A closing of some of the browser tabs:
- Eli Dourado on NEPA - America's equivalent to the RMA. Superb seeming primer on how it all works, though I would not be one to notice any holes in it.
- Road-building is going to get harder, thanks to a court interpretation around water consenting. Minor bits of drainage are going to hit large hurdles.
- Chris Snowdon in conversation with Marewa Glover on New Zealand's tobacco and vaping regime.
- Possibly the best approach for "glue ourselves to things" protestors: leave them there.
- Lindsay Mitchell picks up another aspect of the Perry child poverty report: substantial differences across regions in foodbank uptake, sorted by material deprivation.
- "Rather than address the workforce crisis it inherited, Labour instead resorted to restructuring the health system to put it under greater central government control and make it more vertical. This was a fatal error."
- NPR's Darian Woods and Wailin Wong on America's blocking Chinese access to higher-tech chips.
- Government may be preferring government-built housing in easing RM constraints. That, as a pattern, will make it harder to get necessary RM reform - if govt can exempt itself from the worst effects of bad RM rules...
- Older piece now, but I want to be able to find it again. Cato's critique of the US Jones Act, which prohibits foreign shippers from transporting goods between US ports. NZ shippers often want this kind of rule here too. It's been doing particular harm in Puerto Rico lately.
- Sex work legalisation in NZ included measured aimed at protecting temporary migrants from exploitation; those rules may be doing more harm than good.
- Youth justice facilities overwhelmed by numbers.
- Emergency rooms overwhelmed by numbers and want of staff.
- Mental health system overwhelmed by numbers and want of staff.
- One reason the new Rings of Power series may not be as faithful to The Silmarillion's account as it could be: copyright.
- Wellington: for, by, and of connected insiders.
- MBIE is running a review of space policy. Wish there were a one-click submission option "Just leave it alone and don't break things." There are just so many submission processes on...
- Yet another area in which NZ could do well by simply recognising standards in use in other places. This time, car safety.
- It looks like the prescription guidelines for medicines for ADHD have been designed around avoiding Ritalin flowing out into other uses rather than helping patients. And the one doctor who prescribed in accordance to patient needs rather than guidelines is in trouble for it.
