Utopia, you are standing in it!

Peter Hain’s decision to breach an interim injunction granted by the Court of Appeal in the case of ABC v Telegraph Media Group has caused serious concern. It is one of the cardinal rules in Parliament that members should not interfere in ongoing legal proceedings and Hain did not wait until the end of the proceedings before breaching this injunction, even though the case had been scheduled for an early full hearing. He does not appear even to have read the court judgment he saw fit to overrule, effectively.

The duty of comity means that both judges and parliament must respect the others’ boundaries. If Hain’s decision to intervene in live proceedings is treated leniently by parliament, there must be some concern about whether the judiciary will continue to treat Article IX with its current level of extreme deference. Nevertheless this affair shows the importance of the core principle that…

The  poor old taxpayer who  poured more than  $1bn into   state-owned  KiwiRail during the term of the  National  government  is  being hit up  for  another $35m   to reverse the decision taken  two years  ago to  ditch the  North Island  electric locos  and  replace them with diesel-powered engines.

The Ardern-Peters-led coalition has decided to refurbish the 15  units in  the electric fleet — even  though the   argument  to replace  them  was “compelling” .

While  the  government  now  says it is keeping electric locomotives on the North Island Main Trunk Line running to help meet its long-term emissions goals and boost the economy,  KiwiRail  earlier  said it was essentially running “a railway within a railway” by having the electric section.  (The North Island Main Trunk runs from Auckland to Wellington but is electrified only between Hamilton and Palmerston North). The doubling up of service facilities, inventory, training and maintenance required with…

A concept rooted in Māori spiritual belief – mauri – is widely used in environmental research, monitoring, and restoration work in New Zealand. It has been absorbed within university studies, too, and mātauranga Māori is being taught in science courses.

Victoria University of Wellington “encourages” its staff and students to teach, research and learn about mātauranga Māori as part of their studies.

Faculty of Science staff have not been exempted from this institutional acculturation.  They

” … have been actively participating in the University’s Te Hāpai professional development programme, which helps them to learn more about Te Reo Māori, tikanga Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi. We have found that as people learn more about the Māori culture they become more comfortable and confident about teaching Māori material.”

This post reblogs  California Vs. Texas In Electricity: Comparing The Two States 1 In 5 Americans Call Homeby Chuck Devore in Forbes.  Text in italics with my bolds.

The two most-populous states, California and Texas, are home to one in five Americans. More alike than different in many aspects—diverse population and economy, abundant natural resources—the two states differ in one important respect: policy. With some exceptions, California is progressively liberal while Texas is free market conservative.

These states’ similarities and differences invite comparisons that can be useful in illuminating policy choices among the states and at the national level as well. This essay is one in a series that examines those differences—in this case, electricity and related efficiency.

California policymakers have made aggressive moves towards renewable electricity production and energy efficiency over the past couple of decades. While doing so, they frequently tout the state’s nation-leading electric…

For the 5th time in less than a year, UK Media Watch has prompted a correction in the British media to the false claim that there are “settler-only roads” in the West Bank.  The latest such claim was in an op-ed at the Independent by Sophia Brown, a London-based academic (Israel’s assault on Palestinian universities is a threat to human rights and a tragedy for this generation of students, Oct. 22), as we noted in this tweet:

We followed up with an email to Indy editors, demonstrating that there have never been “settler-only” (or “Jews-only”) roads in the West Bank”.  Editors upheld…

“How is it possible for any sentient human being to have lived through the 20th century without coming to understand that property rights are the basis of any rights that human beings have ever been able to secure, and that far from conflicting with human needs, profits are the only practical engine ever devised that even half succeeded inn fulfilling them.
Such willful ignorance does not stem from lack of intelligence, but has a deeper source in human desires that can only be satisfied by  religious faith. The socialist dream of achieving a kingdom of heaven on earth is as old as Eden.  It is the idea of putting a human design on the impersonal structures of the social order beginning with the economic market and extending to the constitutional order. In wishing this, socialists fail to understand that a market that human beings cannot control and a political process…