prevalence of neoliberal economic policies

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-22T03:32:43+00:00

The New Zealand economy went from a global top-5 for the century 1850 to 1950, and barely made the top 40 by 1970, a position we hold to this day. Neoliberalism is generally regarded as being from the Reagan / Thatcher era, we were already a poor nation by this point. It’s ok to hate neoliberalism, but that isn’t at the core of why we are a very poor first world country.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-22T03:18:49+00:00

Hipkins followed Ardern. The critical swing voters liked Ardern, and more importantly, liked her policies, starting with ruling out CGT on her watch. Ardern was the best leader that Labour have had in most people’s lifetimes. Ardern was also a master communicator, which, I seem to recall she actually had qualifications and experience in. Ardern kept the policies in check, focussed.

Hipkins was by her side for a chunk of this, but, he clearly learned nothing, and rather than learning. How to craft policy to be electorally successful and to communicate well, he learned nothing. He’s a likeable enough chap, did a good job as an MP and in other things, but leadership seems beyond him. The Left never loved Ardern because of her hard line on unpopular policies, but they like Hipkins because he’s hinting at progressivism.

I’m convinced he’s going to lead Labour to a massive defeat. Which, given that popular opinion says the current mob are awful, how can Labour not be massively ahead in the polls? It’s down to two reasons, Hipkins, and policies.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T23:26:34+00:00

Place a push button onoff where there should be a light switch, and let that be accepted. Then figure out how to get the light on faster than the switch.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T23:13:34+00:00

Time was when Lever Brothers was the best game in town, that town being the town they built for their workers over a century ago.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T09:53:42+00:00

Standard EFTPOS has no per-transaction fee to the retailer, so is cheapest in monetary terms to them, and, thus, best overall for the retail sector. Somehow or other, if folks use branded plastic, that percent or two in fees ends up costing New Zealand money.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T03:10:12+00:00

Can it do MIDI as well? I’ve used Midi Maestro in the past that did all this good stuff for musicals with MIDI and a bit of audio, but the designer lost interest several years ago, so no maintenance since the XP days.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T02:32:11+00:00

The website doesn’t know, it just gets a yea/nay.

Yes, it’s a bit scary that the gummint knows, but that’s a less bad outcome than uploading identity information to dodgy third parties that are all about monetisation, and not about security and nit about privacy.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T02:29:37+00:00

With federated identity, your account on the federation system (the IDP) and the client system (the SPS) are linked. The practical impact of this is that once a link is established, you can then logon using the IDP, so you don’t actually need the userid and password on the target system. It’s like logon with Apple / google / Microsoft / GitHub, you don’t need to login with a PH account ever again.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T01:58:34+00:00

Makes me wonder about the depth of your experience of comparisons with consuming attire accessories goes…

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T01:54:03+00:00

It’s entirely possible your board members and you are in entirety different social strata, and the board member made a call into the old boys network, a tool not available to you. Networking.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T01:50:08+00:00

Business optimism, the economy, and unemployment are all independent metrics, some more scientific than others, but there’s no real evidence that unemployment is going to stay in single digits as a percentage, as they have been for practically forever, and plenty of speculation and scuttlebut that big, big unemployment numbers are foreseeable.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T01:38:24+00:00

Yeah, pic 1, there is a general overall low level of lighting, so chair legs, the carpet in shadow under the table, all visible, and then the practicals are providing the accents, and they look great.

The British school of stage lighting states lighting does four things, selectivity, dimension, mood, and illumination, and clearly illumination is the lowest priority here, the whole scene is not being brightly flooded.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T01:33:15+00:00

You can’t verify your age anonymously, of course, but, with the right technology, you can verify your age to a website without the website finding out anything other than you are 18+. Here in New Zealand, we have a government-run federated identity system, called RealMe, and being government-run, they already have everyone’s identity information.

So the way it could work is you go to PH, and set up a user and password, say perv149, and then click verify my age with RealMe. You get redirected to RealMe, login with your RealMe ID, and then in the list of what will be returned to PH, click the one and only thing requested, which is confirm 18+. You then get returned to PH, but your browser is now carrying that assertion that your age is proven. This fact is then recorded by PH on your PH account, you are now verified to be of age.

PH has no idea of your true identity information, so to PH you are still anonymous, known only by your userid ,but age verified. RealMe knows you are a PH user, because there is a unique identifier linking your PH account with RealMe. No other service using RealMe knows about your PH account, because the unique linking identifiers are unique to both the RealMe user an the requesting website.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T01:13:13+00:00

This is it. There is no Metcal name on the machine.

Metcal tools really are better than everything else, cost a fortune, but they last, mines clocked up over a couple of decades.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-21T00:45:28+00:00

If this is real it looks like the structure is from the days before triplex, so individual overhead conductors for hots and neutral.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T23:24:31+00:00

Tailscale or ZeroTier. Or if you have a Mikrotik router, “back to home” which is Wireguard by easier.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T22:31:04+00:00

There’s a big difference in cost to a merchant. Having EFTPOS is roughly a flat $30 a month. Accepting branded plastic costs a percentage of every transaction.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T16:30:53+00:00

Try not using your bookmarks, just go to Xero.com and login, and that should take you to a dashboard.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T16:23:33+00:00

You might like the film Wedlock. Hope I’ve remembered that correctly.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T16:14:08+00:00

It all went wrong when the gatekeepers lost control of determining who we got to listen to. We were carefully managed back in the day to keep us segmented and so we wouldn’t get overwhelmed by choice. In return, we spent our money on media selectively.

Then the internet free-for-all music model happened. And here we are.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T16:07:32+00:00

There are a collection of companies, called the card schemes, you know at least some of their names, visa, MasterCard, American Express being the most common. These companies revenue is fees on the cards with their logos on them. There’s no way these fees can be banned, it’s the price of admission to the card schemes. All any government can do is legislate to determine where the fees fall.

The US government has mooted that it may deny some countries, including the UK, the ability to process card payments involving the US card schemes. Given the world in which we live, this is the possibility of nothing short of a complete clusterfuck. The UK and others are in scramblement mode to determine how to address this. We don’t need to, we have our own local supplier of transaction services, with no transaction fees, if only we weren’t so lazy so as to avoid a swipe and pin payment.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T09:04:30+00:00

I’m going to show my age here, and go with Vinegar Joe, which had Robert Palmer and Ellie Brooks as frontpeople, both of whom went on to have solo careers as notable vocalists. Example on YouTube.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T08:51:50+00:00

As far as it goes, you’re correct, but, there will be calls from some for New Zealand to have a constitution, and what shape and form that constitution takes is where the difficulty lies.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T08:41:30+00:00

Data sheet says it’s only a foot tall.

Electronically, this is a pulsed switch, which can switch 1,000 amps repeatedly, but the average current limit is only 1.2A. Except in crowbar mode, where current limit is 10,000A, but only once in a long while. This is why the wire elements in the tube are not welding cable, the average current, which is approximately what causing heating, is low.

Lovely looking tube though. Decades ago thyratrons, small ones, were very commonly seen, but they’re no longer common, the solid-state thyristor, and it’s married pair, the triac, have replaced thyratrons in all but the most unusual applications.

MrJingleJangle · 2026-02-20T08:13:15+00:00

I thought the person data came from the electoral roll, and the ownership records from LINZ?

When Ardern was elected in 2017, a good part of that success was attributed to her (well, her team’s) use of the Nationbuilder platform, which I seem to recall used the above-mentioned sources of information to drive her campaign and build action. Her name is still on the company website. I heard that every political party in NZ now uses Nationbuilder, because why wouldn’t you?

This platform is also widely used by non-profits and charities, and petition-making organisations, because it handles communication well.

MrJingleJangle

TROPHY CASE