Andrew Dickens Afternoons

At the end of yesterday’s programme I asked the question , “What are you looking forward to doing most under Level 2”Of course many said “get a haircut”.  It’s sort of the standard answer the same way getting KFC and Maccas was the instant response when we went from 4 to 3. It’s not my go to.  I’m quite enjoying my fuzziness particularly the longest beard I’ve ever grown.Other’s talked about sharing a bottle of Pinot Noir with their Dad, who they hadn’t seen since before lockdown.  One wanted to cross Cook Strait.  For no particular reason other than to enjoy a journey they took for granted before lockdown and Covid.One of my favourite responses was the fella who simply said, “see my chiropractor”. I can relate.  3 years ago I stuffed my neck up skiing and I need it crunched back in place and a good session of acupuncture of the seized up muscles.  I’d quite like to look right without wincing.There must be many people tolerating a low level hum of pain who can’t wait for a massage or a manipulation. I saw no

As many of you will know I moved to a new house and new suburb just a couple of weeks before lockdown.We sold our house last year and over summer we found a 3 bedroom apartment so this was the big downsize.  Of course, it didn’t work because all the kids promptly moved home for lockdown so it’s a snug downsized family home.So over the past few weeks, I have revealed that I now live in the Auckland suburb of Devonport.  For those who don’t know the city, Devonport a small suburb at the south end of the North Shores.  There’s one road in and out called Lake Road.It’s a pretty beachside suburb with five beaches within one kilometre.  It’s got the navy base which is always full of action.  It’s got two volcanic mountains which my dog loves walking up. It’s a lovely place to be locked down in. But it’s also fair to say everybody is a bit dismissive of Devonport because it’s just a little too pretty and twee and shall we say bourgeois.  It’s also very white with nearly 93% of the population of European descent, whi

It was fascinating to hear Winston Peters in conversation with Mike Hosking today.It’s been easy to forget with the extraordinary powers granted to Ashley Bloomfield, the Director of Civil Defence and the Police Commissioner to make decisions. Decisions which are then enacted by the Cabinet and sold to us by the Prime Minister and Finance Minister. That Winston is still Deputy PM, Foreign Minister and the leader of a party separate to Labour.That gives him insight.  He’s got a dog in the fight, along with a different point of view.While he’s made some headlines with the trans-Tasman bubble, this is obviously just an aspirational goal rather than a hook to hang your hat on.  As Mike pointed out this morning there’s no way that Scott Morrison is looking at flights between Queenstown and Sydney when Australians still can’t fly from Melbourne to Brisbane for a holiday in the sun.You get the feeling that was always a diversion to keep us fantasising about the happier future to come.Conversation then turned to deba

Well, here we are in Week 7 of a nationwide lockdown to contain and eliminate the virus known as Covid 19.  A new or novel virus for which the world has no cure or vaccine. I think it’s fair to say that our patience for the lockdown has now broken. Our determination has wavered. Our resolve has weakened.The moment we broke was yesterday when we learnt of the case of Oliver Christianson and his successful legal challenge against the Ministry of Health.We all know the story.  His father dying from brain cancer, Oliver flew from the UK, a Covid hotspot, to spend as much time as he could with his Dad. He arrived and went into isolation as per our regulations but Dad started to fade away quicker than expected. So he applied to the Ministry of Health for an exemption so he could see his father and he was refused.In the end, it was the ruling of a High Court judge, Justice Tracey Walker, that interceded last Friday. Oliver got to see his Dad for his last 36 hours.One of the important things for me was Oliver’s good

So this is awkward.I go a flu jab this morning. And what makes it even more awkward is that I never even asked for it.This doesn't bode well for the narrative that the government has lost 700,000 vaccinationsSo last week I got a text from my medical centre telling me that I was eligible for a funded jab and would I like to come in on Monday morning.  I phoned the centre and said yes and then asked why I was getting a funded flu jab.  Have I suddenly become old or elderly of frail?  Is it some sort of mistake.  The receptionist had no idea.  I took up the offer after all, just like Damian Grant taking up a wage subsidy he didn't need.You don't look a gift vax in the mouth.So I turned up this morning and found out that the reason I got offered the vax was that I had cancer and surgery last year. The practice had looked through it's records and determined the perceived vulnerable, made their order quite early in the piece and then the jabs came through.Their first tranche was a bit slow but since then everything

Well it’s been a week where some voices from the past have been offering their comforting and discomforting voices. So what did we get? And are there any tricks we’re missing.John Key has spoken a couple of times and there was some comfort to be found in his predictions.  He, like all of us, knows the rest of the year is going to be extremely tough financially for all businesses and some in particular.But he believes we’ll start recovering faster than some people have said.  He thinks the regions will be hard hit. That Auckland will continue to grow slowly because of it’s economy of scale. He believes unemployment will reach double figures but not the 25 per cents that some predicts He believes property prices will slump but crawl back relatively well.He said that businesses will take advantage of the crisis to trim fat from their employees, which is brutal but accurate.  Never waste a crisis.  He also thinks commercial property will flounder as staff numbers drop and more of us continue to work from homeHis

Andrew Dickens has shared his experience of online funerals - after attending his third such funeral since the Covid-19 pandemic began. After reading a text from a listener who's mother is working in England and signing death certificates, Dickens spoke of witnessing the funeral of his sister-in-law's mother from the other side of the world. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We have a saying in our family: No-one needs a could have/should have conversation right now.We pull that one out at moments of high stress when everything is going wrong and it’s bleedingly obvious that the reason it’s going all wrong is because of a poor choice in the past.The Covid 19 debate is full of could have/should have conversations with people more than happy to tell us what we should have done in the past.  But we didn’t.So the latest was Professor Des Gorman. The former dean of the Auckland Medical School was talking to the Epidemic Response Committee yesterday. His hot take reckon was that we should have closed our borders in mid-February rather than late March.  He reckons that we weren’t resourced to do it.He’s right, obviously, and wrong all at the same time.  Actually, if we closed the borders in mid-January like Taiwan we could have been in an even stronger situation.But no-one was seriously mentioning or considering a full shut down of that at the time.  Including Professor Des.  I’ve gone

So the pressure cooker that our businesses have been in due to our response to Covid 19 yesterday exploded.It was the turn of small business to appear before the Pandemic Response committee and it was a heartbreaking litany of broken hopes and dreams from the sector that employs a quarter of all New Zealanders.Amongst all of them, there was a commonality.Ever since we closed our borders, which killed hospitality and accommodation, and then the lockdown, our small businesses have experienced a dramatic reduction in cashflow that will be fatal for many enterprises.The committee heard that while the government’s wage subsidy has helped them meet one of their liabilities, namely paying the people who do their work, there are many other costs that are sucking their reserves dry.They’ve got no money coming in but they still face debts around rates, insurance, rent, utilities, equipment leases, and all sorts of other business costs.They’re going to the wall and they want the government to do something about it.In th

I know I’m about to be judgemental. I know that some people will say you shouldn’t impose your beliefs and values on other people who are doing nothing wrong.But - I think the people who thought it was a valuable exercise to queue at 4 in the morning at a Merivale McDonalds would be well advised to go home, look in the mirror, and reappraise their life goals and aspirations.I know you’re a burger aficionado, I know it’s been a long five weeks, but seriously? Stressing your body and it’s immune system to wake outside your temporal zone to ingest a tasty snack of debatable nutritional quality just seems to be nuts to me.Speaking of judgemental, I am over the pile on to Deborah Russell. Not because I approve of her inappropriate question asked at an inappropriate time but because it’s an insignificant scuffle as part of personality politics and not at all helpful to getting back on track.To make the claim that her question in a committee, that was promptly shot down by the man in charge of our finances, is indic

So here we are.  After what seems both an eternity and the blink of an eye we come to the time to decide the next step in the battle against Covid 19.The choice is simple and stark and yet so complicated and fuzzy. It is, as we are prone to say these days, unprecedented.Do we extend the Level 4 lockdown or do we ease the strict rules and move to Level 3? There is no right answer because the cases for both are powerful.  The consequences of both are also potentially calamitous.On one hand, the business people of this country are right to fear an extension of the lockdown.  Every day that goes by sees more life ebbing out of our economy. An extension will be the straw that breaks many enterprises backs. Meanwhile, the health cost of a failed economy should not be discounted. A recession is bad for you.  A depression is worse.  It means a lift in poverty. Poverty means bad food, bad houses, bad mental health. Poverty kills you.  It’s been estimated last week that the global Covid slowdown has put the global figh

Day 12 and things are getting real.People are losing their jobs and people are worried about losing their homes. For many it's a surprise as to just how close to the edge their businesses and jobs were.Budget advisors have always warned that too many New Zealanders were only one wage packet away from insolvency and we're seeing this happen, from individuals and families through businesses and corporations. And it took just 12 days.It took just a week to kill magazines. Magazines and periodicals are very vulnerable all the time. They have to pay their staff to write the stories. Then they have to pay the printers. Then a punter has to buy the product and only then can they bill the advertisers. Magazines and community papers were dead in the water pretty much as soon as the government decided that they weren't an essential service.A friend of mine runs a monthly community magazine. She was just about to distribute the April issue when the lockdown hit. She's got 12,000 copies sitting in her garage. No money to

It seems counter-intuitive to be in the middle of a public health crisis and to hear that one of the first financial victims of the pandemic will be our doctors and their practices.Many GPs will be making the decision today and in the following days to close up shop because of a whirlwind of situations that has made them deeply unprofitable.In the days before the lockdown GPs were besieged by clients seeking medications and treatments before they were confined to barracks.  The doctors worked huge hours and in many cases took on new staff to cope.Meanwhile, they were busy investing in pandemic equipment. Perspex screens, portacabins outside their practice for Covid patients to keep them apart from others, and of course scrubs and masks and gloves.Then there was the decision to move to virtual consulting so doctors invested in phones and laptops and applications.And then the country shut down. And no-one went to the doctors.30 to 40 per cent of a practice's income comes from the co-payments from you and I. So

I don’t want to discuss whether our coronavirus restrictions are right or wrong, or if they’re too early or too late, or whether they’re too harsh or too lax.Because now is no longer the time or place. It’s time to just do this and any argument that might weaken people’s resolve and personal responsibility will only weaken the fight against mitigating the virus’ effect.It is what it is and it’s time to do our bit.This morning Mike Hosking was talking to the Prime Minister about the travel bans.  One of the first questions was about some friends of Mike’s who arrived recently from Italy via Doha and waltzed through the airport.  Mike questioned the PM as to whether our borders are truly closed.Now the first thing I thought was how much responsibility Mike’s friends took for their actions.Say they arrived a day or two ago, before the blanket ban.  The authorities would only know that they had flown from Doha, which had no restrictions.  At the time the e-passport gates were still operating so Mike’s friends cou

I had a week off due to a number of personal reasons including moving house so I have had a merciful break.For a week I haven’t had to say the c word.  It’s got so ubiquitous that I think it should be the second c word to be banned on the radio.The word of course is Coronavirus. There is a third c word we could ban and that’s Covid-19.Now I hate to say I told you so but I told you so. A month ago I wrote that that you and I are highly unlikely to catch this new viral bug, but it’s effect on the world will be enormous because of the effect on the global economy. An effect that was totally predictable as entire regions of countries are shut and production halted for 14 days or more.And so it’s been proven.The front page of any news website today highlights that hundreds of jobs have already been lost in the tourism industry.  The Air New Zealand boss has today taken a pay cut and suspended earnings guidance as people stop travelling here and New Zealanders stop travelling abroad. I personally know of three kids

What a remarkable time of self-regulation and personal responsibility we’ve entered.First and foremost is the coronavirus kerfuffle that has engulfed the world. In the battle against the bug the populace has been given the word to take care of themselves. To be sensible and to be responsible.So no hugs, no hongis, no handshakes.  Wash your hands. Feel ill? Call a doctor and then self-quarantine. Make sure you have a plan to make sure you could spend a fortnight at home.So how fascinating is it that so many people have blundered on through.  The infected who ran straight to GPs and the Emergency Departments in Italy without prior warning, immediately forcing emergency staff and doctors to self-quarantine and further weaken the response.How remarkable that a handful of supermarkets saw panicked buying as people hoarded stuff meaning that those who came after them were left with nothing.  So selfish and irrational.The run on facemasks amuses me.  Facemasks stop the infected spluttering the bug out.  They're not

In the wake of the murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children by a former New Zealander who burnt his family to death and then killed himself with a knife, which takes a lot of doing, there has been much wringing of hands.But some are saying we must do something to prevent this from happening to one more woman, one more child.In Australia, Heather Nancarrow, the chief executive of the Australian National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, proposed a dramatic policy.She reckons that during the period of separation, every man must be put on a program. Their mental health should be checked and scrutinised for signs of violence.  All to make sure he is making the transition safely and does not become a risk to women, children or themselves.Even Heather Nancarrow admits her idea is a radical one and it’s easy to pull it apart on logistics only.  And when we concentrate on one gender only in the relationship transition process, we’re ignoring the vast majority of people going through this highly stressf

Each day I’m getting a little more concerned about the coronavirus outbreak of Covid 19.I’ve always bit a bit concerned but optimistic that this will pass quickly and life and trade will go back to normal.After all the last coronavirus, SARS, came and went.  A virus that was more deadly than this current one.But there’s a couple of things that have got me more worried.When I interviewed Health Minister David Clark yesterday on the extension of Chinese visitor bans,  I said the often quoted argument that influenza kills more people but we don’t ban visits from infected areas.  David agreed but said the difference is that we have vaccines for flu.Until we create a medical wall against the spread of the virus, then the physical wall of visitor bans will have to stay in place unless the virus peters out, which it doesn’t look like doing.And then there was a piece in the South China Morning Post that warned that Covid 19 was going to be more damaging to the Chinese economy than SARS.Put simply, the virus may be le

The Newshub poll last night confirmed what we all know.  This election is going to be very very close.This poll suggest Labour and the Greens could lead alone together.  Earlier polls suggest that national and Act could lead alone. So it’s swinging back on forth on a knife edge.  The swinging voters and the strategic voters have never been more important.  As few as 10,000 voters will effectively decide the next government.So there was debate on the radio this morning about the government and time and time again callers returned to the old fallacy that somehow this government is undemocratic because the party that got the most votes last election did not form a government.When National Party voters get that resentment out of their system, they will have a clearer mind on how to support their party. To make it perfectly clear, a sizeable majority of New Zealand voters last election voted against a National Government. Labour and the Greens campaigned against the government.  But so did New Zealand First. They

Well, here we go again with another virtue signalling stoush between greenies and progress.A battle is brewing between Auckland’s Watercare and environmentalists over a plan to replace an ageing processing plant in the Waitakere Ranges.The plant processes 20 per cent of Auckland’s water and it’s been doing the job for 100 years. Obviously, it’s come to an end of its days and it’s time to update it and future proof it for another 100 years.  This is a $400 million project that has to happen.So this is the second time Watercare has tried to do this. Back in 2017 the plan was to put the plant in Oratia. It meant taking 18 homes and properties and the locals rebelled. So everything was put on hold.Watercare has considered four sites and decided on one in Huia way out west in the Ranges and on the harbour.  But this is facing problems principally from environmentalists because of fears of spreading kauri dieback, a newly discovered  flightless wasp that lives in the area.  Some Argentine ants also live there and t