Eliora: Our Red Remembrance Day This Saturday

The losses experienced in New Zealand over the Covid-19 pandemic and all the nonsense that went with it are incalculable. Some people have been stripped of everything through no fault of their own. Cries of warning were ineffectual.

What happened to these people must never be forgotten!

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Is Professor Michael Baker at Otago University rewriting NZ History

Is Professor Michael Baker at Otago University rewriting NZ History between 2020 and 2022 in the Media?

Never one to be out the news for long, Professor Michael Baker has penned an article for the (deservedly) bankrupting Newshub. Apparently we could be on the verge of yet another pandemic. Seems we must live our lives in constant fear of imminent annihilation. But don't fear. NZ could always invite Jacinda Ardern back from her foreign exile, vote back in our former never-ending-Auckland-lockdown Covid Minister, Chris Hipkins, as PM, and the two of them could then bring back the likes of Professors Baker & Hendy to start back up where they left off last time. The thought of it.

Kate Hawkesby: Hipkins may regret Auckland's lockdown, I can tell you who regrets it more

The audacity of this Government - seriously, it makes you wonder whether this the most hypocritical government ever.

Yesterday, Chris Hipkins - as in pulpit of truth Chris Hipkins – Covid Minister Chris Hipkins, the guy who ran the whole shebang alongside Jacinda - showed he's now so desperate for votes, that he said he now regrets the 2021 lockdown length for Aucklanders.

No kidding. Does he really? I lived through that lockdown, alongside everyone else in Auckland.

Chris Trotter: Annus Horribilis.

As thus terrrible year, this annus horribilis, draws to a close, we must all hope that 2023 brings us happier days.

As we watch the Chinese Government transition from its old, hardline, Covid-19 elimination strategy, characterised by long and uncompromising lockdowns, to a new, laissez-faire, wide open borders (and bugger the health system) strategy, uncannily like our own, we have confirmation that not even the totalitarian regime of Xi Jinping’s Communist Party can operate indefinitely without a social licence.

Not that our own government is returning the compliment by acknowledging the lack of genuine social licences for its own flagship policies – and changing them. There is more than a whiff of totalitarian indifference to public opinion in the Labour Caucus’s blunt refusal to change course on Nanaia Mahuta’s Three Waters project.