US president Donald Trump has stared down the mandarins of China and sealed a huge first win in his trade war with the communist state. The Chinese have blinked and handed the US an enormous range of concessions. But, while the deal is a yuge deal for America, it contains
What happens when you have a chronic housing shortage, too few state houses and a government that continually comes out with landlord unfriendly policies? I have watched landlord after landlord sell their rental properties over the last few years, citing various reasons, but just about all of them are to
Isn’t it odd that every proposed “solution” to climate change requires either massive overreach by governments, or mountains of taxpayer’s cash, or most often both? The biggest, most expensive climate boondoggle foisted on long-suffering taxpayers is without a doubt “renewable” energy. Renewables, their advocates insist, are just great:
Smoke & Mirrors So I have been reflecting on how the CoL (and the Media Party) do their propaganda campaigns in relation to tax in general; a real gem is when they call them ‘levies’ not taxes and do so with straight faces. The most recent example was when Jacinda
Over on the website Politikiwi they are tracking the government’s election promises. The website was launched eight months ago and its existence was announced on Reddit. It began as a personal project for 19-year-old software engineer Robert Calvert’s portfolio. Introducing Politikiwi – A polling aggregation and politician popularity tracking
Awareness and voices are raised in criticism of government officials who restricted firebreak cutting and exacerbated the loss of lives, property and animals in Australia’s ferocious bush fires. “We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down,” Warwick Spooner told Nillumbik Mayor
As you may be aware, Vernon Unsworth (hero of the Philippines cave rescue) recently lost a defamation case against Elon Musk, who had called him a “pedo”. Such are the vagaries of American defamation law that, even though the accusation was completely false, and Musk admitted as much, Unsworth lost
It has come to the attention of TheBFD that a few weeks ago there was a meeting between NZTA and farmers, farm contractors, trucking firms and other interested parties such as fire service volunteers. This took place near Christchurch and by all accounts, things got quite testy. The purpose of
The previous government already had a solid infrastructure programme in place when the current coalition came into power. One of the first things the COL did was to cancel most of those infrastructure projects, particularly the roading projects. This government’s ideology, led by the Greens, was that roads would
Labour announced that it will spend $400 million on schools; they will fast track some of its infrastructure projects and they will borrow to do it, thus loosening the Budget Responsibility Rules that they have adhered to so tightly up until now. In other words, the 2020 election campaign has
Information Extract from an article by Simon Black at Sovereignman.com Roughly 23,000 years ago in modern-day Israel, a small tribe of ex-cave dwellers built a tiny village near the Sea of Galilee that may have been one of the earliest agrarian societies in human history. Archaeologists discovered the
PA Pundits – International Ronald Stein Ron Stein contributes Posts at the CFACT site. He is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched Principal Technical Services (PTS) in 1995. He writes frequently on issues of energy and economics. California is about to take
Bernard Hickey says that Jacinda Ardern and Shane Jones are covering up the exploitation of student and temporary labour while cutting back on permanent migrants and that migrants have been duped into thinking permanent residency is a right of passage after a few years working here under a student or
Whenever the left need someone to spread manure of the economics variety Shamubeel Eaqub is the go-to bloke. He’s full of it, or close to. Today’s dissemination covers housing prices and the increase of which, according to the blowhard, is the ‘fault’ of something called ‘baby-boomers’. The economic
The government has allocated $1.9 billion towards improving mental health services, and Jacinda has freely acknowledged that she wants to see the current rates of suicide reduce significantly. Well, somebody should have had a quiet word with Damien O’Connor, Minister for Primary Industries, about that particular policy, as
Today’s face of the day is wetter than an otter’s pocket. Clearly Bridges hasn’t listened to a word Scott Morrison said. He has made James ‘wreck the economy’ Shaw a very happy man. National will support climate change Zero Carbon Bill stuff.co.nz/national/politics/117244331/
