The Mike Hosking Breakfast

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Wednesday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Worst Possible Timing/You'll Go Renewable and You'll Like It/Interference Never Works/Space Fever/Creating Your Own Market

Mike Hosking has a question for the Prime Minister: Why does she have so much clothing out on loan?
NZ Herald columnist Sasha Borissenko has highlighted how many homes some MPs and Ministers own, as the country once again discusses the housing crisis and what needs to be done in this country.
But one particular comment about Jacinda Ardern - taken from the publicly accessible Pecuniary and Other Specified Interests register - got Hosking's attention. 
"Jacinda Ardern owns a family home in Auckland, and has a mortgage with Westpac Bank and as of January last year the Prime Minister had clothing on loan from designers Kiri Nathan, Kate Sylvester, Harman Grubisa (which is no longer), Juliette Hogan, TAC Pacific, Mena, Maggie Marilyn, and Tanya Carlson," Borrisenko wrote. 
"Is that unusual for the Prime Minister to be dressed by people?" Hosking asked. "A number of people have asked is this fringe benefit tax territory - does she keep the clothing?
"I would imagine if you go international and you need some evening outfits you pack a couple of dresses you borrowed from somewhere else, I would get that, but this seems to be a sort of ongoing [thing]." 
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Helen Clark is back for another crack.
She’s active currently on the drug front trying to drum up support for the failed attempt on cannabis last year.
She’s just off the Eden park campaign which she also lost, and now it’s onto to Waihi Beach, where some developers want to build some apartments, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you she’s against it.
I like Helen, mainly because she’s worldly, she’s well studied, argues her case well, and is a very good example of even though you might not agree with a lot of her thinking, you can’t take way her zest, her vigour and the fact she fronts, argues her case, and was indeed one of our more successful Prime Ministers.
But she appears to have traversed into the world of the bored retiree. As a person unable to stop and smell the roses, a person desperate for work, which is no bad thing - what you love and doing keeps you young, but picking your cause is a talent.
Surely she can see the irony of her nimbyism. She’s happy to have the Waihi connection, but unfortunately for the rest of us, we can’t have access to it.
Surely she’s aware of the house debate in this country and its dramatic supply issues and yet she’s happy to put up a fight to stop the sale of new homes.
I am sure she’s got a decent argument: community, history, architecture. Everyone ever who had something built near them they didn’t like, they always have a decent argument.
But given that, if all the arguments counted for something, nothing would ever get built.
Its why, in many respects, councils and their land attitude have made the housing mess what it is.
And the RMA with its myriad of clauses and sub clauses has allowed virtually anyone to tie up any form of new building or progress in a series of court cases forever.
None of it solves any problems. All of it revolves around the selfishness of ‘I like where I am and I don’t want anything to change’.
In this new zoom world where the meetings and work places are in provincial New Zealand, where the ex-pats wants a slice of fresh air and rural countryside, this is the future.
Waihi needs houses the same way Ōpōtiki, or Kaikōura, and every other small seaside settlement does.
Up where we live in the country, its boom time. Future Residential, they call it. Its gang busters.
People need places to live, and if you’ve bought into the zeitgeist, they need affordable places to live.
And we need to spread the population: Waihi and towns like it have to be part of the big picture.
Surely a former pm that’s dealt with all these sort of issues at the highest level before can see that?    

How many people have had a bad public toilet experience? Dirty, no toilet paper, soap, damaged, you name it.
One Queensland researcher has gone around the world studying public toilet design and she has some recommendations on what we can do to improve public toilets all over the globe.
Katherine Webber told Mike Hosking she went to seven countries officially - including the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Netherlands - but does stop and take photos wherever she is.
She found that the countries all do things slightly differently, but there are different types of toilets that have different uses. 
"In a space like a gallery, you have a lot of people watching who's using the space. In a park, you might have exercisers using it, it might need to be used after dark."
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Kelvin Davis has been accused of being soft on prisoners and not having the backs of prison guards.
The Corrections Union has consistently raised the issue of prisoners assaulting guards, and they say nothing is ever done about it.
On top of that they are annoyed that Davis is seen to be advocating on behalf of the prisoners - so much so that a vote of no confidence was considered.
Corrections Association President Alan Whitley told Mike Hosking violence is getting worse in the prison system, and assaults are happening far to regularly.
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It's been dubbed Happy Monday — the day people could put on a bathing suit and swim in an outdoor pool for the first time in months, or rusty golfers strove to hit their drives down the middle of the fairway.
Following a near three-month coronavirus lockdown that along with a rapid rollout of vaccines has seen infections fall dramatically, England embarked on a major easing of restrictions with families and friends able to meet up in outdoor spaces and many sports permitted once again. The other parts of the U.K. — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are taking broadly similar steps.
And, as if right on cue, the weather is improving, with temperatures rising to levels more akin to southern Spain at this time of year.
Under Monday's easing, groups of up to six, or two households, can socialize in parks and gardens once more, while outdoor sports facilities can reopen.
“It’s only because of months of sacrifice and effort that we can take this small step towards freedom today and we must proceed with caution,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a media briefing.
Johnson said it's “inevitable” that cases would start to rise again in coming weeks as Europe struggles with a resurgence of the virus. However, he urged everyone to follow the rules and to get a vaccine jab when called.
Though many aspects of everyday life remain off-limits for at least a few more weeks, many people are relishing their new freedoms, such as playing their outdoor sport of choice, provided the numbers involved meet the limits set out. Organized team sports, such as children's football clubs, can start up again too, up to any number.
One of the first — if not the first — to reopen Monday was the Morley Hayes Golf Club, near Derby in central England, with players teeing off at 12:01 a.m. for a seven-hole floodlit charity tournament.
Many aspects of England's lockdown remain in place with the British government stressing that it's taking a cautious approach to lifting the restrictions, not least because of rising cases in continental Europe. It says that upcoming plans to lift restrictions, such as allowing pubs to serve beer outside from April 12, could be delayed if the virus backdrop deteriorates.
“The whole point about the road map and the timescale that we have got is that it gives us a chance to evaluate the data as we go forward," Johnson said.
Police stressed that officers will remain highly visible, including in open spaces, and won't hesitate to fine anyone going beyond what is allowed, such as those gathering at house parties.
“We make no apology for our tough stance on shutting down those large gatherings which risk public safety," said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jane Connors, who leads the coronavirus response for London’s Metropolitan Police.
Most nonessential businesses remain closed, along with pubs, restaurants, gyms, cinemas, theaters, museums and sports stadiums. And the government continues to urge people to work at home where they can, while traveling abroad is banned except for a few special reasons.
Though new coronavirus cases and deaths are at their lowest levels in around six months, the U.K. has suffered Europe's deadliest outbreaks, with more than 126,500 coronavirus-related deaths, according to government figures. Other measures put the death toll higher because in the early days of the pandemic a year ago, there was very little testing for the virus.
Families who lost loved ones have started painting a mural made up of almost 150,000 hand-drawn hearts on the south bank of the River Thames in London opposite the Houses of Parliament to remember those who have died. The mural is expected to stretch more than a half-mile (nearly a kilometer) when finished.
The “Covid-19 Bereaved Families For Justice” group, which is urging the government to call an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic, said the unlicensed mural isn't meant to be “political or...

Sir James Dyson is going down as one of modern history's greatest innovators.
He, of course, founded Dyson back in 1991 and revolutionised the vacuum business.
And Dyson has moved into so many other areas, like heating, cooling, air purification and hair care.
So what's the journey been like? And what does the future hold?
Sir James Dyson joined Mike Hosking to talk about his business, and what new innovations we can expect from the company.
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The Government is being told to put its effort into increasing the supply of housing - and stop punishing investors.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson hasn't ruled out restrictions, after last week's suite of measures aimed at cooling down the housing market.
Real IQ Director David Faulkner told Mike Hosking in the long term there could be harmful effects for owners and tenants.
"If you keep squeezing investors who have been easily played in all of this, it will retract the housing market, people will scrimp on maintenance and cause people to cut costs."
Faulkner says the Government needs to look to itself for solutions, not landlords.
"I don't like being called a speculator, or being accused of using some tax loop hole, it's offensive language in my view. They need to look in the mirror."
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You know why National want a vaccination target? Because they know full well this government can't run a bath, far less a vaccine rollout.
They exported measles to the Pacific Islands. And last year's flu jab rollout, a rollout they do every year was a mess.
And a lot of correspondence, by the way, from people being told by their doctors there is no roll out for flu so far this year, because Covid has basically taken all the time and all the equipment.
Add to that that last week's Christchurch DHB mess over access to private details, and you can see the chances of us making this happen at pace are virtually zero.
In their defence, a lot of vaccine rollouts have had trouble internationally. It seems to be some sort of pattern, that you start slow, make some mistakes, and then once its oiled, you're off and running.
But the fact the world is well under way, and we have barely scratched the surface should be of concern to every one of us.
But is it? I get the increasing impression a lot of New Zealanders are in a go nowhere kind of fog these days. And the government, no matter how inept isn't going to rile them out of their introspective slumber.
The closest thing we have to a vaccine target is an A4 piece of Ministry of Health paper with the broadest of timelines hasn’t really been challenged by anyone other than the opposition.
There is the bit we are just wrapping up, border workers and health workers. The irony of that is we haven't even done that properly, given last week it was at 93 percent, not the 100 % they said it would be. And that deals with a handful of people.
We have half a million older folks with health issues coming next over the next three months, and then the vast majority of us by the end of the year, starting in July, all things going to plan.
In that is the danger, what plan? Surely there is more than the A4 piece of paper.
Mind you, if you’ve seen how the Ministry has done PPE, flu jabs, MIQ, contact tracing, and border testing, we are probably lucky it got as detailed as a single piece of paper.
I assume those who still think this is world class and the best health response on the planet, might wake up in the coming months when entire countries finish their programme and hundreds of thousands start jumping on planes as borders come down, and ours don't.
All anyone has asked for during all of this, is a plan. What's the plan? In this case, as part of the plan, what's the date?
As National say it's not rocket science. Yet this seems to be a Ministry and government that take the smallest of things and make rocket science seem simple.

Liam Lawson has rounded out a stunning debut weekend in Formula Two with a podium finish in Bahrain.
The 19-year-old New Zealand driver backed up his win in the opening sprint race of the round with a third placing in the feature race at the famous Sakhir circuit.
This weekend marked Lawson's first event in the tier that sits below Formula One, having spent the prior two years in Formula Three.
Starting eighth on the grid, Lawson was pleased with how the day eventuated.
"Extremely happy to finish third - it's a really good haul of points," he said.
Lawson benefited from an early safety car and an error from pole sitter Guanyu Zhou of China – who ultimately won the race – that propelled the Kiwi up the order.
"We got lucky with the VSC [virtual safety car] because I was in the box when it came out and everyone slowed down, so I made up some spots there," the Hawke's Bay driver said.
"We had good pace, especially early on with the options. Dan [Ticktum] was faster so I let him go, in the end I just didn't quite have enough tyre life to fight with these two in the last couple of laps, but I was able to get back up to third. Points wise, a good weekend."
It completes a stellar weekend for the Kiwi teenager with two podiums across the first three races. He was forced to retire in the second sprint race yesterday following a collision.
Lawson's competing in the championship that was won by German Mick Schumacher in 2020 – the son of motorsport legend Michael Schumacher - who is now driving in Formula One with Haas.
"It's crazy to now be a part of it and feel what it's like for all of these guys. I am enjoying it so far, learning a lot and there's still a lot more to be learnt as we go on," Lawson says gleefully.
Lawson sits second in the championship, 11 points off leader Zhou. The next round is at the Circuit de Monaco in Monte Carlo.