Around the traps

A few bits I've neglected to blog.

• My chat with Adam Jarvis on datacentres. 
• A follow-up chat with RCR on the same thing, as well as a couple of bits on the India Free Trade Agreement. 
• The RBNZ's Keeping Cash Local consultation was just atrocious. The Bank threatened commercial banks via a consultation document. OIAs showed that the Bank knew it did not have the power to  just go ahead and do what it threatened to do. There ought to be an inquiry on how that consultation document got out the door. My submission on the debacle. And my piece at Newsroom.
• Bit at The Post on some very fun AI textual analysis quantifying cultures of innovation going back over a thousand years. 
• The UK's Andy Burnham promises more localism, and the policy document looks decent! My piece at The Herald.
• Treasury knows the ethnicity of 97.5% of its staff; the remaining 1.5% didn't answer the question. By contrast, Treasury does not know what proportion of its staff have qualifications in economics. And it earned a big red "weak" grade on the quality of its economic analysis in the latest PIR. My piece in The Post. I also chatted with Sean Plunket about it. 
• And, over at Newsroom, a bit on the coming FSANZ rules that add more new NZ-Australia labelling requirements for alcohol. I thought that National had promised that we were going to stop doing this and shift instead to QR codes on store shelves to make it easier to enable imports and new grocer entry.