Utopia, you are standing in it!

Last month (May), I wrote that Switzerland was the world’s best-governed nation, based on the latest Misery Index.

The month before that (April), I wrote about Switzerland ranking #1 in the Human Freedom Index.

And the month before that (March), I wrote about the ongoing success of the country’s spending cap.

This small country gets a lot of attention because it is a role model.

It has a wide range of good policies (low taxes, private retirement savings, federalism, etc), but it also has very sensible people.

The Swiss have opportunities to engage in direct democracy, and over and over and over again they make sensible choices.

And it just happened again. Voters in Geneva were just asked whether they wanted to increase the Canton’s wealth tax.

Bastian Benrath of Bloomberg reported on the conclusive rejection of the class-warfare scheme.

Geneva voters rejected a…

• Bryce Edwards writes – 

Maybe we’ve all got scandal fatigue. This is the best explanation for why there’s not more public and media concern in the wake of the disturbing report into former Minister Stuart Nash’s relationship with donors. There have been so many integrity violations lately from Government politicians and officials – including Michael Wood, Kiri Allan, Jan Tinetti, and Meng Foon – that it seems hearing about a minister’s dodgy communications with donors barely registers.

The results of the investigation released on Friday morning – in what seems to be something of a calculated government news dump (along with news of Meng Foon’s forced resignation) have largely been ignored or downplayed.

The investigation was undertaken by the Cabinet Office following Nash’s most recent integrity violation, in which he had breached ethical standards, including the Cabinet Manual, by providing sensitive Cabinet information to wealthy businessmen. The leaking was bad…

Until 2022, calling for the abolition of the monarchy may still have been a form of treason in the United Kingdom, but it did not seem to be more generally criminalised. According to the statute books, the Treason Acts remained in force, but they were specialised tools and provided for a limited range of crimes. Section 3 of the Treason Felony Act 1848, for instance, criminalised compassing, imagining, inventing, devising or intending to depose the monarch from the style, honour or royal name of the imperial crown. In practice, such legislation had rarely been used. Even vociferous criticism of the monarchy had not led to such charges or prosecutions. While it technically remained ‘treason’ to call for the abolition of the monarchy, the criminal law had fallen away in reality. Addressing the question of the lawfulness of the Treason Felony Act 1848 and its compatibility with the protections given effect…

James VI and I (June 19, 1566 – March 27, 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from July 24, 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from March 25, 1603 until his death in 1625. Although he wanted to bring about a closer union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, both ruled by James in personal union.

James was the son of Queen Mary I of Scotland and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. James was a great-great-grandson of King Henry VII of England and Lord of Ireland, through Margaret Tudor, his daughter and the older sister of Henry VIII, and thus a potential successor to all three thrones.

James was born on June 19, 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch he automatically became…

Global demand for most of our export commodities has softened recently, ANZ Bank economists tell us. China’s economy has not recovered as quickly as expected, putting downward pressure on prices.

Farmgate returns for most industries are at or above a five-year average, ANZ agricultural economist Susan Kilsby  reports. But cost increases in many cases mean that returns are barely covering costs, The rapid rise in interest rates is a major cost that is taking a toll on heavily indebted businesses.

Farmgate prices for milk and meat have softened, although procurement pressures have kept movements in meat schedule prices in check.

For the horticultural sector autumn harvests are now almost in. The sector’s overriding theme is smaller harvests and slightly stronger prices, but overall returns are well down for many growers.

Dairy commodity prices in particular have continued to weaken and the ANZ Bank has lowered its milk price forecast to…

Edward I (June 17/18, 1239 – July 7, 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he was Lord of Ireland, and from 1254 to 1306, he ruled Gascony as Duke of Aquitaine in his capacity as a vassal of the French king.

Edward was born at the Palace of Westminster on the night of June 17–18, 1239 to King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence. Edward, an Anglo-Saxon name, was not commonly given among the aristocracy of England after the Norman conquest, but Henry was devoted to the veneration of Edward the Confessor and decided to name his firstborn son after the saint.

Edward’s birth was widely celebrated at the royal court and throughout England, and he was baptised three days later at Westminster Abbey. He was commonly referred to as the Lord Edward…

The obsession with chaotically intermittent and heavily subsidised wind and solar has few winners and plenty of losers. The latter include the householders and businesses being crushed by power price increases of a magnitude that few of them can afford, and none of them expected (having been consistently lied to by the politicos and MSM about the true and inevitable cost of attempting to run on sunshine and breezes).

The victors include the power generators and retailers (sometimes one and the same – referred to as ‘gentailers’) whose profits are inversely proportional to the pain being suffered by their customers.

While STT has reported on the upcoming 25-30% hike in retail power prices – set to take effect from 1 July – that staggering impost comes on top of increases of between 10-20% in retail power prices that have taken effect throughout the financial year. Which means that many households…

Oh, dear.  Our Maori people are being dealt another blow.

That’s the impression given by the headline on an article in The Post headed Carbon plan ‘damaging to Maori”.

The report by Glenn McConnell says the Government is about to release controversial plans to reform the carbon market,

“… which have already led to legal challenges and comparisons to the foreshore and seabed saga.”

What’s this struggle about?

A major legal battle has sparked up between the Government and Maori forestry companies over proposals to stop pine trees from earning carbon credits, which are then cashed in through the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Oh.  The carbon plan is not “damaging to Maori” , as the headline would have us believe – it is upsetting for Maori forestry companies.

The IMF says New Zealand is living beyond its means :

. . . the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) latest report on New Zealand’s economy warned the Government to rein in spending and for the Reserve Bank to prepare for further interest rate hikes, should they be needed. 

The financial agency on Wednesday said New Zealand’s economy was likely to continue slowing in the near term.

Inflation wasn’t expected to decline to the Reserve Bank’s target range of between 1 and 3 percent until 2025, the IMF warned.

It also warned New Zealand’s “current account balance (meaning the country is exporting less than importing) has deteriorated significantly, reflecting excess demand and one-off factors”. 

“For the first quarter, that [current account deficit] number came in at 8.5 percent [of GDP],” explained Mark Riggall, a portfolio manager at Milford Asset Management. “So it’s an improving situation – but it’s still pretty bad…

• Michael Bassett writes – 

As cabinet ministers traipse around the country, feverishly talking up Budget largesse in the hope it will help their re-election, they inadvertently let slip what Labour’s key priorities are. A recent senior citizens’ meeting was told that grants to Maori are top priority. Pasifika come in a distant second, with disadvantaged youth somewhat further behind.

Ordinary Europeans, Indians, Chinese and others, who together make up a big majority of our population, don’t get much of a look in.

So, let’s examine the legal definition of this government’s favourite citizens. Who is a Maori? Right up until passage of the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1974, a Maori was anyone who had half Maori ethnicity or more. A half Maori could choose to be classified as a Maori or a non-Maori. Less than half, and the law said one could not legally claim to be Maori.

But, from…