JD: An Analysis of TOP’s Taxes

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Amid the current MSM hoopla about TOP, momentarily muted as the press pack rushes off to dig up dirt on Paul Henry and Stuart Nash, there is one key TOP policy winning voter attention that is seldom mentioned.

What’s driving TOP in the polls has nothing to do with them being ‘centrists’, offering a ‘measured alternative’ to Labour or National and claiming to be willing to work with either of them, it is simply that TOP are offering free money, and who can resist that?

JD: Let Us First Establish the Basic Facts

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Time to stop fawning over TOP as the bright young things of New Zealand politics and take a look at how much of a threat they pose to the peace of mind, financial wellbeing and, by extension, the health of every Kiwi pensioner.

TOP makes several claims including:

JD: The Climate Mythology and Bias

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

With Chlöe Swarbrick’s ‘Watermelon Party’ in the news, pushing the current oil price shock as another reason to decarbonise before the apocalypse descends upon us, we should perhaps revisit the climate catastrophe narrative and establish its origins.

But first, for a perspective on the reality of the threat, let’s look at some of the claims that have been made and discredited since Al Gore kicked off the climate change industry in the 1980s.

JD: If 3% of My DNA Is Scandinavian, Am I Norwegian?

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

The 1961 census in New Zealand counted 167,086 people as Māori, using a criterion of at least 50 per cent Māori ancestry.

Then, in the 1986 census, the Labour Government, led by David Lange with Phil Goff as minister of statistics, introduced new rules allowing individuals to self-identify as Māori and, as a result, the recorded Māori population began to increase.

JD: Bias at the New Zealand Herald

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

All of this analysis led me to the question: Maybe the pro-government, anti-climate catastrophe people just don’t write letters? But if my own experience is anything to go by, that’s not true.

As an avid reader of and writer of (usually unpublished) letters to the New Zealand Herald opinions page, I have long had the feeling there is little balance when it comes to what gets printed and what doesn’t.

JD: Ngāi Tahu, Why So Many?

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

So where, in just 22 years, did these extra 35,000 Ngāi Tahu come from?

Some interesting numbers covering NZ’s most litigious tribe, the South Islanders of Ngāi Tahu. In 1840, the tribe was estimated to have around 2,500 members. However, by 2001 this number had grown to 40,000, meaning that every Ngāi Tahu female across every generation between 1840 and 2001 had given birth to at least four surviving infants, at least 50 per cent of whom were themselves female. This is unlikely, given the prevalence in Māori society of roromi, but not impossible. (Infanticide among Maori was usually sex-selective, with female infants the primary victims.)

JD: The Bell Tolls for NZ Investment

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

The Chloe clanger.

Probably one of the most damaging statements ever made by a
politician fell out of the mouth of Chloë Swarbrick recently in the Herald
Now channel. Paraphrasing, she said that because the Fast Track
legislation was “illegitimate”, the Greens, when in the next government,
will cancel all the mining consents issued under this law.

JD: GDP vs CO2

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Over the past 35 years, world GDP growth has been over 400 per cent in nominal terms, or 170 per cent when adjusted for inflation. Since GDP is another term for economic output, from services, transport, manufacturing and agriculture, all belching out CO2, we must be going to global warming hell in a handbasket right?

JD: We Want More

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Let’s start from this general premise: humanity is genetically programmed to want more.

To our ancient ancestors, the difference between no food in the cave and enough for one or several days’ supply was profound. Effectively a matter of life and death. More stuff to hand meant less need to venture out and less chance of succumbing to the many dangers lurking all around.

JD: The Lack of Trust in the MSM

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Philip Crump, soon to be appointed as a representative on NZME’s new editorial board, puts forward in ‘Cranmer’s Substack’ a number of reasons why trust in the mainstream media is declining:

JD: It Is a Public Service Defence Strategy

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Back in the day I ran one of the larger sales forces in Australasia in one of the most competitive of industries: Office Equipment. And if you think loan sharks, used-car salesmen and the parliamentary wing of Te Pāti Māori are the best exemplars of fanatical, self-interested aggression, you’ve never seen a pack of OE salespeople chasing down a photocopier order. But I digress.

JD: You Have to Feel Sorry for Tamihere

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

You have to feel sorry for John Tamihere, with his back to the wall and fighting for his life. Or at least for his multi-million-dollar lifestyle and the millions he controls through the Waipareira Trust and other entities.

And so he does what any of us would do: he plays every card he has in his hand as he pushes back against the Pākehā establishment that is so unfairly trying to ferret out the truth.

JD: Questions You Won’t Hear the MSM Asking Any Time Soon

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Question for Chloë Swarbrick:

Given that the Green Party has been infiltrated by a group of anti-semitic, keffiyeh-wearing supporters of the terrorist organisation Hamas and has shifted so far left as to be indistinguishable from a communist party, do you think there is now a place in NZ politics for a new, more centrist political party to return to grass roots with a primary focus on environmental issues?

JD: All of Us Are Equal

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

The challenge now is for the silent majority to stand up and display their support for proper equality in NZ.

Not being Māori myself but having married into NZ society I find the great majority of my closest relatives are. A diverse bunch, they lay claim to varying degrees of ethnicity, ranging from my partner who traces unadulterated Māori ancestry back for several generations to those at the other end of the spectrum whose claim seems based on little more than their grandmother having once passed a Māori in the street.

JD: Right...Orr Wrong

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

When I was a young shaver, I was taught a simple lesson to explain how inflation works. Imagine, if all the goods and services in the country are represented by a box of 100 apples and all the money in circulation is represented by 100 dollars, then each apple is worth one dollar.

JD: Looking at the Stats in Reality

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

Despite the protestations of those who wish to make political capital out of it, the average length of life among Māori has nothing to do with racism – systemic, endemic or otherwise.

My wife is ill. So much so that, between outpatient clinics and inpatient surgical wards, she has spent most of the past six weeks in and around the hospital.

So far, so unremarkable, given that this scenario plays out for many unfortunate families every year. But then we come to what, considering the current NZ political narrative, is remarkable.

JD: How the Parties of the Left Have Changed in Recent Years

Guest post on The Good Oil by JD

While woke progressives, schismatic racists and apocalyptic environmentalists rule the roost on the left, it is unlikely that the key voter demographic of the “working class” will support them in sufficient numbers to allow a return to power.

Labour, founded in NZ on the backs of the – primarily Pākehā – working classes, are now hopelessly in thrall to the identity politics of the middle-class chardonnay socialists and the colonisation apologists of academia.

JD: Which Will Beat Luxon’s Government?

JD writes on BFD as a Guest Post:

In the 18th century, economist Adam Smith advanced a theory often considered to be the basis of capitalism. When people work in pursuit of their own betterment and personal profit, the ‘invisible hand’ of the market creates the greatest good for the greatest number.

Since then socialist economists from Marx and Engels onwards have tried to deny this fundamental truth and advance the alternative idea that the state alone should drive the economy and level the playing field to the benefit of all.

JD: Climate Change Is Not the Biggest Threat

JD writes on BFD as a Guest Post:

The world has arrived at this brink of economic failure by believing there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Never mind climate change. There’s a much greater threat on the horizon: the existential threat of a runaway worldwide debt load spiralling into a ruinous default.

JD: The Ex-Pollies at the Trough

JD writes on BFD as a Guest Post:

When you look at the rewards our politicians reap, it is patently obvious to whom their service was, and is, rendered.

As the miasma thickens around the John Tamihere, Te Pāti Māori, collusion case I wondered how JT got those highly paid chief executive jobs at Waipareira and Whānau Ora, with his wife Awerangi similarly ensconced as CEO of both operations.