The Government’s plan for a LNG import terminal could be at risk, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon softening his language on the Government’s plan on Monday morning.

I'm fully prepared to allow whatever face-saving excuse the government comes up with, if it means they don't make consumers pay for something they don't need.

www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

Unfortunately the people who need to do the sharing don't tend to be the ones who die if they don't.

Concerns patients receiving incorrect treatment due to mistaken identity Health New Zealand has acknowledged people may have received incorrect medical treatment due to two people being mistakenly linked to one active National Health Index Number.

My daughter's friend was sent a $1600 bill for an A&E visit because the hospital linked her to the wrong NHI number (of a non-resident)

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Mr BarTel says electricity supply will hold. At worst might get some high demand brown outs, but otherwise resilient. So at least the lights will stay on.

To, yes. For, no.

My favourite version of this idea is from Philomena Cunk, something like "Based on the number of pottery fragments found, the Roman empire must be the clumsiest of all the ancient empires".

It's so effing stupid, and if the public support it, they've been conned. It will do nothing for their power bills. The only group that saves money from this are commercial and industrial gas users - but residential electricity customers foot the bill.

So I discovered at the work lunch table yesterday that the colloquialism 'manus' is not widely known in NZ. It's perhaps either time-, location-, or class-specific, but if so I don't know which?

Sounds messy 😬

Desperate to know whether the person who named Meta's AI 'Manus' didn't know (or bother to check) slang meanings; or whether there's some Kiwi at Meta who suggested it and has since been smirking inside through every meeting on the topic.

That's not the phone you just wrote that on, is it? ;)