Chief Stipe

Why?

Because 50% of our hospital beds are empty. ICU is empty. 14 occupied out of 300. There are people out there that were on surgery lists to fix issues that if not fixed will reduce their life expectancy. I personally know one. I could process the numbers on my laptop. By world comparison the numbers we deal with are not huge. FFS our systems fail when we try to trace 85 people a day! Google does that in real time for the whole population that uses the internet!

85% their normal "best average" occupancy. Even that is crap.

Doesn't have to. You are disappointing me as much as Curious. You use historical data to assess risk/value/reward to determine where to spend your punting money. Why can't that type of analysis be used to determine other event outcomes? Our hospitals are 50% empty. Covid-19 in 6 weeks has only filled 14 ICU beds - predominantly with people with comorbidities. Surely doing some risk assessment we could have done better than that.

Na not true. Andrew Bensley is retiring at the end of racing tomorrow from Sky Sport in Australia. Good luck to him. What a knowledgeable and enthusiastic racing commentator. Can anyone think of the last NZ person you would put in the same league?

Disagree there is more data out there than we have ever had in history. Our Bureaucrats have never been smart enough to utilise it. Anyway back to the draft calendar - we should be going to the Sir Humphrey Appleby's with what WE want NOT what we think they'll accept. NEVER negotiate from the low ground. For those of you who don't know who Sir Humphrey is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Appleby That's where our industry leaders are letting us down. Love him or hate him I wish we had someone like Peter V'landys at the helm.

So we are being governed on opinion not science?

As was mine. I'm surprised that you would give any credence to that graph you posted.

That is your opinion and an assumption. My gripe is with the Government bureaucrats like MPI that are determining what we can and can't do. If you look on another channel the little ex-dwarfs are using their platform to try and nail someone who is training their horses faster than others on their own property. I do find some irony in that given tomorrow is ANZAC day.

No. I'll try organic next and then the lady finger variety. If I have to keep it up....the supermarket visits I'll take some plastic ones.

I'd expect better from you Curious as an academic although it was in the social sciences wasn't it. Why don't you put up the same graph relative to the total population in each country?

Yeah well that those numbers will probably not take me to any of the 3,000 people who are paid an average salary of $100,00 a year to work at MPI - will it? How many of that 3,000 have ridden a horse? I have no problem with taking action to suppress Covid-19 infection spread but some bureaucrat telling me how fast I can work a horse having an impact on that spread I just fail to understand. Australian racing is by comparison in full flight and the State of NSW just announced 7 new cases for yesterday. Go figure!

What legislation says that this is the case? What the hell do MPI or MBIE have to do with how fast a horse is ridden? What's more what the hell would they know about it?

I know this isn't "getting with the programme" but I doubt any Government department has the legal authority to restrict the speed at which you ride or drive a horse.

I know this isn't exactly about racing but.... I went grocery shopping this morning - second day in a row. Miss the social interaction and had a bunch of bananas sitting on top of my trolley - apparently that's a signal. ? My neighbour dropped off a whole lot of field mushrooms from his dairy farm so I needed cream for the sauce and soup. There were no eggs at all on the shelves - maybe that is a silent protest from the chickens who have had a lifetime of lockdown! Anyway I had this craving earlier in the week for brussel sprouts. Found them in the supermarket - $10.49 per kg!!!!! Dearer than Pork! The prepacked ones - were $15.11 per kg! Fresh pre-packed chicken is cheaper! That's about a $1 to put each sprout in a plastic bag.

I don't know about that but they'll only be filled to the brim because there won't be many left.

Another question that I can't fathom the answer to.... I can buy a fry pan and a chopping board online as an essential item from The Warehouse, Briscoes or K-mart but I can't buy a kitchen knife. Frying onions whole will be a new challenge.

To be even fairer isn't the Chairman of the Board and the CEO the same person at the moment?

So much for waiting for this new crowd to do the job. So much for waiting for a change in attitude. Same old same old.

Doesn't matter if it is one or two or more bits of fibre. Still nothing special about the fibre nor the circuit. I haven't argued about satellite transmission however if the sums are done you may well find a different answer. A permanent SDI circuit which has very very high bandwidth requirements and the SDI protocol does not have data compression would cost a significant amount a year. The point I'm labouring to make is there are far cheaper options that SDI that were serve the purpose of NZ racing and that is delivering races to the masses from ALL our tracks not just the elite. BTW it is the former that have been subsidising the latter. Tell me what do they do in Australia for their bush tracks that they broadcast?

I'm not so optimistic. A delayed onset of the flu season due to a very mild autumn so far, an interrupted vaccination programme due to the lockdown and the subsequent unavailability of primary care namely GP's. I return to school for children largely from vulnerable socioeconomic groups. Fingers crossed that a Covid-19 infection bounce doesn't coincide with the eventual emergence of the flu. Some of the things that have been said by the Govenrment and the MOH in the last few days are worrying.

Canterbury Jockey Club Riccarton Park Events Centre 165 Racecourse Road | PO Box 11137, Sockburn Christchurch 8443 | 03 336 0000 www.riccartonpark.co.nz Wednesday 22 April 2020 MEDIA RELEASE Al Basti Equiworld New Zealand Two Thousand Guineas® and Barneswood Farm New Zealand One Thousand Guineas® STATEMENT BY THE CANTERBURY JOCKEY CLUB (‘CJC’) The CJC acknowledges the release yesterday by NZTR regarding racing dates and the Group and Listed race programme for July to November 2020 including this extract concerning the Club: “We would like to acknowledge those Clubs which could be adversely impacted, including the Canterbury JC. While retaining their three-day NZ Cup Meeting it is proposed in the indicative calendar that the Guineas races could be transferred North for the 20/21 season only, depending on the NZTR Board’s assessment of the position in early July.” The CJC wishes to make the following comments in relation to the proposal that the Al Basti Equiworld New Zealand Two Thousand Guineas® and Barneswood Farm New Zealand One Thousand Guineas® be run elsewhere than Riccarton Park Racecourse in November 2020 and the interpretation by some that this is a ‘done deal’. The NZTR release clearly states that it is a PROPOSAL only at this stage and states also: Final decisions will not be made until July. That there is an assumption that travel, and attendance will be limited due to COVID-19 alert level restriction. All New Zealanders are aware that this is a changing situation which will likely be quite different in July, let alone November, to what it is today. The Guineas Races COULD be transferred, not will be transferred. And if that situation were to arise that it will be for 2020 only. The CJC will be working closely with NZTR as we have to date. As the situation with the Alert levels unfolds the CJC will be making every endeavour to ensure that the Al Basti Equiworld New Zealand Two Thousand Guineas® and Barneswood Farm New Zealand One Thousand Guineas® can be run as they have since 1973 at their home, Riccarton Park Racecourse. The CJC acknowledges that racing, like all New Zealand activities, is experiencing exceptionally difficult circumstances under the COVID-19 crisis and appreciates and supports the work being undertaken by NZTR to ensure that racing resumes as quickly and in as strong a form as possible. Wednesday 22 April 2020

SDI is just a video protocol. At the end of the day it still traverses the same fibre network as any other protocol. You still connect into the same fibre termination device. I won't bore you with details on network transport protocols. I concede if they use SDI then they might need something larger than Suzuki Swift - maybe a Great China panel van. However SDI is costly and largely proprietary in its implementation. No wonder RITA is broke. It also raises questions about the deal they did with that outfit owned by Windsor Park and what's his name Randall. SDI is great if you want to deliver HD TV but how many of the target market have the right TV to view it in HD and how many of that market have good enough eyesight to tell the difference. The point is there are other cheaper and equally effective technologies to do live broadcasts from anywhere in the country rather than a select few racetracks. Finally when you say "dedicated circuit" don't think that it is something special like physically a single piece of fibre of from Te Rapa to the studio. It isn't. It is defined logically by software that dedicates a certain level of bandwidth availability at a committed information rate i.e. it guarantees that you will get the bandwidth you require. BUT you still use the same fibre infrastructure and the Telco makes more money by selling that bandwidth many times over to others when you are not using it.