Utopia, you are standing in it!

The article containing that quote, Great Myths of The Great Depression has been around since 1998, but it’s always good to put it in front of people repeatedly because there myths don’t die easily.

For example, Old Leftists like Chris Trotter will always bring up the First Labor Government in NZ and FDR’s New Deal in the USA for how they dealt to the Great Depression. What they don’t mention is that Great Britain and Australia had centre-right governments – even with Labour Party involvement occasionally – that did not go for all the industrial nationalisation, new types of welfare support, and most importantly, Keynesian spending. And yet they emerged from the Slump at the same speed as we or the USA did in terms of GDP recovery, dropping unemployment (both Britain and Australia) and so forth.

What’s also not mentioned is that in the USA, after all of…

George III (June 4, 1738 – January 29, 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from October 25, 1760 until his death in 1820. The two kingdoms were in a personal union under him until the Acts of Union 1800 merged them on January 1, 1801. He then became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was concurrently Duke and Prince-Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg (“Hanover”) in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on October 12, 1814. He was a monarch of the House of Hanover who, unlike his two predecessors, was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.

George was born on June 4, 1738 at Norfolk House in St James’s Square, London. He was a grandson of King George II of Great Britain and the eldest son of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, and…

 Steven Levitt, famous for his Freakanomics, shows that being an economist is not just mouthing supply and demand.

• Brian Easton writes –

Anyone can call themselves an ‘economist’. Many do, despite having no qualifications in economics and hardly any formal training; they often make elementary errors. That is the result of a conscious decision of the economics profession which resists barriers to exit and entry. In contrast other professions have restrictions, often for good reasons; I am glad my medical advisers are not only qualified but also registered. However, claiming to be expert on economics to contribute to the public commentary without any expertise, is confusing to those with more humble understandings.

On the other hand there are those who have a high reputation in the economics profession but who don’t seem to be really economists. Consider Steven Levitt, who has written of himself, ‘I am having trouble…

A new video from Just Facts:

Contrary to forecasts of doom, crystal-clear science shows that a broad range of outcomes related to climate change have stayed level or improved for the past 30 years.

Rigorous documentation of every fact in this video is available at https://www.justfactsdaily.com/climate-change-fears-of-teen-activist-are-empirically-baseless/

By Paul Homewood

Which is worse: the economic illiteracy or the pretentious boasting?
My question is provoked by the news that the Labour Party proposes, if in government, to grant no new licences for oil and gas production in the North Sea, describing this as part of its plan to turn the UK into ‘a clean energy superpower’.
Does it even know what is meant by the term ‘superpower’? Properly understood, the word describes a nation that can project power on a global scale.
We could, once. Nowadays, only the U.S. — and possibly China — qualify. But perhaps Labour’s policy-makers mean we would be influencing others to go down the same path of abandoning their own fossil-fuel resources.
Reality check: at the 2021 UN climate change summit in Glasgow, the British chair of the event, Alok Sharma, was reduced to tears after the U.S., India and China all refused…

By Paul Homewood

From The Telegraph:

Labour’s plan to block all new North Sea oil and gas fields would cost the Scottish economy the equivalent of around £1,100 per person every year, it has been alleged as a trade union backlash intensified.
The Tories highlighted official estimates that Scotland would be £6 billion poorer per year by 2030 if fossil fuel production was rapidly wound down thanks to the loss of thousands of high-salary jobs.
They warned the move would “devastate” North East Scotland in particular, the hub of the UK’s oil and gas industry, “and hammer every Scot to the tune of £1,100”.
The figures emerged as Unite, Labour’s biggest donor, said the policy risked a “repeat of the devastation” caused by the closure of coal mines in the 1980s.
Sharon Graham, the union’s general secretary, accused Sir Keir Starmer of “grabbing the headlines” rather than “developing a serious…

A summary at The Telegraph of David Frost’s recent lecture, in italics with my bolds.

Some of the worst policies ever pursued in this country have been those which nearly all politicians supported at the time. Keeping Britain on the gold standard. Running down our Armed Forces in the 1930s. Demolishing our historic cities and replacing them with concrete. Joining the EU’s Exchange Rate Mechanism. Only a handful of free thinkers questioned these at the time. But when the disastrous results became clear, suddenly few people wanted to defend them.

Now, of course, consensuses can be correct, too. Most people agree that free trade is a good thing. But no one could say that that policy has been unchallenged. Indeed, although it is repeatedly attacked, both intellectual argument and real life keep proving it right.

That is why challenge and argument are so important. When everyone agrees on a…

Zero Carbon zealots attacking ExxonMobil, here seen without their shareholder disguises.

WSJ reports with a sad tone what is actually good news that investors are pushing back against ESG political correctness. Their article is: ESG Blowback: Exxon, Chevron Investors Reject Climate Measures  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

An investor-driven climate change push at some of the
world’s largest oil companies has stalled out.

On Wednesday, Exxon Mobil and Chevron’s shareholders struck down a raft of proposals urging the companies to cut greenhouse-gas emissions derived from fuel consumption, put out new reports on climate benchmarks and disclose certain oil-spill risks, among other initiatives.

The votes were abysmal for climate activists. All but two of the 20 shareholder proposals for the two companies garnered less than 25% of investors’ vote, according to preliminary results, with some performing much worse than similar proposals put forward last year.

Among the most…

In July 2020, Ron Mark gave $25,000 of your money to the bully and narcissist Aaron Wood and his farcical organisation, ‘No Duff’. Aaron Wood bullies everyone he disagrees with, which is a very wide range of people – No Duff charity founder faces bullying allegations from former soldiers | Stuff.co.nz. He loudly claims that veterans suffer from poor mental health, and need to be treated specially and given lots of taxpayer money.

Journalists like David Fisher swallowed the BS back in 2017:

Our military’s gaps in mental health care for uniformed personnel have been exposed through internal inquiries carried out into six suicides in three years.

A slew of recommendations to improve management of mental health in the military came through Courts of Inquiry into the deaths.

Investigations by theHeraldhave found NZDF suffers the loss of one solider, sailor or air force service member to…

Debate on superannuation focuses on the eligibility age and long-term fiscal sustainability. Only rarely is the connection made between superannuation and retirement savings policies, and economic performance.

Since around 1950 New Zealand has been in relative economic decline, and its productivity has been stagnating for many years. Key to this has been low domestic saving rates, which translate into thin capital markets, investment short-termism and to a low ratio of capital to labour, constraining labour productivity. Low domestic savings rates mean high real interest rates and a real exchange rate that weakens our tradeable sector.

The National Party’s policy is that the entitlement age for superannuation goes up to 67 from 2044. In contrast, Carmel Sepuloni in her 27 May address to the Labour Party’s Congress confirmed that Labour will not lift the eligibility age for New Zealand Superannuation (NZS). She indicated it was affordable as long as we keep…

I’ve been following the defamation case which Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith brought against Australian media, who alleged that he was a war criminal and a bully when deployed in Afghanistan.

His case has been dismissed, he was not defamed, he probably did do what was alleged:

Ben Roberts-Smith VC murdered unarmed civilians while serving in the Australian military in Afghanistan, a federal court judge has found.

Justice Anthony Besanko found that, on the balance of probabilities, Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff in Darwan in 2012, before ordering a subordinate Australian soldier to shoot the injured man dead.

Ben Roberts-Smith loses defamation case with judge saying newspapers established truth of murders – The Guardian

From what I can gather, the testimony of Federal Liberal MP (and former SAS Captain) Andrew Hastie seems to have been key:

Assistant defence minister Andrew Hastie has told a…

Being an MP during the civil wars and interregnum came with a certain amount of danger. The decisions that MPs made often came with severe consequences. Dr Vivienne Larminie, assistant editor for the House of Commons 1640-1660, reflects on the difficult choices MPs had to make at this time and the financial and personal repercussions they faced for making the wrong decision.

Throughout the history of the Westminster Parliament, there have been times when MPs faced difficult choices which had potentially life-changing consequences. For the MPs who sat in the Commons between 1640 and 1660 there were unique challenges, unparalleled to that date and arguably since. Decisions were required in 1642 over whether to obey Charles I’s commission of array or Parliament’s Militia Ordinance; in 1644 over attendance at Westminster or the rival Parliament at Oxford; in 1648/9 over whether to continue peace negotiations with the defeated…

Charles II (May 29, 1630 – February 6, 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.

Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria of France. After Charles I’s execution at Whitehall on January 30, 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on February 5, 1649. However, England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, with a government led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe.

Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Charles spent the next nine years in exile in France, the Dutch Republic and the…

National has introduced a terrible housing policy that can only be a reaction of the struggling Chris Luxon to pressure from Nimbies. It means that an Auckland housing unit will have a land cost over $500k more per unit than the MDRS rules. See below for an example

Peter Cresswell has an on point critique here. A Green Party MP shepherded the rules through select committee.

SO WITH HOUSING ONCE again a political football, we await an election to sort out which fuckwits where get to tell us where and how we’re allowed to build, planning rules in and around our city are once again completely up in the air — as they were while we awaited certainty around the MRDS. And without that certainty, it’s impossible for developers and builders to make real plans, uncertain as they are as to how council’s planners might be allowed to curtail…