Daily review 06/08/2025
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5:30 pm, August 6th, 2025 - 23 comments
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Daily review is also your post.
This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
CommentsOpinions
We have a government that invented a crisis and through their own incompetence have made things a bunch worse.
Over on TDB, Tadgh Stopford has written a few posts on the economy/banking etc.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/07/30/guest-blog-tadhg-stopford-the-banksters-are-winning-thats-why-our-economy-is-failing/
In this link is another link to an interview by Tucker Carlson (I know, jut hold yr nose) with Richard Werner.
If you are at all interested in looking behind the curtains give this 20 minutes of yr time.
Werner demonstrates that banks create money out of nothing. Not savings, not fractional reserve banking.
In Aotearoa, they are Australian banks, billions of our dollars leaving our economy every year.
In China, the banks are owned by the state and while this is probably not the only reason for China's economic success, it is almost certainly a factor.
It's the number of banks. That enables small business growth.
Well worth the time.
Culture wars update: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2025/08/06/free-speech-union-meltdown-and-failure-to-take-over-internet-nz/
Supercool people who get off on control systems make random decisions to keep everyone guessing. It's a riff on a novel about the blend of chance and identity. The Dice Man established that option long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
Watching every move you make…
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Key legislative changes the Government is progressing include:
“The changes will support a more user-friendly, technology-enabled RUC system, with multiple retail options available for motorists,” Mr Bishop says.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/next-steps-replacing-petrol-tax-electronic-road-user-charges
I would really hope that a new Left Govt will roll back the surveillance overreach. Maybe Its gone too far by then ? Sadly most people aren't even really bothered ..too busy just trying to get by?
Yup. Fiddling while the robber barons remake the SA of their youth.
Elon Musk lived in apartheid South Africa until he was 17. David Sacks, the venture capitalist who has become a fundraiser for Donald Trump and a troll of Ukraine, left aged five, and grew up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee. Peter Thiel spent years of childhood in South Africa and Namibia, where his father was involved in uranium mining as part of the apartheid regime’s clandestine drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And Paul Furber, an obscure South African software developer and tech journalist living near Johannesburg, has been identified by two teams of forensic linguists as the originator of the QAnon conspiracy, which helped shape Trump’s Maga movement. (Furber denies being “Q”.)
https://archive.li/YXd26 (Financial Times)
https://archive.li/TRxQN
https://archive.is/mLvl4
https://thestandard.org.nz/?s=joe90+thiel&search_comments=1&search_sortby=relevance
I can certainly see you personally have been bothered.Good onya!
I sure have, and also am activated about Peter not a vampire Thiel.
IMO our NZ freedom today (sadly, rapidly eroding : (, was won by the blood given by those who fought, not just in war..but protest demonstrations (against the pro fascist SA rugby tour et al)
Being Aware and Active is the very least we can, and should, be doing ! Keep on going..there are some, and IMO more are becoming Aware.
If I can put something in my vehicle so I can pay as I go it's much preferred to the ,oh shit I'm out out of ruc's ,realization followed by the need to find $400 ish in a hurry.
Yes on the surface it makes sense like e tags etc, only thing is you are then not far away from receiving a speeding ticket in your inbox because you did 53 in a 50 zone. Once the horse has bolted and all.
Yep. Its all designed/promoted to sound reasonable (I use that word advisedly !) , however you only have to look at who is promoting it. Chris Bishop? Who the fuck would trust the POS?
Like just about everything this mob of crooks have done.
"Someone associated with the Coalition of Cockups will make a lot of money"!
someone
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https://elections.nz/assets/Donation-returns/2023/Velocity-Freight-Limited_24_March_2023.pdf
https://www.transporting.nz/press-releases/universal-road-user-charges-needed-to-future-proof-transport-funding
In line with the press release from Transporting NZ, all the korero from Bishop and not a mention of trucks/heavy vehicles.
If it's all about fairness, then heavy vehicles will have to rise to more than $600 per 1000km. Incidentally a cost that we indirectly pay also.
Trucks do significantly more damage to roads and the rest of us subsidise them. Looking at you Fonterra.
It's going to be really entertaining watching this go through. A tracking device in every vehicle is going to get a lot of people quite exercised, especially the less rational of NZF's demographic. I know a few who will have something to say about this and "off their bike" won't quite cover their expected reaction.
Then it leads into congestion charges (hot topic in Queenstown, with some vigorous finger pointing between various community sectors) which National have signalled. Easiest way to administer congestion charging is a tracker in every vehicle, so it all starts to come together as a whole.
Glad it's National that has to sell this. The rage of a tradie getting hit with a "Traffic Jam Tax" when he's stuck in traffic for an hour on Frankton Road will be palpable. All directed at Bishflap and Simple Simon. Can't wait.
It's a reasonably rational way of managing and funding our roads, and a left leaning government could use the tools to really transform how we get around. But getting from here to there is going to be minefield of technical, and societal challenges around privacy and the limits of the technology. Some interesting discussions ahead.
Sure will be. I was thinking about my current transport. We have a second hand 2005 Toyota Caldina 1800cc ICE (designed for short people), and a 2014 Honda Fit hybrid 1500cc (real fun to drive). Neither is likely to have any tracking support. They certainly don't have anything to support odometer collection apart from the number one eyeball..
The current plan is to run these until they drop or become unmaintainable – which will be some time away. We don't do more than about 10-15 thousand kilometres per year, and I'm driving more than I used to.
These were relatively recent purchases – within the last 3 years. They replaced a 1993 Toyota Corona (lost to reversing accident) and a 1998 Toyota Caldina (oil loss and a bad sensor). We'd had both for 20 years and 15 years respectively. I also had a Honda Fit 2012 RS Hybrid for 9 months – but it got drowned in the 2023 floods.
The details of how to collect taxes from these is going to be interesting. I'm seriously uninterested in putting electronics in them because that will be frigging expensive. Not to mention that I don't like being under surveillance. We don't drive at congestion times because they are frigging congested.
I'd also expect an itemised bill if I get periodically based on tracking. Also that would have to be at least weekly because I like to keep a tight control on finances. It has to go through Hnry for GST and business expenses.
It already infuriates me that parking tickets collected electronically arrive 4-6 weeks after we screw up the parking app, and that I don't get an itemised bill from my occasional the northern tollway. Driving offences that arrive month later for being in a buslane while turning a corner?
So what are we left with? Self-reporting an odometer every year at the WoF? Or monthly? That will seriously screw up the governments finances.
Number plate scanning needs to be timely and delivered electronically pretty much as it happens. That is why it fundamentally doesn't work now.
The existing systems we have are too late to change behaviour. But I don't see any progress towards that kind of system. Besides I will want to see some proof on request if I think taht they are wrong. That is a shitload of storage and really large public access systems.
Does it really need to be a tracking GPS type device ,surely it could just be linked to the odometer, kms driven is all that's needed,
They could replace the analog RUC monitors with an electronic one I guess, don't know how that works for retrofitting. And that monitor sends readings to a device which you log with NZTA or whoever.
But my guess is that NACT and their business partners will want tracking, because of the future revenue involved eg parking tickets, private roads, tolls.
From memory Bill English wanted to do this yonks ago (for rego?), and it was very unpopular. I notice this plan is light on detail.
I agree with you that the current system is a pain. But as with SM age limits, removing privacy rights across the population is just a stupid and bad move.
It probably doesn't need to be a tracking device.
But it will be.
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KEY FEATURES
https://www.eroad.co.nz/products/ruc-compliance-eroad-electronic-ruc/
are they using satellite?
I doubt cell networks would be able to capture location, route and operational data with the accuracy required so probably.
Expect they would use both, like a smartphone.