Word of the day

Astraphobia– abnormal fear of thunder and lightening or or an unwarranted fear of scattered and/or isolated thunderstorms.

Sowell says

Put bluntly, failure attracts more money than success. Politically, failure becomes a reason to demand more money, smaller classes, and more trendy courses and programs, ranging from "black English" to bilingualism and "self-esteem." Politicians who want to look compassionate and…

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) May 8, 2024

Woman of the day

Woman of the Day journalist, screenwriter and pioneer aviator Harriet Quimby born OTD 1875 in Michigan, the first American woman to qualify for a pilot's licence and the first woman to make a solo flight across the English Channel.

Harriet went to California to become an actress… pic.twitter.com/9usAP2cegn

— The Attagirls (@TheAttagirls) May 11, 2024

Quotes of the week

There is this underlying theme and I totally support it, that lenders should be required to make sure that borrowers can make repayments without undue hardship.And that’s the way bankers used to work, right? If they didn’t trust you or whatever they would check you, if they did trust you do, they don’t need to. –  Andrew Bayly

It was a rare instance where the politically inept meets the practically stupid. Credit became far more difficult to get while the legal small money lenders suddenly found compliance costs — time primarily — driving them out of small loans.

The thing meant to spare vulnerable people from predatory lending, opened up a new market for loan sharks, while middle class people out for a mortgage — first home buyers especially — were made to feel under cross-examination. – Luke Malpass

Our net debt is at 42.9% of the size of our economy.

When Labour arrived, it was 19%.

Personally, I would never ask Chris Hipkins another question about this current Government’s actions or policies ever again, because between him and Jacinda Ardern, as these three reports so clearly point out, show there are few so-called “first world economies” on this planet that are as hopeless as we are right now.

Everyone is suffering. Every second organisation, agency or charity has their hand out for more money and any number of groups are on a series of strikes or stop-works.

The social and moral malaise is palpable, and the reports produce the numbers that explain why.

I don’t envy this new Government. No matter which way they turn there is mess.

There should have been an amnesty on criticism because what they face is so bad that all we can do is wish them well and always remember that what they are undertaking is a repair job of historic proportions.  – Mike Hosking

97 percent of Maori aged 15 or older are not in prison or serving a community sentence or order. Over 99 percent of Maori are not gang members.

Yet as an ethnic group Maori take a lot of heat.

Their pockets of failure (which occur across all ethnicities) overshadow their success because it suits certain political aspirants to promote the negative. The predominant individualist culture wants Maori to get their act together and exercise greater personal responsibility. While the collectivists want the community to take the blame for Maori failure and fix it via redress. The finger-pointing at colonists as the culprits, which has ramped up immeasurably over recent years, has resulted in a great deal of misdirected anger towards Maori, the bulk of whom just want to get on with their lives. (To boot, this simplistic description ignores that since the early 1800s Maori and non-Maori have become indelibly interlinked by blood and it has become impossible to identify which finger is pointing in which direction, such is the absurdity of modern-day racial politics.) – Lindsay Mitchell 

Do not put the kettle on, do not put the dishwasher on, do not put the washing machine on, do not heat rooms you’re not in and turn all the lights out. This is basically what it’s going to be like this winter and it’s probably going to be like this for many winters ahead of us.

The reason for that is because we’re trying to go green. Basically, we’re trying to run on solar, wind and water. And if you do that, if there’s not enough solar wind or water, you basically, the only other thing you can do is stop the demand, turn everything off.  – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Now, maybe once you know, happens on the ninth, 10th of May 2024 you don’t really care all that much.   

But if you’re doing this multiple times a year and you are doing this multiple years, that stuff adds up. We are literally, we are literally becoming poorer as a country because we cannot rely on our electricity. That’s pretty third world, isn’t it? That’s weird.

Did we choose this? Oh, yes. That’s right. Some of us did. Some of us wanted to do this. This was a choice. We need to rethink.  

I would suggest we need to rethink really quickly, whether this is the kind of country we want to be running, whether this is the kind of electricity system we want to be running.  – Heather du Plessis-Allan

There is no point reducing taxation if spending remains unchanged. It is government spending that takes goods and services out of the community, not the means by which Wellington pays for it.

Debt is tax. – Damien Grant

Fiscal discipline is hard but we have seen that it is consistently rewarded with strong economic performance that translates into political authority.

Thatcher and Clinton endured brief political pain but enjoyed strong economic and political success because, as Clinton ultimately understood, it’s the economy, silly. Ultimately, that is the only metric that matters. – Damien Grant