Word of the day

Spectre – a ghost; phantom; apparition; a mental image of something unpleasant or menacing.

Sowell says

Those who think “negotiations” are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an “issue” that can be resolved amicably around a conference table.

— Thomas Sowell Wisdom (@TheThomasSowell) October 16, 2023

Farmers’ voice

Bayer surveyed 800 farmers in 8 countries. The results are shared in Farmer Voice:

Key takeaways include:

. . . 90% of farmers surveyed said they have experienced an increase in changes in the weather. Half the farmers we spoke to said better seeds, traits and crop protection were the best solutions for coping with changes in weather patterns. . . 

84% of farmers said they already apply or intend to apply practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As far as practices, cover crops were the most popular answer with 43% saying they either plan to implement the practice, or are already using it on their farm. A quarter of the farmers we spoke to are using digital farming techniques to reduce fertilizer use, and the same number practice low or no-till farming. . . 

Pest and disease pressures have risen over the past three years, according to 73% of the farmers we surveyed. More than half (54%) are already working to improve biodiversity by using measures like insect hotels. . . 

In spite of the challenging conditions farmers are experiencing across the globe, 71% of farmers surveyed feel positive about the future of farming. Over half, 54% have been in farming for three or more generations.  . . 

Australian farmers were most concerned about economic factors:

78% say energy costs are among their top three concerns for the next three years – higher than any other country surveyed. Australia has enacted new environmental laws to propel the country to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Interim greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have also been set for 2030. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of Australian farmers said they have plans to shift toward renewable energy or biofuels.

New Zealand farmers will have similar concerns.

What isn’t raised in the survey is the need to feed more people and how policies to reduce greenhouse emissions can, and too often do, reduce food production.

You can read the full report here.

 

DId you see the one about . . .?

Root cause of poverty – Caleb Anderson :

. . . What we have been told increasingly, and very loudly, by left-wing activists is that crime is a direct function of poverty. That if the system was kinder and more generous to the “poor”, people would not be committing crimes, at least not in the way, or to the degree, we are currently seeing.

The answer we are told is, by and large, as simple as wealth distribution. The implication is that if we give people more money, they will be much less likely to commit crimes.

This is precisely the Maori and Green Party policy. Redistribute wealth, close prisons, give people a voice, provide them with comfortable homes and all will be well.

But if all of this was true, NZ would have less crime than India, and less crime than almost anywhere else, and this should have been the case for a very long time. If this was true people would not be stealing cars, laptops, sports gear, or vaping pens. They would be stealing basic necessities.

Further, if the left explanation for poverty was true we would notice an inverse relationship between benefit levels and crime. When benefits go up, crime goes down. Are we seeing this, any of this? We all know that we are not.

Recently I blogged my view that the real crisis in NZ, and in the West more generally is a crisis of virtue, and especially of duty, of duty to family, to others, and to country. Duty to make your own way, and expect nothing material as of right.

I am NOT saying that people do not need a hand up, that society shouldn’t watch out for the less fortunate. I guess I am saying that to expect someone to turn up to work, and to remember that wealth is generated by someone’s effort somewhere, are reasonable expectations … and to claim some of that wealth as though you are entitled to it is theft.

One of the biggest problems in left-wing thinking is the idea that people are fundamentally good, and that bad systems make them do bad things. This idea is far too simplistic.

While it does bear an element of truth, it is no more true than the assertion that people can also do bad things when they are allowed to get away with it, when it makes life easier for them, or when they are simply angry that someone has something that they do not have.

The solution to poverty, at least in part, is an expectation of turning up to work, of paying your own way, of taking responsibility for those nearest to you, of grasping opportunities that do come your way, of turning up to school, and of seeing welfare as a bridge towards independence.

I get a sense that our new government gets this.

The day the delusions died – Konstantin Kisin :

When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.

A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. . . 

Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.

The reaction to the attacks—from outwardly pro-Hamas protests to the mealy-mouthed statements of college presidents, celebrities, and CEOs—has exploded the comforting stories many on the center-left have told themselves about progressive identity politics. For many years, they opted for the coping mechanism of pretending that the institutional capture of universities, corporations, and media organizations by the woke mind virus was no big deal. “Sure, students shutting down events they disagree with is annoying,” they would say, “but it’s just students doing what students do.”

October 8 was a wake-up call for those who didn’t appreciate that the ideology of the campus has spread to our cities, supercharged by social media.

We woke up on October 8 to the clamor of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any major Israeli response to the attacks. We watched celebratory crowds brandish swastikas and chant “gas the Jews” at events purporting to be about the loss of Palestinian lives. We saw Black Lives Matter chapters lionize terrorists. 

In London, where I live, we watched the mayor deliver glib assurances that “London’s diversity is our greatest strength” in the midst of a wave of antisemitic attacks, and as Jewish schools were forced to close because of safety concerns. 

Across the West, we noticed that our representatives refused to condemn Hamas’s kidnappings, and that the legacy media was all too eager to swallow and regurgitate Hamas propaganda.

Prior to the October 7 massacre, many students, alumni, and donors with the “unconstrained vision” trusted that the university—for all its many problems—remained the West’s best environment for civil discourse. 

But then they watched university presidents who were quick to issue statements condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the killing of George Floyd fall silent, or offer the most slippery, equivocal statements carefully crafted to avoid offending anti-Israel groups. They watched an Israeli at Columbia get beaten with a stick, and heard reports about the physical intimidation of students on campuses across the country. They read about dozens of student organizations at Harvard signing a letter holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre of Israelis. 

The events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree.

This unpleasant conclusion is surprising only if you are still clinging to the unconstrained vision. But if there is any constant in human history, it is that revolutionaries always feel entitled to destroy those who stand in their way.

Just as hope about the possibility of peace with jihadists seems suicidally naive, reconciliation with citizens seized by the woke mindset seems a long way off. . .

What we have witnessed over the last two weeks—with enormous pro-Hamas rallies in cities like London, Paris, and Washington, D.C.—has the potential to change the immigration debate in a decisive way. It is much harder to pretend that allowing people to enter our country illegally is a moral good when you watch some of them celebrate mass murder in the streets of your capital cities. . . 

To express concern about border security has for many years been coded as “right-wing.” But how many people, after the horrors of October 7, believe that a secure border is anything other than the most basic test of national security? . . 

The reason the readjustment is necessary and, in my view, highly likely, is that proponents of the unconstrained vision have been allowed to ride roughshod over the concerns of ordinary citizens. They have used this window of opportunity to implement extraordinarily impractical and outright harmful ideas because they take the unbelievable levels of safety, plenty, and freedom we enjoy in the West for granted. The one form of privilege you will never hear them address is the first-world privilege that we all benefit from every day.

They have done this because the fundamental flaw in the unconstrained model of the world is a failure to understand Thomas Sowell’s greatest maxim: there are no solutions, only trade-offs. When you let your institutions be captured by an ideology of intolerance and illiberalism masquerading as progress, that has consequences. When you sow division at home and signal weakness abroad, that has consequences. When you debase the public’s faith in what they are told by the media and their government, that has consequences too. 

Western civilization has produced some of the most stunning scientific, technological, social, and cultural breakthroughs in human history. If you consider yourself “liberal” or even “progressive,” it must surely be clear by now that America and her allies are the only places in the world where your values are even considered values. If our civilization is allowed to collapse, it will not be replaced by a progressive utopia. It will be replaced by chaos and barbarism. 

Will this waking-up moment persist? It depends, in large part, on our courage to look reality in the face. 

As Sowell explained, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

And the truth is that we have indulged in magical thinking for too long, choosing comforting myths over harsh realities. About terrorism. About immigration. And about a host of other issues. In our hunger for progress, we have forgotten that not all change is for the better. Now the world is paying the price for that self-indulgence. Let’s hope recent events are the wake-up call we so desperately need.

 

We need to get better at building stuff – Josie Pagani :

Building stuff, from power grids to water pipes, roads and train lines, makes a civilisation better, but it’s hard to tell how much of a good thing is too much, or when we are trying to do everything at once so get profligate follies like light rail and Lake Onslow, at a combined cost of $60 billion.

Or a $330 million town hall which will give Marie Antoinette a view of the crumbling water pipes that bring water to the surface to flow down crumbling roads.

Or you get “Think Big”, where some projects eventually turned out OK, but should not have all been attempted at once, with the bulldozers sent into environmentally protected areas, and the government taking on too much debt to pay for it all.

Or you get “successes” that turn out to be more hole than donut, like ultra-fast broadband – loved by the 87% of the population who have it, not so much by the 13% or 650,000 Kiwis who don’t, including my place on the Côte du Kapiti. I don’t remember being consulted about missing out. . .

It took us 40 years to get the Waikato Expressway built, when the Infrastructure Commission says it should have taken less than 20 years. It took 70 years to get Transmission Gully built.

New Zealand does not have a pipeline for the next 30 years for all the pipes, hospitals and roads we are going to need. We do boom and bust, with governments trying to accelerate infrastructure investment so they end up paying too much in tight markets, then turning the tap off so that capability exits. . . .

According to a new report by Infrastructure New Zealand, we could achieve productivity and savings improvements of 13% to 26.5% if government committed to a more predictable infrastructure pipeline, worth about $4.7 billion a year.

We need a much better process for selecting our highest priorities and planning for them, starting with more innovation in financing and revenue flows. Congestion pricing and tolls are no worse than petrol taxes, and sometimes better. There is a debate between what should be funded by taxpayers and what can be privately owned or paid for by users, but there is a more important debate about what we need before we get into who will own things.

Nothing will get done without slashing consenting and bureaucracy. Consent times have increased by 150% over a five year period. Costs have increased by 70% over the last seven years. New Zealand infrastructure developers are spending $1.29 billion annually to consent their projects. . .

We need to recognise that consenting processes are often carefully camouflaged anti-development efforts.

Nearly every day the news features someone somewhere who wants to stop something. Nimby lobbies on the right fight housing intensification. An anti-modernity left celebrates a win in the courts to stop a new road.

We need a more muscular and unapologetic embrace of effective government, capable of responding to problems quickly, and building stuff fast.

We have spent the past six years de-industrialising, with industries like wood processing, aluminium, methanol and oil refining all shrinking or being pushed to leave when demand for their products is growing to our north-west.

The development sector – construction, housing, health, transport – is pleading for greater certainty from a new government. Without a national plan, there’s a risk that the cities with the loudest voices will get infrastructure while our towns miss out.

Work with the people who build stuff and agree a 30-year pipeline with local communities, and then we will get our own development success story.

Giving voice to our future – Sir Peter Gluckman :

It was an opportunity missed.

The election has come and gone, with virtually no discussion of the long-term issues that profoundly affect our country.

We were distracted by trivia, amused by accidental misstatements and apparently entertained by “gotcha” questions from the media.

There were pitifully few discussions of serious, long-term, strategic issues confronting our nation. . .

And yet the complex and multi-generational challenges that we face will keep coming, becoming more complex as they are left poorly attended, and we must be able to respond. And rapid changes – environmental, technological and sociological – will continue to compound our world.

A few of those challenges immediately come to mind.

• Our human capital is being threatened by an underperforming education system which has fallen well behind global benchmarks. The rising challenge of growing mental health concerns, especially for our young people, needs to be understood and addressed at its roots.
• Nearly half our population is effectively closed out of house ownership as a result of constrained land supply and immigration policy, fuelled by a decade or more of very low interest rates. This threatens our social cohesion and is foreign to our traditional values.
• We have major deficiencies in our local infrastructure (transport, hospitals, housing) for which there is no visible funding solution and which impair the productivity of our people and assets.
• Our traditional sources of export income (particularly agriculture and tourism) are threatened by global pressures on carbon-intensive industries, and by our very high reliance on one trading partner. Desirably, we would diversify this earnings base. The need to do so is highlighted by our trading and investment deficit with the rest of the world (our current account) which stands at close to $30 billion per annum.
• We must meet our climate obligations. We need urgently to build more resilience into our housing and other infrastructure to protect against the risks of climate change events. This raises major issues in terms of funding, and insurability.
• We have a number of young businesses developing new ideas and processes in IT, agritech and medicine. These businesses need the support structures to ensure they thrive, including access to capital and know-how.
• We remain unclear about our place in the world and how to ensure our ongoing relevance.
• And we have a clearly contested view of how we might develop as a diverse and multicultural society and liberal democracy, but one based on and respectful of the Treaty/Te Tiriti. . . 

Currently, our debates in the public square too often feature contentious rhetoric and short-term point-scoring rather than a serious and open discussion. The three, four or five-year political cycles of our representative democracy do not deal well with problems of a longer-term, inter-generational nature. Nor do our siloed decision-making processes and our lack of strong, well-funded regional decision-making bodies.

We tend to focus unduly on our own backyard with too little reference to our peers globally, where many of the challenges we face are currently being addressed and where we can find many useful proxies. . .

As another example, Wales has shown the value of a Commissioner for Future Generations, whose role is to ascertain whether policies are developed with regard to their inter-generational effects, bringing the voice of the future into today’s debates.

The core role of any government must be competent inter-generational stewardship to ensure the long-term health of our human, social, cultural, environmental and economic assets.

New Zealand’s future as a united, cohesive society will depend on open discussion and resolution of what can appear to be irreconcilable worldviews.

We need to require that our leaders honestly confront complex problems and promote serious discourse on long-term issues. We should expect greater resolution, by consensus, of matters that span political cycles and seek (and reward) less adversarial cross-party initiatives.

Bold and innovative leadership and developing clearer national goals for our collective future is the key to building more enduring levels of social and institutional trust and cohesion, and consequently a stronger and more resilient nation.

Value for money

One of the most damning criticisms of the out-going Labour government and the public service comes from the Auditor-General’s annual report:

. . . This year we continued to focus on improvements needed to the information that public organisations provide about their performance. It is still too hard to tell what New Zealanders are receiving for about $160 billion of central government expenditure each year, and whether it represents value for money. I have raised this matter in several of my reports, as well as directly with the Officers of Parliament Committee. In my view, fundamental changes are needed to the system for how public organisations are required to report on performance, to ensure that the public sector meets the accountability requirements of a 21st century New Zealand. This is an important and urgent matter. . . 

If we were getting value for money we would be seeing improvements in public services that matched the increase in spending.

Instead Labour is leaving government with multiple crisis – in health, education, housing, crime . . .

The National Party understands that the quality of spending is far more important than the quantity and the incoming government will take a much more disciplined approach to spending and to delivering improvements.

Helping it focus on that will be the Taxpayers’ Union which is celebrating its 10th birthday.

Today marks ten years of fighting on your behalf for more sensible, transparent and accountable government spending. A big thank you to all of those who make our work possible. To support us to continue the fight for the next ten years, click here: https://t.co/87AVKKSwyL pic.twitter.com/MoxN3cqYZa

— New Zealand Taxpayers' Union (@TaxpayersUnion) October 30, 2023

Word of the day

Interanimate – to animate or inspire mutually.

Sowell says

It is amazing how many people seem to think that the
government exists to turn their prejudices into laws.

— Thomas Sowell Wisdom (@TheThomasSowell) November 15, 2022

Open letter to World Rugby

Dear World Rugby,

You got this World Cup wrong from the draw.

Doing it four years ago was a mistake that resulted in four teams that could have been finalists pitted against each other in the quarter finals.

The games between the All Blacks and Ireland and France and the Springboks ought to have been finals. Instead they were games that eliminated two of the better teams and let England, a team that made it into the semi-finals by playing a game more like football.

You appear to have learned from that and will make the draw for the next World Cup closer to the event.

But there are more changes you must make and one of the most important ones is that is to the place of off-field referees.

The TMO should be there to act on the request of the on-field referee to decided if a try’s s scored or not, or if play was dangerous or not.

The TMO and the others replaying and replaying possible infringements should not be acting as referees.

The time to tell the on-field referee he missed something or got a call wrong in the heat of the moment,  is after the match when his performance is reviewed. It shouldn’t be during the game and especially not when it means, as it did in the final, that a try is disallowed because of something that happened several minutes earlier and was only apparent in repeated replays.

Rugby is a game of skill at speed. It is impossible for referees to see and adjudicate correctly every single action and reaction from players. They have to react quickly and they won’t always get it right, but better that than disruptions of  the game from off-field interventions many minutes after the fact.

Those disruptions merely move controversy from the referee on the field to those off it and turn the game from the spectacle it ought to be to a stop-start exercise in frustration for players and spectators.

You also need to look at the rules around red cards.

Rugby has the potential for very serious injury. Everything possible must be done to prevent that and to punish players who infringe. It is fair that a player guilty of dangerous play is sin binned but that should be time limited and any further consequence should be left to the judiciary after the game.

Others with a lot more knowledge of the game and its rules may well be able to add other changes that need to be made.

And make them you must to ensure that rugby remains the running, passing, tackling spectacle requiring split second decisions from players and referees it ought to be.

Some of those decisions will be wrong, but will still be better than delayed ones based on repeated replays from off-field officials.

You can’t get perfection and complete fairness in an imperfect and unfair world and trying to is taking the fun, and the sport, out of the game.

Quotes of the week

Fortunately, our democracy is strong. We have frequent elections that are administered independently by the Electoral Commission with clear rules and regulations.

There are always winners and losers in elections and that is determined by the public via the ballot box. We accept the result and get on with our lives, safe in the knowledge that there will be another election in three years.

On Saturday, Kiwis stood up and said enough of the division and lack of delivery, what an incredible result.

We have a democracy we can all be proud of. Our goal for the next Parliament and beyond is to unite New Zealanders and ensure we grow and develop as a nation. –  Stuart Smith

Before the Herald argues our democracy is failing and the election was bought, with no analysis of the total sums spent by all Labour-aligned compared to National-aligned institutions, the paper should refrain from undermining trust in our nation’s integrity. My impression is that overwhelmingly more money & power was brought to bear by Labour, using its affiliate organizations in the unions, media & educational “establishments” than National to try to swing the election. Even with it, the people were not fooled. – Robert MacCulloch

The rugby they play in Heaven was played by the All Blacks against the Pumas.

The rugby they play in Purgatory was played by the Springboks against England.

The rugby they play in Hell was played by England against the Springboks. –  Spiro Zavos 

Well no disrespect but that’s what happens for the rest of the country, New Zealanders…work up till Christmas, they take Christmas break and then they get back into it in the new year. It’s very similar here I think. . . 

New Zealanders voted for change, we’ve got a lot to get through, if we start earlier and have to finish later, so be it. – Christopher Luxon 

Along with the pursuit and retention of power, the essence of politics is also about the art of the possible, that is, recognising current reality and adapting to it. The awkward truth for Wellington is that while it shifted left at the recent election, the rest of the country shifted right. Wellington is now a political outlier and no amount of virtuous clinging to previously held positions is going to change that. Wellington’s leaders need to quickly come to grips with the new political realities and develop the pragmatism required to achieve at least some of what they want. Simply shouting from the sidelines about what “should” be rather than acknowledging what now “will” be, will leave them looking impotent and irrelevant. – Peter Dunne 

Wellington will only get moving once it has a coherent and financially robust plan to put before central government. This will require much more realistic leadership than holding cosy little meetings between the Mayor and the city’s local non-government MPs to mourn the loss of LGWM as they want it.

It is the reality of who holds political power and who does not, and Wellington now looks set to learn that the hard way. – Peter Dunne 

Democracy should not be rushed, and caretaker governments can do no harm, even if they can do no good. – Brent Edwards

You could call it decentralisation, meaning Wellington should no longer be in the driver’s seat for everything.

You could also call it localism, which means the same but stresses the role of local communities.

Call it subsidiarity if you want to show off your command of Latin. That means that issues should be dealt with as close to the people affected as possible.

That latter term, especially, sounds a bit academic. But really, it is just common sense. If the rubbish collection can be organised locally, there is no need for a national minister for rubbish collection. Just keep it local, thank you very much. – Oliver Hartwich

Instead of improving public services, Labour’s centralisation agenda has made matters much worse. It destroyed a few functional polytechs to create a dysfunctional mega bureaucracy. It has shifted resources from the frontline to feed an ever-burgeoning public service in Wellington. – Oliver Hartwich

If we have learned nothing else from the Election result, the following is true:

Overwhelmingly, Kiwis have made a choice that is an emphatic rejection of pretty much all the radical left plans for our future.

We and they should suck it up. – Clive Bibby 

https://twitter.com/damienmgrant/status/1717255927383183758

You’ve got to think there’s something very rotten in the state of the public service in this country that they’re carrying on —in some quarters where they know full well they’re getting cancelled— that they’re carrying on hiring people, working on projects, spending money, commissioning work.

Why? They’re not going anywhere. Three Waters, light rail, Let’s get Wellington Moving… why are people on these projects persevering when they must know it’s over? They’re gone, surely the spending stops. It’s reckless and wasteful, and smacks of a deluded sense of entitlement that they can carry on in the false belief —or maybe just arrogance— that wasting taxpayers’ money on contracts and outlay trumps the reality, which is they’re toast.

Give it up. Stop already. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are being spent on things that will be completely irrelevant and non-existent. There is a guy, as we know from yesterday, at Three Waters hiring people. What a waste of time and money.   – Kate Hawkesby

It just feels to me that while all the excuses and hot air is getting bandied about, yet more money’s being spent, or should I say wasted. And I think we as taxpayers deserve better.  

Hopefully a change in direction and a shift in priorities with this new government will refresh outdated attitudes within the public service, and this nose-in-the-trough-to-the-bitter-end mentality, will stop.  – Kate Hawkesby

On her website, she says

Gender expression can be quite fluid, and just because a child chooses to express themselves in one way now does not mean that they have to remain with that gender identity for the rest of their lives.

No – that’s not gender identity. That’s personality. That’s expressing your likes and dislikes. Girls can be more masculine-like. Boys can be more feminine-like. Girls can be doctors. Boys can be nurses. But that’s nothing to do with choosing your gender, chemicalising and castrating healthy bodies, and ignoring biology. – Bob McCoskrie

Hateful speech is not the problem. It is a symptom of a larger malaise and one that will require more than a simple legal remedy to overcome. – Damien Grant

"Every despotic regime that has ever arisen has done it through fear & fear is the great enemy of democracy. Fear will induce people voluntary to accept restrictions which in a more balanced frame of mind they would not accept"
Lord Jonathan Sumption 🎯https://t.co/QdhCFFppbF

— Ro Edge (@rosey_nz) October 29, 2023

“Fear is the great enemy of democracy”

Former UK chief Justice, Lord Jonathan Sumption, is in New Zealand as a guest of the Free Speech Union.

In an interview on Q&A he criticised Covid lockdowns and spoke of fear as the enemy of democracy.

Word of the day

Mutable – unstable, insecure; changeable, subject to change; fickle; of a ship: unsteady.

Milne muses

“Every piece of poetry has a music of its own which it is humming to itself as it goes along. Verses sing themselves into people’s heads and stay there for ever, so that even when they are alone and unhappy they have this music with them for company.” ~A.A.Milne #poetry pic.twitter.com/lMWZfLpyAB

— A.A.Milne (@A_AMilne) September 16, 2023

Beautifying the blogosphere

A bit of power in the sky this morning. Taken at sunrise on Glastonbury Tor. pic.twitter.com/sGzAprYBdX

— Michelle Cowbourne (@Glastomichelle) August 28, 2023

Maya muses

"When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed." #MayaAngelou
This is an excerpt from Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, published on this day by @PenguinRandom 30 years ago today. -The estate of Dr. Maya Angelou https://t.co/5XKCcFBija pic.twitter.com/Mo7qJXKyLZ

— Maya Angelou (@DrMayaAngelou) September 21, 2023

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

We’re honoured to host Lord Jonathan Sumption in NZ over the next week. Famously called ‘the cleverest man in England’, Lord Sumption will speak particularly about the intersection between the Rule of Law and free speech. Keep an eye here for updates and media coverage. pic.twitter.com/yU1AXYC1ym

— 🗣 Free Speech Union ✊ (@NZFreeSpeech) October 27, 2023

Word of the day

Squandermania – the act of spending recklessly; an extreme urge for, or level of pleasure obtained by, spending money recklessly; the practice of spending money extravagantly especially by a government; prodigious squandering (usually by a government); excessive expenditure by a government on a supposedly prestigious project.

Sowell says

Europe is belatedly discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) October 21, 2023

Mitchell and Webb brain surgery

The Facts on All Blacks & Springboks

The Facts compare and contrast the All Blacks and Springboks:

KEY INSIGHTS

• Of the 23-player teams named for the Rugby World Cup (RWC) final:
  • 8 All Blacks have a win rate of 80% or better (Brodie Retallick, Sam Cane, Aaron Smith, Beauden Barrett, Tamaiti Williams, Sam Whitelock, Finlay Christie, Damian McKenzie).
  • 1 Springbok has a win rate of 80% or better (Jean Kleyn). He’s only played 5 games but has won all 5. (Emoni Narawa has also won 5/5 but came home early with an injury).
  • 22/23 All Blacks have a winning percentage over 70%. Mark Talea has won 5/8 games (63%) with the ABs.
  • 5/23 Springboks, 2 starting players and 3 reserves, have a winning % over 70%.
• Overall, the ABs team has an average win rate of 77%. The Springboks 66%.
• Both teams are hugely experienced:
  • All Blacks = 1,396 caps. 61 on average. 4 centurions (Sam Whitelock 152, Aaron Smith 124, Beauden Barrett 123, Brodie Retallick 108)
  • Springboks = 1,286 caps. 56 on average. 1 centurion (Eben Etzebeth 117).
• Despite the caps being similar (AB’s wth 8.6% more), the ABs have scored twice the number of tries and total points:
  • All Blacks = 328 tries (16 each on average). 2,812 points (134 each on average).
  • Springboks = 144 tries (7 each on average). 1,455 points (69 each on average).

Both teams have won the Rugby World Cup three times.

The All Blacks are the only team to have had consecutive wins (in 2011 and 2015).

Dare we hope they will win tomorrow morning, stop the Springboks winning consecutive tournaments and being the first to win four?

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Apropos of this, Spiro Zavos writes:

The Rugby World Cup trophy commemorates William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School lad who was supposed to have picked up the ball and run with it during a game on the Big Field in 1823. The point of World Rugby iconising Webb Ellis is to establish the truth that rugby must be a running and passing game, not a kicking game like football.

As the wording on the commemorative stone at Rugby School reads: “William Webb Ellis with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it.”

England’s Bully-Boy, No-Rugby tactics against the South African Springboks in the second semi-final of RWC 2023 represents, then, a travesty of all the best qualities inherent in the running rugby game that have emerged through the play of millions of players in over 100 countries since Webb Ellis’ supposed “fine disregard” for the kicking-only game.

So right now rugby lovers around the world need to rise up in protest against England’s brain-dead rejection of the essential running rugby ethic. We need to demand action in terms of significant law changes from World Rugby to thwart England’s shameful regression to a No-Rugby game deployed against the Springboks.

As the nuns used to tell us at convent school: “What does it profit a man who gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his immortal soul?”

In rugby terms: “What does it profit a team to sell out the soul of rugby for a RWC semi-final win?” .  . .

This match-up on Sunday morning of the two best teams in RWC history, with one of them to became a four-times Rugby World Champion, looks like being a rugby game for the ages.

Tying this essay together, then, in an effort to make sense of last weekend’s RWC 2023 semi-finals, is this liturgy:

The rugby they play in Heaven was played by the All Blacks against the Pumas.

The rugby they play in Purgatory was played by the Springboks against England.

The rugby they play in Hell was played by England against the Springboks.

All fingers and toes crossed, the heavenly team wins tomorrow morning.

P.S.

Can someone who knows more about rugby than I do (which will be most of you) explain why the All Blacks keep kicking the ball and losing possession?