Category: imported_guest
There is something odd about the global warming debate — or the climate change debate, as we are now expected to call it, since global warming has for the time being come to a halt. But I have never in my life experienced the extremes of personal hostility, vituperation and vilification which I — along with other dissenters, of course — have received for my views on global warming and global warming policies.
When did anyone last hear officials and professionals talking enthusiastically about the social and economic benefits resulting from the subdivision of land to create secure, clean and tradeable title? Indeed, any Regional or District plan is likely to include a long list of the potential problems caused by subdivision, but will mention few, if any, of the benefits.
The Rule of Law embodies the notion that freedoms are protected not by the dicktat of any person or collection of people, but by the Law to which all, high or low born, are subject. This notion is so central to the way we order our society that it is now little discussed, and one suspects no longer widely understood. It is a safeguard of great antiquity.
Since the National government took office late 2008, welfare reform has formed a large legislative programme much of which has now been completed. It is perhaps too soon to expect benefit numbers to start reducing, complicated by the global financial crisis driving up unemployment in 2009-10.
“Climate Change” has become an important international topic - one might almost say religion. It began life as “Global Warming”. So very many people, including politicians and “news people”, appear to have been overwhelmed by it, and have led others to believe, and follow the doctrine. However, the cost of “Combating Carbon” has been extremely high, and the debt and economic consequences are being passed on to present citizens, and, worse still, to future generations, including all our grandchildren.
An analysis of submissions to the Constitutional Advisory Panel obtained under the Official Information Act reveal a deep opposition to treaty politics that was obscured in the panel’s report to government in December.
Two pilot warrant of fitness trials for rental properties are presently under way. One is a government initiative involving 500 Housing New Zealand properties and the other involves a “consortium” of interests involving the Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin councils, ACC, NZ Green Building Council, and the University of Otago.
This book contains a dozen essays on aspects of Treaty of Waitangi settlements. The fourteen contributors are all, in one sense anyway, eminently qualified to write on the subject. This book is a political tract masquerading as an academic treatise.
Something about the way the Left is presenting the ‘child poverty’ problem doesn't stack up. When interviewed, Green co-Leader Metiria Turei repeatedly stresses that 2 in 5 of officially poor children come from working homes. But for Turei and other anti-poverty advocates to continually highlight this group when attempting to influence voters implies there is something less laudable about being benefit-dependent. Not a sentiment normally associated with the Left.
Decision makers can be informed or mislead on policy decisions depending on the quality of supporting research. It is important to ask what the conclusions are, but also how those conclusions were arrived at in terms of assumptions, methods, and data reliability. A case in point is research on identifying a living wage rate for New Zealand.
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