Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, December 30th, 2008 - 16 comments
Italian males, despite the appearance of virility in their persistent attentions to female tourists, have caught the European disease – male infertility. A study this year shows some dramatic falls in male fertility in Italy since the 1970’s. Finding Dulcinea summarized the Italian results as:- During the 1970s, Italian men averaged 71 million spermatoza per […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 am, December 28th, 2008 - 76 comments
The Economist is one of the few main stream media that seem to be flourishing in the days of decline for most media outlets. This is probably because it offers truly interesting comment and opinion. For instance in the current science section, they have “Darwinism:Why we are, as we are, a view on the current […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:36 pm, December 17th, 2008 - 21 comments
Gerry ‘sexy coal’ Brownlee has spent today ripping apart more anti-climate change laws. Today, under urgency and without the opportunity for the public to contribute via the select committee process, National/ACT has repealed the Biofuels requirement and is now in the process of repealing the ‘ban’ on new baseload fossil fuel power plants. Disturbingly National/ACT’s […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, December 15th, 2008 - 39 comments
Tourism New Zealand has recently launched its dedicated YouTube channel – Have Your Say – where tourists can post video messages about their experiences while visiting here via a mobile studio. Here’s what our new PM, Minister of Tourism, and veteran YouTube user John Key had to say. But while John’s out there on YouTube doing the hard […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, December 10th, 2008 - 10 comments
Have you heard the sad news that the EU may be next to join the international communist nanny-state conspiracy against incandescent bulbs? It seems EU bureaucrats have published a “report” which calls for a ban on the freedom-loving inefficient bulbs which have kept our planet warm for almost 130 years. Thank goodness ordinary decent New […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:14 pm, December 9th, 2008 - 55 comments
Rodney Hide on National and ACT’s select committee into the ETS: “I am especially pleased to see that the issue of the scientific and trade implications will be considered alongside the impacts on the economy. “There is definitely not a monolithic view on the fact of human induced climate change and I welcome this government’s […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, December 9th, 2008 - 3 comments
In case, like me, you tend to mainly read the news online, here’s what was stuck to the Dominion Post this morning:
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, December 5th, 2008 - 38 comments
It’s good to see Treasury’s extreme right-wing prescription for New Zealand has not been wholly embraced by the National Party – and it’s easy to see why. While Bill English (a former Treasury wonk himself) no doubt agrees with the policy ideas and direction outlined by Treasury, he has the disadvantage of being accountable to […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:05 am, December 5th, 2008 - 15 comments
Murray McCully has just used his recently acquired ministerial discretion to allow Fiji’s under-20 soccer team to enter New Zealand in transit on its way to a tournament in Tahiti. This is broadly at odds with the Labour government’s sanctions following the coup in 2006 (though they did grant the Fiji sevens team permission to […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, December 2nd, 2008 - 27 comments
This classic myth is used by National/ACT as an excuse to not do anything about climate change and, now, to attempt to undermine emissions reduction targets in the international climate change agreement to succeed Kyoto. And it is nothing more than a myth. Between 1990 and 2005, agriculture became 30% more efficient in terms of […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:25 pm, November 29th, 2008 - 44 comments
Foreign Minister and Whaling Spokesperson Murray McCully has announced that New Zealand will be breaching international law by not undertaking search and rescue operations if whalers or protesters get into trouble in New Zealand’s zone of responsibility. Great. So, in a week and a half our new government has abandoned its part in the global […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:31 am, November 28th, 2008 - 43 comments
Over the last few weeks I’ve heard the odd grumble in Wellington leftie circles about the proposed Basin Reserve flyover but until now haven’t really paid much attention. Nor, does it seem, have many others. The 3D artists’ projection above shows why we probably should. According to the Save the Basin Reserve campaign, the NZ […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 pm, November 27th, 2008 - 47 comments
National/ACT has only been in power a week, but the flip-flops keep coming. Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee will not confirm that that National/ACT will reversing the new light-bulb standards. This after they campaigned hard against these standards and Key repeatedly promised that under a National government people would not be told which type of light-bulbs they can use. Brownlee […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, November 27th, 2008 - 92 comments
Don’t let Key go abroad representing us again until he has had some diplomacy training. I can’t believe, I literally can’t believe, the comments he has made in the UK. In addition to the comments yesterday, where he called the new carbon-offset airport departure tax “protectionism” and said it will lead to a “contagion effect”, […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, November 26th, 2008 - 24 comments
I’ve never seen the sense in Public-Private Partnerships. How is it ever going to be cheaper to get a private profit-making company to come on-board and take the risk for developing a piece of public infrastructure? The Government has to give them a good deal so they can make a profit, and the Government has […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, November 26th, 2008 - 56 comments
The UK has announced plans to increase departure tax from its airports for flights outside Europe to pay for offsetting their carbon emissions. This is part of the worldwide response to climate change – countries are making emitters pay and even aviation, which is excluded from Kyoto, is now being targeted (quite rightly too, it […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:04 pm, November 21st, 2008 - 98 comments
According to a leading financier, carbon credit broker Nigel Brunel, of OMF Financial, New Zealand has become “a bit of a joke” in Europe as National/ACT looks set to delay, even abolish, our Emissions Trading Scheme. If you’ll forgive me an anecdote, I’m reminded of the introduction seminar when I was at uni in Finland. We […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:49 pm, November 19th, 2008 - 73 comments
The National Party’s decision to resurrect the idea of a carbon tax is one of the most cynical plays I’ve seen in a while, coming from a party that opposed a carbon tax from day one. In fact, for all their hollow attacks on Labour’s climate change record it’s been National that has campaigned harder […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 pm, November 15th, 2008 - 34 comments
With a masterful awareness of the import of his actions, President Roosevelt termed his economic program to lift the US out of the Great Depression ‘the New Deal’. Laissez-faire capitalism, whereby the ‘invisible hand of the market’ ruled, had failed to fulfil the conditions of the social contract (a fair distribution of wealth between capital […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, November 14th, 2008 - 17 comments
From Scoop: The hapless polar bear that emerged during the recent TVNZ You-Tube leaders debate has resurfaced to issue a plea to Prime Minister-elect John Key. “The planet is on the slide due to climate change,” stresses the bear. “Me and my ilk are like canaries in the coal mine. But by-God we’re not the […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:22 pm, October 31st, 2008 - 34 comments
Some great political theatre from Greenpeace yesterday. A bunch of climate activists got up at the crack of dawn, plastered ready-made lawn around the outside of John Key’s electorate office, then put up some wee pine trees and stumps alongside a billboard saying ‘Would John solve this climate crime?’ Looks like a couple of them […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:41 pm, October 21st, 2008 - 23 comments
The National Party has today been forced to clarify its policy for more public-private partnerships in transport after an embarrassing leaked photograph found its way onto several online internet ‘blogs’. In response to the photo (below), John Key has scheduled a press conference where he is expected to formally announce a policy to lease public […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, October 18th, 2008 - 64 comments
We live on a finite planet. We can’t just keep adding 75 million people a year to the human population while also increasing the average resource consumption per person without collapsing the biological systems that support us. Current projections have the world population rising another 2-2.5 billion in the next 40 years to peak around […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, October 14th, 2008 - 90 comments
National’s Nick Smith has announced that they would cancel the $1 billion fund to insulate New Zealand houses, which the Greens won as part of the Emissions Trading Scheme. This massive programme would improve energy efficiency, create warmer, healthier homes and would provide useful employment during the downturn. A study, ironically carried out under National and mentioned to me […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, October 9th, 2008 - 43 comments
The Greens have announced that they will choose their preferred coalition partner based on their commitment to 12 criteria. I’ll just look at 5 (not that the others are less important, just space): reduce New Zealand’s oil dependence and climate change emissions; – senior Nats don’t even think climate change is happening and the Party […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:55 pm, September 30th, 2008 - 24 comments
The RMA is a quick and cheap process in the vast majority of cases, and it is regarded as a world-leading piece of legislation. Few consent applications are refused or appealed. Reforms of the RMA over the years have made it more efficient. The studies show that the delays that do happen in consents being […]
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, September 26th, 2008 - 42 comments
We all knew New Zealand was in recession in the first six months of this year. The official figures have confirmed this. The surprise though is on the upside. The consensus had been that the economy had shrunk 0.5% in the quarter. In fact, it was 0.2%. Remember that this figure occurred during the height of […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, September 25th, 2008 - 23 comments
Incredibly, leading rightwingers including John Key, Maurice Williamson, Lockwood Smith, Rodney Hide, and Roger Kerr still don’t accept the overwhelming evidence for climate change. A cynic would say that’s just because it’s in their interests to engage in this wishful thinking. But maybe that’s too harsh, maybe they’ve just been suckered in by sophisicated marketing, like this: [hattip […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:55 pm, September 9th, 2008 - 48 comments
Boosting their green credentials is not proving as straightforward as National would like, as this video that’s doing the rounds shows.
Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, September 9th, 2008 - 58 comments
God, another leak from National, this time their research, science and technology policy. From Mallard’s press release: “Mr Key should not only be embarrassed, he should be very worried about the shambolic show he is running. Contrary to his desperate claims last week, I did not find any of these policies in any café. Or […]
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