New Zealand Conservative

It's Queen's Birthday weekend here in New Zealand. Perhaps because the Queen has so many birthdays every year, she probably wont mind this one being taken over by atheists and liberals. And it has been. It's a weekend where the shops are going to be open from dawn to dusk, discounts and specials on offer like some mid year boxing day sale. No Christians to lament that low paid shop assistants are bring forced to work rather than worship. Barely a murmur from the unions, who have already negotiated penalty rates and time in lieu. Not to mention 4 weeks annual leave, not three as it was a few months ago. Nope, if atheists and liberals wanted their own religious holiday, with freedom to worship on the alter of the cash register, with permission to succumb to the temptation of brunch at a cafe, followed by penance of towels and underwear purchased at 30% discount, then surely, Queens Birthday weekend is their day? Full on shopping, and no-one and no-thing standing in peopl...

It's Friday. It's been pretty quiet (except for the lurkers, who still register on my stat counter), so drop in and actually say something. If you feel like it. No pressure. I mean, we've disabled anon comments - you've got to at least have a blogger handle or something. But it's the least you can do if you want a voice. Let's not talk about "right to offend" though. There is no such right. It's simply a statement of fact. If you offend, there are consequences. Indeed, there are consequences to everything. What pleases atheists is that consequences are only limited to this life. Isn't that a comforting thought? Wouldn't want to be wrong though, would you? And that's the other thing that can piss off an atheist. The implied threat in having a different world view. Yeah, you could cross the road blindfolded too, if that makes you feel better. Doesn't change the traffic volumes. So argue all you like. Doesn't matt...

I was just talking to someone today about Hilaire Belloc ( Defender of the Faith ). You know who you are. So, here are a couple of links to some of his interesting books that are able to be read online. The Great Heresies The Online Books Page

Whilst Microsoft are trying to get people excited about Windows 7 and banging your fist on the screen to make it work...I'm just after the new 256GB Solid State Drives. Tired of waiting for Microsoft to make Windows boot faster, I'm moving to plan B. These are a winner for any laptop - faster, smaller, lighter and less drain on the battery. I've seen a few of these hitting the market, and mass production is not far away. Samsung have just leapfrogged the current crop, and with an estimated reliable lifetime of 12+ years with this technology, it looks like the earlier problems of limited write cycles are contained. Great. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest computer chip maker, said today it has developed a new solid state drive which is expected to replace hard disk drives in laptop computers. Samsung said its 256-gigabyte solid state drive (SSD) for data storage is 2.4 times faster than traditional hard drives. The company plans to begin production of SSDs ...

Thanks to the folks who participated in the poll in a weak attempt to influence my next post topic. Except I spent so long waiting for the poll results, I may have inadvertently checked off one or two of the topics early... Of more interest to bloggers may be that I had placed a name/website behind each voting topic , and it's now time to see who has been voted off the blogopshere. (Yes, the Conservative faction of the VRWC is that powerful.) And the results are: It goes "Score", "Blog Topic" and "Site Voted Off". Highest score wins. 07% - Anything Irrelevant - Frog Blog (If only you had known eh?) 07% - Something Satirical - The Standard (Hardly worth the effort) 23% - A rant about Liberals - Hard News (He lives. Hard luck) 30% - A rant about the Left - Young Labour, Pete Hodgson, Russell Fairbrother, Martin Gallagher, Winnie Laban, Brendon Burns, David Cunliffe, Steve Chadwick, Tim Barnett (W...

Some guy (Garth Gadsby) got his car stolen, his house burgled and managed to catch the criminals by firing a few shots in their general direction. These thugs had been doing this before. They needed to be caught, and the place is so remote, Police don't call. I blogged this earlier . So, the crims are let out and the shooter ends up with the state putting him through the cost of a trial, take 18 months to run it, and then the State steal a further $3,000 from him, and finally, take his gun. The Judge Jan Kelly, no doubt related to infamous bandit, Ned Kelly, said she was being lenient on Garth. Meanwhile, the criminals have since [allegedly] stolen another car and been doing burglaries again. You can also bet whatever fines they get, they wont pay. There is no justice in New Zealand. A Wairarapa man convicted of shooting recklessly at teenagers in a stolen car has been sentenced to pay a fine and hand in his gun. Garth Gadsby, 60, was last month found guilty by a jury of r...

Moderate Centre-Left Wing Blogger "Dillsy" yesterday published irrefutable proof that John Key and National were directly behind the power outage across Wellington, in a deliberate ploy to embarrass the State Owned Enterprises that provide energy to the country, and by implication, Helen Clark. Dillsy warned that if National win the election there will be blood on the streets, and medical services will need to be cut to fund National's extreme far right agenda. "The Reserve Bank have papers that prove that a cut of even FOUR staff in a Public Service of 40,000 will create ripples of funding cuts to education, health, police and justice causing many deaths and untold suffering. I know they have documents proving a tax cut of just 1% more than the thresholds Dr Cullen has announced will be the straw that breaks the camels back, and people will be forced to bleed to death in accident and emergency." Why wont the Reserve Bank release these papers?", demands...

Well, if you are brain dead, you are legally dead. They keep you on a respirator, then cut out your organs for others. Then you die. More. Although, I've read a few cases where people have "come back" from being legally dead. You know there are always loopholes when you are dealing with the law. Val Thomas’ doctors honestly can’t explain how she is alive today. Thomas, who lives in West Virginia, is being called a medical miracle after she suffered two heart attacks and had no brain waves for more than 17 hours; reports NewsNet5.com. Thomas’ heart stopped around 1:30 a.m. Saturday and doctors said she had no pulse. Rigor mortis started to set in, and she was placed on a respiratory machine. “Her skin had already started to harden and her fingers curled,” Thomas’ son, Jim, told NewsNet5.com. “Death had set in.” And then she pops up before they can slice and dice her, and says, "Aren't you the Doctor from Days of Our Lives?" No, Scrubs. Related Link: Docto...

No, I'm not going on about some radical Labour policy to freeze interest rates and inflation until sufficient votes have been gathered. But this is err, quite cool. Found frozen in time: The Blog of Ryan Sproull

Blog New Zealand Life Coach had a cool idea. Take on a bit of the bad news and write a " Pollyanna Post " to lighten things up a little. We could all try a bit of that from time to time. So I will attempt something similar. I thought I'd pass on a bit of positive feedback on people I might otherwise target for a bit of political point scoring. So yeah, for what it's worth, these stories are true. Deal with it. My first true story concerns Labour MP Chris Carter. I happen to know first hand he was in a position to do a (non-political) favour for some-one he didn't know, via a request from a mutual acquaintance. He was working late, had to fly back from Wellington to Auckland even later, and yet made a big effort to help this person out. Maybe it was no more than what any decent person would do, but that therefore, was very decent of him. Thanks Chris Carter. My second story concerns the currently disgraced Mary Anne Thompson. I know a person, whos...

The Police are so confident of catching dangerous criminals, they have a new policy of giving them a two week head start on the getaway. "We like to give murderous thugs at least a 2 week head start before we hunt them down like the rabid dogs they are. Often, you let the chain out that much and they might commit the same crime again, doubling our chances to gain a conviction." "Apparently, the witness and the victim of an attempted murder have the guys license number, so once we track down the victim, we'll be able to get right on to it. We are calling for members of the public who might know the whereabouts of the victim to come forward." "You may read about their story in the papers, and possibly notice their name and address - if so, give us a call. We'd really like to know, because the criminal might see the same article and take decisive action. Decisive. Action. Once we clear this backlog of traffic duties, and sort out the rosters, we too ...

Q1: If Labour say "tax cuts causes inflation", (and use that as an excuse not to give them) why then, does the increase in government spending by 100% over the last 9 years apparently NOT cause inflation? Can you imagine going to the voters and saying "We can give you a Families Commission, but it will cause inflation, and erode your pay packet. Are you sure some of the 18,000 staff hired by Ministry of Social Development aren't enough to cover this?" Q2: If Cullen has held back on tax cuts for 9 years to stop inflation and high interest rates, why do we have one of the highest interest rates in the OECD? [ tip to side show bob ] Q3: Why does the Reserve Bank move quickly to raise interest rates when getting the latest figures from the market, ignoring future indications of softening - and when the latest figures indicate it's time to drop them, decides the future indicators of Labour's tax cuts for 2010 and 2011 suddenly have more relevance? Q4: If ...

To: Dr Michael Cullen (cullen@helengrad.con.nz) From: Fly Buys Date: 23 May 2008 Subject: Fly Buys Statement ---------------------------- Dear Mr Dr Cullen Please find attached your Fly Buys statement as requested. We note that with the Toll Rail purchase your points balance is now at 12,463,210 points. You points total up to 15 May includes expenditure of 11,000 points for an upgrade to first class tickets on a recent flight to Poland [supplementary card holder Margaret Wilson] and 3 million points for a Ms Helen Clark who purchased the " Champions of the Earth " award from the United Nations. We have posted a booklet of the catalogue items available. Some of the things you can buy with 12 million points: * 6,234 foot spas with sea salt packs * A freezing works in Dannevirke * A favourable commission of inquiry on any Labour MP (ex-MPs not included) * A factory in Dunedin for white ware * A Playstation with assorted Anti-National Karaoke Tunes and the rights to distrib...

Well, the markets have spoken and they worry Cullen's Budget (tax cuts and a big pile of spending) are inflationary. Labour flunkies take this as an opportunity to warn National's tax cuts are going to be more inflationary. More inflationary than what? Tax cuts needn't be inflationary in the right circumstances. Only certain kinds of spending is inflationary. For example, buying a rail system costs about 655 million, but before the money has even been handed over, it’s inflated to 1.4 BILLION. Nice going Cullen. Related Link at Kiwiblog: Cullen tells the markets the way it is

It's Friday. The budget is out, but Labour are still in. The talk is all about tax cuts, and the vote seems to be "it's not enough", or "I expected more". That's coming across as very greedy and self-centred. You can expect Labour to capiltalise on that, and National will have to be careful in the way they position their election promises. Personally, I don't think people's intention here is about greed. The reality is, after nine years in power, with year on year tax surpluses, people have seen their own pay packet eroded by inflation and by "bracket creep". This inflation then hammers a whole segment of home owners on big mortgages, with interest rates way up. What many people realise is those interest rates were pushed higher by massive increases in government spending, as much as Bollard tried to blame the property market. Even so, maybe that would be acceptable, if the Labour government looked like they cared. The reali...

It seems the deductive* powers of many are extraordinary. Take this situation; there are 6 closed boxes on the table. You open the first and find a cauliflower. You open the second and find a cabbage. You open the third and find a carrot. Pictured: Zucchini is another vegetable that starts with the letter C We are halfway through the boxes. To digress for a moment - people look for patterns. They look for order. They apply their learnings and make what seem to be objective deductions. But we'll still get different opinions. Vegetables? Things starting with the letter C? Vegetables starting with the letter C? We open box four. Potato. OK. Well, it's vegetables then. Box 5. Lettuce. Yep, case closed. Vegetables. Do we need to open box 6? Some people don't bother at this point. But we will be thorough. We open box 6. An apple. Yep, it's a vegetable. At least that's what many people would have you believe. --Zen * Deductive, in the general sense, bu...

Ok, well I don't really do many reviews but I was wandering through the Red Shed this afternoon and espied this CD/DVD set. It's a live concert by James Taylor called One Man Band - just himself and his acoustic guitar backed up by a piano player and interspersed with stories around the writing of the songs - where they came from and where he was when he wrote them. All the classics are here: Fire and Rain, You've Got A Friend, Shower The People, Carolina on My Mind - over two hours in all. James Taylor was one of the inspirations for me when I was learning guitar - James and David Gates and Paul Simon. I read a review of James' playing once, and the reviewer got it dead-on when he said that his every vocal line is punctuated with a guitaristic nod or wink-of-the-eye. You don't really see guitar players like this any more: well, I don't anyway. The players I see on videos these days have this stumdy-strum basic accompaniment; this is a player still in full co...

Dr Cullen may be a little upset that the average tax cut of $16 per week is being compared to the cost of a block of cheese. That was not what the money was intended for. With a recent "investment" of $ 9 million dollars in the racing industry, and a state monopoly on lotteries, he was no doubt hoping gambling would be on the increase. Well, I hope he's cheesed off. The budget looks to be a rather pathetic effort, with a small tax deduction around election time, and others kicking in over the next three years. Problem is, last time Cullen promised to up the tax thresholds, he turned around and cancelled them. Given that Labour's budget didn't really address any plans for growth; for interest rate abatement; and for tackling energy issues, there's every excuse Labour's bad economic management will force some serious belt tightening in 2009. Question is, will it be government that is asked to tighten their belts, or the tax payers, pensioners, student...

Scientists have discovered a major fault line running through the New Zealand political landscape. Dubbed "The Cullen Fault Line" experts are warning that it could crack in just a few hours with the announcement of Labour's budget. "We are expecting widespread casualties, with the collapse of jobs, mortgages, food and transport prices also burying people alive. The aftershocks of which could trigger a major landslide for National later this year, possibly October." With recent polls off the Richter scale, Labour was seen to be on shaky ground. John Key has warned the Earthquake Commission to expect claims of up to $50 per week per person to repair the damage.

We really need a new poll to gauge who is the preferred PM: 1. John Key 2. Winston Peters 3. Bill English Are there any other names I've missed? What do you reckon Rodney's chances are? Update: OK, so it seems I forget one very important person that should be included on the preferred Prime Minister stakes. A certain female, that should be listed no matter how bad her chances. Fair enough. Let's add Jeanette Fitzsimons to the list. Although that would mean we'd have to add Russel Norman too. The world's first co-Prime Ministers. Cool. Maybe then we'd have tax calculated on income splitting?

Decisions, decisions. There are so many posts I want to do, but limited time at the moment. So I'll have to prioritize. But because I'm a bleeding edge blogger** I thought I'd add a touch of reality to the mix. YOU; MR or MRS, MS or MISS, MASTER or DR (you know the type, the ones that say they have a PhD), and I suppose I can throw in a reference to the androgynous anonymous types although they don't have a title, so just imagine a blank space back there a wee way. Anyway, YOU get to choose the next post by voting in the little poll I'm running in the side bar. So, enter your votes for the topics I've listed, and if it suits my purposes, I might take note. Oops, I mean that your votes will make a huge impact on the choice of my next topic. Really. Stop looking at my nose. And for an extra dose of reality, we will also vote off a blogger, and possibly a commenter. Yes, that's right, behind every topic I've assigned a blogger name or commenter n...

It's Friday. It's also been a couple of weeks since tragedy hit Burma, and we have yet another government preventing free aid reaching its citizens. This seems to me to be a case where military force to support aid workers could be justified. What say you? But feel free to drop in and mention much more cheerier things. Just count your blessings, such as they may be.

It’s a little too close to the bone to call him Ron Donald. But Hughes did take the mickey out of MacDonald, leaving us with little choice. Do you want fries with that citation? As Scrubone says, vote for this clown, and you vote Green (it's a joke). Still, he could have dressed up as a snail or a hector dolphin. Arresting Ronald seems so much more child friendly. "Mum, the Police have McArrested Ronald and its all the Greens fault". Ouch, poor kids. Innocence lost. Either way, whilst the Greens and Winston continue to support Labour, this is just one part of a three ring circus. ---------------- Hat tip over at Half Done: Would you vote for this clown and originally on Whale Oil

Now, it just cannot be the result of natural selection that biological forms show the same forms we also witness in spiraling minerals and in spiral galaxies. And when we find a “solution” in living beings that turns out to be optimal with respect to many millions of conceivable (and computable, these days, with fast computers) alternatives, it cannot have been selected out of random trials. There have not been dozens of millions of generations of macaques trying out all sorts of cortical patterns of connections, such that only the best survived. That’s ridiculous. Some people, completely outside of the ID field and for different reasons, think natural selection doesn't explain evolution as according to natural selection. Nevertheless, the ID camp might at least be pleased that the holes they are finding in evolution does indeed call for a fresh perspective. The result would not prove or disprove God's existence, but it does, I think, reinforce the miracle of life, and the pa...

While people were breaking into the Waihopi "Spy" Base, prisoners have been strolling out of Mount Eden Prison. Corrections Department northern regional manager Warren Cummins is bearing the brunt for the prisoner escape due to alleged staff shortages. [SATIRE BEGINS] Said Cummins: "No worries, we will catch this prisoner, and teach him a lesson he will never forget: home detention." Cummins was quick to point out the problem is a guard shortage, not prisoner shortage. "It doesn't matter if we lose a few prisoners, we've got heaps of spare ones. What we don't have is guards. We need to work out how to stop the guards from escaping. We have some great ideas, involving RFID tags and GPS enabled bracelets. Cummins also explained that the prison officials were now considering the purchase of locks on doors, bars on windows and higher fences. This would be after the underfloor heating, million dollar landscaping, televisions and and playstation devi...

This post should really be called: "Male expert declares women don't work enough and lives to talk about it." And why are academics called experts anyway? The pay equity gap between men and women in Australia will not close until women are prepared to work longer hours, an academic says. Err, you mean longer hours in the office I presume? The only male taking part in a National Press Club panel discussion about the pay equity gap, Prof Wooden's remarks drew gasps from the mostly female audience. Were they surprised at the findings, which have been known for centuries? Or surprised that this panel member had such a deep voice? Or surprised he earns 15% more than them for saying the same thing? I'm a little surprised he earned anything for this information. Prof Wooden said closing the gap would require a change in the traditional family structure. "The only way we can achieve this is if we have lots of role reversals, lots of men behaving like women and ...

With Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) released as an R18 rated game, the Government have moved to ensure minors are not permitted to purchase and play the game. Steve Gilbert, local games shop manager confirms: "We've been asking for proof of age for GTA IV as we are aware of our social and legal responsibilities. Every purchaser has had some form of age ID. Most common is a note from their parents. Any purchasers smoking and drinking when they come into the shop are also obviously also over 18, so we don't need to ask them. One young lady did look about 13, but she's been turning tricks on the street corner opposite for so long, she's got to be about 25. What I am personally amazed at is the number of 18 year olds that are quite short. It's obviously evolutionary." This fact was picked up by the Greens, who have called on the government to end potential discrimination on short people. Russel Norman suggested that short people should also automatic...

Stephen Franks is musing on a "broken windows" policy for policing in Wellington. It's just been kicked off in Christchurch. Youth crime climbs. We must get tough. Can't have broken windows around the place. Sends the wrong message. And heating isn't cheap either for that matter. Broken Windows is apparently the more accurate coined term for the "zero tolerance" style policing programmes working reasonably well in a few American cities. I'm all in favour of Kiwi-izing these terms. Let's call it the Zero Tag policy perhaps? Although, there was that recent story about the 21 year old tagger that got caught by the pub owner, who ended up tagging the tagger and the tagger's clothes, to the cheers of patrons. Actually, I'm more amazed the publican wasn't thrown in jail for vigilante behaviour. What's NZ coming to, if we can defend our property without the state getting involved? Next, criminals might actually be locked up. ...

It's not just the Church that think promoting condoms isn't the way to reduce HIV in Africa. It seems a Harvard research group have figured out this strategy is not yielding results. Globally HIV causes 3.7% of mortality but received 25% of health aid. And handing out condoms willy nilly sends the wrong message. The armor doesn't work. Rather than getting it on, cutting down seems to be the solution, in more ways than one: ...study leader Dr Daniel Halperin said many studies have shown that male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of heterosexual HIV infection. Three trials in Africa were stopped early after showing at least a 60% reduction in HIV risk. Furthermore, programmes to promote fewer sexual partners appears to have had a primary role in reducing HIV rates in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire, and in urban Malawi and Ethiopia, he said. After a 1987 "Zero Grazing" campaign in Uganda, the number of people reporting multiple and casual ...

It's that certain day of the week again. Drop in and leave a comment. I'm off for some food, but I'll see if I can throw a few topics up later. Until then, welcome to the start of the weekend. What does that mean for you?

The guys at No Minister have found a rating widget for their posts. Great idea. So I dug one up too. Seems we can let readers rate posts, from 1 to 5. I thought a choice between 4 stars (Good) and 5 (Excellent) would have been safer, especially as they say there is no accounting for taste. But what the heck. It's installed. Give it a go readers, it's much easier than adding a comment, rating anything 4 or 5 stars is anonymous (kidding, it's all anonymous) and it might give us an indication of which topics are of more interest. Although, I suspect half the people will use this as a "disagree/agree" flag. Ouch?

Dr Cullen today ruled out a tax free band at the bottom end of the scale when considering tax relief in the upcoming May budget. What would have been music to the ears of many cash strapped workers is simply a discordant note to Labour, who march to a beat of a different drum. Which is almost strange, because creating a tax free threshold would arguably be a very "Old Labour" policy in terms of a fairer and simpler way of easing the tax burden on low incomes. But "New Labour" is to keep tax rates high and then redistribute it as welfare, all the while pointing out what a huge favour they are granting the lucky group singled out for tax relief. "The Labour-led Government recognizes the need for relief across the economy, but we know that need is especially acute at the bottom end of the income scale." Nice words. They mean little. He had considered a tax-free band. "This would have seen, for example, the first $9500 of income not attract income t...

We've all seen the stories of the Austrian monster who built a secret series of closets in the basement and imprisoned his daughter there for something like 24 years, using her as a sex slave, a sex object. Cruelty beyond belief, to his own daughter and the children fathered by him who were also imprisoned. He's reacted to being called a monster. In today's DomPost I see that he says "I'm not a monster. I could have murdered her, but I didn't." Well, I have some news for him. Monster. Ironically now, but not nearly ironic enough, Josef Fritzl refuses to leave his cell as fellow prisoners have threatened to kill him. I wonder if he will receive less than 24 years imprisonment?

In today's world, you either own property or you are property. It's an interesting situation that helps the very rich get richer, and the poor stay poor and the middle class pay the taxes. Communists think that this means capitalism is wrong. Socialists do too, but try to act a little more moderate about it. However, their preferred solution is effectively to destroy it by using the government as some form of benign wealth distribution, and where possible, buying back infrastructure assets. It doesn't work. Indeed, by giving too much power to the State, we effectively become property of the State. It's scary socialists cannot see this, or weight the implications of this appropriately. But that is a different post. At the other end of the scale are those like the Libertarians, whose core philosophy revolves solely around property and the much vaunted Free Market. The obvious danger in Libertarian philosophy is that it ultimately reduces a person's worth to ...

In today's news , The Government is considering making the Morning After Pill free for teenage girls. What are they thinking??!! It seems like they're trying to do as much damage to the country as they possibly can before they get thrown out. If they think that this is going to decrease the number of abortions then they are seriously wrong. It will increase them and give these girls a feeling that should they choose to have sex at an early age then they have this FREE option to fall back on. And I'm betting the parents don't need to be told, either. This seems to be furthering along their 'alleged' agenda to break up families. To add to this, Helen announced the other day that funding of $146 million would be given for a drug to be administered to teenage girls to combat HPV (human papilloma virus) which is named as the root cause of 90% of cervical cancer cases. One of ways to catch HPV is to have 'unprotected' sex with many partners. I say 'unpr...

Hot on the heels of the new computer game "Grand Theft Auto IV" there's a new game that has just been released. It's called "Shooting Libz"^. The idea is to interact in a virtual world running into various Libertarian types and restoring community order by preventing them from doing that particular activity. You get credits (virtual cash) for every socially destructive or offensive activity prevented. You then use this money in later stages of the game to fund political activities to either stop or counter the Libz. It's sick. You have a range of measures that can be taken, one of the most extreme being using lethal force. The game can be tricky, as you can lose money (usually via legal fees) if you are too heavy handed, apply the wrong measure or use your "measures" in the wrong way. Play the ban card too often and you'll end up with the Greens in power and being carted off to the Gulags. For example, shooting a libertarian for ...

Zounds. It's Friday. Just one word. Echelon. Update 8:00pm: To the anonymous jerk posting foul comments, grow up and leave. Commenting is now open only to registered users (Google or OpenID). --Zen

I started writing this post several weeks ago, but as you will see from the begining of the post, it seems my sojourn into silence has continued into being unable to post this until now. I am also about to go on a silent retreat for the next two days starting from tonight, so I may be rather quiet online for the next wee while. Here's the post... Silence is a sword in the spiritual struggle. A talkative soul will never attain sanctity. The sword of silence will cut off everything that would like to cling to the soul. We are sensitive to words and quickly want to answer back, without taking any regard as to whether it is God's will that we speak. A silent soul is strong; no adversities will harm it if it perseveres in silence. The silent soul is capable of attaining the closest union with God. It lives almost always under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God works in a silent soul without hindrance. ~ Divine Mercy in My Soul, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska I ...

I was horrified to hear that a Dominican Friar (he is a Catholic Priest) was involved in will-full damage at Waihopai Spy Base, and had lead two other men to do the same. If intelligence gathering is the most "evil" thing happening in NZ at the present time that required a physical act, then all the men involved need to get their heads read. On NZ's Catholic Blog, Being Frank, the only people that weren't horrified were a young, liberal blogger and an older, constantly dissenting commenter. Which says something. Related Link: Hehehe ~ Being Frank

[SATIRE] We’ve been told to get used to the global economy. We’ve been told to accept that many jobs previously done by Kiwis are better done by people in other countries prepared to work for less than one dollar per hour. The people that make these decisions are paid lots of money for “making the hard choices". But who could have guessed the ramifications as this philosophy was adopted throughout the western world? Business The BRW top 100 businesses stunned shareholders today by announcing that CEO’s, board members, and top management are all being outsourced to an Indian Consortium “Rajahs Executives”. “We’ve found we can get fully qualified management teams for as little as NZ$50,000pa. Even better, we purchase this as a subscription service and gain full tax write offs without incurring KiwiSaver charges, PAYE and FBT. The guys in accounting have really outdone themselves. I'd say more, but it's my last day on the job and I've got to clear my desk.” Analysts...