Penn Raine: UNexpected

Last week, much to my surprise, a senior UN official accused Hamas of interfering with humanitarian deliveries in Gaza. The report claimed that Hamas operatives forcibly entered World Food Program sites, assaulted aid workers and took supplies which were to have been distributed to Gazans who face serious shortages.

Penn Raine: Is the UN provoking Jew fatigue?

Fellow Breaking Views bloggers have thoughtfully responded to my recent opinion on the continued rise of anti-Jewish rhetoric and violence current in Western democracies.

They suggested that credit points for the Holocaust- Shoah - have largely been spent and that the UN’s alleged factual reporting on humanitarian issues in Gaza, and Israel’s alleged crimes would anyway use up any remaining global sympathy.

Penn Raine - Plus ça change: the rise and rise of antisemitism in the West.

During World War Two France deported 275, 000 Jewish people to the extermination camps. Three thousand returned.

The sanitised view is that the French boldly opposed these actions largely with the courage of the Resistance. The truth is that even before the occupying German force demanded that the deportation quotas be filled the Vichy government of the allegedly Free France had already drawn up its own plans for deportations.

Penn Raine: Northern Ireland finds out

The outbreak of fiery protest in Northern Ireland this week has been called by some commentators ‘muscle memory’. They mean that the anger of The Troubles has been efficiently repurposed to express Irish rage against the cultural and societal imposition of migrants for whom an attempted beheading in a suburban street is acceptable behaviour.

Penn Raine: Wait for it!

Wait for the howls of ‘Populism!’ when Britain’s red wall of Labour run councils crumbles as Farage’s Reform party marches over the ramparts, giggling as it goes.

No doubt there are similar wails, but of ‘Misogyny!’ and perhaps even ‘Racism!’ sounding around Wellington’s beltway and its bureaucracy’s dim corridors at Maiki Sherman’s announcement that she was stepping down because her position was ‘untenable’.

Penn Raine: Where are the spads when Chris Luxon needs them?

In the country formerly known as NZ there are no official spads or special advisors as there are in Britain.

The spad is an unelected position made by government ministers or local councils whose appointee will tell bosses what they want to hear and generally confirm all their prejudices. They are allegedly of a different stripe from the civil service which my sources amusingly describe as ‘neutral’ and unlikely to have political bias.

Penn Raine: How to make a martyr

Has it struck anyone else that US democrats and their global proxies who have been bending themselves out of shape blaming the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Trump in particular and social conservatives in general need to sign up for some serious PR webinars?

Their position is similar to the kid with all the Easter egg foil wrappers hidden under the bed and a chocolate-smeared mouth who burbles, ‘It wasn’t me, it was him!’

Penn Raine: Do RNZ feel ‘unsafe’ now?

It used to be that RNZ represented the grown ups in the room. Before I switched them off permanently I respected the presenters and their content as dependable sources of fact and analysis, put together by people more mature and astute than I. Just last week though we learn that RNZ are hurt and distressed at their ex-news boss’s ‘scathing’ report.

I’m just going to say it.

Penn Raine: Golden Child

Our friends have four adult children who joke about whose turn it is to be ‘golden child’. They judge this accolade on which of their lives and careers is currently most admired. The corollary to this is which of them could stuff up the most and avoid a proper telling off.

In our country these days there is a whole group of golden children who never get the level of ticking off that they deserve. So who are they?

Penn Raine: No woman, no cry

Last Tuesday Jonathan Ayling, of the Free Speech Union, met with the Assistant Commissioner of Police to discuss why a previous undertaking to cease Non-Criminal Hate Incident (NCHI) police training has been reneged on and is continuing despite there being no law to support it.

The outline of the extensive training manual can be found on the NZ Police home page (Advice and Services/Advice for victims/Hate motivated crime/The Weave). There is plenty in these pages to shock, not least the clarification of ‘hate/hostility’ which, according to NZ Police is the same as ‘bias/prejudice’. Notice ‘hate’ is equated with ‘bias’ which no dictionary would consider as synonymous but according to the police manual would allow mere negative feelings to be categorised as a stronger and more dangerous emotion.

Penn Raine: It’s not the economy, stupid

Clinton’s ‘90’s strategist James Carville must have resented how often his quip is ascribed to his boss, and worse, that he is ever only partially quoted. Like so many memorable pronouncements that come in threes, the rest of his 1992 successful campaign message was that the electorate cares about healthcare, and that ‘more of the same’ policies might not cut it.

Penn Raine: Cancelling Shakespeare

I wonder which of our cultural orthodoxies and customs our descendants will need to grovel over and apologise for hundreds of years from now. Will global social media behemoths be coughing up billions on reparations for the crippling wave of diminished self-esteem caused by online bullying? Will Big Pharma CEO’s be required to beg forgiveness for grooming millions of the world’s children in the belief that they were born with the wrong sets of genitalia?

Penn Raine: Party tonight at Mar A Lago!

One November afternoon in 2016 I came out of a three-hour meeting shocked to find that the world’s greatest power had elected the world’s most obnoxious man as its President.

I expected the USA to sink immediately beneath a tsunami of blood. I’m not exactly sure why, just that it seemed that the democratic process had slumped to the level of a TV game show. Of course, that that was before Ardern was elected.

I say I was shocked, but I was not surprised. It was obvious to anyone who listened to anything out of the States beside Oscar acceptance speeches, that John and Jane Doe wanted something done about the creep of the rust belt, the war on traditional values and the deluge of illegal migrants through its porous border.

Penn Raine: They’re listening to us

In a recent interview Mark Mitchell was asked about our police force having special lessons to recognise hate speech. The two examples the public has seen from the teaching module, ‘Kiwi not iwi’, and ‘There are only two genders’, give us an idea of the sinister direction of the forces lining up against wrong think.

Disaffected police whistle blowers who hold  the odd view that they would be more useful going after drug lords, fraudsters, and murderers, have said there also exists a ‘hate hub’ where people who have hurt feelings can lodge a complaint. Wrong speakers can then expect to have their social media accounts scrutinised, phone records sought and to be interviewed with a close focus on their use of pronouns.

Where this might go next is a mystery because there are no laws against offending people. Not yet.

Penn Raine: Give us a smile, darling.

Is the demand that women smile for men still a thing? Are females still instructed by strangers in the lift to ‘Cheer up, it might never happen,’? This pervasive requirement for women to display performative amiability had, I thought been largely swept away in the roiling waters of last century’s feminism.

That feminist struggle that today sees female students outnumbering men at our universities, notably at medical schools. That sees 38% of parliamentarians as women, the highest ever percentage since we were first admitted to the chamber in 1919. Ideally, I suppose this figure should be higher - if the job could be seen as estimable, which is moot.

Penn Raine: Goodbye Prof Blakely

You can’t really accuse the Coalition MPs of bad manners, especially in the case of the dismissal of Tony Blakely as the chair of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid 19 – Lessons Learned. He has been, to use The Herald’s  words ‘eased out’, rather than ‘sacked’ as some might have thought appropriate.

That Blakely was an Ardern appointment was problematic enough in terms of how bright a light would be shone on edicts surrounding Covid but that he was a friend of Bloomfields and a Government advisor on those same contentious edicts, suggested to most of us that he would experience difficulty in steering the inquiry to any conclusion other than NZs performance had been exemplary.

Penn Raine: Beware the dismemberment of the Kiwi bloke

When you’ve finished checking your FakeNews? app for the veracity of the Victorian Federal Government’s appointment of a Parliamentary Secretary to judge men’s behaviour you might still be in a disbelieving state of mind.

 

However, the appointment appears to be genuine.

‘Tim Richardson will become Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change, continuing the Allan Labor Government’s priority to make Victoria a safer place for women and children ….this is the first position of its kind in Australia – and will focus largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys’ and men’s attitudes towards women and building respectful relationships.’

Penn Raine: ‘A little learning…’

And how dangerous ‘a little is’ was displayed this week when Sean Plunkett and Michael Laws interviewed Victoria University’s Student Union President, Markail Parkinson and Salient editor, Henry Broadbent respectively on why the Free Speech Union’s debate on free speech had been postponed. The debate had sought to explore the role that our universities have in supporting, or not, free speech and was to have featured Jonathan Ayling , CEO of the Free Speech Union. It may yet not go ahead as the interview revealed that Ayling might be considering bringing up subjects from no-go areas of co-governance and trans-gender politics.

Penn Raine: What a load of rubbish!

Ignoring the Greens because they’re crazier than a crate of snakes is my default setting although it’s hard work failing to notice that their leaders jet en masse to COP, steal stuff probably made in sweatshops and appear to support slavery.

But it’s not just Green MP’s who need a good talking to - Auckland Council, I’m looking at you.

Penn Raine: Listen Up, Radio New Zealand

I’ve a lot of time for Stickman, Pak’nSave’s poster chappie, but wonder how he has resisted being dressed in a frock and rainbow scarf. Perhaps his Foodstuffs’ mum and dad took to heart how the Australian Woollies’ brand was vilified for snubbing Australia Day, and the subsequent defenestration of its CEO, Banducci. His attempts to paint a friendly face on the company whose shady majority shareholders are Blackrock and Vanguard by insisting chummily that he be known as ‘Brad’ did him little good. Although Ozzies had been peevish over Woolworth’s perceived price-gouging, it took Brad’s refusal to let them buy tacky plastic merch to celebrate their national day to persuade them to boycott the retailer.