Utopia, you are standing in it!

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…

The Treasury released its budget economic forecasts. What do they say about the economy over the next four months?

• Brian Easton writes –  

Let me begin me with an irritation. One post-budget headline was ‘Treasury optimistic over recession risk in Budget 2023‘. Treasury being optimistic is almost an oxymoron. They fire down the centre.

It is true that Treasury has lifted its forecast of economic activity (GDP) a little since its December 2022 exercise, reflecting stronger migration and tourism and the rebuild from the cyclones. Even so, it expects GDP per capita to fall fractionally between the June 2023 and June 2024 years. The next year is going to be tough, with some quickening of economic activity in the middle of 2024.

Moreover, while Treasury does not forecast the fans showing the degree of uncertainty in the forecasts, it provides guidance about its assessment of upside and downside…

Credit: Scottish Power
Plenty of talk but not very much action, it seems. The author notes that ‘the small size of hydrogen molecules poses safety and greenhouse gas-related risks that must be mitigated’, while most current gas grids can’t cope with more than 20% hydrogen content anyway. Affordability looks at least questionable. Such issues will require years of effort and expense to even attempt to get to grips with.
– – –
The global discourse on addressing climate change, energy transition, and investments is currently dominated by the topic of green hydrogen, says Dr. Cyril Widdershoven @ OilPrice.com.

The media frenzy surrounding the expanding array of projects, subsidy schemes, and international strategies is fueled by the influence of Washington’s IRA plans and the EU’s energy strategic projects.

It appears as if the choice for a post-hydrocarbon world has already been made, with green hydrogen or its derivative, green ammonia…

Labour party’s Congress is underway in Wellington. The country’s worst ever minister for ‘Social Development’ (a ministry which does not involve developing society at all) has unveiled their first policy to campaign on:

Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni said a re-elected Labour government, led by Hipkins, would not raise the pension age from 65.

“New Zealand has one of the simplest superannuation schemes in the world. It is universal and generous,” Sepuloni said.

Labour would also continue making contributions to the NZ Super Fund and dishing out the winter energy payment.

That’s right. Despite soaring debt, an aging population and one of the most generous superannuation schemes in the world, Labour are committed to keeping it exactly as is.

Treasury had warned the cost of the ageing population was on an “unsustainable” track but Sepuloni stressed not changing the age was affordable “as long as we keep paying into…

Federated Farmers is working with the Taxpayers’ Union with a roadshow opposing the government’s replacement to the RMA:

“We all want to see reform of the RMA, but it needs to be done right to address the issues of cost and complexity that farmers face every time they want to do something productive with their land,” says Federated Farmers RMA Reform spokesperson Mark Hooper.

“The current legislation just ties farmers up in red tape, slows us down, and heaps on unnecessary costs – but the Government’s proposed reforms will only make that worse. It’s an absolute nightmare for farmers.

Federated Farmers strongly opposes the current reforms because they will shift land use planning away from democratically elected councils towards ‘Regional Planning Committees’, which will be at arm’s length from their local community,” Hooper said.

“We also have real concerns that the reforms will introduce new, vague and undefined concepts…

James E. Hanley provides a roundup of failed Green expensive ventures in his Real Clear Policy article Green Projects Hit Iron Wall.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Developers looking to build thousands of wind turbines off the Mid-Atlantic and New England coast are coming up against a force even more relentless than the Atlantic winds: the Iron Law of Megaprojects, offering a warning of the trouble ahead for green-energy projects.

The Iron Law, coined by Oxford Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, says that “megaprojects” — which cost billions of dollars, take years to complete, and are socially transformative — reliably come in over budget, over time, over and over.

From Boston’s Big Dig to California’s high-speed rail to
New York’s 12 years-overdue and 300% over-budget East Side Access rail project,
big boondoggles routinely demonstrate the validity of the rule.

Offshore wind projects are not immune to the…