[...] If Europe continues on its “no-death penalty for any crime” trajectory, enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, they will one day have to admit that in order to hold this legal principle as some sort of “civilised ideal,” they are fully prepared to sacrifice many innocents within their civilian populations [...]

THE POSTCARD says it all. There stands Auckland’s Mt Albert/Owairaka, circa 1910, gloriously naked. Not a single tree in evidence. None. If the Tupuna Maunga Authority (TMA) truly wishes to restore Owairaka to its original condition, then it will not limit itself to cutting down 345 trees, it will cut down every last tree on the mountain!

[...] If the free to air model is broken then yes, the participants should fail and they should fail only because the concept is unsustainable, not because the competitor is guaranteed taxpayer funded survival.

[...] two recent polls - Rasmussen and Emerson - are now showing that a whopping 34.5% of Black Americans approve of the job President Trump is doing. This represents a potential disaster for Democrats, who have always relied on winning the votes of this minority demographic. There are several significant factors in play which are creating this change:

[...] No, no, no, they insisted. China is reducing its emissions. China has stopped building coal-fired stations. Anyway, all the coal burned by India and China is imported from Australia, so those emissions are really our fault.

[...] Are National’s strategists correct in assuming that by taking NZ First out of the game they can deny Labour a working majority?

[...] Is New Zealand in a poverty crisis or is it a product of the angry left, who will push the goalposts as far as it takes to manufacture a demand for their ideas? Well, of course, there is a segment of the population living in hardship. There is a significant number of working poor doing it tough year in, year out, barely providing the meagre basics for their families. To argue otherwise you’d have to be a cold-hearted prick and you’d be wrong.

[...] The Big Lie this summer is that the catastrophic bushfires ravaging Queensland and New South Wales are “the worst ever” and “unprecedented”.

[...] What was it that drove these changes? The facts of dispossession had been known for centuries. Indigenous peoples held their histories close. Local historians could describe in vivid detail every battle/massacre. It was just that no one else gave much thought to the wet-work incidental to modernity’s advance.

[...] With aggravated robbery levels up, daily smoking rates stagnant and, in the case of our poorest New Zealanders, tax levels having little relevance to consumption, Smokefree 2025 was at risk of being added to the large pile of political dreams turned nightmares.