Word of the day

Sodcasting – playing music on a mobile phone or other portable device in public, without regard for those nearby who are forced to listen.

Sowell says

It is not just the nonjudgmental ideology of the intelligentsia but also the self-interest of politicians that leads to so much downplaying of personal responsibility in favor of external explanations and external programs to "solve" the "problem."

— Thomas Sowell Wisdom (@TheThomasSowell) February 28, 2024

The prophesies of Titania McGrath

Andrew Doyle created Titania McGrath, an über-woke and privileged white female who expounds Social Justice on Twitter. It’s satire but like any good satire, it has fooled many people into thinking she’s real and serious.

In a wonderful, and worrying,  example of life imitating art, many of her prophesies have come true.

Quotes of the week

“Sustaining Tenancies has had exactly the effect you’d expect: there is no incentive for tenants to improve their anti-social behaviour or to stop deliberately damaging their taxpayer-owned house. There are hundreds of serious complaints every month – the most recent stat has been 335 serious complaints per month – of things like intimidation, harassment, threatening behaviour and worse. –  Chris Bishop

I do not think that The Journal of the American Medical Association intends to be funny, but sometimes it is.

For example, I recently saw on its website a paper titled A Young Pregnant Person With Old Myocardial Infarction. Evidently, the journal is now so misogynist that it considers the word woman an insult in itself.

To the N-word must now be added the W-word; soon, if the linguistic Savonarolas have their way, there won’t be enough letters in the alphabet to designate words which must never be pronounced on pain of excommunication by the monstrous regiment of the righteous. Frailty, thy name is person! – Theodore Dalrymple

There is a giant ideological lie behind the locutions used in both papers, which is that the sex of a person is simply a matter of choice or of random allocation at birth, an unimportant detail medically. If people choose to believe such rubbish, it is up to them; but when the repetition of such a lie is imposed as a condition of employment or advancement, when everyone must assent in public to what he knows to be false, then has totalitarianism arrived.

Who won the Cold War? Certainly, it was not the West. – Theodore Dalrymple

We’re no longer fit for purpose. Our infrastructure and our services are at breaking point. We need investment, but don’t have the money. 

The reality is that, irrespective of your political views, this Government needs to be successful. However you might define success in the light of our situation, we should be prepared to accept whatever progress we can make. – Bruce Cotterill

Because the problems are made worse by the state of our most valuable workforces. Our healthcare workers, teachers and police are all underpaid. They’re all highly regarded internationally too. The result is the international recruiters are all over them. The offers are attractive. More pay. Better conditions. Better weather.

The trouble with such a scenario is we will lose only our best and brightest. Those who have the get up and go to try something new are also those who other countries want the most. – Bruce Cotterill

If we don’t have the money, we have to find it. And in the short term, we are not going to find it by increasing revenue. That will take the time that finding new trading partners, developing more overseas markets, creating new products and growing our tax base inevitably takes.

While we’re waiting for that to happen, we need to cut the daylights out of our cost base. – Bruce Cotterill

First, we have to determine what we need to achieve. So, what does the aftermath of a recovery look like? To me, it means being able to invest the money in our government services to gradually bring them back from the brink and make them fit for purpose. It means hospitals that are well staffed and fully functional and operating out of properties that are fit for purpose.

It means water services that don’t leak, and our children experiencing one of the best learning environments in the world. It means a well-paid police force delivering law and order to our communities and a judiciary that supports their efforts. It means our people coming home for the money rather than leaving because of it. And it means a strong, independent media propped up by advertisers and viewers rather than the Government.

And, given the impacts of the past few years, success means our debt burden starts going down rather than up. – Bruce Cotterill

If this were a business we’d get out of the things that don’t add value. New Zealand has more than 70 ministries. That’s not a bad place to start.

Our government bureaucracies have become so large, they’re inefficient and unreliable. A recent NZ Herald article outlined the numbers of people working in government departments. When you get 1700 people in the statistics department you have to wonder what they all do. That potentially means salaries alone of $140 million a year. And then ask the question, how much of what they do, do we really need? What would we lose if they had 800 people? Could they get by with 800? If so, we can have 800 more cops.

We have 2660 people in the Department of Conservation and another 1050 in the Ministry for the Environment. Surely there’s some overlap. How much of what they do is necessary right now? – Bruce Cotterill

From experience, I can say big organisations are typically clumsy, inefficient and slow. Much of their activity falls under the heading of “doing business with themselves”. Meetings for meetings’ sake, without agendas or outcomes, are often a feature.

Big government organisations are worse. There is often little in the way of output that affects or improves the lives of those outside the organisation. Government organisations typically have armies of people in non-productive sectors such as communications and human resources.  – Bruce Cotterill

The starting point is to ask what we want from our government departments. What are we trying to achieve and what are those departments doing that we don’t really need? And if we dropped another 10 per cent of the bureaucracy, what would we stop doing? My guess is, not much. – Bruce Cotterill

We need to cut the bureaucracy and pay the front line. I’d rather pay police, teachers and nurses more, and get the roads and water pipes fixed, while creating less bureaucracy and a better support structure for our government ministries.

In the meantime, the rest of us need to front up for the good of the country.

That means hanging in. It means reducing our expectations for a few tough years. Working a bit harder for a bit longer and for a bit less. Because if the survival of the enterprise is at stake, and it is with the good ship Kiwi, then tough measures are essential.

We’ve run out of time. This Government really does need to be successful. – Bruce Cotterill

If it is a crime to want to build the nation of Aotearoa-New Zealand out of the dreams of all its people, then I must plead guilty. Likewise, if it was wrong to recoil from the horrors of 7 October as forcefully as we daily recoil from the crucifixion of Gaza, then I was wrong. If it is a crime to understand the Jews’ need to build a home of their own since, as History has amply demonstrated, they are not safe in anybody else’s, then convict me. Convict me, too, if it is “antisemitic” to understand the longing of the Palestinian to, at last, insert the key in the lock of his family’s bullet-scarred front door, and return home. – Chris Trotter

I’d just say to New Zealanders, if you ever elect a Labour Government again you shouldn’t do so for a generation given the economic mismanagement we’ve inherited. – Christopher Luxon

We don’t undo six years of economic vandalism and mismanagement in one Budget, but what we’re going to build is back a culture of financial discipline into Wellington and that’s what we’ve been working incredibly hard on. – Christopher Luxon

You’ll have to wait until the Budget but we’re working on balancing how we’ll protect frontline services, how we get rid of the wasteful spending and actually how we grow our economy. That’s what good, responsible economic managers do.

Our Government is having to clean up after the last one, this is the hangover of all of that. – Christopher Luxon

Reasonable question for some media to ask the PSA: is there any circumstance ever when you have thought public sector staff cuts were appropriate, or should numbers always only increase?

— Michael Reddell (@MHReddell) March 21, 2024

National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost half that of Labour. It’s a reminder that money can’t sell a bad product.

The left want to force taxpayers to fund political parties so go on about the impact of money on politics. But the empirical evidence is that the correlation between how much you spend and how many votes you get is very very weak. – David Farrar

So, a recession it is then.  Another one. 

We had one at the end of 2022, going into 2023. Remember those good times? It got revised initially and the Government of the day said “see, told you it wasn’t a recession”. 

Then we got the final read and, yes, it was indeed a recession – two solid quarters where we went backwards. 

That’s bad enough. Recessions in modern economies are rare. Normally we argue about growth not being strong enough. 

No such luck for us. 

And now, to break the record, another recession. The third quarter of last year and the final quarter of last year were another two quarters of negative activity. Another recession. 

The record? Well, there isn’t a modern Western economy that has done what we have.  – Mike Hosking 

We are the worst of the lot and that, despite Grant Robertson saying it’s not a contest, it is unforgivable.

The ongoing issue is that, as well as going backwards, we are still stuck with inflation that is far too high. Now, the commentary will tell you inflation is coming down, which it is. But not enough and not fast enough.  – Mike Hosking 

As history is starting to be painted all over the world with all the individual stories of the reaction to Covid, New Zealand now officially stands out as the example of what not to do. 

What a legacy. What a reputation. 

What a cluster.  – Mike Hosking 

The truth is, that number isn’t telling the full story. Because that number has been pumped up by record levels of immigration.

The real number is the GDP per capita, this is the economic number when you count every single person in the country. And that’s come back by 0.7 percent in the last three months.

And here’s a real brutal number- since September 2022, which means just slightly over a year’s worth of data on a per capita basis, the economy has shrunk 4 percent. – Heather du Plessis-Allan 

That is the price of our Covid response, it’s the price of the lockdowns and the spending and printing of the money and the resulting interest rate hikes to settle it back down again.

I was thinking yesterday about Grant Robertson’s legacy and how most commentators are quite rightly saying it’ll be years before we really can say what his legacy is.

But I think the clue is in the numbers today. – Heather du Plessis-Allan 

In his speech Robertson rattled off things he was proud off: the Winter-Energy Payment, increases to Working for Families, raising the benefit levels and those who benefited from the pay-equity legislation.

All great stuff, but these chocolate bars thrown to those deemed worthy as rations were continuously cut. When the GDP falls it isn’t people like me, or the former Wellington Central MP, who suffer.

But when your expenses are $99 and your income is $100, 3% percent matters; and this is what Robertson and his Labour colleagues cannot understand. That the march of progress is not made through government programmes but in spite of them.

And when we have six years of fiscal irresponsibility, recklessness and incompetence even the energy, drive and passion of the entrepreneurial and business class cannot overcome the malaise. – Damien Grant

He boasted that Crown spending lifted from 27% of GDP when he assumed office, to peak at 34%. “The long-run average is a bit over 30%. Anything less is, in my mind, austerity.”

There are a number of ways to measure austerity, but in the financial year ending June 2023 the Crown spent $9.4 billion more than he took in taxes. That is the reverse of austerity. – Damien Grant

Life is the basis of well-being, and we cannot afford to preserve as much of it as the Australians can; and Grant Roberston is part of the reason why.

And as for child poverty? This was deteriorating in the last year of the Labour government; although there had been a slight improvement in the initial years but short-term fixes often show brief improvements but are never enduring. – Damien Grant

Speaking of the Reserve Bank. New Zealand once led the world in the integrity and independence of our central bank. It was understood that the Reserve Bank governor was above the political pressures of the day and would focus only on monetary stability.

Between them, Tweedledee and his mate managed to destroy public confidence in this arrangement. Watching the Finance Minister and the governor of the Reserve Bank giving joint press conferences made it clear that the goal of monetary stability would be subordinated to the political economic needs of the moment. – Damien Grant

Not since Sir Robert Muldoon have we endured a finance minister whose decisions would leave such a toxic legacy; yet the failings are obscured by his charm and political acumen.

History will judge him with more sympathy than it did Sir Robert, who ended his days as a character of himself in the Rocky Horror Show. Perhaps this is as it should be. We live in an age where intentions matter, and performance does not. – Damien Grant

So let’s junk the ridiculous notion, which has become ingrained among the Western great and good, that to allow ‘blasphemy’ against Islam is to indulge in some species of religious intolerance or racism. The precise opposite is true. When you allow anti-blasphemy fury to take hold in a society it is the minorities, or the minorities within minorities, who truly suffer the most.  – Tom Slater

The bizarre sensitivity our supposedly secular institutions now show to anti-Islamic ‘blasphemy’ only legitimises this barbaric bigotry. It also betrays an anti-Muslim bigotry all of its own. When schools or cinema chains or politicians capitulate to the demands of anti-blasphemy activists, they burnish the idea that Muslim Brits are not really Brits – that, unlike any other community, they are deemed incapable of living as full citizens in a free society. Apparently, they simply cannot be expected to endure having their beliefs challenged. And so they must be tiptoed around forever, as if they were beasts. This is the mirror image of the claim made by the jihadists and anti-blasphemy extremists, who insist ‘free speech’ is just an excuse to bash Muslims. For the sake of all the would-be heretics, blasphemers and apostates, we must stop indulging these lies. – Tom Slater

Being a retailer has never been easy. Trying to keep ahead of trends, being nice to customers when they aren’t always pleasant, and watching sales decrease every quarter as you combat the cost of living and the increase in online shopping.

Living in daily fear is just appalling. Turning up to work every day and wondering if this is the day you will be robbed and potentially assaulted.

Figures released this week tell a hideous story of how real it is. There were 148,599 retail crimes reported to police last year, nearly triple the 50,840 crimes reported in 2020. – Paula Bennett

The American public has become so accustomed to unfettered access to public figures that we expect total self-exposure as a matter of course. Meanwhile, we meet their need for privacy, which belongs to every human, whether humdrum or celebrated, with a kind of rabid suspicion. The moment anyone in the public eye requests a desire to step away from the glare, we collectively make the worst-possible-scenario assumptions.

Now’s a good moment to rethink all of that. Kate’s terrible news shouldn’t just make us feel terrible for Kate; it should also make us feel terrible about ourselves. – Pamela Paul

Must those questions even be asked? Sometimes a person’s request for privacy is just that, not an invitation for yet more giddy, self-indulgent, obsessive invasiveness.

What we now know is that all this speculation was directed at a woman with cancer. Whatever this news means for the future of the British monarchy, whether one supports or despises it, is of far less consequence than what it means to a young woman with three school-age children, regardless of royal status. In dealing with this terrifying disease, Kate is just another human, with just as much right to handle her illness as she chooses.

Right now Kate Middleton is sick, and the hope is, with proper medical care, she will get better. What, we must wonder, would it take for a culture sick with its own wolfish appetite for self-exposure to try to get better, too? – Pamela Paul

People are sick of having someone lie to their faces. When someone is lying to you on television, and you look out the window and see a different reality, then that’s going to produce very unhappy people. – Graham Linehan

Get rid of these people who have disdain for the views of ordinary and decent people. – Graham Linehan

You know, I think for a lot of us, we’ve looked from the outside into the public service and thought. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? To what point? And what markers are there to say that you are doing it well?   – Kerre Woodham

A lot of the way the modern workforce is constructed is just creating jobs to have them. How many people involved in private sector corporates and in the public service spend all day booking out a meeting room to talk at one another about workers. About people who are actually getting up and going to work to pay their wages. What do they do?  

I totally get we need to have policymakers; we need to have people who can help ministers to make decisions about where a particular portfolio needs to be spending or where they’re heading. Did we need our 30% increase in the size of the public service, many of whom had no idea what they were doing or what they were there for? I don’t think so.  – Kerre Woodham

It’s official. Our economic hangover from the Covid-19 pandemic has been worse than in most countries. Inflation has been more persistent, our government accounts have deteriorated more quickly, and our growth has been more anaemic.

Figures out this week show our economy on a per person basis shrank nearly three per cent in the past year. No wonder retail is doing a freeze. –  Steven Joyce

 Many of the productive areas of the economy shrank significantly last year, including manufacturing, transport, and wholesale and retail trade.

The largest growth area, at a whopping 7 per cent, was the government administration category. In short, the massive growth in public spending masked a deeper recession for households and businesses, and we all now realise that level of spending can’t continue. Our government debt has been growing at the second fastest rate in the OECD. – Steven Joyce

From my recent travels around the country, the economy feels much worse than the view the central bankers are currently seeing, and the danger is the Reserve Bank will be too late in starting to lower interest rates. The hikes were so precipitous so quickly that their deflationary effect is still working through the system, and if the politicians turn out in this instance to be true to their word of shrinking the public sector, the Reserve Bank may be taken by surprise as to how sharp the slowdown is. It’s a finely judged call but it’s clear the economy won’t truly turn up again until interest rates start to fall. – Steven Joyce

Too much regulation is also a big burden and it has a greater impact in a small country. – Steven Joyce

hink of 10 industries that could do with shaking up a bit, or a bunch of potential new industries, and think of the possibilities.

It all adds up to the need to rediscover our can-do attitude, which I think was drummed out of us during the pandemic years. The rest of the world is accelerating away from us economically. We need to get out there and use our Kiwi initiative again, and start catching up. – Steven Joyce

We all want to know what our colleagues get paid… but we don’t want to have to tell our colleagues what we get paid.  – Heather du Plessis Allan

Whilst Grant Robertson was talking himself up in Parliament about his wonderful political career and how proud he was of his achievements, the result of his past six years as Finance Minister were clear for all to see. We’ve just fallen out of the world’s top ten “happiest” countries and are in recession, practically to the day he gave his farewell speech. Our problems are largely due to Robertson’s excessive fiscal expansion, done on borrowed money, during the pandemic, which amazingly was one of the largest in the world in spite of us having the least number of cases during that time of Covid compared to others.  – Robert MacCulloch

What is most unforgiveable about Grant Robertson’s tenure as Finance Minister & Deputy PM is that, in the aftermath of our greatest health crisis ever brought on my Covid, he left our health system in a declining & tattered state. The only thing he needed to get right, more than any other, was to ensure our health-care was world class, because a new type of virus could obviously afflict us again at any time. But he threw always billions on everything but health-care. Clearly he deserve the title, “Worst Finance Minister Ever”.– Robert MacCulloch