Afternoon roundup

The tabs do pile up. A few days out at the NZAE meetings, a couple days leave, and then digging out from under the pile...

• If the government forbids asylum seekers to work, it ought to be providing them income support. Instead it bans them from working and requires them to live off of any savings they might have, and charity. It really is a kind of administrative evil. 
• Anton Howes with some fun history of freight infrastructure
• Paul Walker with some fun history of the firm
• “You’ve got this cool thing that will get you the youth market and make you look innovative. But if there’s even the tiniest chance it will lead to a big fraud investigation or AML problems, you have really stuffed up. And you can never prove something 100 percent won’t go wrong.”
• Christchurch is pretending that its sun is different from the sun elsewhere as an end-run around MDRS rules. It'll be a test of how government responds to these kinds of shenanigans. 
• Industrial and process heat is covered by the ETS. Nevertheless, central government requires councils to consider climate change when consenting industrial process heat. An ETS means councils shouldn't have to think about this. 
• National has proposed a third medical school. But it won't do a lot of good without expanding the number of supervised practice positions at hospitals. Right now, there are international doctors who could practice here, in a desperate doctor shortage, but there aren't enough of those slots, and those slots are mandatory. Some catch, that catch-22.
• There has now been an increase in clinical practice positions so that we can get more nurses. Three years into the pandemic, but better late than never. 
• The great thing about carbon prices is that people really don't have to understand what actions are associated with reducing global warming. Prices give them all the guidance they need. Good thing, because a survey of Kiwis had 'rallying behind recycling' as doing the most good for the climate. Recycling has negligible effects on GHG. But it doesn't matter, because waste is in the covered sector... 
• StatsNZ isn't likely to hit census response rate targets.
• "Since when are monopolies for private companies a good thing?" Well, they can be. But they're less likely to be when granted by statute, as they are here...
• The pharmacy guild advances implausible arguments for maintaining guild restrictions on pharmacy ownership. 
• Me, in Newsroom, with a reminder about Alchian's shipping the good apples out. 
• Police response-time targets have been curved...
• Willie Jackson wants to have a big nationalistic fight with Big Bad International Platforms to take to the election. Only sensible way of reading this. 
• Tech to reduce nitrogen runoff from fertilizer. Neat.