The Other Side of the Story

This format of this article is going to be a regular on G News cos I dreamed it up while away on holiday and it attempts to take what is spoon fed to us - and flip it round - so we don't swallow it.

1. ) Luxon's Orchid is so special

Christopher Luxon was very so proud to have an orchid named after him on his visit to Singapore - and the seven taxpayer funded staffers working on Luxon's social media wasted no time getting the cheesy photo of Luxon grinning like a cheshire cat before some Luxon orchids - out there. What a win.

The psychological impact here was a kind of "me too" because some may recall World Famous PM Jacinda Ardern also being honoured with an orchid in her reconnect tour to Singapore and - now Christopher Luxon could claim he was of equal status - a great leader - a man of our times - being honoured as breathless fans at the NZ Herald fanned themselves in hot flushes at his sheer greatness on the world stage.

The other side of the story is that nearly all visiting dignitaries to Singapore get an orchid named after them since 1956 when something called "orchid diplomacy" was first deployed.

It's hard to find a country on planet earth where someone of rank visiting Singapore did not get an orchid named after them. It would have been a massive hoot if Luxon had missed out ...but Luxon did miss out on some special treatment Jacinda was served up on her tour.

Regular long time G News reporters will recall that Derek from the NZ Herald was bored out of his brain when Jacinda was reconnecting us to the world and saying NZ was open for business. Jacinda's press coverage was a study in sledging her and Derek's yawning was an attempt to make her less than ordinary.

Who can forget TVNZ 1 News going out of its mind that "nothing was booked in" when Jacinda flew off to see Joe Biden and Winston growled while Gerry said our relationship with the US was not what it used to be. Yet Biden spent way more time with Jacinda than was expected and yeah he was thankful and grateful to her - kind of a long way from the cheerleading for Luxon sharing noodles really.

The other side of the story is it helps when the press explain the context and don't take sides.

2.) Great expectations about average time on a youth benefit

Thomas Coughlan wasted no time this morning - stating that Luxon was correct to suggest that young folks were spending 24 years on average on a benefit and Louise Upston had said "I'm not prepared to accept the welfare system we inherited, where work-ready job seekers are forecast to spend an average of 13 years on a benefit, and teenagers could become trapped on welfare for 24 years of their working lives."

Thomas stated that the Greens had attacked the way Luxon and Upston were throwing these numbers around :

"They argue one of the Government’s favourite statistic - that people on a youth payment will spend an average of 24 years of their working lives on a benefit - is misleading because it applies to just 0.5 per cent of people who receive main benefits." - Thomas.

Thomas revealed that the NZ Herald had covered this before and dug up Taylor Fry reports over the past five years using OIA requests after Steven Youngblood (former advisor to MSD's chief actuary ) had posted some excerpts from a Taylor Fry report on X.

The other side to this story is that averages conceal the skews created by outliers in data - and in this case a very small percentage of people are staying on benefits for over thirty years - which skews the average upwards.

Even Taylor Fry ( appointed originally under Sir John ) say so about their own reports - and they do long term projection modelling - which is like an art rather than an exact science. The old maxim "All models are wrong but some are useful" applies to the long term future gazing - and it would have been far more insightful to use medians and real numbers to provide insights to the public about the real nature of the so called problem.

National need to justify "checkins" and assume Labour was too soft - as if what happened in 2017 was ideal and a benchmark.

They also do this about the size of the public service and levels of Government spending. It's neoliberal bollocks.

National think an increase in the number of people staying on the benefit is bad but booting people off into short term work is not too clever neither.

Because soon people are back - and all you did was move numbers around on a spreadsheet and waffle about expected averages.

The starting conditions about the need for benefit support are not uniform across New Zealand neither. There's no clarity about what regions in NZ most of the long term dependents come from - but I am betting it's mostly in Northland and the East Coast of the North island where unemployment is also highest.

It's all a bit rich as National slash thousands of jobs and at the same time punch down hard on job seekers while waffling about modelling projections and averages ...but you already knew that.

3. ) Inflation falls to 4%

Two hours ago, Christopher Luxon wrote on his FB page :

"Inflation has fallen to the lowest rate since June 2021. Our Government is making good progress in our fight against the cost of living crisis. There is more to do to rebuild our economy so your money goes further but we are on the right track.' - Luxon.

7 minutes ago Nicola Willis wrote :

"We’re working hard to rebuild our economy so we can reduce the cost of living."

Willis posted that comment above the headline that inflation had fallen to 4% - the lowest since June 2021.

The misleading association is - that National are bringing things down and back to the target range - but as we all know - they have done nothing to help inflation come down and no economist is keen on their tax cuts tight now which will only make inflation stay higher for longer.

The other side of the story is non-tradable inflation only fell 0.1% down to 5.8% and this is seen as the main sticky problem before the OCR will be lowered and interest rates will fall.

Non-tradable inflation is being driven by increasing international accommodation costs, construction of new houses - rising rates and rents.

Luxon and Willis are fuelling massive rates raises with their water infrastructure policies and in turn rents will keep driving higher.

The economy is not being rebuilt nor fixed.

Coal is being poured on the Climate Crisis.

Long tunnels are being proposed under Wellington.

Consultants are being paid huge sums to tell Willis what to do about the Ferries.

Media is falling over while Melissa Lee says don't ask me.

Massive toll fees are coming for Roads of National Significance.

"We're raising the energy levels" but making no deals nor new FTAs.

The price of owning an EV is shooting up.

Here comes those prescription charges again.

Willis is soon to head for the USA to escape the heat that should be applied to her about these matters - but as we all know, Willis seems to have a kind of "get out of jail" card with some media and she seems to walk all over anyone who tries to hold her to account simply by being loud and deflecting with excuses that blame Labour.

All the lies are coming home and it takes a special kind of media to keep blowing smoke up this.

The Other Side of the Story

G