Utopia, you are standing in it!

‘If you put my cousin on the council, I will slit his throat.’ (Typical threat from an Iraqi sheikh, Occupational Hazards, page 231) Rory Stewart Stewart (born 1973) is posh. He comes from a family of Scottish landed gentry. Like lots of poshos born into a family which helped administer the last shreds of empire, […]

Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq by Rory Stewart (2007)

Workers’ Power. The power of the NZ working-class reached its zenith in 1974, when 10,000 workers marched in protest at the Drivers Union leader, Bill Andersen’s, arrest – and secured his freedom. The Labour Government of Norman Kirk was frightened of the organised working-class then. Fifty years later, there’s precious little left of the private…

Losing The Working Class.

I wrote more than four years ago about a misguided soda tax in Philadelphia. This video from John Stossel updates us on what’s happened. As usual, John makes good points I’m especially amazed that he was able to get an overpaid local politician to go on camera to defend such an indefensible levy. And it […]

Soda Taxes Are Wrong, but Not Educating Kids is Worse

Poland held its general election for both parliamentary chambers yesterday, 15 October. An alliance of parties opposed to the incumbent Law and Justice party (PiS) has won. In the voting for the first chamber (Sejm) PiS retains a plurality but is down to 36.4% of the votes (per Wikipedia with around 90% reporting). Civic Coalition, […]

Poland 2023 (and, more briefly, Slovakia)

An earlier article, featured here at the Talkshop said ‘artifacts have come to light thanks to a warming climate, proving that a mountain pass served as an important trade network’. We’re told ‘The pass was in use between the years 300 and 1500 AD, and most active around the year 1000. Its use declined with […]

Norwegian archaeologists are salvaging priceless artifacts from melting glaciers—why were they found there?

This week marks the ten-year anniversary of this Sex, Drugs and Economics blog. Here’s my first post (from 8 October 2013), briefly explaining my rationale for blogging, including:…this blog is a way for me to create a discussion space for my students, and help them to recognise the value in the economic approach to looking…

Ten years of Sex, Drugs and Economics

It turns out that readers here can’t subscribe to Tom Gross‘s email newsletters, as they’re intended for people in media and politics. Tom has, however, kindly agreed to send the newsletter to me and allow me to reproduce the contents on this site. Here’s his latest newsletter, with his words indented. 90-year-old Czech-born Holocaust survivor Gina […]

Today’s post by Tom Gross on the war

Libertarian reform isn’t at the top of the headlines in New Zealand, but there are a few things you might expect in that direction: – Reforming pharmaceutical approvals so products with approval in two other trusted peer countries get automatic approval in NZ. Relevant because of the relatively slow approval time for Covid-19 vaccine in […]

From the comments, what will happen in New Zealand edition?

Last night, many of us responded to the statement of Leon Panetta, former CIA Director in the Obama Administration, that he “has no regrets” about signing the now infamous letter of 51 former intelligence officials suggesting that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Even more unsettling were his comments that he believes it could […]

“Denial Ain’t Just a River in Egypt”: Panetta Repeats Debunked Russian Disinformation Claims on Laptop

Below is my column in the New York Post on issuance of superseding indictments for Sen. Bob Menendez, his wife, and associates to include new charges related to his alleged work as unregistered foreign agents. The new charges not only highlight the alleged corrupt practices of Sen. Menendez, but also the absence of such charges […]

How About Hunter? Justice Department Adds FARA Charge to Menendez Prosecution

Although if I were a Kiwi I’d probably be a member of the Labour Party, I have criticized them strongly for their education policy: a policy that has constantly tried to insinuate Māori “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori ) into school science curricula (it’s fine if taught as history or sociology).  Labour has also been […]

New Zealand votes out woke Labour government by a big margin

These come from a newsletter that is not online but is received by Andrzej and Malgorzata. As Wikipedia notes, Tom Gross is. . . . . . . a British-born journalist, international affairs commentator,and human rights campaigner specializing in the Middle East. Gross was formerly a foreign correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and New York Daily News. […]

From Tom Gross: more photos and videos related to the war