Utopia, you are standing in it!

Buzz from the Beehive  

The Government claims to be delivering certainty to displaced homeowners affected by the recent North Island extreme weather events, providing an interim payment to support them when their insurance payments for temporary accommodation run out.

But certainty for taxpayers is missing from the press statement from the Minister for Social Development and Employment, Carmel Sepuloni.  It contains not one figure with a dollar sign. which means the sum being budgeted by the government for this initiative is a mystery.

We are told only that the interim payment will be available from 4 September,  made weekly and directly to homeowners, and set at 100 per cent of the average rent declared by Accommodation Supplement recipients in the recipients’ region.

Sepuloni’s announcement had been posted on the government’s official website (when we checked early this afternoon) along with news that the Therapeutic Products Bill has…

Rocket Lab’s latest launch from Mahia Peninsula marks another significant milestone for both the company and its founder Peter Beck.

The first stage of the Electron rocket for the “Baby Come Back” mission – which launched satellites for Nasa and commercial clients from Mahia on Tuesday afternoon – was fished out of the Pacific Ocean and put on a boat. It is now on its way to Rocket Lab’s Auckland HQ to be assessed for possible reuse, Chris Keall reported in the NZ Herald.

Rocket Lab has retrieved a first-stage before – several times – but has yet to reuse a booster. It hopes to do so by the end of this year.

“Today’s mission is a big deal, not just in NZ but internationally. We’re getting tantalisingly close to reusable rockets,” Rocket Lab communications director Morgan Bailey said.

The Edict of Expulsion was a royal decree issued by Edward I of England on July 18, 1290 expelling all Jews from the Kingdom of England. King Edward told the sheriffs of all counties he wanted all Jews expelled by no later than All Saints’ Day (November 1) that year. The expulsion edict remained in force for the rest of the Middle Ages.

The edict was not an isolated incident, but the culmination of over 200 years of increasing antisemitism in England. The edict was eventually overturned more than 350 years later, during the Protectorate when Oliver Cromwell permitted the resettlement of the Jews in England in 1657.

Background

The first Jewish communities of significant size came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066, when William issued an invitation to the Jews of Rouen to move to England, probably because he wanted feudal dues to be paid to the…

Over many years I have written here, and elsewhere, of my frustration with the National Party and its perceived “values”. I struggle with their bland policies and their “we do Labour, but better than them” attitude. I know many National Party people, including candidates. A lot of them talk the talk privately, but when push comes to shove, they don’t, or can’t, walk the walk. It’s almost as if they’re scared to be bold or daring or take a position for fear of upsetting a part of society, so they try to be everything to everybody. At least that’s how it appears. I realise that elections are won by winning the 75% or so who are in the “middle” of the spectrum and so the realpolitik means that caution must be applied. And so over this election campaign, and the next year or so, I am going to try very…

If your idea of progress means never having power when you need it most, and never being able to afford it when you do get it, then the grand wind and solar transition is for you.

Guaranteed to deliver a power pricing and supply calamity, every time, heavily subsidised wind and solar are said to be the “future”.

Vanessa Mendoza and Troy Senik take a look at what that wind and sun ‘powered’ future means for you.

When the Lights Go Out: The Destabilization of America’s Electricity Supply
Kite and Key Media
Vanessa Mendoza and Troy Senik
14 June 2023

In the year 2000, there were fewer than two dozen major power disruptions in the United States. In 2020, there were 180. How did our electricity get so much less reliable?

A number of factors are at work in the growing instability of the grid. For one thing, much of…

The BBC website hosts handy revision notes for our kids. Who vets the information? Some time ago I posted about their claim that melting sea ice raises the sea level, Archimedes be damned. Now we find that the BBC thinks that dinosaurs invented space travel and colonised Saturn’s moon Titan, forming it’s seas of methane after they died. The idiocy is unbounded.

Claire Charters makes some remarkable assertions in her 14 July Opinion piece Matariki is a mark of how far we have come and how far we have to travel.

Charters is a law professor at Auckland University. She chaired the He Puapua working group and is the indigenous rights governance partner at the Human Rights Commission. She has ancestral links to Ngāti Whakaue, Tūwharetoa, Ngā Puhi and Tainui. She also has extensive European ancestry.

In her 14 July Opinion piece Professor Charters argues that “before we can claim to be a nation founded on the rule of law, we must address the fundamental illegality of the state.” To add to the sins of the illegal New Zealand state, Charters also opines that “Aotearoa still refuses to repudiate the doctrine of discovery – the racist rule that permitted European powers to take land from “natives” because they didn’t qualify as…