Bob Edlin: There has been lots of counting the costs of opening new library....

There has been lots of counting the costs of opening new library – but has anyone counted the books?

Wellington’s newly refurbished central library has cost heaps. As well as building costs (estimated at $217.6 million in an RNZ report last September), there have been Maori blessing costs, opening ceremony costs, and the costs of “a glitzy website”.

The website, The Post reports, cost nearly $600,000, pushing the costs associated with the library opening to more than $800,000.

Sallust: How Wokeism Is Destroying the West

By the late 3rd century AD, the Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self. Beleaguered by mass migration and invasions across its frontiers, vast resources had been poured into fighting off the invaders, while at the same time, endless civil wars had created an ongoing crisis of leadership. Rampant inflation had destroyed the currency. The solution came in the form of a vastly more complex state under the emperor Diocletian (AD 284–305). A ballooning bureaucracy presided over a welter of new laws that, among others, tried to fix prices, lock workers into their occupations and prevent movement, while levying crippling taxes.

Clive Bibby: Western Conservative Values versus Wokeism

Western conservative values are on a comeback and Wokeism is being destroyed in the process.

I have always considered myself to be a progressive conservative.

Before my “Woke” opponents, while lying in wait for something they can criticise and choke on their muesli, let me explain what l mean by that apparent contradictory term.

Brendan O'Neill, The Maoist cruelty behind the trans crusade

The ousting of a 90-year-old charity worker for querying preferred pronouns is a new low for woke.

Sometimes the hilarity of woke can blind us to its brutality. We lose ourselves in ‘wokeness gone mad’ stories and lose sight of how cruel wokeness can be. We’re so busy getting a kick from viral clips of some privileged pink-haired kid wailing at work because he was referred to as ‘him’ rather than ‘them’ that we forget what a baleful impact this cranky ideology can have on real people’s lives. The chilling case of the Californian charity worker Fran Itkoff should bring us crashing back down to Earth. It’s hard to think of any recent cancellation as brutish and unforgiving as this one. Mirthful it is not.

Chris Trotter: Going For Broke With Woke.

What are we to make of Chris Hipkins speech “Working With Others”? Ostensibly about unity, the Prime Minister’s address homes in on the two issues which, for the last three years, have divided New Zealanders the most – Ethnicity and Gender. For good measure, he has also ruled out leading Labour into any kind of coalition agreement with NZ First. Taken in its entirety, Hipkins’ speech has much less to say about unity than it does about refusing to work with anyone who declines to embrace Labour’s radical social agenda. That being the case, it would have been more honest to entitle his address: “Going For Broke With Woke”.

Chris Trotter: Debating Debating.

That Television New Zealand saw fit to run a news item on the subject of political debate tells us something. Unfortunately, it is that we have a very big problem on our hands.

A generation has grown to adulthood for whom the idea that all important issues have at least two sides has acquired a counterintuitive aspect. It is a generation raised to believe that all the great questions that formerly divided society have been resolved.

Clive Bibby: Taking Our Country Back

A recent racially charged outburst from one of our local Maori councillors has provoked a reaction that l wouldn’t have thought possible given the support for the woke movements that have become entrenched in our society as well as in other leading democracies throughout the world.

I had almost given up hope that we would ever return to a situation where people were elected based on merit rather than adherence to an ideological preference.

In the United States in particular we have seen a dramatic decline in opportunities for free speech and an increase in an environment that encourages division based on a distorted view of human rights. It has created a society where freedom of expression is controlled by those in government and supported by a main stream media that has given up any pretence of reporting the truth.

Ani O'Brien: Is the woke reign of terror coming to an end?

The howls of protest can be heard reverberating around the echo chambers of the internet as the world’s second richest man confirmed his purchase of Twitter this morning. Reports from inside the company tell of chaotic discontent as those who have until now been tasked with censoring and banishing the Wrongthinkers™ from the site realise that their reign of terror may be coming to an end.

To paraphrase a tweet I read this morning: Twitter under Elon Musk will not be perfect and will no doubt come with its own issues, however, in my opinion, it is preferable to Twitter under the ideological San Fran stasi. If Musk remains committed to the free speech values he has thus far espoused we will be in a much better place.

Karl du Fresne: Why the woke Left is so rattled by Camp Freedom

It’s been fascinating over the past couple of weeks to observe the intellectual contortions of people who forcefully uphold the right to protest, just as long as those ghastly lowlifes on the other side don’t do it.

Veteran old-school leftist Don Franks deftly skewered the hypocrites in a poem published on this blog, but it hasn’t deterred them from continuing to recoil in disgust at the sight of the “rabble” (a word suddenly much favoured by the illiberal Left, as opposed to those like Franks who believe in free speech) on the lawns outside Parliament.

There’s an unmistakeable note of panic in the posturing of the woke Left. They suddenly realise they no longer control the public debate and are wildly lashing out at the scruffy mob that usurped their right to make a nuisance of themselves.  How dare they!

Paul A. Nuttall: The Queen of Woke

As she backs Churchill’s cancellation, it’s time to ask: is Queen of Woke Jacinda Ardern the world’s most insufferable leader?

The achingly right-on New Zealand premier says she doesn’t care about parliament’s decision to remove a portrait of the wartime leader. If there’s a woke cause, you can guarantee Ardern will jump on it, like an overgrown student.

New Zealand’s parliament has taken the extraordinary decision to remove a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill from its public gallery. As a result, he will now be hidden away from the public like some shameful reminder of the past. Not glorious, as he once was, but an embarrassment who is out of kilter with ‘modern day’ opinions and attitudes.

Clive Bibby: The "WOKE" Arsenal

Modern day wars are more likely to be fought on battlefields where the spoils of victory are the hearts, minds and wallets of those who make up the numbers.

In spite of the aggressive actions of those rogue states that want to supplant our values and traditions with their own ideological thinking and lifestyles, there appears little appetite amongst even those who have the ability to push back for an “all out” military conflict.

The reason for this reluctance is understandable given the shear destructive power of the world’s arsenals and the knowledge that the end result would probably render the surviving planet uninhabitable.

Chris Trotter: The Political Economy Of Shock-Jockery.

Last week, Sean Plunket was awarded the DCM. Mere days after John Banks, standing-in for his fellow right-wing broadcaster, Peter Williams, was driven from Magic Talk Radio’s microphones, Plunket was abruptly advised that his services as the station’s “Magic Afternoons” host were no longer required. 

Magic Talk’s decision was made amidst the furore created by Banks’ failure to fight on-air racism with sufficient zeal, and the subsequent threats from its major advertisers to withdraw their support. Did the prospect of the right-wing contrarian’s imminent return prompt at least one of those major advertisers to issue Magic Talk’s proprietor, MediaWorks, with an ultimatum? Something along the lines of: “If Plunket stays, we go”?