Dave Witherow: Power Pressure

There was a time when we used to be rich – number three in the world pecking order. Now, at number 63, and sinking fast, we are approaching the status of a third-world backwater. Poverty is widespread, and many New Zealanders are unable to afford the basics of existence. Electricity, for example – which used to cheap, is now so expensive that in the last year alone some 20,000 households had their power cut off at least once – despite government subsidies which last winter topped half a billion dollars. People are taking out loans to pay their power bills, sinking deeper into debt, while the power companies, (which we used to own) rack up about four billion profit per annum.

Dave Witherow: More Power To Somebody’s Elbow

Years ago – further back than most of us can remember – electricity in New Zealand was produced by power-stations designed and built by engineers employed by agencies of the government, national and local.

This arrangement, which lasted for about a century, seemed to work tolerably well. Power, distributed all over the country, was affordable, and apart from the odd dry year, generally reliable.

Dave Witherow: Brave New World

The past five years have been quite a tonic. So much has changed. So much has vanished: our notions of citizenship, democratic freedom, the limits of authority, our identity as a nation.

This transformation began long ago and grew slowly – sufficiently slowly that most people, if they noticed it at all, were inclined to believe that it wasn’t all bad. What, if you thought about it, could be very wrong with a general loosening of restrictions inherited from earlier and less enlightened times? Why put up with custom and tradition, just because they were customary and traditional?

Dave Witherow: Treaty weather

 Democracy, as a prescription for society, is all or nothing. It can’t be diluted, apportioned...

Things are getting a little heated. Simple propositions that, not long ago, would have been understood, are no longer. We see this every day and we saw it recently in Wellington in front of the Beehive, being demonstrated by a large number of people.

It is now obviously a waste of time trying to explain, or even discuss, the contentious Treaty, and its alleged Principles. There are no Principles. There never were any — and despite the well-paid sophistries of the country’s “top lawyers”, there still aren’t.

Dave Witherow: What’s Next?

Once, in a sporadically rational past, evidence mattered. It might be hidden  - for a while, or forever, (how would we know?). It might be falsified, slanted, contentious, or so obviously convincing there could be no further argument. But nonetheless, and by fairly widespread consensus, the facts usually mattered.

It would be hard, I think, to make that case now. What we think, these days, no longer needs a backing of evidence. Opinions are everything, and the facts, where they conflict with our preferred point of view, may be ignored at no cost to our credibility or reputation.

Dave Witherow: Occurrences

We seem to have more problems than usual these days. Here are just a few of them, briefly summarised.

 Climate Change - Global Warming. 

 The climate has always been changing, and there is little evidence  that human activities are more than marginally involved. We are told there is consensus, but in fact many scientists conclude that the climate panic is no more than a hoax, foisted on a gullible, misinformed public, who are thereby being closed out of cheap food and energy, normal means of travel, and affordable housing.  Their rulers, however - Bill Gates and Al Gore and Klaus Schwab and the rest of them – do not propose to share this new lifestyle.

 The whole field is complex, far beyond any thumbnail analysis, but read “Unsettled”, by Steven Koonin, or see Ian Plimer (Youtube), for alternative viewpoints on this orchestrated fraud.

Dave Witherow: Medical Initiatives

Is private enterprise a lost cause these days?  Sometimes it seems so – especially since the Jacinda junta scuppered so many small businesses during the late great Covid panic. And it’s no better now, with half the country on some kind of benefit and the best brains moving to Australia.

Years ago, before New Zealand became a lefty paradise, I thought of opening a pub. Why not? Pubs are civilized places – bastions of   intelligence and good-humour, and, of course, private enterprise. And and since I was already spending a lot of my time in pubs I thought why not combine pleasure with the useful bonus of an income? But between breath-testing, random-stopping, and the demonization of the drinking classes, I decided there was no future in that.

Dave Witherow: Retrospect

What happened to the Great Pandemic? Not long ago we were all going to die; we were at war with a lethal virus. And now, voila, nothing to worry about, nothing at all to be seen. And, most remarkable of all, no media curiosity as to whether all the excitement was warranted.

This, of course, has become standard practice in what was once New Zealand, where cock-ups blow away like the morning mist – political cock-ups especially. And so, as John Cleese used to say in another context: “Don’t mention ze vorr”.

Dave Witherow: Here Is The News

Doctor Bloomfield, our Voice of Science, has announced he is retiring.

The job as been onerous, he says, and he is looking forward to a more relaxing life and fresh opportunities as an “influencer”.

 Some of us – a small, warped, scientifically-illiterate minority, no doubt – tend to think that Dr Bloomfield has done more than enough influencing already. And not just influencing, which, after all, leaves a bit of wiggle-room for the poor sod being influenced. Coercing, actually, would be a more accurate word for what Dr Bloomfield has been up to. Get injected, show your papers – Herr Doktor Bloomfeld knows all about that.

Dave Witherow: Confederacy of Dunces

Just when you think we have reached peak lunacy, it gets worse. The other day, for example, we had Prof Michael Baker, Otago University’s pre-eminent Doomster, advising us yet again that things are looking grim. The virus is not done yet, he thinks, and until Big Pharma comes up with new gene-bending elixirs we are still seriously in the cactus. There is too much complacency abroad, says the Prof, and the rules need tightening again. We must be forced to become “mask-wearing society”.

Yes Michael, yes. We heard it all the first time. We believed the images of catastrophe in Wuhan. People falling over in the streets and being welded into their apartments. We believed you and Bloomfield and Hipkins. We swallowed everything you told us. We were flattening the curve and leading the world. We were the doughty team of five million who, by “following the Science”, would eliminate the virus. Except, of course, that we didn’t. The virus is back, spreading everywhere and infecting everyone.

The Science – or your version of it anyway - turned out to be a crock.

Dave Witherow: Peace In Our Time

The American collapse in Afghanistan has provoked some urgent discussion on the current state of Western military competence. Are our armies fit for purpose? Will they ever again win a war? Or has armed force become obsolete in the world we now see evolving?

Here in New Zealand, of course, these questions are more or less moot. Our participation in Afghanistan was less than enthusiastic, and we have been well ahead of the pack in defusing the legacy of organized violence still associated with armies. Our recalcitrance runs deep, and I remember an auspicious Anzac Day, many years ago, when Prime Minister Helen Clark banned the carrying of real rifles by Army Cadets at memorial ceremonies. Guns, Helen reckoned, might give these impressionable young men - they were nearly all men then - the wrong idea.

Dave Witherow: Crime and Punishment

New Zealand, by international standards, has always had a very low crime-rate. We rank as the second-safest country in the world, according to the Global Peace Index, and for the last twenty years or more our crime-rate has been trending generally downward. Criminal offenses involving firearms are especially rare, amounting  to less than one percent.

Our Police, in keeping with this relatively benign environment, have traditionally been unarmed, and throughout the twentieth century they themselves have argued that the routine carrying of weapons, rather than affording protection, might well provoke the criminals to respond in kind. A glance at the U.S. statistics strongly reinforces this conclusion.

NZCPR Weekly: Muzzling Free Expression

Dear NZCPR Reader,   

This week we reaffirm the crucial importance of the freedom of expression to a society and we reflect on the actions of Australian Rugby in sacking Israel Folau; our NZCPR Guest Commentator Dave Witherow examines press freedom and how the media is increasingly restricting the free expression of readers; and our poll asks whether you believe Australian Rugby should have sacked Israel Folau.

*To read the newsletter click HERE.
*To register for the NZCPR Weekly mailing list, click HERE.  

Dave Witherow: Immigration Deserves Debate

Our immigration policies are a sad joke, with a new record of 130,000 arrivals in the year to March. During the same period there were about 48,000 departures, giving a net gain of some 80,000 people. And since many of the leavers will undoubtedly return in due course, we are in effect accommodating a new Dunedin-sized city every year. (The March arrivals alone, at 6,100, amount to a medium-sized town).

There has never been any useful debate about this - about the desirability of such an unprecedented influx, or whether, even on the narrowest of economic terms, it delivers any benefit. The Green Party, notwithstanding the environmental insanity of unrestricted immigration, now raises no objections, and within our mainstream media, where an addled devotion to diversity trumps all else, serious discussion is unwelcome. Anyone attempting to ask awkward questions is immediately branded a racist.

Dave Witherow: Jabberwocky

For more than a year our state broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, has concealed the fact that it is engaged in a campaign to “change the linguistic landscape”. This radical new mission was far from voluntary. It was imposed from above, forced upon a supine RNZ staff following amendments to the Maori Language Act in 2016.

Few New Zealanders were aware that one of their most trusted institutions had been so fundamentally subverted, and no-one at RNZ, it would seem, thought fit to tell them (or even, as many of us might have hoped - to protest). But no, they just quietly went along - some of them minimally and probably reluctantly, but others with servile enthusiasm.

Gerry Eckhoff: Response to the Dave Witherow column in the Otago Daily Times

At first glance it would seem that the Otago Daily Times, Arthur Wellesley and the writer of a recent and contentious column in the ODT - Dave Witherow, do not have all that much in common. 

The connection is the famous statement of Arthur Wellesley - better known as the Duke of Wellington or the Iron Duke who famously said – “publish and be damned”. 

The Duke was alleged to be having an affair with a “scarlet women” and was subject to a blackmail attempt in return for their silence. The allegations were published. The Duke went on to become Prime Minister despite the English being scandalized.