Don't fight a cat. Ever.

Midnight, 2am, 3.30am, 5.10am

Wake, drink, drain.

Wake, drink, drain.

Possibly this will be the last night I feel the need to do this, I just want to expel any possible blood before a clot begins.

The good news is that for the whole weekend there has been no sign of sharks. The patient is just lying down, all day and all of the night, moving as little as necessary, letting the the wound finish its mending. Seems to be working.

Seeing the specialist tomorrow, let’s see where we are then.

6.30am

Crazy shit keeps happening out in the world and here I am with a keyboard. Let's resume the daily habit of looking in the rear view mirror and wondering what the hell we've run over now.

7.10 am

Oh hello Corin! Haven’t been listening for a few days, nice to hear you again, even if your reo still has that car-keys-falling-into-the-insinkerator sound.

What are we talking about today? The bubble! The Trans Tasman bubble! We are now Team of Thirty Million and even though I chafe at the idea of being on the same side as anything with Scotty from Marketing, the hundred mile an hour asshole, well here the bloody hell we are, one great big pool of tourist and business opportunities going forward and joyful tearful loved ones coming back together.

Glad for everyone whose lives will get a bit better thanks to this, still a little bit apprehensive about being a bit vulnerable, a bit more exposed, a bit worried that our very strong wall of protection might be weakened now. Let us turn to facts and reasoning, the aloe vera for all inflamed emotions.

Someone has done the maths and it checks out. The odds are pretty extremely long that it could go wrong, so long as our current protections remain.

Essentially: your risk of getting burned is greatest next to the fire and in this flaming metaphor the fire would be the international borders to the rest of the world from whence infected people arrive. So long as we still have our swiss cheese and our belts and braces - just in case any border staff are doing any lying - we can pretty much say: yes, there’s a fire there but it’s contained inside the fireplace and it can't do us any harm as long as it stays there.

That being the case, team of 30 million gets to circulate at will. I’m okay with that. But the moment a spark flies out from the fireplace, we’d better be ready to grab it.

7.20am

People, families, continue to be parked in motels for emergency housing. Compared to a car, or nowhere at all, that’s a good proposition. But no-one would say it’s desirable to have things go on like this. The question of the moment: is how long will that be?

We get an extended report that includes a visit to Rotorua where it’s causing angst for neighbours and motel guests and proprietors of bars who are not happy about people with problems being housed quite so nearby; people with addiction problems, people with just-got-out-of-prison problems, people who are just real bad bastards, and people who have none of those problems but also no money and no roof because they’re at the hard wrong end of our goddam modern economy.

What do they need? Somewhere to live, and some social support.

When do they need it? Now.

Do we have what they need? Not enough.

How soon will we? What's getting built and how long will it take to get enough built?

Usually Megan Woods is very good at this but she seems a bit vague this morning and that's frustrating. I end up going to the Housing website to get some numbers, and we’ll look at them in a minute but first let’s cross to Nicola Willis who claims to have an answer.

All credit to her, she can talk a more reasoned case than all the duds who have preceded her saying I'm from the National Party and I'm here to fix housing, no really hear me out, but her words still suffer a fatal limitation and I pass the mic to MTAF reader Jeff Howell to make the case he did this morning on Twitter:

BUT YOUR HOUSING POLICY DOESN'T INCLUDE BUILDING ANY ACTUAL FUCKING HOUSES!

I messaged him from my bed of rest to do my fact checking and he said, yep, it appears to be just so.

This is Willis' "5 ideas to fix housing" which form National's housing policy. Carefully phrased with NO promises to build any houses if/when they're the Govt. Clearly Nicola is relying on the market to solve all of our housing problems, as it did so well the last time the Nats were in Govt.

So. Those housing numbers. On this dashboard we get a graph that appears to show quite good growth in transitional housing supply.

I’d follow it down myself but pleading bed rest, I now embrace the easy way out and invite you, the very astute readers of this newsletter, to assess the strength of this rising axis and report back, if you feel so inclined. Gracias!

9.45am

The Standard has pounded out a more-in-sorrow-than-anger-oh-who-am-I-kidding-y’all-are-wimps post about the state of the national lust for motor vehicles.

Here’s the disconnect: there is a massive realisation growing that while climate change gases in New Zealand are 47% generated by car and truck combustion engines, there’s near-zero sign that we are getting out of our cars any time soon as a percentage of trips taken.

and

The gap between the ideology that climate activists and media activist commentariat spout, and the actual actions people make every day with the EFTPOS cards in their wallets, is getting more stark by the year.

I feel seen, and not as an EFTPOS card user.

Roll up your trousers, I’m going to spout a bit more ideology.

Last week, just before I started bleeding, I was getting all fired up to rebut an absolute carnival of dunces on the Herald Facebook page; people purporting to rebut what Simon Wilson had written in support of a bike lane for the harbour bridge.

I intend to do that, but I have decided that it might be easier to do it one dopey objection at a time. So that’s what I’m going to do: a rebuttal a day, for as long as it takes. Starting tomorrow.

I don’t want to be just spouting ideology that goes nowhere. But I reckon there is momentum, albeit relatively small, and I want to help it build.

Here’s a flavour of the sort of thing I have in mind. Do by all means feel welcome to add your own.

11.35am

That stuff I was writing yesterday about how grateful I feel that we protected our hospitals and our people? Boy am I feeling it this morning.

12.35pm

Don't fight a cat. Ever.

2.45pm

I just keep feeling seen. And I already hated them dogs, from watching Black Mirror.

4.20pm

Thank you, sincerely, everyone, for all the kind wishes as I went on my hospital rodeo. I love doing this newsletter for its own sake but I especially love it for the warm connections we have here. Y’all are wonderful.