Word of the day

Capacitate – to make capable of a particular action; make capable of functioning in a given capacity; make legally competent to act in a particular way; to furnish with legal powers; qualify; cause (spermatozoa) to undergo the physical changes necessary to fertilise an egg.

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day Marie-Thérèse Le Chêne born OTD 1890 in the Ardennes, one of the first women to be trained by the Special Operations Executive and at 52, the oldest woman SOE agent sent to France during WW2. Codename: Adele.

At the beginning of the war, Marie-Thérèse fled to… pic.twitter.com/O82Zra7hWU

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) April 20, 2024

Loosening lending regulations

The government is acting on its commitment to reduce red tape by loosening lending regulations:

The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today.

“Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are revoking 11 pages of overly prescriptive affordability regulations, introduced by the last government, to enable Kiwis to access finance with confidence,” Mr Bayly says.

“These regulations created unnecessary compliance costs and are an excessive barrier for lending. And worse, the regulations failed to protect the most vulnerable Kiwis – the very people they were intended to safeguard.

“When the affordability regulations were introduced into the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003 (CCCFA) in December 2021 it threw a bucket of cold ice over banks and financial providers by prescribing minimum steps to assess the affordability of a loan. The overly arduous checks meant the time it took to process loans dramatically increased. Lenders told me that a small loan that used to take two hours to process suddenly took up to eight hours. 

“This meant it was no longer affordable for many providers to offer small loans. It became very difficult for everyday Kiwis, who need $500 to fix their broken-down car, to access a safe line of credit. They were effectively frozen out of the market and many vulnerable Kiwis were instead forced to borrow from high-interest loan sharks,” Mr Bayly says. 

Housing Minister Chris Bishop says the time it took to process a home loan increased substantially and thousands of Kiwi families, who would have previously qualified, were locked out of the market.

“The changes announced today will make the home loan application process simpler for hardworking Kiwis who have diligently saved to buy a house.  . . 

Labour’s tightening of the regulations was a government-knows-best approach that increased the time and complexity involved in getting loans for even small amounts of money.

It was unnecessarily intrusive. It led to lenders trawling through would-be borrowers’ bank accounts and turning down loans because  of the amount spent on coffee.

People need protection from unscrupulous lenders but the government doesn’t know better than the responsible lenders who don’t need overly prescriptive regulations to judge whether a loan will be prudent.

Quotes of the week

Children are real live human beings, they’re not objects. They’re not parcels that we can move around. They have feelings, they have significant ties. Children’s very survival depends on their emotional connections to adults.

I don’t want to be disrespectful, but it’s a simplistic belief that culture trumps all else. And so therefore it justifies the removal of these children from where they have been for two and a half years, and the movement to people who at this point in time are from a child’s perspective, strangers. – Nicola Atwool

Whenever any scheme aims or claims to be “world-class,” you may be sure that it is the brainchild of megalomaniac mediocrities. Alas, our world is full of them, they dominate public affairs. There is nothing wrong with mediocrity in itself, of course, because by definition there must be a lot of it, and we are most of us mediocre (at best) at most things. It is when mediocrity is combined with overweening ambition, as it increasingly is, that it becomes dangerous. – Theodore Dalrymple

If we allow our political debate to degenerate into name calling, fictitious comments and extremist language, our society will be poorer for it. Because, when our political leaders use inflammatory language over and over again, people begin to believe what is said. Those that don’t are desensitised to it, as it starts seeping in to other parts of life. – Bruce Cotterill 

There is no doubt that there are plenty of things that need to be said in this country. We should be thankful that people are prepared to enter the discussion. We all need to hear both sides of a story and we should be grateful that we live in a democracy that allows open debate.

But to be constructive, such debate needs to be respectful and the information delivered needs to be factual. Only then, will such discussions strengthen our democracy. Until then, the current behaviours will weaken it. – Bruce Cotterill 

Households below the sixth equivalised disposable income decile receive more in transfers than they pay in tax. The sixth decile is a wash. The top four deciles pay net tax, with the bulk of the burden on decile 10 households who each contribute about $75,000 per household more in tax than they receive in transfers and government-provided services.  – Eric Crampton

Protest has, particularly in recent years – and particularly led by the climate activists – gone from being peaceful marching and waving of placards and shouting to now including damage of property, kind of as a matter of course.

This is a big problem overseas with the climate activists throwing paint at valuable pieces of art on display. And here in New Zealand, it’s kind of being imported.You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if you don’t adequately punish something, it will be repeated.

You just have to be a human to know that because it’s human behaviour. – Heather du Plessis-Allan 

No woman is a cis woman. We’re not a subset of our own definition. We are adult human females. A transwomen is exactly that, a transwoman. A male who identifies as a transwoman based on a feeling not a reality of actual biological sex. Women don’t need or want a prefix

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) April 16, 2024

20 years of soft power, lobbies and corruption and we have a UN where Russia occupies the chair of Security Council, Iran chair of Disarmament, Saudi Arabia as chair of Gender Equality and Women’s Rights. – Artur Rehi

In a week where we learned we will need ten times the power we currently use just to search the net, given AI sucks up a shed load more power than your current Google search, it might be time to get a bit real about what makes the wheels turn. 

While we wait for solar and wind and whatever else to get approved and brought online, the simple truth remains we make most of our energy out of water (which is good), a bit out of hot stuff in the ground (which is pretty good). But we still need coal. 

Because we can’t really look for more coal the same way we haven’t been able to look for more oil, we got a bit stuck. So, we had the absurdity of importing coal from Indonesia. 

Not only was it coal, but it was coal not nearly as good as ours, thus defeating the entire purpose of saving the planet.  – Mike Hosking

On a trip to the Netherlands some years back I was struck by the absence of hills and mountains.  When travelling in the Netherlands you are almost entirely dependent on maps and road signs, as opposed to heading in the general direction of a landmark.  This is a disorienting experience for those used to terrain.

Values work similarly.  They orient us in certain directions, re-orient us when we are off-track, and assure us that, with due care, we will reach our destination.  They also give us some semi-objective concepts (or abstractions) of what it is to be decent. Values produce shame and feelings of guilt when we fall short.  This, in turn, generates inner conflict and ultimately the possibility of insight, and even of righteous action.

In my view, what is bugging young people most is that too many of them have a poorly defined, and sometimes utterly dysfunctional, sense of what it is to be decent … of right doing, of duty, and of responsibility.  Of course there are many exceptions, but as a general rule, I think that far too many young people (and maybe not so young people) are missing the values that serve as guardrails, that orient toward the good and fruitful, that bind relationships, that call us toward duty, order and sacrifice, and, most of all, perhaps paradoxically, enable us to feel OK.  –  Caleb Anderson

Young people are drifting.  They want freedom but, at a deeper level, not too much.  They want options but, at a deeper level, not too many.  

Young people kick at the metaphorical guardrails because, paradoxically, they need to know that the guardrails are there.  Thus at the deepest level, they yearn for a “thus far and no further” imperative.

But the guardrails for too many young people are no longer there, and the state has continued, at breathtaking speed, to devise substitutes. The message is that values are subordinate to feelings (and to equity and justice in and of themselves) … they are personal, evolving, contextual, negotiable, malleable and, ultimately, dispensable.  

This makes risk-taking that much more risky.  It creates anxiety and it creates anger.  Too many young people have been sold short.   – Caleb Anderson

Values are no longer the constants on which we can reliably depend, the glue that binds and unites.  The wisdom of generations, and of lessons hard learned, have been replaced by a void … a deep and dark void … and the result is a generation in freefall.

Consequently, we may have one of the most fragile, and least psychologically and socially integrated, generations in history, uncertain of direction and devoid of resilience. – Caleb Anderson

Research indicates that values, and the guilt they sometimes produce, are often promoters of pro-social behaviour.  Moral decisions seem to produce altruism.  Altruism strengthens relationships, grows a sense of worth, motivates toward action, and mitigates the introspection and uncertainty that are so often the root of mental illness and social dysfunction. 

This is the message that young people need to hear.  This is where we have failed them.  This is what parenting books, and the near tidal wave of state-sanctioned incursions into the jurisdiction of the home (and schools), can never achieve,

We (parents, schools, and society at large) need to love young people enough to tell them this, to model and teach values, to enforce (not negotiate) reasonable expectations, to exalt personal sacrifice over personal gain, and to live with the kickback … and to live with the fact that, for a time, they will not love us in return.

Personal sacrifice (something values demand) is the purest form of atonement …  our young people need to know this …  but it is also the thing to which contemporary society is so disinclined. – Caleb Anderson

I don't think it's nice to lock rapists in with female prisoners, allow mediocre males to participate in women's and girls' sport, or for women to get death and rape threats for speaking up for their rights. When you've stopped all that happening, we can talk 'nice.' pic.twitter.com/DRSSzQO9nO

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 16, 2024

I am a massive advocate of robust debate that might change your mind – that’s the best thing in the world,” French said. “But it’s impossible if what we’ve got to do is hunker back into our positions, defend them by spitting and being furious and then blaming and cancelling.

We’re all talking about inclusivity and favouring difference and all the rest of it. And that’s all great, I love the idea of that, but that’s not how we’re living.

We’re living the opposite of that – we’re massively intolerant, quick to blame, litigation, trolling and all of this dreadful stuff, which has got nothing to do with understanding how other human beings operate.

We are people who know we make mistakes, we know we have shortcomings, we know we have all this stuff, but because we are expected to present ourselves as perfect and only celebrate all the perfect things, it just wiped out any margin for error.

I genuinely think we’re being forced into corners where I can smell my own cowardice.

I don’t like that – I’ve never been cowardly, I hope – but I’m starting to be that, because I’m being circumspect about what I will support or not, in case it causes trouble.

You know, and even thinking about the timing of when I might say such a thing, or what might be cherry-picked out of this and lambasted against me.

As women, especially, that’s the last thing we should do is shut up. – Dawn French

The Tribunal summonsed the wrong woman, on the wrong issue, at the wrong time. No wonder some people think they’re past their use-by date. Perhaps they should be wound up for their own good. – David Seymour 

If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgivable. You are putting children at risk by doing that. – Hilary Cass

What dismays me is just how childish the debate can become. If I don’t agree with somebody then I’m called transphobic or a Terf [trans-exclusionary radical feminist]. – Hilary Cass

I’m much, much more upset and frustrated about all this disinformation than I am about the abuse. The thing that makes me seethe is the misinformation. – Hilary Cass

If the document called The NZ Curriculum was submitted as a Year 12 school project, it would fail. If you multiply the 308 staff by an average salary of $80,000, a conservative number given Wellington pay-scales, you get about $25,000,000 – yes $25 million dollars. Has the Kiwi Tax Payer been billed that amount of money year after year – that is, over $100 million – for 60 pages of PR, marketing and communications-inspired glossy pages of nothingness? – Robert MacCulloch