Afternoon roundup

The closing of the many tabs:

• EU trade talks with NZ are on. European consumers who worry about food security, food prices, and access to the only lamb that, to the best of my knowledge, Peter Signer has granted caveated ethical approval - they should be telling their governments to ditch the tariffs and quotas on NZ ag exports. 


• Elizabeth Rata has a blog.


• That doesn't solve the problem, Camus. Like sure, you're right - but in a trivial sense. You've just pushed the question up a level. 


• How not to build a stadium. Or, better, perhaps they shouldn't be building a stadium. 


• NZ fares poorly in the latest world competitiveness rankings.


• It's especially when you have low-quality informal institutions that competent mayors matter. I wonder what a replication of this work for NZ would look like. 


• NZ has a lot of options for drivers who want to take jobs on apps. Uber, obviously. But also Lyft, Ola and anyone else can enter the market if they want. The Employment Court is trying to decide whether Uber drivers are employees. It's an odd kind of employment if someone can have three or four different apps open at the same time, taking jobs as they come. Macfie takes a very union-sympathetic position; haven't seen other reporting on the court case.  


• A new taskforce to try to unblock building materials, with a focus on plasterboard. Looking to consenting will matter, but the overarching issue will still be getting councils out from under joint-and-several liability. 


• Radio New Zealand cheering on the creation of a new cartel, mostly because they have no clue how occupational licensing works. 


• Bad news for beer drinkers - price is going up (as it is for everything else).


• AML rules still killing remittances.


• Jenny Ruth picks up Geof Mortlock's worries about RBNZ.