700,000 Kiwis didn't complete Census
The Ministry's chief statistician has reportedly told the country's politicians in a letter that 460,000 New Zealanders did not complete the Census - and 240,000 only partially completed it. Liz MacPherson has finally provided the full Census figures, more than a year since it was completed - after stonewalling Parliament's governance and administration committee over the number of partially and fully completed responses. Now the opposition is blasting the Government and calling for another Census. "It's been like drawing teeth to get information from Statistics New Zealand about the results," State Services spokesperson Nick Smith said. Smith says the record low response will not give the Government accurate results, and the problems with Census 2018 are not just the record low response rate - but a doubling in the partial response rate. That compounds the problems for the State Sector, which relies on hard data. "We now know over 700,000 people or one in seven New Zealanders did not complete Census 2018. This leaves a huge data hole that will create problems for years in allocating tens of billions of dollars in funding for central state services like health and education, as well as affecting electorate numbers and boundaries for Election 2020," Smith said. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday hit back at Smith, pointing out that it was the previous Government that made the decision to move to an online Census - which appears to have been part of the problem with the big drop in responses. But Smith isn't buying that. "Stats NZ needs to accept responsibility for the 2018 Census shambles. It cannot blame the funding when it was 36 percent greater than Census 2013 and when this budget was underspent. It cannot blame the digital strategy when Australia successfully delivered its 2016 Census with a 95 percent response rate using a similar strategy." Smith says Stats NZ botched the delivery of Census 2018 by excessively relying on online responses and providing insufficient neighbourhood backup for others. He's even calling for consideration to given to deferring the electoral boundary changes for 2020, as well as bringing forward the next Census to 2021.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
Here's Thursday's thinker!
I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
Do you think you know the answer to our daily riddle? Don't spoil it for your neighbours! Simply 'Like' this post and we'll post the answer in the comments below at 2pm.
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Head here and hover on the Following button on the top right of the page (and it will show Unfollow) and then click it. If it is giving you the option to Follow, then you've successfully unfollowed the Riddles page.
Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...
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