Category: imported_guest

I can't be sure, but it may well have been me who introduced the term Nanny State into the New Zealand vernacular, on my Politically Incorrect Show on Radio Pacific. Certainly I used it regularly there, and observed it creep into common usage thereafter, as did the related term, Helengrad. In any event, the expression is well and truly out there now, and that's as good a thing as its referent is bad. Nanny State is vicious, anti-human … and, as we speak, relentlessly advancing.

There’s much talk now of the call, lately by Sir Thomas Thorpe but in fact made by many others many times over many years, for an office of criminal review to sort out courtroom mistakes and free all the wrongly convicted. This may get the thumbs up to acknowledge the spanking the Privy Council has just given our Court of Appeal in Bain, but also because something has to be done to cover for the suicidal detachment of our appeal system from the PC.

If the NCEA was a car would you drive your kids anywhere in it? Based on its performance over the past five years, probably not, since you could not be confident your kids would reach their destination intact—that is, having a qualification that is meaningful and precise.

Economists have long since accepted Milton Friedman’s argument that monetary policy – ‘printing money’ – is the single cause of inflation, whether in boom times or in recession. Inflation is about too much money chasing too few goods. So the first requirement for non-inflationary growth is for the Reserve Bank to run a sound monetary policy.

One of the most heavily-promoted arguments in favour of MMP, at the time of the 1993 referendum, was that its introduction would transform (for the better) the way in which Parliament worked. We were promised much better behaviour in the House, but more importantly, greater sensitivity to the wishes of the Electorate.

As parents of an intellectually disabled son who is positively and gainfully involved with a sheltered workshop, we are disappointed that the Labour Government, Progressive, New Zealand First, the Maori Party, the Greens and United Future all colluded together to pass the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal (and related matters) Bill.

The recent finding by Justice Asher in the Auckland High Court that a group of District Health Boards failed to adequately manage both a conflict of interest invoked by one of their board members being a senior party in a contract let by the board and a fair consultation process throws into doubt the efficacy of many of the processes undertaken by a very large number of ‘quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations’ (quangos) established in the health care sector under the health reforms implemented since 2000.

Being a lawyer in Sweden under the regime of the anti-smacking law, I have known that the proposed law would lead to policing and criminalising responsible parents all along, and I am still trying to warn New Zealand before it is too late: The anti smacking bill will turn parents into criminals. If the Bill becomes law it will mean the abolition of parental authority.

WHAT kind of welfare state should New Zealand have in 30 years? If the trends of the past 30 years were to continue, we could end up with more than a quarter of working-age adults living on benefits, a huge retired population relying on a hopelessly overstretched pension and health system, and younger workers struggling under a massive tax burden as government soaks up almost half the nation's gross domestic product to pay for it all.

What a wonderfully powerful human trait is the imagination. No other form of animal life can think creatively as we humans…to dream up scenarios of passion…love, joy, hatred, anticipation. But distort our imaginative powers with a bit of fear guilt instilled by mischievous science…and presto, you have the makings of the catastrophic global warming [ooops, I’m sorry], I mean, climate change hysteria.