Category: Democracy
2008 was the coldest year this century. This is not an aberration as the global warming industry would have us believe. The world has been on a cooling trend since 1998 and there is now growing scientific evidence that governments around the world should plan for colder not warmer temperatures.[1] Yet, as is typical of emotion filled movements, it is hard to imagine cold hard facts getting in the way of the vested interests’ headlong rush towards costly and useless global warming taxation schemes – even here in New Zealand.
One in six New Zealanders now live abroad, including an estimated 24 percent of our skilled workforce. This is the highest proportion of any country in the OECD. According to the Government Statistician, in the year to September, long-term departures from New Zealand reached 82,254, the greatest number since 1979. Of those, 42,316 Kiwis headed to Australia, the highest number in over twenty years.[1]
If it wasn’t for the fact that the general election is just around the corner, new home owners would be forced to install government approved showers that plumbers say deliver little more than a dribble of water. This is on top of government approved hot water cylinders - modified for heat pumps and solar panels - that cost $500 more than standard models.[1] For these nanny state interventions we have MMP and the Green Party to blame.
Engaging a panelbeater to design an intersection is unwise. It is equally silly to leave to arrogant and at times duplicitous parliamentarians unfettered control of the voting system of which they are beneficiaries.
It’s all a bit unreal, the credit crunch, but if there’s a message coming out of it, it’s engraved on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe: Don’t Panic.
Last week's designation of a Select Committee room of Parliament as the Rainbow Room shows just how far the human rights movement in New Zealand has marched over the last sixty years. Standing alongside other Select Committee rooms dedicated to Maori, Pacific Islanders, Asians and women, the Rainbow Room was dedicated by the Speaker to recognise gay, lesbian and trans-gender New Zealanders and the paths they have taken to full citizenship with equal rights.[1]
National sovereignty remains a vexed issue across the world. In the contemporary climate sympathetic to the ambiguity which gives rise to such a contradictory notion as the international community the very notion of national sovereignty is ironic.
On Saturday November 8th Helen Clark will be asking voters for their support as she attempts to win an election that would elevate her to the rarefied ranks of four-term New Zealand Prime Ministers alongside Richard Seddon, William Massey and Keith Holyoake. During the address in which she announced the election date, Helen Clark explained that the 2008 general election will be about “trust” - whether the public can trust a Labour Government led by her, or a National Government led by John Key.
In this politically correct world that we now live, it is important to hear again the words of Voltaire which echo the essence of free speech – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. Increasingly our right to free expression is being eroded by the apparent rights of others who disagree with what we say.
There is currently a growing body of literature being produced by scholars in many parts of the world which suggests that traditional cannibalism – of the sort that was practiced by Maori in New Zealand – either never occurred at all, or that if it did, it was done to perform for Europeans, and was not a part of the true culture of those ‘performers’. This sort of historical revisionism seems to elevate the novelty of an academic position above what I have always considered to be the primary object of any historical endeavour: to try to move closer to what Gibbon termed ‘the naked, unblushing truth’ of the past.
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