George What the hell is wrong with our country? It feels as if our backbone has been stripped from our spine. If the polls are anything to go by, this country is a dead man walking. We are currently governed by a group of student revolutionaries who are physically adults
George Ego, confidence, cockiness or whatever you call it, can be seen as an advantage by some and a hindrance by others. It is about money/mouth stuff. There is a tolerance if the money matches the mouth, but ridicule if the mouth is its master, or in the case
Gabriel Hays papundits.wordpress.com Gabriel Hays is a staff writer for MRC Culture Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has proposed a way to discourage Hollywood from profiting off of Communist Chinese propaganda. It’s not news that Hollywood production companies edit and censor their films according to the dictates
R&BAvenger Watched ‘Planet of the Humans’ on YouTube last night. A real eye-opener for me and my other half. Interestingly she was also inspired to watch Andrew Bolt and Rowan Dean‘s take on the movie as well, which came up immediately afterwards. The best part for
Fighting Temeraire * Title: Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea * Author: Robert K. Massie * First Published: 2003 * Pages: 880 (Kindle Edition) This book by the American historian Robert K Massie is the story of the War at Sea during WW1. It is the
Peter Cresswell pc.blogspot.com A pandemic does not necessarily cause a recession on its own. It needs help. Historically, a pandemic has very rarely caused (or been correlated with) a recession: Did I say “rarely.” For the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, read “never.” So far. Why not? Because,
Simon Thornley covidplanb.co.nz With much journalistic ink spilled over COVID-19, it is easy to forget that our policies of lockdown and social distancing are based on a belief about the lethality of the virus and its spread. This belief comes from interpreting evidence. Currently, two main ideas
pointofordernz.wordpress.com Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy launched by a small team of veteran newspaper reporters who were responsible for much of the content of the authoritative weekly newsletter, TransTasman, before its change of ownership early in 2018. The Waikato and Waipa
George Throughout the last few weeks, I have read some very enlightening and well-researched articles here on The BFD. There are some I don’t necessarily agree with but I respect opinions that reflect a well-researched challenge to my own thoughts. And the reason I feel this way
David Theobald I am over the lockdown. As I have said before, on a selfish, personal basis it doesn’t affect me that much; I can put up with it. I am retired, live in the country, can weather the (hopefully) temporary hit any investments have taken and can still
Peter Cresswell pc.blogspot.com Nearly three weeks ago, historian Niall Ferguson posted six questions that Chinese political leader Xi Jinping needs to answer about this coronavirus — not in any expectation of them being answered, but instead to highlight how far China still seems to be from enjoying the free
Gerhard Sundborn covidplanb.co.nz Gerhard Sundborn is a Senior Lecturer Population and Pacific Health at the University of Auckland. With Covid-19 bearing down on New Zealand, and fears of an overloaded health system and a death toll numbering many tens of thousands, the Government moved swiftly to implement
P.J. Gladnick papundits.wordpress.com A note to Atlantic magazine: George Orwell’s 1984 wasn’t meant to be a how-to guide… A couple of people writing at The Atlantic magazine see a fantastic silver lining in the current coronavirus outbreak. Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods see
Daphna Whitmore rdln.wordpress.com Since I wrote Corona fevers and the madness of models, criticising the lockdown in New Zealand, there have been many comments and some objections to the article. Some of these have been discussed in other forums but here I will try to respond to a
George Words matter to me. When the PM announced that level 4 was to be extended by five days and then added the rider that it was only two business days, it identified a classic example of verbal manipulation. The intent was to minimise the impact of the decision, but
Justin Knight For anyone too young to remember Y2K, it was a very expensive non-event invented by IT charlatans to scare the world into paying them a significant amount of money to fix precisely nothing. The argument went that when the year 1999 ticked over to 2000, all the
