New Zealand
Part II:Programmable Money
Two years ago the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Sir John Cunliffe, spoke the most sinister sentence I’d heard in a long while. The menace was unmistakable: “giving your children pocket money but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets.” This statement was offered in the context of Central Bank Digital Currencies. Let me explain...
E-Scooters: A Two Wheeled Burden?
Since approximately 2016 there has been a rapid increase in personal and for-hire electric scooters (e-scooters) in cities around the world. Over 600 cities now have e-scooter for-hire services and, globally, the electric scooter market is valued at more than AUD $49 billion and growing at 10% per year. In Australia, there was an 800% increase in e-scooters from...
Granny Basher’s Discharge Sends the Right Message
One year ago I made a young man famous. The video footage of the horrific political violence he perpetrated against a 71 year-old lady at a Women’s Rights rally shocked the world, leading to international condemnation of New Zealand. Two weeks ago I was in court to witness his sentencing: he received a discharge without conviction and his name was...
The Rise of Citizen Journalism and Independent Media
Shortly after 4pm on the 27th of March, the X account @churPanic commenced a live broadcast on a mobile phone from the streets of Gisborne, New Zealand. Against a backdrop of community outrage at taxpayer-funded Rainbow Storytime in the local library, a pedestrian crossing had been whitewashed. Residents of this small North Island town were protesting at the repainting of...
A Digital Dark Age (part 3)
‘We will continue to be your single source of truth. Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth’. So said former New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Covid When Covid hit in 2020, people had no reason to doubt what they were being told by their political leaders. However, the pandemic very quickly exposed the incompetence of many in the medical...
The Global Online Safety Regulators Network: A Global Surveillance State?
The journalist Michael Schellenberger recently discovered that there is a formal government censorship network called the “Global Online Safety Regulators Network” (GORSN). Australia’s top Internet censor, Julie Inman Grant, an American, described it at the World Economic Forum. The group includes censors from Australia, France, Ireland, South Africa, Korea, the UK, and Fiji. This is a concerning development for anyone...
Raw Deal
A local rag (The Geelong Advertiser) reported* last month that some sort of strange secretive trade was taking place in the quiet backstreets of affluent Highton. The article heavily implied that this was an illegal distribution of ‘raw’ (unpasteurized) milk - a product that is banned for human consumption in Australia and banned entirely for sale in Victoria. I found...
Victoria: Back in the Basket Again
Reproduced with permission from The BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/2024/05/09/victoria-back-in-the-basket-again/ I grew up in Victoria (don’t judge me, it wasn’t always the way it’s become), and lived through the dark days of the early 90s. Back then, it seemed that hardly a week went by without another economic calamity: the Pyramid building society collapse, the Tricontinental bank collapse, the State Bank of Victoria...
Olympic Dam’s Gold Medal Performance
It is exactly 50 years since Western Mining first discovered the massive gold, silver, copper and uranium ore body at the aptly-named Olympic Dam in South Australia. A golden anniversary indeed! But discovering the ore was just the beginning. The fight to allow uranium mining at Olympic Dam was brutal. The ruling Labor Party, under then Premier Don Dunstan, was vehemently opposed...
