New Zealand Conservative

It's Sundance Film Festival time. An excerpt from a documentary film that is making a splash there. There is a certain inevitability about that I suppose.

Life in Obama's America means new taxes. Here's a beauty, a 15c tax on Christmas trees. Its very necessary you need to understand, it's needed to fund a bureaucracy to promote the "Christmas Tree Industry" . There is no satire tag to this post because er well it isn't satire - it's for real.

New Zealand Universities are loosing ground when compared to their international counterparts, I read this morning. And nor is a surprise on reading the article to find the reason, apparently, for this is " the low level of investment in the New Zealand university sector ". Cry me a river. Another significant story in this mornings news is: Hamilton council 'hiding gays away' And this grievance arises from the Hamilton city council refusing permission for the bedecking of bridge lamp posts with rainbow scarves during Gay Pride week. And the whiner in this story is a Professor, one Professor Lynda Johnston from Waikato University, pictured on the left. So out of curiosity I googled her to find out who she is Research Interests: In 1995 I completed a Masters thesis in which I argued that bodies and spaces of gymnasiums are gendered. In gym spaces female body builders resist, subvert and reassert normative understandings of gender. My doctoral thesis, a...

New Zealand Fashion week and this apparently is an example of it. These women look malnourished and have the bodies of wizened old women. What is the designer trying to project here? What are we supposed to take from this? Grotesque!

This is how Stuff in its wisdom decides to draw you into reading its story on the proposed extension of mining in Waihi. The stories lede A $1 billion plan to mine gold and silver under Waihi has divided the town with Newmont Waihi Gold denying claims it has bought the town's silence to ensure the proposal gets the green light. Well they haven't bought "silence" have they since the reporter who wrote this found at least one person who would make this claim. But there is nothing sinister in this is there? Newmont spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in the township. That includes $100,000 on the town's six schools and college, and sponsorship of local sports teams and facilities. Waimata Primary School has just received new classroom computers. For goodness sake the company is putting money back into the town and into the lives of the people who live there and anybody with half a functioning brain cell knows without the company there probably wou...

Another thing I wont be loosing sleep over reported in the Guardian It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim. Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This man claims he is treated like a second class citizen Second class citizen Guess what Clint there really are a lot of second class citizens out there but they aren't who you think they are.

In a rare example of rationality ( cf   the kneejerk ) the Government has kicked the idea of lowering the alcohol limit into touch . Of course having done so the wail has gone up and the media dutifully trot out "experts" who are given a forum to spew forth their hyperbole. "I think the most important thing has been missed. [The Government] is saying that people are allowed to drink to over the level of intoxication and then drive. It's scandalous when you look at the international evidence," he said. Although the Government had said it would spend another two years looking into whether to lower the limit, Sellman said, researchers agreed doing it now would save lives . Well some "researchers" might well agree it would save lives but that don't make it so. Indeed "researchers" for the most part don't even agree that the current level is a level that induces measurable impairment. In the real world a driver aged 25 has signi...

  Shopping centre bosses approve 'Asian squat toilets' following cultural awareness course From next week, shoppers in Rochdale who push open the cubicle door expecting the reassuring sight of a modern, clean lavatory could instead be faced with little more than a hole in the ground. Bosses of the Greater Manchester town's Exchange mall have installed two as part of an upgrade costing several thousand pounds after attending a cultural awareness course run by a local Muslim community activist. A familiar sight in parts of the Middle East, and still sometimes seen in France and Italy, the toilets require users to squat above them, rather than sitting. With one in ten of Rochdale's population of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, centre managers say they have been told some members of the local Asian community prefer them for cultural reasons. Apparently this innovation has something to do with " cultural understanding and community cohesion " though how...

This picture illustrates a hyperbolic story with a hyperbolic headline: Govt criticised for lack of action on obesity . Phtttt According to the story "New Zealand as the third most obese nation in the world, with an obesity rate of 26.5 per cent" . More than a quarter of New Zealanders are obese? And the consequences according to the story are dire for our economy. Experts believed obesity was the biggest health problem facing the nation, with a cost to the health system estimated at $500 million a year. Numbers plucked out of the air by "experts" who are experts at, well, plucking numbers out of that part of the anatomy used to illustrate this story and post. Look at this from one of the "experts" cited in this story. Fight the Obesity Epidemic spokeswoman Dr Robyn Toomath said the Government had barely acknowledged obesity as an issue. It had increased funding for Kiwisport in schools, but there was no evidence that participation in sport...

Click here to close What is this mess on the left I hear you ask? Believe it or not it is a Powerpoint slide to descibe the military situation in Afghanistan. On seeing it General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, was heard to remark 'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war .' You may click on the image to view it in all its glory but it will leave you none the wiser I'll posit Source: Mail Online

Dominion Post Headline: Kiwis worst in the world for bullying . One in five Kiwi workers suffer from workplace bullying, one of the worst rates in the world. The figures are revealed in a university survey released today. A joint university research team – from Auckland, Waikato, Massey and London – polled more than 1700 workers from the health, education, hospitality and travel sectors asking how frequently they were exposed to "negative acts" at work. What planet is the joint university research team from? Are New Zealand workplaces really more rugged than Asian sweatshops or African plantations? Get a grip! And what have been identified as the most worst workplace environments by these genii do you suppose? Higher rates of bullying were found in the education and health sectors and also in kitchen "hot spots" within the hospitality industry. Health and Education? The people who produced this are employed by the "Education sector" - no? ...

You probably read about how the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research supplied the Winter Olympics with 100,000 condoms, possibly guffawed when you figured out or read thats 14 condoms per Athlete and Official. And they have all gone apparently so the Canadian Aids Research people have organized an emergency shipment . Well there is no way in the universe that these condoms have been put to use, for this number to have been used by this amount of people would have required 28 couplings per individual, work it out. Absurd. No the whole thing is a publicity stunt designed to promote condoms and cheapen sex. Condoms are somewhat repellent items which reduce intimacy, and degrade sex into a mechanical action. This is why they are promoted so vigourously I am sure. Anyway all those Olympic condoms will have been souvenired most likely - so it goes.