Brian Gaynor: What is the future of television?

What is the future of television? Will television experience a similar dramatic downturn in revenue as the newspaper, music and book retailing sectors?

Television’s future is in the spotlight following the publication of Alan Wolk’s book “Over the Top: How the internet is (slowly but surely) changing the television industry” and the release of Television New Zealand’s 2015 annual report.

Mike Butler: Opera House could be used as-is

The life risk of the Hawke’s Bay Opera House is very low and there is no legal requirement to leave the building empty so it could be used now, risk specialist Ian Harrison said on Monday.

Mr Harrison, who is chair of Evidence Based Seismic Strengthening, addressed more than 70 people at the Havelock North Function Centre.

Mike Butler: Nursing the Parihaka grudge

The Catholic Church this year used a song by Tim Finn and Herbs to teach forgiveness and reconciliation in its schools to mark November 5 as Parihaka day. But church leaders do not see that Parihaka is rooted in staunch opposition to white settlement.

November 5, 1881, was the day that government troops evicted 1600 people from a village built on confiscated land between Mount Taranaki and the Tasman Sea.

Mike Butler: Same-sex marriage two years on

The demand for same-sex marriages by New Zealand residents has decreased by over 10 percent over the past year while traditional marriage has slightly increased in the same time period, according to statistics released this week.

Civil Unions and Marriages: September 2015 quarter shows that there were 19,659 traditional marriages, up from 19,266, while there were 450 same-sex marriages, down from 504. (1)

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Syria – Putin’s geopolitical coup

It’s the stuff of an Orwellian political satire. 

A sovereign nation is faced with a massive insurrection that is largely orchestrated by hostile outside forces who bring in thousands of foreign fighters. Third parties who don’t like the government of that nation arm and train other rebel groups but they also feel threatened by the principal usurper, so those rebels are supposed to take on both at once.

Mike Butler: Gisborne resource co-governance

The Gisborne District Council became latest local authority to adopt a co-governance arrangement with local tribe Ngati Porou on notified resource consent applications, on planning documents, and on private plan changes.

The agreement between Te Runanganui o Ngati Porou, a trustee company, and the Gisborne District Council, passed at a council meeting October 8, includes heavily criticised aspects of co-governance involving tribal appointees with full voting rights.

Matt Ridley from the UK: The benefits of carbon dioxide

France’s leading television weather forecaster, Philippe Verdier, was taken off air last week for writing that there are “positive consequences” of climate change. Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of mathematical physics and astrophysics at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, declared last week that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are “enormously beneficial”. Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, said in a lecture last week that we should “celebrate carbon dioxide”.

Are these three prominent but very different people right?

Richard Rahn from Cato: Destroying the Economy in Order to Save It

 

If  one phrase encapsulated the Vietnam War, it was this: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Those in the political class in Washington have learned nothing, but perhaps more accurately, many don’t care if their policy proposals and actions cause more misery than benefit.

On Sept. 29, Congress held a hearing on the rules proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would likely destroy much of the small-dollar loan industry and drive many low-income and poor credit-risk people into the arms of loan sharks.

Bruce Moon: Rangiaowhia incident

As long ago as 1815, J L Nicholas observed that "amongst the moral vices to which many of the New Zealanders are prone, may be reckoned the odious practice of lying, in which they too frequently indulge ... [it is]seldom of a harmless nature ... to serve their own interested purposes".[i]

There is much evidence to show that today, two hundred years later, the same practice continues.  The Tainui tribes are one such source, a 2014 example under the heading "The Latest Tainui news from Eraka's Blog" being the following.

Mike Butler: Keep the flag flying

A country’s flag is not a branding logo to be changed every generation, according to publisher John McLean in his 20-page booklet titled Keep the flag flying.

McLean, who has written several books on New Zealand history and was an officer with the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve, is adamant that a country’s flag is an enduring symbol of an enduring nation.

Gerry Eckhoff: Climate Change Lecture

The recent lecture by Sir Geoffrey Palmer on climate change held at Otago University does highlight some rather interesting issues. It also appears that scorn and derision inevitably follow a question from any intrepid soul brave enough challenge the latest circulating theory on climate change.

The venerable Sir Geoffrey is something of an authority on NZ constitutional law and related legal matters. It is a rather heroic assumption however that his status within the legal profession qualifies him to deliver an address at the University as any sort of authority on the environmental science of climate change.

Matt Ridley from the UK: Some policies to fight climate change have done more harm than good

The Volkswagen testing scandal exposes rotten corruption at the core of regulation. Far from ushering in a brave new world of cleaner air, the technologies adopted by European car makers, driven by policy makers in Brussels, have been killing thousands of people a year through an obsession with lowering emissions of harmless carbon dioxide, at the expense of creating higher emissions of harmful nitrogen oxides.

There is a lesson here that goes much wider than the car industry, the clean-air debate and even the regulation of business. The scandal is a symptom of the political world’s obsession with directing and commanding change, rather than encouraging it to evolve.

Karl du Fresne: A light-bulb moment in Arkaroola

Years ago, I watched a rugby league test on TV in a remote tourist spot in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The match was between the Kiwis and the Wallabies and I suspect I was the only New Zealander among the 20 or so people in the TV lounge.

When the Kiwis scored, I couldn’t help letting out a triumphant whoop. It was probably not a smart thing to do.

Lindsay Mitchell: How much CYF resource is wasted?

New data shows a significant drop in substantiated findings of child abuse:

Karl du Fresne: At least he's consistently barmy

Jeremy Corbyn, the recently elected leader of the British Labour Party, has been described as a throwback to 1970s-style socialism. He even looks like one, his face being adorned with what one commentator described as a 1960s political beard.  

You could describe him as the accidental leader. When his name was put forward, few people took his bid seriously. His 32 years in Parliament were distinguished only by his record of voting against his own party whenever it deviated from cloth-cap leftist orthodoxy.

Matt Ridley from the UK: How to cure old age itself

Squeezed between falling birth rates and better healthcare, the world population is getting rapidly older. Learning how to deal with that is one of the great challenges of this century. The World Health Organisation has just produced a report on the implications of an ageing population, which — inadvertently — reveals a dismal fatalism we share about the illnesses of old age: that they will always be inevitable.

This could soon be wrong. A new book, The Telomerase Revolution, published in America this week by the doctor and medical researcher Michael Fossel, argues that we now understand enough about the fundamental cause of ageing to be confident that we will eventually be able to reverse it. This would mean curing diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease and osteoporosis, rather than coping with them or treating their symptoms.

Brian Gaynor: How KiwiSavers react to a market downturn

There have been a large number of letters in the media over recent weeks from concerned KiwiSaver investors. These investors are worried about the downturn in the world’s equity markets and the impact this will have on their portfolios.

Comments include; “we are a bit concerned we’ve bitten off more risk than we can chew”, “we have some concern about our KiwiSaver accounts”, “why would I not change to a lower-risk fund now, before the market truly takes a beating?” and we want “the flexibility to move into cash quickly when the market takes a dive”.

Rick Caddick: Rates - the Elephant in the Room

Criticism of the property based rating system has become more intense in recent times, as rate demands have outstripped the cost of living, wage increases, and inflation.  But criticism of the system dates back to the 1930s. 

The late Sir Ross Jansen, probably New Zealand’s most experienced and knowledgeable authority on local government, for a long time advocated for the abolition of rates, which he described as “antiquated – long past their use-by date – unfair and unpopular, hurting the elderly and those families on low incomes.”

Lindsay Mitchell: Paying out benefit-liability $ to Tuhoe

MSD has released a commissioned report about decentralising welfare to Tuhoe.

"Tūhoe is a relatively young population with high levels of unemployment, welfare dependency and low incomes....

In 2011 the Crown entered into a relationship agreement with Tūhoe in which it acknowledged the mana motuhake of Tūhoe and its aspirations to self-govern. Tūhoe have their  aspirations to become independent of the Government, generate its own revenue and become self-sustaining. MSD has asked whether or not it is feasible to transfer a portion of the Crown’s liability to Tūhoe."

Richard Rahn from the Cato Institute: Hillarynomics

If Hillary Clinton were to be elected president, what economic policies would she propose and what would be the effect on the economy? To try to get an answer, I have looked at her statements, her campaign website, and her Senate record.

Mrs. Clinton has recognized the major economic problem of slow growth and stagnant incomes, and her economic platform is called, “A plan to raise American incomes.”