TagMeInSkipIGotThis @ TagMeInSkipIGotThis @lemmy.nz

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331

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ah interesting, if it can't work out where you are it just shows the coldest permanent settlement :)

speaking of weather, if you have access to a terminal*, I discovered this the other day:

curl wttr.in/<your region here>

you can use lat/long, or town/city names - though obviously you'll need to append _

<country abbreviation>

I'd happily swap a couple days of our sun for a couple days of proper rain - ideally on even numbered days so I can still take advantage of watering my veges on the odd numbered :) Its 9am here and already cracked 21C with average temps hovering around that until Monday evening.

(*if not just browse to it like normal its just slower)

Yes, and in an employer-employee relationship where almost all the power is held by one party to the relationship one parties' "mistake" is another's deliberate obfuscation & hiding of entitlements.

And IIRC for the annual close down in which an employer is allowed to require you to take leave, they can only require you take your entitlement, not your accrual right? I guess because technically they can reject any request from leave if its to use your accrual rather than entitlement :)

IIRC* the biggest problem with the holidays act and accruing leave is that the legislation refers to days and some people would work a 10, or 12 hour shift on a normal day, but when leave was accrued and/or paid out it was only on the basis of an 8 hour day which obviously screwed some people out of pay.

And then people who worked over time made things even more complicated especially if it was highly variable (like my work) where it was even harder to figure out what a normal day of work was and thus how many hours of pay to provide when taking a day of leave.

Almost all of that confusion has been resolved now though, so I'd imagine given the government legislating this its underlying motivation is to screw things back in favour of the employer and deprive workers of pay.

*I may be mis-remembering and aren't looking this up.

Yeah, back of napkin maths from the rumours of everything.

iRex: 550m on Ferries, initial total project cost from 750m -> 3.1b due to port-side infrastructure upgrade costs ballooning for future resilience (seismic mostly IIRC).

Nicky NoBoats: 300m rumoured cost of cancelling, 900m rumoured cost of two new, smaller, ferries that won't arrive until 2029 at the earliest given that there's still no contract. Plus as-yet uncosted port-side upgrades still required which Nicky is trying to lump on Wellington & Marlborough's councils. Plus increased freight costs double handling containers and reduced capacity from smaller boats. Plus increased emissions unless somehow they can get the hybrid upgrades iRex was capable of. Plus increased emissions due to smaller boats needing to run more frequent sailings to meet demand.

The overall cost is still going to end up around 3b once someone pays for the port-side work which is where the bulk of the costs were growing and once the hit to our emissions targets is accounted for. The current infrastructure is outdated, is not resilient and needs to be upgraded whether its a smaller boat, or the bigger iRex.

My gut reaction at the time was that the cancellation was done as a political move - designed to crap on something from the previous government and send a signal that Nactional Fist were about cutting cost. But a rushed decision is going to end up costing all of us in the long run.

Yeah it sucks, traditionally you'd think Winston would curb the worst of the Right's economic impulses at the expense of socially liberal policy, but it sorta seems now that he's traded all these culture war "wins" his base want for almost nothing apart from his MFAT toy.

Yeah, I'm very critical of Labour because they're socially Left, but through electoral fear tend to economically right. If you work through their recent record its been some wins for workers on the employment rights levels without fundamental changes to the neo-liberal economic system which is slowly but surely impoverishing their base.

I agree re NZ First, and they're more populist than anything else which means they could land anywhere at any given election, but most of their voting base is still at the greypower end which tends towards more right wing socially & economically.

I think in the media we see parties described in a way that clashes with historic understandings of where the left, centre & right are purely because the right has been driven so much further to the extremes than 50+ years ago.

I would describe the parties like this:

• TPM: Left
• Green: Centre-Left
• Labour: Centre-Right
• NZ First: Centre-Right
• National: Right
• Act: Far Right

I'm sure some would argue Green & TPM are Far-Left, but neither are really calling for the over throw of the capitalist state or anything so I just don't really see it, i'd put Act at Far-Right because they essentially want to dissolve the power of the state entirely outside of its role in policing internally & externally.

I tend to think the more options for communication the better - you never know what will fail entirely, or not perform in any given situation so having alternatives - especially ones that can be as cheap as meshtastic nodes - is a good thing.

Hopefully by the time the next Cyclone Gabrielle level disaster happens in this region we'll have more people with radios, better resiliency in cell towers, direct to satellite texting and stuff like meshtastic.

Yeah it sounds very much like Meshtastic to me, i've been waiting/hoping for someone to get access to a high point in Hawkes Bay that can be a repeater back to Wharite and from thence to Wellington.

Its kinda surprising, but by the looks of this tool there's actually more peaks with LOS than you'd initially guess although all the best ones are already in use by telcos and emergency radio services etc.

Meanwhile, the NZ Horror publishes a (presumably*) deranged HdPA opinion demanding Hipkins delivers an apology for "ruinous" vaccine mandates.

*I don't pay for the Horror, and I don't read morons.

Indeed, which is another illustration of the problem with the modern economy - a combined income of $200k plus would be needed and that's likely only achieved with both partners in a relationship working near full time as well.

Oh absolutely that's the intent - Act are all about employers doing whatever they want, whenever despite the clear power differential. My point is more that $180k isn't actually that high level anymore, its pretty close to middle management in a lot of white collar companies.

That also illustrates how there's bigger gaps between the bottom and middle, as well as an even larger gap from the middle to the top.

Well, unless it has no ratcheting clause to have that rise in line with inflation etc. It won't take all that long before that starts to impact people who see themselves as being quite middle-class* - particularly white collar workers in Auckland / Wellington where housing costs are very high.

*Note i'm well aware that their version of middle class doesn't align with historic NZ perceptions. But also the amount of high-end inherited wealth and the growing disparity between the top 10% and the rest means its also not entirely unrealistic to put a single income family with one earner at $180k as "middle-class" in Auckland.

I'd love to hear of any employee-employer negotiation that started from a position of no redundancy provision, no unjustified dismissal that ended up with those in the contract.

On the face of it that does sound logical, but seemingly it must be common in large vessels* so i'd assume there's a reason for it that as a pleb I have no idea about.

*from a sample size of 1 fairly large ferry and an NZ Navy ship.

I really like rail, and agree that it has a lot of benefits; but road and rail isolation due to land movement, bridge damage etc from natural disasters is likely to be increasingly common and expensive to recover from. Ports can also get damaged, but the sea paths between are obviously difficult to close and getting a port serviceable in most disasters is likely to be easier too.

Even despite that I have a strong preference for re-opening a lot of the under utilised rail and removing effective road freight subsidy while legislating max distances to get freight off the road onto more energy efficient options (rail & coastal shipping). It would obviously be expensive, but so is maintaining roads at a standard for the speed and size of trucks that have been allowed since 2014 - so its really a matter of choice. And that's before I even start talking about the possibilities for low-no emission passenger rail vs flying.

But, if we accept that no National or Labour led neo-liberal economics government is ever going to budget to reinstate rail to anything like it used to be pre 80s, then we can probably only maintain a handful of major routes for freight (setting aside all the other existing rail that either are already, or could be more heavily utilised for passenger):

• Napier-Palmerston North-New Plymouth (relabelling the Marton-New Plymouth & the Palmerston North-Gisborne lines)
• Hamilton-Tauranga
• Wellington-Palmerston North-Waikato-Auckland-Whangarei
• Invercargill-Dunedin-Christchurch
• Greymouth-Christchurch

That gives 3 routes West-East across the country, and 2 that go North-South and links all of the container ports to inland distribution centres. If someone who understands transport better than me can explain why putting freight on rail up to Picton to then take it off, truck it onto a ferry, then back onto a train in Wellington is still good then maintaining the Main North Line for freight would be good too.

I'd say the problem was the decline of our domestic shipping industry post 80s. It's a real shame, we're a long, skinny, quite mountainous country with lots of coast and good harbours dotted about in convenient locations - we could be like Norway or Japan and have great coastal shipping and passenger ferries if we wanted. But no.

Heh, if I remember right at least the KiwiRail crew knew the autopilot was on, they just didn't know how to override it didn't they?