Ross Meurant: Evolution of Politics

Darwin was damned for his version of Evolution.

Feel free to damn me for my version of Political evolution.

Rt Hon Winston Peters appears to have come up with a match winning serve.

Ross Meurant: Turmoil in Tanzania Tranquility in Cameroons.

Recent elections in Tanzania seem to have produced a bit of a mess.

Political opposition manifests in riots, many persons killed, incarcerations and opponents blocked from standing as candidates in elections. (1)

Cameroon sits on a powder keg. (2)

Ross Meurant: In Love with AI?

AI, short for Artificial Intelligence, is computer systems or machines that can perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, decision-making, and processing data to recognize patterns and gain insights. (1)

Hatched mid 1950s in the UK to the point now where AI poses a major threat to employment of humans, my first question was, “Follow the Money”. That is, who owns this evolving beast?

Ross Meurant: What Ever Her Faults

Whatever the faults of their mother precipitating Tom Phillips abduction of their children and subsequent estrangement from their peer group, natural evolution through 4, now lost years, there was no justification for Tom Phillips to have done what he did.

There were other options Tom Phillips could have taken.

Ross Meurant: Spot the Difference - or the Similarity

Drug Cartels in Central & South America, have massive influence on who stays alive and who dies. Anyone who stands against or interferes in the commercial operations of suppling drugs to the major market i.e. America, is in serious danger of death. Such is the power of fear imposed on populations where these parasitic elements operate with virtual impunity.

The latest example being Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay, a 39-year-old senator who remains in intensive care after he was shot three times - twice in the head - at a campaign event in the capital, Bogotá.

Ross Meurant: Organised Crime - Bring Back Buck!

According to the “experts”, Organise Crime (OC) is out of control in New Zealand. (1)

One explanation for this claim lies at the doorstep of the Courts failing to impose deterrent sentences. Another has been the myopic belief that using police resources to issue traffic infringement notices (especially in Fendalton, Karori and Remuera where transgressors pay the fines and don’t get out of the car and smash the cop), rather than stakeouts at potential ram raid sites, is the most efficacious form deployment. (2)

Ross Meurant: For Justice To Be Served

Gina Lollobrigida once said: “We are all born to die, the difference is the intensity with which we choose to live.”

Machiavelli said: “Fortune (luck) rules only half a man’s life; The other half being their will.”

Born equal as we may be, it’s how one performs as one wanders through this odyssey called life, that determines our fate.

Ross Meurant: Banks Have a Liability - KYC

A financial planner defrauded almost $4.5 million from his former partner, cousins and primary school friends to fund a “voracious” gambling addiction that betting companies fed with free tickets, client managers and reminders to his phone.

This happened in Australia.(1)

Ross Meurant: Guilty Before Found Guilty and Guilty After Found Not Guilty

If ever there was a shocking travesty of justice, it was Rt Hon Luxon’s ill-advised comment of, “ill-advised”, to Hon David Seymour, relating to the Epsom MP’s letter to Dr Polkinghorne. (1)(2)

A fundamental pillar of New Zealand’s system of justice, predicated on the 1215 Magna Carta is:

We are all innocent until proven Guilty.

Polkinghorne was found Not Guilty.

Ross Meurant: Performance Paramount in the Jungle

I applaud the Operational Deployments, undertaken by the NZ Police, since Richard Chambers was appointed to the position of Commissioner of Police.

Across the front-line, breakers of the law, who somehow avoided police intervention during the rule of Commissioner Coster, are now regularly being brought before the Courts.

Ross Meurant: No Happiness is the Enemy

For some time now, media reports in our nearest and most valuable neighbour, Australia, have been reporting on elevated antisemitic pro Palestine tensions.  Melbourne in particular.

Most recently, Breakingviews has carried opinions lauding Netanyahu’s response to Lebanon based Hamas-led militant groups surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which involved a rocket barrage and a few thousand militants breaching the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking Israeli civilian communities and military bases.

Ross Meurant: 2025 Resolution - Time for Name Changes

A glance at a map of New Zealand will demonstrate about 80% of “places”, are Māori names.

In the western sector of the parliamentary electorate (Hobson), I once served as MP for 9 years, at a glance, I counted 6 English named places and over 30 Māori, between Hokianga and Kaipara Harbour entrances.   This ratio appears similar across the country.  

Ross Meurant: Message to Santa - All I want for Christmas is …Happiness.

In this Odessey we call life; what path; which road do we take?

Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it’s the courage to continue that counts,’ extolled Sir Winston Churchill.

Euripides said: ‘I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.’

My family coat of arms embraces the Machiavelli dictum: “Virtu et Fortuna”.

Yet, for they who strive, be it from helot to bourgeois, or those born to the Manor (where bequeathments from they who before them strived, are often squandered), debt is a companion for life – an albatross around one’s neck.

Ross Meurant: Finding Fraudsters in Crypto Currencies

Don’t call them scammers.  They are criminal fraudsters.

National (NZ government coalition partner) have decided to appoint an “Anti-Scam” Minister Mr Bayly.  Ironically, on a radio platform 19 Nov 2024, Hon Bayly appeared to “absolve” social media from any liability for scamming.  

Recently, Australian banks have begun to shut out crypto currencies (1) (2) which appears to be a policy in conflict with the electioneering pledges of President elect Donald Trump.

Ross Meurant: ‘History can be a Bitch’ – once said Titewhai Harawira

February 28, 2021, I penned my first blog for Dr Muriel Newman’s platform: A Step Too Far (1)    T’was but only last week, 3 years plus, that I vowed, not to blog again. I felt I was saying versions of the same thing.

November 14, 2024, and atrocity in the Hallowed Halls of New Zealand’s Parliament, however, was another, Step Too Far.

As Titewhai Harawira once said, ‘History can be a Bitch’, I say, “It sure can.”

Ross Meurant: End of the Rainbow

As a kid I was told, that at the end of the rainbow, there was a pot of gold.

In 1980 Rt Hon Rob Muldoon (as he was then) responding to Bob Jones (as he was then), demonstrated astonishing prescience, when he said that by 2030 the population of NZ (which at the time was 3 million) would be 2 million. (1)

He went on to describe “a future world in which national barriers were virtually non-existent, in which trade and people flowed freely” and the huge cities which at the time were generally regarded as “dangerous and unpleasant, would instead become meccas of excitement”, whereas NZ would become, “a quiet retreat, its youth and its vitally creative people constantly moving abroad, particularly to Australia”.

Ross Meurant: Economic Formulas for Failure

Eight Hundred jobs to go – in Timaru – meat works.(1)

Two hundred jobs to go – Ruapehu – timber mills.(2)

Shop closures and job losses in Auckland CBD.(3)(4)

Hundreds of jobs to be axed in New Zealand media restructure.(5)

The collateral impacts of these job losses, runs deep affecting thousands of New Zealanders.

Fear not.  The Official Cash Rate tinkering has Interest rates dropping.

Yeah, right mate. 

Ross Meurant: Law v Lore

Is Civil War a real possibility in New Zealand?

Auckland University’s introduction of a mandatory paper in Māori, has certainly caught the attention of a tranche of New Zealander’s who appeared to have previously tolerated persistent Māori claims for more and more of the Land of the Long Black Cloud.

Such an intrusion impacts on the core values and beliefs of us all.

Ross Meurant: Rugby Union v The Dollar

Once upon a time, when chaps played rugger for the love of the game - not the dollar, and the household names of players could be recognised and pronounced, the game united our Nation.

Saturday after the game, rugby clubs across this once Long White Cloud provided sanctuary, where a culture was nurtured; where club protocols of behaviour substituted for police and many a romance was kindled - be it all against a goal post as twilight fell.

Ross Meurant: What is Sovereignty? What is Monarch?

Recent television coverage of the crowning of the Queen of Tainui, devoid as it was of rantings by pseudo radical Māori leaders who plagued earlier television coverage of the farewell to the deceased King, was refreshing.

Yet, within a short passage of time beyond the boundaries of the Royal Palace, utterances by self-assessed “influencers”, repeatedly referred to the new Queen as, Sovereign and Monarch.