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Home / Politics / "Surrender Before June, 2021 And Get Empowerment" - Gov. Umahi Tells Criminals!
"Surrender Before June, 2021 And Get Empowerment" - Gov. Umahi Tells Criminals!
May 27, 2021 Politics
Governor David Nweze Umahi of Ebonyi has appealed to criminal elements in the state to surrender before June, 2021 deadline or risk being prosecuted by the security agencies.
Governor Umahi spoke at Ezza Model Secondary School, Izzikworo, Ezza South, during the Ebonyi Central Zone grand finale of the 2021 Governor David Nweze Umahi's Annual School Sports. In his address, he said: "I continue to ask them to surrender and then come and get empowerment".
Speaking further, he said:
"By the first week of June, those who have not surrendered, we will allow the security agencies to do their work. So I continue to insist that they should come forward to be profiled and empowered".
Gov. Umahi also identified juju makers and sellers of hard drugs as some of the problems bedeviling the youths. He noted: "We need to identify those who are selling hard drugs. It is also another problem. Remove these two and our children are the best. You add these two, our children do not know who is who".
While commending the efforts of the Chairmen of the four Local Government that make up the Ebonyi Central Zone, the Governor said: "Let me thank my Local Government Chairmen on the issue of security. Some of you are doing extremely very well.
Gov. Umahi frowned at the killing of security agencies and wondered why they should be killed when they are neither the problems of the agitation or the reasons the South East are being marginalized.
On the ongoing Ebonyi State International Airport, Gov. Umahi reiterated his commitment to see to the completion of the project by December 2021. He also promised to commence the dualization of the road that is going to cross Onueke before December also.
A novelty football match held for Gov. Umahi was played by females students from Community Secondary School Umuoghara, Ezza North and Ezetaugbala Memorial Secondary School, Amudo, Ezza South.
Gov. Umahi challenged the participating pupils and students to put in their best. "We must bring up the best so that we can encourage them, if it is scholarship, we give to them in all the Zones to encourage them. And so, by the day we will do our grand finale, we should be able to honour them and so, I want them to take it very seriously."
In his remarks, the Commissioner for Education, Dr. Onyebuchi Chima, attributed the ongoing Sports events as a fallout of the #EndSARS programme organized by the Governor.
"This is the manifestation of #End_SARS programme that he recently sponsored where one of the mandates is that we will open the doors to children and youths of Ebonyi State".
"Today, on behalf of the teachers of Ebonyi State, the pupils and the children and indeed all good citizens, those who believe in good things, we declare that indeed the summation of what you are doing in education is what we classify as #Umahism.
The winners in the Central Zone will join others from the North and South for the grand finale that will hold later in the State Capital, Abakaliki in order to decide the overall champions.
Gov. Umahi afterwards played host to Chief George Muoghalu, an Anambra State Governorship hopeful aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
"Surrender Before June, 2021 And Get Empowerment" - Gov. Umahi Tells Criminals! Reviewed by Kosisochukwu on May 27, 2021 Rating: 5

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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A simple guess the card colour bonus game is enabled if player has any win on any activated payline. If player guess the correct colour the winnings are doubled. This is a gamble game, and although player can dramatically increase their winnings and can also lose them.
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A second interview with Delaware-Maryland Synod Vice President on the topic of change, this time talking about John's personal philosophy of change, some thoughts about the book "Switch" and changes coming for our synod.
What did John share that challenged your view of change?
In what ways could you apply John's thoughts on change to your ministry or organization?
This interview with synod Vice President John Auger talks about change and especially how faith helps us move forward in new directions!
Which of the ideas John shared is most challenging in your view of change?
What step could you or your organization take to move forward into change?


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'Mad Men's' Joan goes modern
Kaley Cuoco has babies on the brain
Ricky Gervais' David Brent gets a movie
Kim and Kanye's new love nest
Not even Franco can break Colbert
Beyonce responds to divorce rumors
The return of Hilary Duff, the singer
When 'Family Guy' meets 'The Simpsons'
A 'hammered' Sheen goes to Taco Bell
Houston's mom slams Lifetime biopic
A bear and a vampire in 'Trailer Park'
Warner Bros. is doing their part to make sure a new generation also grows up with "Yogi Bear."
The beloved animated mammal, originally created by Hanna-Barbera back in 1958, has received a live action, 3-D makeover, and will soon be chasing down a pic-a-nic basket on a big screen near you.
Dan Aykroyd lends his voice to "Yogi" while music sensation Justin Timberlake breathes life into Yogi's loyal sidekick, "Boo-Boo." As for the film's live action stars, Anna Faris, Tom Cavanagh, T.J. Miller and Nathan Corddry lead the way. The unstoppable antics of the world's least average bear hit theaters nationwide right in time for Christmas.
Post by: CNN Entertainment Producer JD Cargill
Filed under: movies • Trailer Park
Jon Hamm is missing the marriage chip
Much like his "Mad Men" character Don Draper, Jon Hamm isn't exactly a fan of marriage. Happily committed to actress Jennifer Westfeldt, 40, since 1997, Hamm says he has no plans to take a walk down the aisle.
"I don't have the marriage chip, and neither of us have the greatest examples of marriages in our families," 39-year-old Hamm, whose parents divorced when he was two, tells Sunday's Parade magazine. "But Jen is the love of my life, and we've already been together four times longer than my parents were married."
Though the couple, who met while performing in the off-Broadway play "Lipschtick," are crazy in love, Hamm confesses he definitely doesn't have babies on the brain.
"I like kids but I also like the option to close the door," he explains. "Becoming a parent is a whole other life, and it doesn't stop."
Post by: Mark Marino -- Special to CNN
Filed under: Celebrities • television
Behind the Scenes on 'Showbiz Tonight': Who's coming to 'Idol'?
TGIF, Marquee readers.
"The Showbiz Tonight" staff just can't stop talking about the premiere episode of "Jersey Shore." Sammi and Ronnie - who were dating last season - are apparently off again, everyone seems to hate Angelina and all the kids seem to be soaking up the alcohol just fine in Miami!
"Showbiz Tonight's" Associate Producer, Jessica Como said she was "underwhelmed by the season premiere but thinks it will get better", but Production Assistant Anisa Husain loved it and can't wait for more episodes.
Post by: Showbiz Tonight Producer Jenny D'Attoma
Filed under: Showbiz Tonight
Jennifer Aniston: Not very familiar with sperm banks
Jennifer Aniston's next rom-dramadey (it's romantic, it's funny, and it's dramatic all at the same time) seems to be art imitating the tabloid version of her life. In "The Switch," out in August, Aniston stars as a single, 40-year-old woman who uses a sperm donor to get pregnant.
But when Jay Leno asked Aniston if she would ever consider doing the same – since, you know, she's always pregnant or thinking about having a baby, depending on which celebrity weekly you read – Aniston joked, "Geez, that question has never been asked to me. Do I go to, like, the yellow pages?"
Because Leno is always…out for laughs, we suppose, he continued to press the topic, inquiring how, exactly, one would use a sperm bank to get pregnant.
Filed under: Celebrities • Jennifer Aniston
'Idol' contestant Paige Miles on the show's changes
Paige Miles understands how difficult it was for Ellen DeGeneres to dole out criticism to "American Idol" contestants.
"I know it was hard for her to be hard on us because she knows what it's like to be on the other side, to be booed and to be cheered on to an encore," said Miles, who finished 11th last season on "Idol."
"She knows what it is like to be on both ends of the spectrum, so it was hard to chew us up like that," Miles said. "I think that was probably one of the biggest parts that she wasn't quite ready for."
Post by: CNN.com writer Lisa Respers France
Filed under: American Idol 2010 • American Idol judges • Celebrities • Ellen DeGeneres • television
There's a new 'Shore' in town
You can take the cast away from the "Shore," but … well, you know the rest.
As it turns out, New Jersey is not vital to "Jersey Shore's" success. Despite early speculation that moving Snooki and the crew to Miami, Florida, wouldn't turn out well, they're still the same old fist-pumpers we fell in love with last season.
(Update, 4:50 p.m.: Yeah, it looks like New Jersey is definitely not vital to this show's success. Last night's episode had 5.3 million viewers for the second season's debut, and the episode marks MTV's best season premiere rating in more than seven years, according to the network.)
Post by: CNN's Stephanie Goldberg
Filed under: Jersey Shore • TV recaps
Our daily cheat-sheet for breaking celebrity news, Hollywood buzz and your pop-culture obsessions.
Christina Aguilera's coming back to 'The Voice,' and more news to note
'American Horror Story' renewed, and more news to note
Taylor Swift is Billboard's Woman of the Year, and more news to note
We hope you liked 'Extant,' and more news to note
Robert Downey Jr. messes with our minds, and more news to note
'Walking Dead' gets sixth season, and more news to note
That time Colbie Caillat sang 'Smelly Cat,' and more news to note
Ellen Pompeo's new baby, and other news to note
MJ in 3D, and other news to note
Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga top the charts, and more news to note
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We are seeing my little sister (well, 29 year old, little sister) off to Paris this evening. I have very mixed emotions about this. I'm excited and proud of her doing this for 3-6 months, but yet, so sad that I won't be seeing and texting her on a daily basis. Knowing she's not here, is not easy. My oldest sister has lived in New York for about 10 years, I can't handle another sister moving away. For the next few months, I will be the favorite aunt (only present aunt) to my niece and nephew. I get them all to myself, wink, wink. I will give you all more details on my sister's move later one...it's exciting. I'm hoping to distract myself by making a new fall wreath this weekend. Maybe something slightly as cute as this one.
For now, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
I love that wreath! I hope you're hanging in there without your sister. Sisters are the best!


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El zorzal de Fraser (Stizorhina fraseri) es una especie de ave paseriforme de la familia Turdidae propia de África occidental y central. Se encuentra en Angola, Camerún, República Centroafricana, República Democrática del Congo, República del Congo, Guinea Ecuatorial, Gabón, Guinea, Nigeria, Sudán, Tanzania, Uganda y Zambia. Su hábitat natural son los bosques tropicales húmedo de tierras bajas.

Anteriormente se consideraba al zorzal de Finsh (Stizorhina finschi) coespecífico con el zorzal de Fraser (BirdLife International 2004). Ambos anteriormente se clasificaban en el género  Neocossyphus..

Referencias

 BirdLife International (2009 Stizorhina fraseri; IUCN (2011) IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Version 2011.1. Consultado el 20 de septiembre de 2011.

Enlaces externos

fraseri
Aves de África

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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carbonconstruct.com
home > introduction > macro-scale issues
Macro-scale issues
This section identifies work underway on a number of wider issues related to carbon. For instance, while climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation are often considered as separate, though complementary, approaches, wider issues such as energy security or fuel poverty present even broader challenges. Another challenge faced is that of behavioural change and in many cases raising awareness generally.
It is important that low carbon behaviour becomes the norm and not the exception. Infrastructure is designed to meet demand from individuals, homes, industry and transport. Reducing demand and increasing efficiency will directly reduce the need for infrastructure, therby its carbon content and the emissions generated by its use.
Selected briefing
1) DECC: The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan Chapter 3 - Transforming our power sector
2) Sustainable Development Commission: Prosperity without growth
Prosperity without growth? This document says that the current global recession should be the occasion to forge a new economic system equipped to avoid the shocks and negative impacts associated with our reliance on growth. Ahead of the G20 summit in London, the report calls on leaders to adopt a 12-step plan to make the transition to a fair, sustainable and low carbon economy.
3) UK Government Foresight Programme: Powering our lives
This is a UK Foresight Report covering, transitions in energy systems in the built environment, behaviours, values and interventions for change, scales of energy systems and security and resilience of future systems.
This website is managed and maintained by CIRIA
Measurement and reporting tools
Building performance
Infrastructure performance
Procurement, clients and ownership
Generation and storage


switchio relies on some basic FreeSWITCH configuration steps in order to enable remote control via the ESL inbound method. Most importantly, the ESL configuration file must be modified to listen on a known socket of choice and a park-only extension must be added to FreeSWITCH's XML dialplan. switchio comes packaged with an example park only dialplan which you can copy-paste into your existing server(s).
Depending on your FS version, additional acl configuration may be required.
An XML dialplan extension which places all inbound sessions into the park state should be added to all target FreeSWITCH servers you wish to control with switchio. An example context (switchiodp.xml) is included in the conf directory of the source code. If using this file you can enable switchio to control all calls received by a particular FreeSWITCH SIP profile by setting the "switchio" context.
You can also add a park extension to your existing dialplan such that only a subset of calls relinquish control to switchio (especially useful if you'd like to test on an extant production system).
This allows switchio to perform call tracking (associate outbound with inbound SIP sessions) and thus assume full control of call flow as well as measure signalling latency and other teletraffic metrics.
This could have alternatively be implemented as a switchio app.
Before attempting to stress test FreeSWITCH itself be sure you've read the performance and dialplans sections of the wiki.
This prevents FreeSWITCH from rejecting calls at high loads. However, if your intention is to see how FreeSWITCH behaves at those parameters limits, you can always set values that suit those purposes.
You will also probably want to raise the file descriptor count.
You have to run ulimit in the same shell where you start a FreeSWITCH process.


A vintage Art Deco style Melba china cake or bread plate with spring flowers design. A deep sided plate suitable for cupcakes, biscuits etc. with earred handles. Bone china with hand painted daffodils and crocus flowers over transfer print. The edge is finished with a green trim.
Made by Melba China Co.Ltd., Stafford St., Longton, Staffordshire Potteries, England c.1948-51. In excellent condition.


Samira Asgari had spent months planning her move from Switzerland to the United States. The 30-year-old Iranian had secured a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She had won a prestigious award for her research in genomics that would even pay her salary at her new American lab.
"I was really happy and it felt like everything was going right," said Asgari. But Asgari's plans changed when she flew from Geneva to Frankfurt, where she was supposed to board a second flight to Boston.
Like Asgari, hundreds of Iranian students already accepted into U.S. graduate programs may not be able to come next fall due to the uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump's proposed travel ban. With admission season still in full swing, 25 of America's largest research universities have already sent out more than 500 acceptance letters to students from the six affected countries, according to data provided by these universities.
The vast majority of those students are from Iran, where prospective undergraduates are known for their strength in engineering and computer sciences. The ban, which could suspend immigration from Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, has been blocked by federal judges. According to legal experts, if the court ruling is overturned, or if Trump issues a new immigration ban, students will be excluded from entering for fall classes.
"For us to not have access to that talent pool is a major, major blow," said Kazem Kazerounian, dean of the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut, which has accepted 17 Iranian students so far.
The new uncertainty has steered some students to other nations that compete with the U.S. for top students, including Canada, Australia and Japan, officials at some schools say. Students from Iran have helped ll graduate programs at American colleges for years, especially in engineering schools.
Out of 12,000 Iranian students who attended U.S. universities last year, 77 percent were graduate students and more than half studied engineering, according to data from the State Department and the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit in Washington. At the University of Central Florida, a third of the 115 students who have been accepted to graduate programs in civil and electrical engineering for next fall are from Iran.
Iranian student Amir Soleimani, 26, has been accepted into two universities in the U.S., where he wants to pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering and continue his research on artificial intelligence. If he is kept out, he says, he will likely have to begin his two years of mandatory service in Iran's military.
Many U.S. universities rely on international students to work as research and teaching assistants, particularly in engineering. Americans who study engineering as undergraduates often opt for the job market instead of graduate school, experts say, leaving them to rely heavily on international students. Some schools also rely on tuition money from foreign students, who are typically charged full costs.


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IPL 2017: Mumbai Indians takes over Rising Pune Supergiant in the last ball thriller to win the title
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IPL 2017: MS Dhoni takes Pune to Indian Premier League 10 finale
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It was a night when nothing went right for Mumbai Indians as they succumbed to 20-run defeat at the hands of Rising Pune Supergiant in Qualifier 1 of the 2017…
ICC Champions Trophy: Suresh Raina disappointed after failed to make the cut in India squad
Rajat Pandey May 8, 2017 ICC Champions Trophy: Suresh Raina disappointed after failed to make the cut in India squad2017-05-08T23:13:56+00:00 No Comment
A day after reaching the milestone of scoring 4,500 runs in the Indian Premier League (IPL), Suresh Raina was disappointed after he failed to make the cut in the 15-member…
IPL 2017: Sunil Narine scored fastest IPL fifty vs Royal Challengers Bangalore
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Sunil Narine admitted that he did not expect he would hit the fastest fifty in the history of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and was surprised with his own power…
Sunil Gawaskar slams off Virat Kohli: 'He should look himself in the mirror'
Rajat Pandey May 6, 2017 Sunil Gawaskar slams off Virat Kohli: 'He should look himself in the mirror'2017-05-06T22:02:26+00:00 No Comment
Virat Kohli is the darling of Indian cricket fans. His elegant strokes and envious records have made the India captain a champion. But something different is happening at the Indian…
IPL 2017: KKR bowlers outperforms as RCB scored lowest ever total of IPL
Rajat Pandey April 24, 2017 IPL 2017: KKR bowlers outperforms as RCB scored lowest ever total of IPL2017-04-24T14:36:56+00:00 No Comment
Kolkata: Woeful with the bat, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) were wonderful with the ball so much so that despite being all-out for 131 in overs, they beat Royal Challengers Bangalore…
IPL 2017: Hasim Amla took Gujarat Lions to another win over Kings XI Punjab in Rajkot
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Kings XI Punjab failed in all departments in big loss, Anderson and Billings Sizzles for DD
Rajat Pandey April 16, 2017 Kings XI Punjab failed in all departments in big loss, Anderson and Billings Sizzles for DD2017-04-16T12:40:34+00:00 No Comment
Delhi: Kings XI Punjab skipper Glenn Maxwell said a disappointing performance in all three departments of the game led to the team's heavy 51-run loss against the Delhi Daredevils at…
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Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) bucked the trend of teams winning at the Eden Gardens while chasing by defeating defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) by 17 runs here on Saturday. Uthappa's…


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New Director of the Asian Pacific Islander American studies program Professor...
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AMES-APIA program opens specialized library in Morton Hall
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Sunday, Jan. 22, William and Mary women's basketball (9-9, 4-3 CAA) battled back to defeat Charleston (8-9, 3-4 CAA) 80-74 at TD Arena in...
Adam Jutt - January 23, 2023
Adam Jutt '25 is majoring in economics and math. Aside from being an opinions editor, he is a member of Club Tennis and involved...
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Giorgianna Heiko '25 is an English Major and prospective Creative Writing minor. She is co-President of the Liberal Students League, a debate club, and...
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Thursday, Jan. 19, the Lemon Project at the College of William and Mary held the first of their monthly Spring 2023 Genealogical Research Roundtables....


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Kingsburg, CA Criminal and Public Records
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Our background check service searches through billions of records and dozens of databases.
Because some cities have higher crime rates, it may be more likely for its residents to have criminal records or criminal backgrounds. Therefore, when searching for someone's background records, it may be important to know basic criminal information about the city and state where they live or have lived in the past.
You can peruse our statistics to find out general demographics & criminal information about Kingsburg:
Kingsburg Crime Rankings:
Statewide (2015)
Population: 349th
Violent Crimes: 231st (256th per 100k)
Rape: 72nd (220th per 100k)
Agg. Assault: 189th (238th per 100k)
Robbery: 150th (202nd per 100k)
Property Crimes: 309th (140th per 100k)
Burglary: 228th (60th per 100k)
Larceny: 315th (233rd per 100k)
Vehicle Thefts: 200th (56th per 100k)
Nationwide (2015)
Population: 2,897th
Violent Crimes: 605th (2,661st per 100k)
Murder: 77th (413th per 100k)
Rape: 189th (1,257th per 100k)
Agg. Assault: 468th (2,526th per 100k)
Robbery: 334th (1,215th per 100k)
Property Crimes: 1,443rd (2,381st per 100k)
Burglary: 631st (1,114th per 100k)
Larceny: 1,379th (4,008th per 100k)
Vehicle Thefts: 438th (176th per 100k)
Arson: 117th (825th per 100k)
In Fresno County (2015)
Population: 9th
Violent Crimes: 13th (11th per 100k)
Rape: 9th (11th per 100k)
Agg. Assault: 12th (12th per 100k)
Robbery: 8th (7th per 100k)
Property Crimes: 7th (4th per 100k)
Burglary: 6th (3rd per 100k)
Larceny: 8th (6th per 100k)
Vehicle Thefts: 6th (3rd per 100k)
Households: 3,745
Land Area: 3.547 miles2
Time Zone: PDT
Kingsburg, CA Crime Rate Information
Murder 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0
Rape 1 2 0 1 2 6 3 4 2
Agg. Assault 16 17 22 22 58 25 18 25 18
Robbery 6 2 4 2 4 6 2 5 8
Burglary 81 96 62 128 105 111 111 88 97
Vehicle Thefts 107 76 84 77 55 91 54 56 78
Arson 2 3 2 3 2 2 2 3 0
Violent Crimes in Kingsburg, CA in 2015
Reported Numbers
Rape 2
Aggravated Assault 18
Property Crimes in Kingsburg, CA in 2015
Burglary 97
Larceny 165
Motor Vehicle Theft 78
Arson 0
Larceny in Kingsburg, CA
Robbery in Kingsburg, CA
California Criminal Statistics:
As the table-above indicates, major crimes in 2015 in Kingsburg, CA included 28 violent crimes and 340 property crimes. The 28 violent crimes included: 0 murders, 18 aggravated assaults, 2 forcible rapes, and 8 robberies. The 340 property crimes included: 78 motor vehicle thefts, 97 burglaries, 0 counts of arson, and 165 counts of larceny and/or theft. Of course, there were additional offenses in Kingsburg, CA which fell outside of the major crime category; these crimes are generally charged as misdemeanors. It is important to realize that the numbers above reflect the reported crime rate, not the actual crime rate. Depending on the crime, there can be a huge disparity between the actual crime rate and the reporting rate.
Violent Crimes 194120 191025 185173 174459 164133 154944 160944 154129 153709 166883
Murder 2485 2260 2142 1972 1809 1792 1884 1746 1699 1861
Rape 9212 9013 8903 8713 8331 7663 7837 17178 19925 22198
Agg. Assault 111455 109210 104743 99681 95877 91197 94702 89029 91803 99349
Robbery 70968 70542 69385 64093 58116 54292 56521 53640 48680 52862
Property Crimes 1156017 1108660 1080747 1009614 981939 973901 1049465 1018907 947192 1024914
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Arson 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
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Ignoring climate change will be catastrophic | Letter
Dan Dieterich
EDITOR: Thank you for publishing the article "Report blames humans for warming" on Nov. 4. It described the Climate Science Special Report that had just been issued as part of the federal government's quadrennial National Climate Assessment.
Climate scientist James Hansen found that summer temperatures have shifted "drastically." They're now far hotter than in earlier decades. Earlier this month, the United Nations also said that this year will be one of the three hottest years worldwide since records began being kept, with 2015 and 2016 being the other two.
All this not only increases the ferocity of hurricanes and wildfires but makes Wisconsin's rainstorms bigger, increasing our floods.
RELATED: Humans to blame for global warming, massive federal government report says
The Government Accountability Office says that the federal government spent over $350 billion over the past 10 years on disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. That doesn't include the cost of this year's hurricanes, wildfires, floods and droughts.
Since, as the Nov. 4 article points out, "human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases are the dominant cause" of the climate changes we're experiencing, what can we do? Cut our emissions of the most important greenhouse gas: carbon dioxide.
How? By telling Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson to support a carbon fee and dividend bill. And, by urging our member of the House of Representatives to join the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which already has 30 Republicans and 30 Democrats.
Confronting climate change won't be free, but the cost of continuing to ignore it will be truly catastrophic.
Dan Dieterich,


text:
Eburodacrys longilineata is a species of beetle in the family Cerambycidae. It was described by White in 1853.

References

Eburodacrys
Beetles described in 1853


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text:
The Price of Meth
Back in 2011, New Zealand's drug warriors claimed a success in their war on methamphetamine. The price of meth had risen.
The report shows the price of P has been steadily moving upwards since 2006, and remains high. The latest survey data shows the mean price of a gram of P is $768, up from $723 at the same time in 2010.
"However, this is not the time for sitting on our laurels. While the price of P has risen dramatically in Christchurch, we are seeing fluctuations around the country. While we are seeing progress, it's more important than ever for authorities to continue to be vigilant."
The nature of seizures at New Zealand's borders is continuing to change. Seizure levels of precursor chemicals, like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, are down 44 per cent compared to the same time last year. In contrast, seizures of methamphetamine are rising. In the first nine of months of 2011, 23 kilograms of methamphetamine were seized at the border - nearly 95 per cent of the total seized during 2010.
At the time, I wondered how much of that increase was CPI and the GST increase. Sure, you don't pay GST on meth directly, but neither do meth dealers get to claim back the GST on any of their legally purchased inputs.
Whatever the case then, the Herald today reports that meth costs $500 per gram in Auckland and $600 per gram in Christchurch.
Maybe it would be even more prevalent if we again had easy access to pseudoephedrine over the counter, but it seems unlikely. It seems rather that drug dealers have figured out better ways of getting meth into the country.
If making meth out of pseudoephedrine got us to a price point per gram of about $700 in 2008, before the ban, it seems unlikely that anybody's going to go back to that way of making meth if their current supply methods get to a price point of $500-$600 per gram.
Can we please un-ban pseudoephedrine for over-the-counter purchase? The continued ban is just stupid.
Doesn't the government claim to have some wellbeing-based agenda? If that's about more than playing card games at Treasury and adopting trendy vocabulary, this seems an obvious cost-effective way of improving wellbeing. One line of regulation flipping pseudoephedrine out of Class B2 and back into its prior pharmacy-medicine status. Costs the government nothing and makes everyone with a cold a bit better off.
Update: A source in Christchurch who would know tells me that the quoted price in Christchurch is "way wrong Haha" - on the high side. Christchurch prices are lower than the Herald there quotes - though it notes those were the prices at the time of the survey. The earlier numbers come from a more comprehensive drug price survey; the Herald doesn't say where the researcher drew the more current price figures from.
Labels: drugs, prohibition
Me at Newsroom ($) on coalition politics and the Capital Gains Tax. I wonder whether Labour wasn't rather pleased to be able to blame Winston for not progressing the thing. Ungated here.
Me at The Spinoff on the job creation claims around the Provincial Growth Fund. Where I'd worried that MBIE was delaying my OIA so they could backfill workings onto some high-looking job creation numbers, reality was far less complicated. Why they took so long to release things is up in the air, but all they did was take the lower bound of the job creation estimates provided by the grant applicants and added them together. Dunno why it took months to tell me that.
In our Insights newsletter, I wonder whether Treasury's Heartwork game were a parody. But I fear the answer is no. I'm told that Treasury's Intranet, last Wednesday, included this bit.
What's all the fuss about Heartwork?
Over the last couple of weeks, you might have read or heard about criticism being levelled at the Treasury for its involvement with training organisation Heartwork, who've run several workshops with small groups of our staff as well as an external event at our premises last week.
You will already know the importance the Treasury places on staff wellness, diversity and inclusion, and building capability of our people. We have many initiatives underway to help achieve our objectives in each of these key areas.
Our workshops with Heartwork were a small trial to see what benefit we - as individuals, teams and as an organisation - might gain from their approach to incorporating empathy in our dealings with others.
In providing the venue for last week's event, organised and run by Heartwork, the Treasury provided an opportunity for others interested in this approach to gather together and talk about their thoughts and experiences. Providing a venue for groups to gather for presentations and discussion about aspects of wellbeing is one way in which the Treasury can help promote diversity of thinking and common understanding.
Contrary to the rhetoric of critics, the importance of empathy and communication skills in business is well established – and our stakeholders are asking this of us. Engaging effectively with a broad range of New Zealanders, and collaborating productively with our peers across the public sector, is also core to our ability to provide policy advice well. We will continue to focus on growing these and other skills in our people.
Finally, to give you clarity around one of the comments made in the media: the Treasury's involvement in these workshops, and with the event held here last week, is in no way related to the government's Wellbeing approach or Budget 2019. It has been an internal capability-building exercise.
The response doesn't really address the 'why the heck is this a Treasury priority when you have rather bigger problems' concern raised in my NBR column of the prior week. My probity questions of Treasury, posted here, are now an OIA request with a due date of 20 May. But I guess we now know that it was a Heartwork event at Treasury rather than an event Treasury commissioned.
If you haven't yet read Danyl Maclaughlin's write-up of the event, you really really should. It may leave you somewhat sceptical about the whole thing. Point of Order on Treasury's Heartwork game is also worth a look.
Labels: assorted links, clippings, Treasury
Board composition and company performance
In 2012, the NZX required listed firms to disclose the gender composition of their boards. No gender quotas were introduced, but the disclosure rule was expected to encourage changes in board composition.
Glenn Boyle takes up the topic with Michael Foley and Sanghyun Hong.
The Impact of the 2012 NZX Listing Rule Change on Board Composition and Company Performance
We examine the impact of the December 2012 NZX listing rule change that introduced compulsory disclosure about gender diversity on NZ boards. Most notably, the rate of growth in female-held directorships increased significantly after the introduction of the new rule, resulting in, by 2016, average female board representation being approximately double what it had been in 2012. However, we find no relationship between this response and company performance. Across six measures of operating and financial performance, firms that responded most strongly to the listing rule change fared, on average, no better or worse than those that stuck closer to the status quo.
That doesn't mean that tighter rules requiring specific board gender balance targets would be costless; it is always risky to extrapolate from changes like this voluntarily undertaken by firms that were able to do so to changes that would obtain under compulsion.
They conclude:
We have obtained two principal results in this paper. First, NZ companies significantly increased their rate of female director appointments following the 31 December 2012 listing rule change that required all NZX-listed firms to disclose more information about the level of gender diversity on their boards. Although we cannot totally rule out the possibility that this relationship is merely coincidental, it seems more likely to have been at least partly causal. Thus, despite its "gentle-nudge" nature, the new listing rule appears to have had a positive impact on the gender diversity of NZ boards.
Second, however, this positive impact did not translate into better firm performance. Although post-2012 NZ company performance was generally strong, inter-firm variation appears to have been independent of changes in gender diversity: on average, firms that responded most strongly to the listing rule change subsequently performed no better on average than firms that failed to respond at all. Perhaps even more strikingly, there is also no relationship between listing rule responsiveness and performance improvement following the listing rule change. Such a finding is consistent with the bulk of the literature on the relationship between company performance and female board representation: as Klein (2017) has noted, meta-studies of this relationship conclude that there is essentially zero relationship between these two variables. Our work provides further support for this view, in a NZ context.
Our results are consistent with an efficient director appointment process in NZ. If, following the 2012 listing rule change, NZ firms had over-reacted by appointing unqualified female directors, then we would expect to see a relative deterioration in performance among the firms that responded most strongly to the rule change. Similarly, if prior to 2012 NZ firms had been under-utilising available female talent, then we would expect to see a relative improvement in performance among the firms that responded most strongly to the rule change. However, we observe neither such effect, suggesting that NZ firms applied, at least on average, meritocratic principles in appointing directors prior to 2012 and have continued to do so since.
This leads to one final implication of our results. Despite the meta-study evidence, NZ commentators (e.g., Meier, 2014; Parker, 2018) and politicians (Lambert, 2018) periodically call for the imposition of female quotas on boards. Our study suggests such claims should be treated with caution: if a voluntary increase in female directors (which is likely to consist of mainly well-qualified appointees) has no impact on firm performance, then a further enforced increase (regardless of ability and qualifications) could well have a negative impact.
Previously: Wishful Treasury Thinking
Relatedly: Reddell on that full-page ad in the Dom.
Labels: Glenn Boyle
Our Tarot Treasury
Danyl McLaughlin attended last week's gaming session at Treasury; he reports on it at The Spinoff.
It is at least as bad as I'd thought. The event I mean. Danyl's reporting is excellent.
Fiona Ross is a thought leader in the public service; an articulate and engaging public speaker. She stands at the front of the room: a seminar space on the third floor of Treasury. The 30 people in the audience fall silent. She begins. "We all know we live in a DEVUCA world."
Everyone nods thoughtfully. Except me. I raise my hand. "We live in a what?"
Ross looks at me and blinks. "DEVUCA."
I try to imitate the sound, unsuccessfully. Someone at my table explains the acronym in a low voice. "It stands for diverse, ambiguous, volatile, uncertain …"
"I think complexity is in there," another person suggests. There is some disagreement. No one is quite sure exactly what kind of diverse complex ambiguous world we occupy.
"Google it," Ross advises.
"I will. How do you spell …?"
"And in a DEVUCA world we all need to be more empathic and inclusive. That's why Heartwork is so exciting."
Maybe at the next event they'll all wear flower pots on their heads in celebration of a DEVO world.
Among the more depressing aspects of Treasury's degeneration is that, for many on the left, it still defines the right hand side of an Overton window. If Treasury pronounces something, only madness can lie beyond that to the right.
Treasury looks deceptively normal, like an ordinary government department. It is not. Treasury is the most powerful organisation in the public service. In parliament the seats in the House occupied by government MPs are known as "the Treasury benches". To control Treasury is to control the country.
Treasury is located at the bottom of the Terrace, opposite the Beehive. The building is handsome, spacious, filled with air and light. But in the minds of progressive intellectuals and left-wing activists Treasury casts a black and terrible shadow over the history of modern New Zealand.
But Treasury isn't that anymore. It's something else.
That was all a long time ago, and today's Treasury is working hard to return New Zealand to a pre-neoliberal, prelapsarian state. Next month the government will release its first "Wellbeing Budget"' It uses the Treasury's Living Standards Framework, a world leading concept which, Ross informs us, the department has been working on for 18 years. Instead of focusing purely on economic capital the public service, led by Treasury, will seek to grow the country's human, social and environmental capital. But also still the financial capital. "We're definitely not saying economics and finance isn't important." After the session is over I ask Ross, "How does any of that connect to this game? Are there any metrics to show Heartwork leads to those outcomes?"
"We're still building the evidence base for that."
The Heartwork game is separate from the Wellbeing budget but related to the concept of wellbeing, the company's other co-founder, Clare Rousseau, a former Treasury analyst tells me. Heartwork incorporates the ideas of Marshall Rosenberg, a psychologist and conflict negotiator who advocated non-violent communication, and combines his teachings with Te Whare Tapa Whā, the "four cornerstone" model of Māori mental health, along with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; the Stanford Social Review's model of the Dawn of System Leadership; Mindfulness; Gamification and "Theory of U", a change-management theory from the 1970s filled with Heideggerian jargon about presencing and co-sensing.
I didn't attend last week's session. I wouldn't have liked it, and I'm rather sure I wouldn't have been welcome.
There is a disturbance in the psychological safe space of the Heartwork learning journey, and it is mostly the fault of Eric Crampton, chief economist at the New Zealand Initiative, a champion of the neoliberal reforms and a critic of the new wellbeing focused Treasury. The experiment with Heartwork came to Crampton's attention last week. He blogged about it, and this led to a Newshub story in which National leader Simon Bridges attacked the card game as "bizarre and actually wrong", while Jacinda Ardern quickly explained that Heartwork was "nothing she or any of her ministers had anything to do with". It's the reason we're warned at the beginning of the session not to take photographs or any recordings or share any of the personal stories that emerge during the event.
My column on the mess at Treasury is now online at NBR ($)
Danyl goes through how you play the game. Except it isn't really a game. Games will usually involve other players. The Heartwork game is just, well, playing with yourself. So whatever questions you have about the game - you can go there to read how it goes.
I have a few other questions though.
Did Treasury hire Heartwork to provide this session? If it did, what is probity like when contracting for this kind of thing with a former consultant reported to be friends with folks in ELT? Is the registration fee a partial recouping of the costs of the card decks for Treasury, or is it Heartwork's charge for the session? Does Treasury's Guidance for Setting Charges in the Public Sector apply?
If Treasury didn't hire Heartwork for the session, and instead it's been through other arrangements, what's policy at Treasury around hosting commercial outfits like Heartwork for these kinds of sessions – do they charge rent on the space? If a different company wanted to run a similar event at Treasury for their own proprietary teamwork program marketing thing [there are oodles of consultants in this general space], what would be the process around approving that?
It wouldn't be hard to imagine Dale Carnegie being happy to provide sessions with similar objectives/outcomes, for example. And it would totally make sense for Treasury to send staff for training for this stuff on an as-needed basis. But the nut of it here is if Carnegie's local trainers [or other equivalent] asked Treasury if they could provide a $35/head session at Treasury with Treasury and others invited, on what basis could they decline them when they've allowed Heartwork? Carnegie at least is reputable. What if the Scientologists wanted to provide e-readings?
Labels: endless screaming, Treasury
Howling at the Treasury moon
I like the headline that The National Business Review put on this week's column. It isn't online yet; I've a few snippets below:
Big organisations get up to a lot of stuff that looks pretty silly from the outside – and even from the inside. Corporate retreats with ridiculous team-building exercises. Awkward social functions. Corporate family picnics when you would all rather prefer to be out with your own friends.
Anybody who has ever worked in a big organisation knows this. Even smaller organisations sometimes get into this game. It is hell for the more analytically minded and introverted among us, and doubly so for analytically minded, introverted economists, but such exercises seem to serve a functional purpose. It is easier to work with people if you know them better. And it is important to know people outside your own smaller team because others might know things you need to know.
Last week, Treasury caught critique, and even some ridicule, for hosting an event with Heartwork scheduled for 17 April.
On the face of it, the event did look risible. The event teaser, after all, initially invited readers to "Imagine surprising Aotearoa with a strain of compassion so delightful that it re-wires our collective consciousness!" After featuring on the evening news and in a question to the Prime Minister in Parliament, the Heartwork event's invitation has been toned down just a little.
In any case, it is definitely not your father's Treasury. But perhaps your woke nephew's Treasury.
But is a failure to consult sun and moon feelings really at the root of Treasury's problems?
After going through the declining capabilities in economics at Treasury, often canvassed here, I hit some of the implications:
All of that would make for a very difficult workplace environment with a change in government. Rapid changes in policy priorities and direction require staff with the training and expertise to shift quickly into new areas. Where Treasury has not been able to keep up with an outflow of economic expertise, a greater burden would fall on those analysts able to handle the work. Rebuilding capability in Treasury's core work would reduce pressure on staff, improve outcomes in external surveys, and help Treasury in its role as advisor to government.
But there seems to be a schism within Treasury.
Some have taken the government's wellbeing agenda to heart, and put it within an economic framework of a kind. Others seem to have taken the wellbeing agenda to mean rigour is passé, quantification is bad, and advice should be based on holistic views that lack an underlying economic framework. In that view, little economic expertise is needed in policy analysis beyond that which can be provided in a few days of training sessions on-the-job.
George Mason University Professor of Economics Peter Boettke likes to say economics puts parameters on our utopias. Putting the different measures of wellbeing into a consistent cost-benefit framework reminds us that we live in a world of trade-offs. Resources put to the pursuit of one wellbeing objective are generally resources not put toward the pursuit of another. Getting rigorous assessments of the effects of policy is needed if the government's wellbeing agenda is to be taken seriously.
All that then brings us back to the Heartwork card game. Big organisations like Treasury will have this kind of thing. But even if it helps staff to better understand themselves and each other, it is far from addressing the underlying problem at Treasury. Worse, it feeds into a sense of wellbeing as woo at Treasury. Even worse, can you imagine being one of the relatively few remaining economists at Treasury and being asked to play a game about your sun and moon feelings?
A Treasury that addresses symptoms of the underlying problem with sun and moon games rather than by strengthening its capabilities may not be a Treasury that can do its necessary part in improving the quality of government services under the wellbeing agenda. It is remarkable that two senior Treasury managers have made the wellbeing game a priority.
Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf's tenure as Chief Executive ends mid-year. While no announcements have yet been made about his successor, it is critically important that a strong appointment be made. Treasury needs to be able to rebuild its core capabilities and needs a Chief Executive who takes that work seriously. But it is hard to throw a stone in Wellington without hitting someone who will tell you it is not in the interest of the State Services Commissioner to provide a strong appointment.
I very much hope Minister Grant Robertson will be watching this appointment process closely and ensuring that the candidate can provide him the kind of Treasury he needs. It is important. We may all yet wind up with moon feelings otherwise.
If all of that's too depressing, here's some Ozzy Osbourne to help.
Bark at the moon.
Update: here's an ungated link; here's a gated link.
Labels: endless screaming, National Business Review, Treasury
He's a failure on top of everything else.
"His greatest shortcoming is that he's unable to do the thing I don't want him to do! What a blistering fraud!"
I love the alt-text on today's Wondermark.
It sounds too much like Question Period here.
Labels: fun, politics, Wondermark
Easton on schools
Brian Easton doesn't seem to like our recent report on school quality.
A recent contribution has been from the NZ Initiative's report Tomorrow's Schools: Data and Evidence. [EC note: I've updated the link to the Initiative's site rather than Scoop] Unfortunately it is only note of six pages, which does not meet the standards of a research report, so I can hardly comment on the quality or veracity of the findings.
The note observes there are performance differences among schools (it uses NCEA attainment as a measure). No one is surprised that higher-decile schools outperform lower-decile schools by a large margin (on average). However, once the NZ Initiative adjusted for the effect of family background (they dont explain how), they found that the average differences in education outcomes across school deciles disappears. The report concludes that the inequality in education outcomes evident in school league tables is not a result of large differences in school quality, but rather of large differences in family background, particularly differences in parental education.
The NZ Initiative concludes that their 'research' demonstrates that the current schooling system is working and should be retained. Maybe; one wants to see the research first, especially as it contradicts the international literature. (I can think of a number of ways one could do the exercise – not all of them would be valid.)
What strikes me is that the NZ Initiative barely observes that the research suggests that the main source of educational inequality (and a whole lot of life opportunities which follow on from it) is 'family background', whatever they mean by that. The implications for inequality are hardly explored. As far as I can infer, the NZ Initiative is so besotted with defending the competitive model of schooling it is uninterested in the wider questions of the sources of and policies for children's opportunities,; issues central to the egalitarian society. That, I think, captures a deep attitude of the elite right; 'who cares about social inequality providing we are doing all right'.
Indeed there is celebration of inequality when the rich display their wealth. Of course there was inequality in the egalitarian society before 1985, but it was rare for the rich to show it, to display, what Thorstein Veblen called, 'conspicuous consumption'. After 1985 it became common to flaunt how rich you were.
Our analyst, Joel Hernandez, spent about a year in the IDI lab on this one.
The mission we gave him: start by figuring out how much of the variability in school performance is due to things outside the school's control, like family and student background. Current league-tables could easily mostly be picking up parents' education or income. We need to be able to find the schools that are doing a superb job despite difficult circumstances, so that we can learn from them. The measures out there just aren't up to spec for doing that kind of work.
So he spent the last year merging a ton of administrative data sets and cleaning the data. It is not a small job.* For the population of students who completed NCEA from 2008 through 2017, there's a link through to their parents. From their parents, to their parents' income. And their education. And their benefit histories. And criminal and prison records. And Child, Youth, and Family notifications. And a pile more. Everything we could think of that might mean one school has a tougher job than another, we threw all of that over onto the right hand side of the regressions.
It's student-level observations with a ridiculous number of control variables enabled by the data linkages in the lab.
The point of the exercise wasn't to precisely identify coefficients on each of the independent variables. The point rather was to mop up all of the variation that comes from family circumstances. There's no structural equation modelling here or any attempt at getting at causality among those variables - just a giant reduced-form kitchen sink.
Plus, five hundred or so indicator variables for each of the country's secondary schools.
On the left-hand side - a few measures of performance at NCEA. But that's just the starting point. We're going broader. Employment after graduation. Income after graduation. Progression to tertiary. NEET status (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Benefit uptake. We could even put future criminal activity in there. So far, it's just NCEA though.
After separating out all of the variability that comes from family background, the coefficient on each of the schools' indicator variables tells you the average effect of that school on outcomes.
Our plan had been to put up the big report in July(ish) with all of the method and the first set of results. Then, short reports would follow regularly on different outcomes.
But then the Bali Haque report came out. The report said that there are huge differences in student outcomes across schools, that those differences showed up as differences by decile, that decile differences were inequitable, and that the entire school system needed to be overturned because of it. Currently self-managed schools operating under school boards would be replaced with hubs managing dozens of schools.
There are indeed very real problems in board governance in some failing schools. It's something that features regularly in stories of persistent school failure. But if the justification for abolishing school boards and putting in place a big new governance structure is strong differences in school outcomes by decile, well, we know that that wasn't the case.
So we moved. Because we're a think tank. Forward the short report on the variability in outcomes by decile after separating out the family background effects.
And then Brian thinks we're hiding stuff or trying to downplay the family circumstances, perhaps trying to hide the evidence that big income redistribution schemes are warranted.
It would have been irresponsible of us to put up the coefficients on the other correlates. We have a kitchen sink of variables to mop up effects, not to precisely identify the coefficients on any of them. Putting up all of those coefficients without checking their sensitivity would have been premature. We control for whether the child is from a single-parent household. Whatever the sign on the coefficient, it would feed into culture wars around divorce and the desirability of two-parent families. We control separately for mothers' and fathers' incomes, and mothers' and fathers' educations. Results could feed into arguments around two-earning families. Most of those control variables would fuel one interest group or another. And even if we were sure we had the numbers right, they're still not causal. If you find that kids of well educated parents perform better at NCEA, that doesn't mean you should start giving degrees to parents to boost their kids' chances.
We'll have more in the full report. What we have so far though lends zero support to arguments around redistribution. Parents' education matters a ton. Income - not so much when education is controlled for. But we need to play with it more before we say anything more. If we have to suffer Easton's grouchiness for it, oh well.
But our object here is the exact opposite of Easton's imaginings. If we can identify the schools that do a fantastic job with kids that other schools have a hard time helping, that means the Ministry or ERO could go into those schools and see whether they're doing anything differently from schools that aren't doing such a good job. Sure, it would take a policy change around operational use of IDI. But it is entirely doable. Learning from that can help lift performance for those that too many schools are currently failing.
And there are all kinds of ways of handling it.
Within the current model, you could get reports from the Ministry to every school board telling them where they're doing well, where they're doing poorly, and which schools they might want to learn from (and which might need their help). The reports would help empower school boards that cannot tell whether poor outcomes are because the community is disadvantaged, or because the Principal is failing. And if the data were available to the parents, that could encourage parents to take a more active role in board governance in places where there is underperformance. Both voice within the school, and exist from underperforming schools, could help encourage better performance. And don't pretend that this is bad because the status quo is some paradise where all the schools are doing great and everyone sends their kid to the local school. Right now, parents use worse proxies for school performance and will happily walk by an excellent low decile school to get their kid into a higher decile school that's further away. The local school might be the one who could do more to help their kid. But we can't tell without better data.
Within a hub-based model, the reports provided by the Ministry could help the overarching structure to manage performance among their schools, to send investigators in to figure out why one school is doing particularly well in ways that nobody had noticed before, and to use what they learn to help others. They could use it to test the effects of different kinds of practice on outcomes. In the data lab, what goes on in the schools is a black box. We just don't know. But the hubs might know that one school never shifted to modern learning environments and the other one shifted to them 6 years ago. It could look at whether those kinds of policies had any effect.
Either way, it would also help the Ministry in similar ways. It could help ERO check whether any of their interventions improve student outcomes.
There is just so much that can yet be done with better use of the data we have. I've been pointing to it for years. Nothing's being done about it. The Ministry has a staff of 3000; we have Joel. We don't have time to do all of it. That's one reason we're opening up all our code in the lab for others to build on.
Imagine if every guidance counsellor in every school received a report from the Ministry for every student. The report for each student finishing Year 10 would say "Here are a thousand kids who looked a lot like you 5 years ago, and another thousand who looked a lot like you 10 years ago. Here are the choices they made about paths through school, through to tertiary or vocational training, and their later employment outcomes. Here's what the kids like you who chose a Bachelor's Degree are doing now. Here's what's happened for those who chose vocational training. Many of these choices may never have occurred to you." It is entirely feasible to do this right now. It would take a few months' coding. After that, it's just push-the-button. And it isn't being done.
What difference could it make for a kid who never considered university a possibility, because of the community she grew up in, to see that other kids with similar academic records had done brilliantly at uni and that they'd better push to do the UE courses? What difference could it make for a kid whose parents were pushing university to see that kids with comparable records did far better pursuing a trade? Better information has to help.
We have a pretty big work programme here on deck. Once Joel's code is up in the data lab, I'll put up a note about it. I've already been in touch with friends back at Canty. One substantial barrier to assigning IDI projects for Masters thesis work is that you spend a year in data cleaning and matching (and just learning your way around) for any big project. You can't dump that on a Masters student without strong risk that the project falls over. But you can assign projects that build on an existing codebase.
Academics won't put up their code because their incentive is the opposite of ours. They'll want to get the vita lines on every possible way of dicing the data after fronting the fixed cost of merging it. Just look at access around the Dunedin Longitudinal survey, or some of the others out there. Tons of publicly funded work locked up for the benefit of those who ran the surveys.
We want ours to be as open as possible within the constraints set by StatsNZ around the data lab. We want way more people using that code base to see what's going on in education. And if any of them find ways of improving the code to improve match rates, even better!
Our work here is a starting point.
* Even worse, it seems to be a much-repeated job, with anyone doing work in the area duplicating efforts. Joel will be getting all of his code up into the StatsNZ wiki for others to build on - the process for getting it in there isn't trivial though.
Labels: Brian Easton, education, Joel Hernandez
Continued census whoas
Stats has started providing some detail on the missing response figures in the last Census.
Motu has followed Brian Easton's earlier call to bring forward the next Census to 2021, returning us to the timings we were on prior to the Christchurch earthquakes.
A correspondent raises a few further questions, which I hope are answered in the full report on the 2018 Census:
There are substantial differences between responses with a missing question or two, and responses where the respondent has only filled in their name. How big of a mess are we looking at?
The web-based Census may have had some problems, but it may also have provided some opportunities. Like, how many responses suggest the respondent isn't really taking things seriously - for example, by ticking the first box on every question. This could have been done in real-time, prompting a follow-up visit. Did Stats do any of this?
My correspondent finds it odd that there are more people who didn't do the Census at all than that left at least one question unanswered. I'm not so sure there - if you're filling in the web form, it can prompt that you've missed a question before it lets you move on to the last page. I'm not sure if the survey did that or not though.
A have a few others:
If they're interpolating data from other administrative sources, are they filling blank cells from relevant admin data, or putting in an average based on matched other respondents' answers? How are these generated answers flagged in the data? This will matter for researchers doing things like checking the correspondence between census responses and administrative data to see how well the two line up. But it'll also matter for any research using those generated answers. I expect Stats will be well on top of this.
We keep hearing Labour partisans blaming National for not sufficiently funding Census. Did the Government Statistician raise any specific risks in the shift to the online Census under that funding arrangement? If the Government Statistician had raised a lot of concerns about the viability of the Census under the funding provided, and National went ahead anyway, then pretty fair to sheet it back to National. I do not know what warnings of risks were provided.
I had thought that the funding allocation for the 2018 Census built in some of the expected costs of shifting to an online census model, with the prospect then of lower cost censuses to come. Given the problems in 2018, will that have to be revisited?
We hear rumours around that non-responses were concentrated among particular communities. Stats' statement doesn't get into that yet, as they weren't asked. We should expect to see more detail on that in the full reporting yet to come.
Labels: census, Statistics New Zealand
A bleg for knowledge about knowledge
If I want to know what people know about politics and their political systems, I know where to go. Jack Vowles's New Zealand Electoral Survey has some basic civics knowledge in it; for the US, I'd look to Dye & Ziegler or Scott Althaus.
But I'm now looking for work on general knowledge. If there's any decent work out there, and especially if it gives international comparisons, on basic public knowledge of basic facts, I'd love to hear about it. Like basic facts about geography, science, world history, that kind of thing.
Tuesday, 9 April 2019
A compassionate Treasury
Your regular reminder that Treasury today is rather different from the Treasury of the 80s and 90s.
I'm going to copy and paste rather more of this than I usually would, just in case the thing gets deleted.
There's a $35 registration fee for this event at Treasury.
I have no clue whether the money goes to the folks running the session or what; I suspect it covers a cost of the deck of cards provided. But they recommend that attendees buy a deck of their cards in advance as practice as well, so attendees would wind up with double the compassion. It's wonderful how Treasury is helping to promote a small business by hosting it and encouraging folks to buy its products.
Minister Jones would approve, if Heartwork were based in the Provinces.
Here's the pitch. Treasury is Love.
Imagine surprising Aotearoa with a strain of compassion so delightful that it re-wires our collective consciousness!
COME TO THIS SOCIAL LAB TO CONNECT AND CREATE TOGETHER.
+ Fiona Ross - The Treasury Chief Operating Officer
+ David Dougherty - The Treasury Manager Strategy and Performance
+ 24 curious and creative people at The Treasury
have been experimenting in the social lab.
We've created a "compassion starter culture" - a network of people who want to create a more compassionate culture in Aotearoa, starting where we are - in our workplaces.
We've been playing and rapidly prototyping with the Heartwork Wellbeing Card Game* - now available publicly.
We know that the intention for what we want to create has a huge power.
We don't have all the answers. And we can't do this mahi alone.
So we'd like to invite you into this social lab.
So we can grow an even more beautiful, and more resilient strain together.
We'll share what we're learning while we're still metabolising.
Come along to:
Hear from Fiona Ross about what she's been learning from her experiments with the Heartwork cards in her work as Chief Operating Officer of the Treasury.
Meet the Heartwork team and understand the potential they see for people to be 1) meeting their own needs 2) meeting each others' needs and 3) creating more delightful outcomes together with Aotearoa.
Learn at least three powerful ways you can use the Heartwork cards to cultivate a 'win-win-win' culture for Aotearoa, your teams and yourself.
Play the card game and share stories with other people who care deeply about people.
Connect with other people who want to cultivate compassion throughout Aotearoa.
Contribute ideas and co-create with us as we consider how to take this kaupapa forward together.
Watch our video about the card game here.
"The cards are a really good way to recognise what you need to do to end up with positive outcomes. After using them I felt more complete, certain of what [the other person's] feelings and needs were, and was able to come up with different strategies to find solutions for negative feelings I was having." - Penny
"Before having [a] chat I used the cards to check in on what I wanted to feel and not feel, and what I wanted them to feel and not feel. This really helped me identify my needs and what I wanted out of the conversations- which then helped me put together a really quick plan. And it took 5 mins tops. So I went in more prepared emotionally as well as intellectually; and being more intentional is a work-on for me.
As a result I feel the conversation went well and I am more confident in my decision and the reasons for it..." - Sam
*win-win-win: good for you, good for others in your organisation, and good for society as a whole.
FAQS: (contact us if you have other questions that aren't answered here)
It sounds like this event is targeted to people who work in government. Can I attend if I don't work in the public service?
Yep - if this invitation speaks to you, you're more than welcome to attend.
Can I take home my Heartwork cards on the night?
Yep. We recommend ordering your cards through our website now, and we'll give you a pack to take home on the night.
I can't make it until 5.30pm. Can I arrive late?
No can do sorry. The Treasury security system means that you will need to arrive promptly at 4.45pm to be able to get into the building.
I, for one, love that this is a priority both for Operations and for Strategy and Performance at Treasury, as indicated by the attendance and presumed endorsement of the Chief Operating Officer and the Manager for Strategy and Performance.
Just imagine how better Treasury would have been prepared for the currency crisis after Muldoon lost election if they had thought to consult both their sun feelings and their moon feelings. I don't know how New Zealand came through it without that. But we will be far better prepared for the next crisis. Treasury may have few remaining economists, but every single person who remains there will care deeply.
And surely that matters more than anything else.
Update: Here's Newshub's take on it, with reporting by Tova O'Brien. The Prime Minister doesn't know what moon feelings are; Treasury refused to answer questions about it.
Census Whoas
If Stats NZ does not produce detail for Parliament on non-response rates in the last Census, its Chief Exec may be up on Contempt of Parliament.
Here's Stuff:
Government Statistician Liz MacPherson is facing contempt of Parliament after being ordered by MPs to produce census information.
In an unusual move, a select committee has placed a standing order on Statistics NZ chief executive to produce the number of partial responses were received in Census 2018.
MacPherson was first asked by to provide the answer by the governance and administration select committee during its annual review in February, and again on Wednesday. Both times she declined.
The chief statistician now says she will provide the information – which could further reveal the extent of Census 2018 issues – not on the given April 10 deadline but as part of an announcement promised later in the month.
National's been a bit displeased with Stats, or at least so goes the rumour 'bout town, since GDP revisions and immigration figure revisions that, had they been correct the first time round, might have affected the last election. But this is a unanimous request of the committee for information - it isn't just Nick Smith.
MacPherson was unavailable for an interview on Friday, but in a statement remained firm that it was not the appropriate time to release the number of partial responses to Census 2018.
"It is my hope that the committee will appreciate that I have made this determination after careful thought and application of statistical best practice.
"Without the appropriate context, these individual numbers would be open to misinterpretation," MacPherson said.
She said the number of full and partial responses would now be provided in an announcement later this month, when Stats NZ would also detail when the first census results would be released.
"This is simply a question of timing ... When we produce information for the public we outline the methodology and limitations of any data produced," MacPherson said.
Fair enough, but it has been more than a year since the 2018 Census.
University of Otago professor Andrew Geddis said it was "very unusual" for such an order to be placed on state sector chief executive.
"I can't remember a time a public servant has refused after being told they must answer."
If a complaint was taken to the speaker or the House, Macpherson could be forced to apologise or be censured by the privileges committee.
"That would be a very major escalation. I would expect that the House treat it as contempt."
Meanwhile, other parts of Stats are still trying to figure out how to measure spirituality.
Labels: Statistics New Zealand
Migrant acceptance
Arthur Grimes' latest column at Newsroom covers migration and wellbeing.
The happiest countries in the world tend to be quite affluent but also tend to have strong social support programmes. In 2018, the ten happiest countries according to the Gallup Poll were (in order): Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. Thus New Zealand, at 8th, is (despite our grumbles) a great place to live.
Often migrants come from poorer, and less happy countries. The process of moving to happy countries (e.g. in Northern Europe, Canada and Australasia) leads to a significant boost in their welfare.
Indeed the top ten ranking countries for average happiness of migrants (i.e. of the foreign born) is almost the same as for overall happiness: Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico (Netherlands slips fractionally to 11th). Note that New Zealand rises to 5th in the ranking of happiness of migrants.
An important factor for explaining migrant wellbeing in their new country is the local attitudes of the domestic population towards migrants. The report finds that countries which are highly accepting towards migrants tend to have both greater migrant happiness and greater happiness for the domestically-born population.
This aspect is one in which New Zealand scores particularly highly. According to the Gallup Poll data, Iceland and New Zealand are neck-in-neck at the top of the most accepting countries for migrants. Intriguingly, acceptance of migrants is not strongly related to country incomes: the next five places after New Zealand in the acceptance stakes are Rwanda, Canada, Sierra Leone, Mali and Australia. (People in Eastern European countries are particularly unaccepting of migrants. Of the eleven countries who are, on average, least accepting towards migrants, ten are in Eastern Europe; the other is Israel).
He links through to the underlying data, from the 2018 World Happiness report. That report constructed a migrant acceptance index:
In reaction to the migrant crisis that swept Europe in 2015 and the backlash against migrants that accompanied it, Gallup developed a Migrant Acceptance Index (MAI) designed to gauge people's personal acceptance of migrants not just in Europe, but throughout the rest of the world.
Gallup's Migrant Acceptance Index is based on three questions that ask respondents about migrants in increasing level of proximity to them. Respondents are asked whether the following situations are "good things" or "bad things": immigrants living in their country, an immigrant becoming their neighbor and immigrants marrying into their families.
"A good thing" response is worth three points in the index calculation, a volunteered response of "it depends" or "don't know" is worth one point, and "a bad thing" is worth zero points. We considered volunteered responses such as "it depends" because in some countries, who these migrants are may factor more heavily into whether they are accepted. The index is a sum of the points across the three questions, with a maximum possible score of 9.0 (all three are good things) and a minimum possible score of zero (all three are bad things). The higher the score, the more accepting the population is of migrants.
Polled Kiwis gave the second highest average score in the world: 8.25, just 0.01 points below Iceland's 8.26. The survey questions were asked in 2016 and 2017.
Michael Reddell's post earlier this week on immigration suggested that policy allowing reasonably liberal immigration represents an 'elite' ideology.
It may.
But if it does, it's an elite ideology that appears very broadly shared - at least in the Gallup data.
Labels: Arthur Grimes, immigration, Michael Reddell
Hard to short housing
Mike Reddell points to Phil Twyford's speech on housing and wonders why, if folks with money on the line take him seriously, house prices haven't started dropping yet: The housing supply agenda looks good, but if it were credible, house prices would already be dropping.
It's a good question. My answer to it: it's darned hard to short housing.
Think about other markets covered by the NZX or futures markets. People there are betting all the time on whether prices will go up or down. If you think prices will rise relative to current price expectations, buy now or buy futures. If you think they'll drop, sell futures or buy options to sell in the future. There are lots of ways for people to trade in future prices, regardless of which way they think things will go.
Suppose you wanted to bet on Twyford's being right and you only own your own home. You might sell your house, rent another house, and hope to buy a house at a much reduced price in a few years time. But you'd have to live in a rental for a few years, and current broken housing markets have meant that the rental market sucks. It's an expensive option. If you think the price of soy beans will drop in a couple years, you can make a few clicks and have some options in your portfolio. You don't have to go without food for a couple years.
And everyone who thinks Twyford is wrong - well, it's easy to put a bet on house prices increasing. Maintain your current property portfolio or expand it.
There is a related literature. During the GFC, there were bans on short-selling. Those bans reduce the efficiency of prices and lead to bubbles that can persist and make crashes more likely.
There's no ban on short-selling housing here. But neither is there any obvious ability to do it. There are no Case-Schiller indices here. Other mechanisms are more complicated. Short companies or funds with lots of exposure to property? Even if house prices drop, the value of a set of properties could rise if more intensive land use is allowed. If there were some company that owned a pile of landbanks on the fringes of Auckland, and it were publicly traded, you could try shorting that one.
Just because I can't see any obvious way of shorting housing doesn't mean there isn't one. But the asymmetry in ease of going long versus short can make prices more persistent.
I put reasonable odds on Twyford's actually being able to get this done. Here's a likely sequence of events in that case.
After new infrastructure financing vehicles come on-stream, new leapfrog developments are announced. The first few advertise all-up prices (including the levy that funds the bond that funded the infrastructure) not far below current prices, but far enough to attract interest.
Existing landbankers see what's happening, recognise Twyford's serious, and rush to get their properties developed and sold before prices fall the rest of the way down to paddock price plus infrastructure cost plus construction cost.
Capacity constraints in construction will be even more binding. That will slow down the price drop unless government is able to progress other parts of the supply agenda that are less advanced, or not even yet on the table. Building material supply regulation. Ability to access foreign construction workers. Ability for foreign developers able to build at scale to work in the New Zealand market given the constraints of the OIA, the foreign buyer ban, building material supply regulation, and ability to bring in their own workers.
And Council risk-aversion in consenting driven by joint-and-several liability remains an issue - though if the government's Urban Development Authorities can not only provide resource consents but also sign off on final building certificates, that might help.
So without complementary policy easing other constraints, the path to new equilibrium prices will not be a fast one.
If you want a handle on why prices haven't dropped yet, it'll be the combination of those other capacity constraints pushing out the date for getting much lower fringe prices and the inability to short.
If Case-Shiller markets in Auckland housing existed, I'd be looking about 4-5 years out - but I'd also want to be talking with some construction folks before doing anything.
Labels: housing, Michael Reddell


text:
NoveList Introduces New Features and Options into NoveList Select™, for Customers Incorporating NoveList Content into Their
~ Improvements to Functionality and Display, Series Recommendations, Inclusion of Lexile Levels and Options to Purchase Content Café Features Part of Latest Upgrade ~
IPSWICH, Mass. — June 28, 2012 — NoveList®, a division of EBSCO Publishing, is introducing new features to NoveList Select™, its catalog enrichment resource. These new features improve the user experience, as well as offer new upgrade options, including book jackets, professional book reviews, sample excerpts, tables of contents, and more, from Content Café – a database offered by Baker & Taylor.
NoveList Select is the catalog enrichment component of NoveList readers' advisory resources. This component pulls NoveList content into a library's catalog. NoveList Select makes reading recommendations, series information, book discussion guides, Goodreads ratings and reviews, library newsletters and events available to library patrons from within the catalog record. Patrons can find similar titles and authors based on their searches, discover more of the library's collection and sign up for library newsletters and upcoming events.
Vice President of NoveList, Duncan Smith, says NoveList Select has evolved as a way for librarians to enrich their catalogs, and the new features and upgrade options provide librarians with even more ways to serve their patrons. "The library catalog is the main destination for library patrons. Displaying NoveList's rich content within catalog records allows patrons to learn more about their favorite authors, or to find out about a series or author they didn't know existed. NoveList Select moves a library catalog from being only a book delivery service to being a book discovery service."
Now Content Café, from Baker & Taylor, is available through NoveList Select as well.Content Caféis a comprehensive database with more than 22 million data elements, with new additions made daily. Content Café enriches OPACs with jacket images, reviews, summaries, complete book details, and more.
Other new features will further enhance the user experience. Improvements to the display and usability of the NoveList content within the catalog records will make it easier for users to access the information. Recommendations for similar series in the library catalog will also be easier to find with a list of series titles added to the existing title and author recommendations that have always been part of NoveList Select in the You might Like These section. Lexile® reading levels are also being added where appropriate. These will primarily be available in juvenile records to help determine whether a title is appropriate for a child's age and reading level.
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Some drizzle, heaviest during Sun night. Freeze-thaw conditions (max 13°C on Fri afternoon, min 0°C on Sun night). Winds increasing (calm on Sat morning, fresh winds from the SSW by Sun night).
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