Heather du Plessis-Allan: How is this recession making us feel?

I don't think many of us are surprised to hear that we’re back in a technical recession for the second time in a year, it's pretty rough out there.

Personally, I know people involved in retail. They're behind on rent, they can’t pay it because they aren’t making enough money any more.

I know an architecture business that hasn't had any business for months now, I've heard of contractors like draftsmen, builders, and so on cold calling other businesses looking for work.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: The GDP numbers confirm what we're all feeling

It's fair to say that the GDP figures out this morning came as a shock- it's a lot weaker than economists were expecting.

Economists were tending to forecast a bit of growth, around 0.2 percent to 3 percent, and instead what they saw was the economy slumped 0.3 percent for the third quarter, which is July through to September.

And if you calculate it per capita to account for all the extra people who arrived here during that time, it's even worse- the slump is 0.9 percent, which is actually quite material. 

Peter Wilson: Week in Politics: National and Labour go courting at Fieldays

It was Fieldays week and that meant Labour and National courting the farmers with enticing policies.

Opposition leader Christopher Luxon announced National's policy, which pushes back the deadline for pricing agricultural emissions to 2030 and rules out putting the sector under the Emissions Trading Scheme.

The party's agriculture spokesman, Todd McClay, said it was all about giving farmers the tools they needed to cut methane emissions.