Unherd reports the UK Government saying:

If universities don’t take action, the government will. If necessary, I’ll look at changing the underpinning legal framework, perhaps to clarify the duties of students’ unions or strengthen free speech rights. I don’t take such changes lightly, but I believe we have a responsibility to do whatever necessary to defend this right. 

National should promise to do the same here, if elected.

But the scale of the challenge is huge:

For years, many universities have either indulged or tacitly approved of radical activists who shut down controversial speakers around no-go issues of race, gender and sexuality. The range of subjects which run afoul of these sacred subjects has expanded as the meaning of terms like racism, sexism, transphobia and harm has undergone what psychologist Nick Haslam terms ‘concept creep’ to include innocuous behaviour like wearing sombreros.

Safety is the term now used to demand censorship of everything.

No-platformings are relatively uncommon, but represent the tip of a deeper, growing problem. Activists are launching internal investigations against academics they disagree with, infiltrating university committees, drafting expansive equality and diversity policies, and skewing hiring, promotion and curriculum content. The academic mainstream fears them. An ideologically monocultural, anti-conservative climate is created in the social sciences and humanities which narrows viewpoint diversity, reducing research quality and chilling debates in class. No wonder we found that fewer than 4 in 10 Leave-supporting students felt comfortable expressing this view in the classroom.

It would be interesting to survey students here and find out if they feel comfortable expressing their views in university classrooms?

Tom Chivers at Unherd reports:

There’s a fascinating and slightly unnerving new study out in preprint, by scientists at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Here’s the technical version. There’s a system called “Registered Reports”, in which scientists preregister their hypotheses before carrying out a study, and scientific journals agree to publish the study on the strength of the methods, rather than the results. The new study found that Registered Reports are only about 50% as likely as standard, non-RR research to confirm their hypothesis.

And here’s why it matters. At the moment, science has some profound problems. Journals tend to only publish “novel”, “exciting” results. That means that if you do an experiment to see if wine gums cause halitosis, and it comes back negative, it probably won’t get published. As I said recently, that means that journals fill up with “positive” studies and “negative” ones sit in file drawers, so the scientific literature is skewed.

The skewing is a real issue and there is value in know a hypothesis wasn’t proved.

Stuff reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is “frustrated” that RNZ pushed ahead with announcing proposed changes to its Concert radio station.

RNZ is planning to take the classical music station off the FM frequency and replace it with a new station aimed at reaching a wider, younger audience.

Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report the government had asked for time to find an alternative.

“I feel very strongly about this. When I came in as Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage, one of the priorities I had was access – that we need to broaden the access of all New Zealander to the arts,” she said.

“I understand that RNZ has obligations to all New Zealanders, and it is their view that they are not catering for one sector. But it is my view as arts minister that one does not need to come at the cost of another.

“My frustration here is that I see this beyond a programming decision and into a structural decision.”

She said when Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi was briefed – very recently – on some of the proposed changes, he expressed concern and one of his clear concerns was over the loss of FM frequency for Concert.

“He explicitly asked for time so that we could see if whether or not there was something we could do to prevent the loss of the FM frequency for Concert. RNZ went ahead and announced this regardless.”

The real story here is of Government incompetence. Helen Clark has pointed out Labour made manifesto commitments towards Concert FM stating they would make sure Radio NZ doesn’t reduce funding to Concert FM.

But Labour didn’t seek to implement their promise. They could have done so through the Crown Entities Act which allows the Minister to amend the statement of intent or performance expectations for Radio NZ.

Radio NZ doesn’t have to implement a party’s manifesto but it does need to statements of intent or performance expectations.

So the problem was one of their own making. Radio NZ has backed down, but if the Government was competent they could have prevented the fracas from ever occurring.

Was fascinated to hear about Lloyd Trigg the other day. Not only is he one of the few Kiwis to win the VC, he is the only one to have received it solely due to testimony from enemy forces!

His citation reads:

Flying Officer Lloyd Allan TRIGG, D.F.C. (N.Z.413515), Royal New Zealand Air Force (missing, believed killed), No. 200 Squadron.

Flying Officer Trigg had rendered outstanding service on convoy escort and antisubmarine duties. He had completed 46 operational sorties and had invariably displayed skill and courage of a very high order. One day in August 1943, Flying Officer Trigg undertook, as captain and pilot, a patrol in a Liberator although he had not previously made any operational sorties in that type of aircraft. After searching for 8 hours a surfaced U-boat was sighted. Flying Officer Trigg immediately prepared to attack. During the approach, the aircraft received many hits from the submarine’s anti-aircraft guns and burst into flames, which quickly enveloped the tail. The moment was critical. Flying Officer Trigg could have broken off the engagement and made a forced landing in the sea. But if he continued the attack, the aircraft would present a “no deflection” target to deadly accurate anti-aircraft fire, and every second spent in the air would increase the extent and intensity of the flames and diminish his chances of survival. There could have been no hesitation or doubt in his mind. He maintained his course in spite of the already precarious condition of his aircraft and executed a masterly attack. Skimming over the U-boat at less than 50 feet with anti-aircraft fire entering his opened bomb doors, Flying Officer Trigg dropped his bombs on and around the U-boat where they exploded with devastating effect. A short distance further on the Liberator dived into the sea with her gallant captain and crew. The U-boat sank within 20 minutes and some of her crew were picked up later in a rubber dinghy that had broken loose from the Liberator. The Battle of the Atlantic has yielded many fine stories of air attacks on underwater craft, but Flying Officer Trigg’s exploit stands out as an epic of grim determination and high courage. His was the path of duty that leads to glory.

A real hero. And bravo to the Germans who recommend to their Allied captors he be nominated for his bravery.

A good analysis by Yossi Klein Halevi:

The Trump plan has reopened one of the most significant but least noted divides in Israeli politics: the split between the pragmatic right, which under certain conditions accepts territorial compromise, and the ideological right, which opposes any West Bank withdrawal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has enthusiastically embraced the Trump plan, while settlement leaders deeply oppose it. Though the plan offers the Palestinians only 70 per cent of the West Bank – considerably less than previous offers – it still conforms to the basic principles of those other plans: a Palestinian state with the capital in East Jerusalem, however symbolic.

Worst of all for the ideological right, the Trump plan would limit the ability of settlements to expand, effectively turning them into islands surrounded by Palestinian sovereignty and threatening the long-term viability of the most isolated settlements. That the most pro-Israel administration in memory is presenting a plan whose principles are anathema to the settlement movement is another reminder to Israelis of how deeply the two-state solution has become embedded in international expectation.

So the plan is anathema to the hardline settlement movement. It does preserve their current settlements but freezes and isolates them. In time they may even voluntarily be removed as unviable.

With each Palestinian rejection, the map of a potential sovereign Palestine shrinks. Arguably no national movement has rejected offers for statehood more often than the Palestinians – from the 1937 Peel Commission, which offered the Palestinians 80 per cent of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea including the West Bank; through the 1947 UN partition plan, offering 45 per cent of that land; and President Bill Clinton’s December, 2000, offer of 22 per cent. Each of those plans was endorsed by mainstream Zionist and Israeli leaders. The Trump plan has further reduced the map.

Every time they say no, they end up with a worse offer. Think if they had said yes to the 1947 plan.

It is long past time for Palestinian leaders to do what they have never done in the history of this conflict – offer their own detailed peace plan. We know what Palestinian leaders oppose – but what exactly do they support? Beyond the repetition of the formula of “two states along the 1967 borders,” what is the Palestinian position on refugees, land swaps, settlement blocs and holy places?

Agreed. They have never put up a serious alternative plan. If they did, then real negotiations could occur.

The Herald reported:

Ardern proudly proclaimed they’d ensured that all of our District Health Boards are now made up of at least 20 per cent of Māori, saying that thanks to their appointments for the first time the boards fully represent the Māori people. 

I thought the Boards were then to govern, not to represent. Parliament’s job is to represent.

It shows how the Government is focused on tokenist gestures like this which are easy to do, but have they actually improved health outcomes for Maori?

Here’s some of the movement of health indicators between 2017 and 2018 for Maori:

• Amphetamine use up from 2.3% to 3.3%
• Cannabis use up from 25.3% to 32%
• Current smokers up from 33.5% to 34%
• Good self-rated health down from 80.3% to 77.3%
• Obesity rate up from 47.5% to 48.2%

But hey boards are now 20% Maori so who cares about actual health outcomes for Maori.

So while Winston is having people follow around journalists who report negatively on the Government, a former Cabinet Minister is reporting that shock horror a National MP was at MacDonalds (sic).

Was Clare’s source the same one who happened to see Guyon Espiner and Matt Shand meet the former NZF President?

I think trying to shame an MP for being at McDonalds is silly in the extreme. But as it happens Woodhouse wasn’t there. He was somewhere else where several thousand people could testify he was there.

Clare won’t believe his denials though.

Now as it happens Michael does have brothers who look like him, but no it wasn’t them either.

The only true part of the claim is that Michael’s car was seen outside McDonalds. A party volunteer had borrowed it and she popped in to McDonalds with her school age kids to grab some food.

There were no rosettes and certainly no lollipops, blue or otherwise.

But may I suggest that Government MPs stop photographing journalists meeting sources and stop “reporting” on opposition MPs. It really doesn’t fit in well with Jacinda’s claims of a government of kindness.

Radio NZ report:

NZ First Leader Winston Peters has claimed responsibility for photographs taken of RNZ journalist Guyon Espiner, Stuff reporter Matt Shand and former NZ First president Lester Gray.

The photographs, and a video, were posted on The BFD, a Whale Oil-linked website which has been running stories defending New Zealand First and trying to belittle reporting about the NZ First Foundation donations.

The photos ran with an article criticising the reporting, which Espiner and Shand have both been involved in.

The deputy prime minister has said two reporters were photographed going to a meeting with Gray “to prove that was the sort of behaviour going on”.

When the photographs were raised with him by Magic Talk Radio, Peters said “we took the photographs”.

Jacinda Ardern has repeatedly said her aspiration is to lead a Government with a guiding principle of kindness. And is there anything kinder than having the Deputy Prime Minister arranging to have journalists followed and photographed, to try and expose sources who have been critical of the Government.

Also worth noting the massive silence from the Greens. Let’s imagine the nightmare happened and NZ First had chosen to go with National, and all the revelations about secret donors, secret trusts, policies that benefit donors and finally the Deputy PM (or a proxy) having journalists tailed to expose their sources.

The Greens would by at hysteria level 13 on a 0 – 10 scale. They would be calling it corrupt. Demanding resignations, court action. Calling for a general election. They’d be painting National as equally complicit and corrupt as NZ First for putting up with it. Every day they’d be asking questions in the House about it.

But to protect their baubles of office, the Greens remain silent. At best we’ll get an innocuous press release expressing concern.

The One News Colmar Brunton poll is:

• National 46%, 59 seats
• Labour 41%, 52 seats
• Greens 5%, 7 seats
• NZ First 3%, no seats
• ACT 2%, 2 seats

So National/ACT 61 seats and Labour Greens 59.

The Greens must be terrified that Winston will not only drag NZ First under the 5% threshold, but them also. In the last OMCB pre-election poll they were at 8% and got 6.3% so polling at just 5% means a very high chance they’ll end up under.

Ben Thomas writes:

What follows is an attempt to provide context to some of the questions Peters answered. 

“Is the Serious Fraud Office justified in launching an investigation into your party’s handling of donations and loans?”

Peters did not mention the Electoral Commission’s referral of New Zealand First Foundation donations to the Police at all. By his answer, it sounded as if SFO investigation was his idea. “Having seen the controversy out there” in the past months’ through Stuff and RNZ’s reporting of the Foundation’s affairs, he said, “we had decided, from my consultation with the party itself, that we should request the police’s involvement because they would have the powers to get out the truth.” Finding the leaker was only “one of the matters” that Peters desperately wanted resolved with Police (and now SFO) assistance.

Welcoming an inquiry by a law enforcement agency is a smart PR move – after all, why not welcome it if you have nothing to hide? Peters has embraced the tactic with such enthusiasm, though, it appears to have affected his short term memory. His claim that his party had resolved to seek an investigation into its donations is not borne out by any of his statements prior to the Electoral Commission actually referring the donations to the Police on Monday. 

On Sunday, Peters released a statement saying that he was recommending that the Party’s president make a complaint to the Police based on a “massive breach of party information”. 

When Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking asked Peters on Monday (before the Electoral Commission’s statement) what he was intending to ask Police to do, Peters’ response was “what we can do is get them to trace the person responsible [for the leaks] and charge them because it’s a criminal offence.”  

You almost have to admire the lies when they get this brazen. The reality is they kept saying they had complied with laws at all time and nothing to see here right up until the day the Electoral Commission told them it was referring them to the Police.

“What does the NZ First Foundation do and what was it set up for?”

An excellent question, to quote Peters himself. “A group decided the National Party had a foundation and that we should duplicate that.” But a better question might have been, what is the relationship between the Foundation and the party? This is a key question. If the Foundation operates genuinely independently from the party, then many of the nascent issues raised in the investigation will be solved. But is it independent? 

This should be a key focus of the SFO. We know the Foundation paid expenses incurred by the party or by MPs. It spent $425,000 on stuff ranging from campaign office rent to website expenses to legal advice for MPs to a $5,000 tent at the races. Most of these bills were addressed to Winston Peters or his staff.

So who authorised this spending? Who decided that the Foundation should be asked to pay these expenses and who authorised the expenditure on behalf of the Foundation?

$425,000 is a huge amount of spending. It is hard to imagine that anyone junior could authorise such spending.

Sam Sachdeva also writes:

Decrying a smear campaign against New Zealand First and promising to deliver a message not edited or “contaminated” by outsiders, Peters said nothing he had not already offered up to media throughout the last few months.

The foundation was based on the National Party’s model, he said (an argument vigorously disputed by National); the law was the law, and should be observed as such (a tautology that ignores the more substantive debate about the donations).

Perhaps most interesting was his continued effort to distance himself from the foundation’s creation and operation, noting: “My only involvement then and all the way through was to say at the start, you make sure it’s all legal.”

“I did not receive any money, full stop. I’m not part of the foundation, full stop. And so have I got any information I can proffer to, for example, the police or the Serious Fraud Office? No, because I’ve never seen one of the accounts and that happens to be the truth.”

Again the Foundation spent $425,000 on behalf of NZ First and most of the bills it paid were addressed to Winston personally or his office. The claim his only involvement was to say make sure its legal is of the same nature as his claim he knew nothing about $100,000 from Owen Glenn.

A former press secretary to an Arts Minister tells some truths:

In fact, it’s a stretch to call the arts a “community”. In politics, a community tends to be defined, however broadly, in terms of its interests. Those interests could be based on geography, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, or economic imperatives. The arts are a community more in the sense of the Balkans after the fall of communism – an intractable, internecine turf war based on ancient and obscure grudges.

Ben is probably understating the reality.

This then is the political formula for funding the arts sector: the public hates it, and the arts community hates you for it.

There is no end to how much they believe the taxpayer should be forced to fund them.

This pattern repeated itself over and over again, each layer of the arts community fracturing into smaller and angrier cliques. Helping the NZSO infuriated the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra, helping the APO infuriated other regional orchestras.

The rivalry between the NZSO and APO makes the conflict between Shia and Sunni look like a minor dispute.

A survey of the publishing industry in the US has some moaning there is no progress on diversity in publishing.

If you look at the data you’ll actually see it shows how barmy some diversity activists are, as in fact the data shows the opposite to what they claim. Let’s go by demographic:

• Race. They bemoan 76% of the industry is white. The last US census had 77% white.
• Gender: The industry is 74% (CIS) women.
• Trans: The industry is 97% CIS and 3% non-CIS. That 3% is certainly higher than any population estimate.
• Sexual orientation: The industry is 81% straight and 19% other. The 81% straight is well under the population.
• Disability. 11% of the industry say they have a disability – well in excess of most population estimates

I’m all for a focus on diversity but there are some who get besotted with it and no matter what the data is, will always claim there is a diversity problem and minorities are under repesented.

NewstalkZB reports:

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is defending her deputy, and New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters, amid criticism over donations to his party from the racing industry.

Yes she is defending NZ First having massive secret donations from the racing industry and in return delivering huge financial windfalls to the racing industry with taxpayer money.

Peters, also Minister of Racing, has delivered lucrative benefits to the industry since taking the portfolio’s reins in 2017.

National finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith said this afternoon New Zealanders needed reassurance that there had been no undue influence as a result of the donations.

“We have New Zealand First ministers making large decisions about large spending and all New Zealanders want to be assured about the integrity of the decision-making.”

But Ardern said these sorts of accusations were “not fair”.

“Racing policy, decisions, bills, as with any decision we make, as a Government, goes through considerable scrutiny – no one policy is ever decided by one party, they go through all of us.”

Jacinda needs to read the Labour and NZ First Coalition agreement. It requires Labour to “Support New Zealand First’s Racing policy”. There is no other portfolio which has the agreement requiring the Government to support one party’s entire policy. This shows how massively important it was that NZ First could guarantee to its funders their policies would be implemented.

The New Hampshire results with 91% counted are:

1. Sanders 26%
2. Buttigieg 24%
3. Klobuchar 20%
4. Warren 9%
5. Biden 8%

New Hampshire, like Iowa, is not a representative state. It is 94% White and the Democrats there tend to be more liberal than the rest of the country. So no one was expecting Biden to win or even come 2nd. But 5th with 8% is terrible.

Unless he does amazingly well in Nevada and South Carolina, I think all over for him. Moderates seem to be leaving him for Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Will his strong black support remain? He could be out just before or after Super Tuesday.

Hard to see a path for Warren. The liberal uber progressive vote has gone to Sanders. Warren may leave even before Biden. New Hampshire is her neigbouring state and she got 9%.

Klobuchar could be interesting. 20% is pretty respectable. She had targeted the first two states a lot and far from clear she has resources to compete in the others. But if Biden looks more and more unviable she and Buttigieg will compete for his vote and she may look safer with a proven electoral record.

So I think now down to Sanders, Buttigieg and Klobuchar with Bloomberg the wild card. Bloomberg is now in 3rd place in the national polls.

If all four of them stay in after Super Tuesday, a contested convention becomes more and more likely. Exciting times.

The Independent reports:

Indonesia has introduced a female flogging squad to punish women who violate Islamic law. …

In a separate lashing, a woman who was sentenced to 30 lashes fell unconscious during her punishment for being found “in the company of a man other than her male guardian”.

I’m not sure what is more barbaric – flogging or having it being a crime for a woman to be in the company of a man.

This is the sort of human rights violation that the UN Human Rights Council should be loudly condemning, rather than their fixation on one country.

But will we hear a word?

Well by coincidence Indonesia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council.

Douglas Murray writes in The Spectator:

So it is worth stressing that on the big questions of his time Roger Scruton was right. During the Cold War, he faced an academic and cultural establishment that was either neutral or actively anti-Western on the big question of the day. Roger not only thought right but acted right. Not many philosophers become men of action. But with the ‘underground university’ that he and others set up, he did just that. During the 1970s and 1980s, at considerable risk to himself, he would go behind the Iron Curtain and teach philosophy to groups of knowledge-starved students. If Roger and his colleagues had been largely leftist thinkers infiltrating far-right regimes to teach Plato and Aristotle there would have been multiple Hollywood movies about them by now.

I never knew that about him.

Martyn Bradbury writes:

This is becoming a God damned event horizon black hole and it’ll suck Jacinda down the way it destroyed Helen’s Government.

Forget doing a bloody electorate deal, this will stink to high heaven and if NZ First is DUMB enough to have screwed this up a second time, then it’s the political kiss of death.

You would have thought after the Owen Glenn fiasco NZ First would have been far smarter, to have this immediately passed to the SFO however is a serious political threat.

What the bloody hell have they done?

Winston kicking up a fuss that privileged material has been leaked to the media means jack shit if the material leaked is real and true and enough for the bloody SFO to be triggered into action.

Jacinda can’t be tainted with this, protect the Queen.

Bye bye Winston, it was lovely knowing you.

This is almost like 2008 repeating itself all over again.

Another potentially good sign for Trump. A record high 90% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life. That doesn’t mean they put that down to Trump, but a happy population is less likely to vote for change.

Back in 2011 only 78% said they were satisfied, so a 12% increase is significant.

Eric Crampton talks sense:

I wish then to advance three propositions.

First, Auckland Council might have a better idea about the actual value at stake were it to put up a serious request for proposals and invite bids.

Second, the high downtown land values that could make the case for moving the port also make the case against using the site for a stadium. Stadium maths are worse than Pythonesque – they firmly reach into Douglas Adams territory.

Finally, decisions to move the port should be contingent on just what alternative uses might be found for the port land. Deciding to move the port first, and only subsequently exploring the options for the vacated waterfront, would be a mistake.

Crampton is basically saying it is barmy to decide to move the Port first, without knowing how valuable the land that would be freed up is. That makes total sense.

And the best way to find out is to invite bids. Ask companies to put in a bid saying how much they would pay for the 550,000 square metres of waterfront land.

The case for moving the Port would be rather simple if the Port could really recoup $20 billion by selling the land on which it sits. It would have more than enough money in that case to buy and develop a site elsewhere. The case would be far more difficult if the underlying land were only worth about a billion dollars, as the Port’s CEO has suggested it might be. Deciding to move the Port before finding out what the underlying site is actually worth could lead to regret.

So a sensible way forward – the Auckland as owner of POAL could invite indicative tenders for the land.

Spiked reports:

This week, we have seen the true toll of political correctness. PC isn’t just irritating or stupid. It isn’t just woke students banning sombreros or schools getting iffy about ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. PC destroys lives.

A report into police and council failings in Manchester has found that gangs of predominantly Pakistani men were free to abuse up to 57 girls after chief cops and local officials turned a blind eye to this foul, cruel behaviour. Why did they turn away? Partly out of fear of stoking racial tensions. Partly because they were worried that drawing attention to the grooming and exploitation of mostly white working-class girls by Asian men might ‘incite racial hatred’ and damage multicultural relations.

Sure one should be sensitive to stoking racial tensions. But if the facts are that gangs of Pakistani men were abusing dozens of girls, then preventing crime comes first.

Let’s put it plainly: they sacrificed girls to political correctness; they thought that preserving the ideology of multiculturalism was more important than protecting girls from harm.

Sadly true.

The independent review into grooming and abuse in Manchester in the mid-2000s, published yesterday, makes for grim reading. It says there were up to 57 victims, mostly white girls aged between 12 and 16, and 97 potential perpetrators, mostly men of ‘Asian heritage’. The review makes clear, from some of the evidence it acquired, that some of the abuse networks were made up of ‘predominantly Pakistani men’. That is, similar to Rotherham, Telford and other parts of the UK, this was a case involving what is sometimes referred to as a Muslim grooming gang.

The girls were groomed, sexually abused, plied with drugs and raped. They suffered, in the review’s words, ‘the most profound abuse and exploitation’. But little was done to help them. Their abusers were not brought to justice. And this catastrophic failing was in part fuelled by what the review refers to as Greater Manchester Police’s concerns about ‘sensitive community issues’. As one news report summarises it, the police were ‘keen not to be seen targeting [a] minority group’. As a result of this PC cowardice, of this mad multicultural sensitivity, the abuse continued.

Many of those girls could have been saved from what happened if the Police had acted properly.