Morning chorus: Finally, the Police act

Anti-vaxx and anti-mandate protestors who were allowed to abuse and spit at bystanders on Parliament's grounds without consequence for two days, are finally being stopped and arrested

TLDR & TLDL: As I publish this, Police are finally dragging anti-vaxx and anti-mandate protestors out of the crowd on the lawns of Parliament to stop them abusing bystanders and threatening violence.

Photo: Marty Melville/AFP via Getty Images

I argued in this standalone piece published earlier this morning for all that the amplification of misinformation should be treated as a threat to our national security and health, not a frustrating inconvenience that will fade away without consequence.

Misinformation threatens our national security

Elsewhere in the news this morning:

• to lessen the feared effect of Omicron on critical supply chains and industries, the Government has announced an exemption scheme which will mean close contacts in approved businesses and organisations can keep going to work instead of isolating if they return a negative rapid antigen test (Beehive)

• US authorities seized a record-high US$5b worth of stolen bitcoin overnight in what is the biggest confiscation of the crypto-currency in history (Buzzfeed);

• European scientists reported overnight a major breakthrough in their quest to generate electricity from nuclear fusion (Guardian);

• National is proposing a rewrite of consumer finance rules to separate the treatment of big banks offering mortgages from the loan sharks the rules were designed for (NZ Herald, Stuff); and,

• Ian Taylor attacked the Ministry of Health over its refusal to trial a PCR test that provides results within an hour, rather than the four to five days likely to gridlock the economy once omicron takes off (NZ Herald)

Later today, I’ll write in more depth about why duopolists are as much to blame as international commodity prices and money printing here and overseas for the rise in inflation that our politicians are pointing and shouting at each other about. (Full subscribers can comment and see the rest of my regular morning email below the paywall fold.)