Nine To Noon

With the Covid-19 pandemic putting more people under financial pressure, the Citizens Advice Bureau says it's pushed people to the very limits of their financial resilience.

Pattrick has been closely following the Supermarkets inquiry, where the rubber is meeting the road with the duopoly terrified of being required either to divest stores to create a competitor or to pull apart the vertically integrated supply chain from warehouse to supermarket shelf.

Mary Wadsworth of Dorothy Butler Children's Bookshop Auckland reviews Pony by R J Palacio, published by Penguin Random House.

Pioneering British psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Gwen Adshead has spent more than spent 30 years working inside prisons and with offenders at Broadmoor Hospital - this is where some of the UK's most notorious criminals are detained.

Ron Elving explains why President Joe Biden's appearance at COP26 will be a test of him on a world stage. Also the US Supreme Court tackles abortion and guns, huge spending bills are on the brink in Congress and the significance of statewide elections in Virginia and New Jersey for Democrats.

As more Covid 19 positive patients are allowed to isolate at home, family doctors are planning for how to care for them. Recently we spoke with Bryan Betty from the College of GPs about the shortage of pulse oximeters and the role of these devices in caring for Covid patients who're at home. Professor Dee Mangin is a GP in Ontario, Canada, and Professor of Family Medicine at McMaster University and University of Otago.

The government's plans to push ahead with its three waters reforms have been called the "theft of local assets" , "disappointing", "devastating" and "unacceptable" by some councils, while others are welcoming the plan as a relief to ratepayers. Billions of dollars worth of council-owned drinking, waste and stormwater infrastructure and services assets are to be amalgamated into four regional bodies.

Urban issues correspondent Bill McKay join Kathryn to talk about the further RMA reforms announced last week, which aim to improve housing supply by speeding up National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD), enabling more medium density homes.

Pierogi dumplings are a delicious Polish staple which some Canadians have adopted as their national dish. Kate Grater, who hails from Vancouver makes and sells them in Christchurch, at The Pierogi Joint on the fringe of the CBD, in Waltham.

Cabinet meets today to decide whether to move the two regions out of alert level 3, step 1, as retailers plead with the government to ease alert level restrictions in Auckland and Waikato, to allow shops to open, this as two Auckland high schools have Covid scares. Also an assessment of the Government's draft emissions reduction plan, and a critical moment for Greens co-leader and Climate Change Minister, James Shaw attending COP 26 in Glasgow.

 

Stephen Mills is an executive director at Talbot Mills research limited which is the polling firm used by Labour. He is a former political adviser to two Labour governments.

Brigitte Morten is a director with public and commercial law firm Franks & Ogilvie and a former senior ministerial advisor for the previous National-led government.