NBC reports:

Poland said a number of Russian drones entered its airspace during an attack on Ukraine early Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO allies, a first since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Leaders across Europe condemned the incident as the latest sign of escalation from the Kremlin, which has rebuffed President Donald Trump’s bid to broker peace talks.

There’s two important things to note with this:

1. The drones were armed. This wasn’t just an incursion of drones doing surveillance. They had missiles or explosives attached to them, and were in Polish airspace.
2. There is no way it was an accident. There were a total of 19 drones that went into Poland.

Putin is a master of deniable provocation. He sees the west as weak. It is a good reminder that the war in Ukraine will never stop with Ukraine. He wants Moldova, Georgia, Poland etc.

This would be a good time for Europe to ramp up military support to Ukraine.

US conservative activist Charlie Kirk is in critical condition after being shot while speaking at a campus event in Utah.

All political violence is appalling, when people thunk they can murder someone because they disagree with their views. This one seems even more chilling as Kirk is not an elected official (who often get public security). He co-founded Turning Point USA as an 18 year old, and is a regular presence on campuses where students can question or challenge his views.

I hope Kirk survives and recovers and that authorities catch the person or people responsible.

UPDATE: Kirk has died

This is so very very sad.

Rest in peace Charlie.

Update2: Trump has ordered all US flags to fly at half mast until Sunday. It is hard to over-state how massive Kirk’s assassination is. In terms of conservative politics he would be arguably third behind just the President and VP in terms of emotional connection with conservative activists. The mood at the moment is shock and sadness. It will I suspect turn to anger.

Iyrna Zarutska was killed almost three weeks ago on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her killing was captured on video. It was horrific. It showed her killer just stabbing her three times from behind in an unprovoked attack. The killer was a recidivist criminal.

However this killing, despite CCTV video of it happening, was all but ignored for over two weeks by the entire legacy media in the United States. It seems it did not fit the desired narrative, namely:

• The victim was the wrong type of victim
• The killer was the wrong type of killer
• The murder victim was a knife not a gun

Where other killings caught on video get hundreds or thousands of mentions in newspapers such as the NY Times, this one didn’t have a single mention until recently.

Looking at the University Entrance for Leavers Data for every high school in NZ it becomes clear that there are some good things happening.

The following shows significant improvement in outcomes for thirteen schools. For schools that are struggling, Ministry officials, policy makers, etc – it would be well worth beating a path to the doors of these schools to find out what has helped so much.

Each year I process a full data set that cover every high school in NZ. It is their leavers data and shows the qualifications their students left with in 2024 (whatever level they leave at).

It presents a far more accurate picture than the year level data schools publish in February.

For every high school the process looks at in ranked order (including their Equity Index Number – which replaced “deciles”)
– School size
– NCEA Level 2 and 3 for Leavers (for all schools)
– University Entrance (UE) for Leavers (for all schools)
– The gap between L3 and UE (for all schools)
– The gaps – by school and aggregate – between ethnicities.
– Retention until 17 years of age (for all schools)
– Progression to Degree Level study (for all schools)
– Data split between the EQI 10ths (for all schools)
– Data that shows which schools are thriving above their demographics
– Case study data on the Super 8 Boys’ Schools and the 13 Boys’ Schools in the South Island seeking improvement
– System wide data gender, ethnicity, etc.

(NB: The UE statistics include equivalents for Cambridge and IB).

For those who would like the data set please email me: [email protected]

• if it is for personal use – a donation is appreciated.
• if it is for professional/business/school use – the costs is $350 (plus GST) I will send the data set with an invoice.

A very extensive and interesting story at Newsroom on the NZ soldier who was a neo-nazi, and tried to provide military secrets to a foreign government. Some key details are:

• He had swastikas on the walls of his house near Linton Military Camp
• At age 18, said he wanted to fight alongside Anders Breivik who killed 77 innocents in Norway
• Joined NZDF at age 22
• Said the Holocaust never happened
• Said joining a Nazi organisation was the best thing that had ever happened to him
• Said they do hate the Jews as Jews responsible for most of world’s ills
• Fawned over Brendon Tarrant

He is basically a traitor to New Zealand. One interesting aspect is the country he thought he was supplying military information to is permanently suppressed. I have zero inside knowledge on the identity of the country, but I will make an educated guess.

With his Aryan views, it would have to be a European country. It would not be a country NZ is friendly with, as he claimed he wanted asylum there. So the logical conclusion is Russia. I Amy of course be wrong.

The Court of Appeal has rejected the latest appeal by Scott Watson for the murders of Ben Sharp and Olivia Hope. I am pleased but not surprised. He has had his case considered by every court possible.

• Found guilty by unanimous verdict after a three month High Court trial in 1999
• Court of Appeal dismissed appeal in 2000
• Privy Council declined leave to appeal in 2003
• In 2020 the Governor-General referred the case back to the Court of Appeal which has now delivered its decision

The decision is here. Key points:

• The concerns raised with ESR’s quality management system do not raise any real issue with the reliability of the Hair evidence.
• This is not a case where the scientific evidence used at trial has since been undermined and revealed to be unreliable. Indeed, the evidence given at trial has been confirmed as reliable by the experts who gave evidence at the appeal hearing.
• we have concluded ESR generally adhered to relevant quality standards relating to the collection, handling and forensic examination of the Hairs and are satisfied there is no material issue
• we have found the results obtained from the DNA testing of the Hairs conducted in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom reliable
• we have determined, in light of our consideration, that a miscarriage of justice did not occur in respect of the Hair evidence

The Court of Appeal also deals with the issues of identification of Watson, and the so called ketch. Worth reading the full decision.

I hope this gives some finality to Ben and Olivia’s families.

The 12 largest countries in Europe are:

1. Russia – Nationalist President
2. Turkey – Nationalist President
3. Germany – AFD leads in most polls
4. UK – Reform leads by 9% in polls
5. France – National Rally leads by 10% in polls
6. Italy – Brothers of Italy in power
7. Spain – nationalists not in power or ahead in polls
8. Poland – Nationalist President
9. Ukraine – under attack
10. Kazakhstan – nationalists not in power or ahead in polls
11. Romania – nationalist party leads in polls by 20%
12. Netherlands – nationalist party leads in most polls

So of the 12 largest countries in Europe, nationalists are in government in four of them and lead in the polls in five more. The majority of Europe will have nationalist governments in a few years time I would say.

Radio NZ reports:

But the Greens’ commerce and consumer affairs spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March told RNZ that was only “one part of the puzzle” and the government needed to explore all its options – including breaking up the supermarket duopoly.

“While we support having new players in the market, Nicola Willis is banking on big corporations coming into Aotearoa, and that automatically leading to lower prices,” Menéndez March said.

“What we need is action that tackles the greed we are seeing in the duopoly right now.” …

Menéndez March also pointed to the Greens’ policy of taxing excess profits as an option …

Even for the Greens, this is a level of stupidity that is hard to imagine.

They are saying that food prices are too high, and that the way to lower them is to increase the tax on supermarkets!

This type of reasoning wouldn’t even get you NCEA Level 1!

Long-time Labour activist Jeremy Greenbrook-Held has posted a voting guide for Auckland elections. As he is the campaign manager for various City Vision and Labour candidates it is no surprise he is endorsing them.

What is surprising is that he has explicitly endorsed Mayor Wayne Brown for re-election, despite Labour Party member and Auckland Councillor Kerrin Leoni standing for Mayor.

I think this speaks volumes, and gives us some insight into why Leoni isn’t officially endorsed by Labour.

Radio NZ reports:

The Chief Ombudsman has reprimanded Marlborough District Council’s use of public-excluded briefings and workshops, saying they should be “open by default”. …

Council chief executive John Boswell said the council’s use of public-excluded was well within scope under LGOIMA.

“We are continuing to operate in accordance with the law,” Boswell said. “That is [the Ombudsman’s] own individual opinion and interpretation of how he thinks things should be ultimately conducted.”

This is a level of arrogance that makes the CEO unfit to hold his office. he dismisses the Chief Ombudsman’s advice as merely an “individual opinion”.

He is the effing Chief Ombudsman. His views are not some personal random reflection. His job is to review decisions made by local authorities under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.

The CEO dismissing his views as an “individual opinion” is akin to a government department CEO dismissing the views of the High Court as “an individual opinion”.

The decisions by the Chief Ombudsman are actually binding on councils unless the Council explicitly votes not to accept it within 21 days.

The CEO’s attitude is so terrible, I think the Mayor needs to take action.

Tyler Cowan writes:

Consider, most prominently, Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the federal government is taking a 10 percent share in Intel (worth some $8.9 billion dollars). Ten percent makes the U.S. government the single biggest shareholder in the company.

We are used to criticizing China—and rightly so—for its state-owned enterprises. But there can be no other way to describe this new arrangement for the United States.

Imagine the meltdown the Republican Party would have had, if Barack Obama had done this?

This won’t be the last government takeover—or at least that’s what Trump is promising. Trump says he wants to do more of this with other companies, with TSMC, Micron, and Samsung as other potential targets

Guess who is in favour:

Given that this is a blend of socialism and corporate statism, it should come as no surprise that Bernie Sanders has endorsed Trump’s Intel decision.

I miss the good old days when Republicans supported free trade and the private sector.

An astonishing revelation in The Post:

But the PSA’s national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons says meat inspectors “are very worried about this move towards private meat inspection, they know that the companies are conflicted when it comes to this work”.

“Their job is to be genuinely independent on the chain that involves staring down pressure from meat companies, and that independence is absolutely critical to the high quality meat inspection that we have here.”

Fitzsimons says the PSA has written to both the Chinese and US Ambassadors “to raise our concerns about the move towards private meat inspection, and we’ve requested a meeting with them”.

The PSA are basically trying to destroy the export markets for the meat industry, in an attempt to prevent competition for state sector meat inspectors. This tells you a lot about them.

The Herald reports:

A 20-year-old law student has triumphed over Auckland Transport in court, with a judge ruling the installation of three speed bumps and a raised pedestrian crossing was unlawful.

Sean O’Loughlin took a case to the High Court at Auckland, arguing AT had failed to follow the law for the $667,000 works on The Parade at Little Bucklands Beach.

His case centred on the argument that AT focused on speed reduction and safety issues, skipping the legal requirement to weigh the impact on drivers. The only crash involving (minor) injury was due to a speeding public bus, he told the court.

Justice David Johnstone ruled in favour of the student, finding that AT hadn’t genuinely considered the impact on motorists.

This is a significant case. Basically the court found that AT doesn’t consider motorists when making these decisions.

O’Loughlin believed there were potentially wider ramifications from the ruling because AT had relied on a pre-written template claiming the changes would not “unduly impede vehicular traffic”, and did not give any reason behind that.

“You can go on the Auckland Transport website and see the template. It has all the paragraphs pre-written. It’s possible they use it to make other decisions,” he said.

I predict this law student has a good future in front of him.

When Tom Phillips first disappeared into the bush with his kids, there was a bit of me that admired him. Not the taking the kids away from the rest of the family, but the fact he could keep four kids happy in the bush for days and weeks on end.

But it has become apparent that he is not just living off the land, but he is robbing stores with the assistance of his kids. He has turned them into outlaws, rather than have them at school.

Radio NZ reports:

The police have dismissed suggestions that elite military forces be called on to track down fugitive Tom Phillips and his children, warning that could risk their welfare.

New CCTV footage of a man and child breaking into a Piopio store has stoked fears about the welfare of Phillips’ children – Jayda, Maverick, and Ember – who were taken by their father to an unknown location in December 2021.

Phillips faces a raft of charges, including aggravated robbery, aggravated wounding, and unlawful possession of a firearm.

With the case now stretching on for years, it’s been suggested that the NZ Special Air Services (NZSAS) be tasked with locating him and his children.

The Police are quite right. Sending in the AOS or SAS would be a terrible mistake. The nightmare scenario is not a shoot out between Phillips and the Police, but I worry that his kids would be armed also, and if they fired on the Police, then it would end with dead kids.

UPDATE: Phillips is dead, according to his sister. He shot a police officer before he was killed while trying to rob a business. A sad and pointless ending. My thoughts are with the injured police officer and also his family – hopefully his kids will be found safely and reintegrated back into society.

The Herald reports:

An activist opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza helped co-ordinate and carry out the repeated vandalism – via bright red paint “bombs” – of electorate offices belonging to National Party officials, including Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Now, nearly two years later, she has appeared in the Auckland District Court asking for a discharge without conviction so that the admitted crimes won’t stymie her career.

But a judge recently denied the request, noting that she should have known better.

After all, she is a practising barrister.

Hannah Lucy Swedlund, 28, came to court last month with letters of support from the senior lawyer who employs her and from Green Party MP Ricardo Menendez March.

The Judge was correct to deny the request. This wasn’t a one off moment of madness, but a campaign of damage over many weeks.

It says a lot about the Greens that they support someone who damages the offices of other MPs. They want our sympathy when people say nasty things about their MPs on social media, but they defend someone who doesn’t just mouth off, but actually damages MPs offices.

Police got a pretty strong indication of Swedlund’s involvement after analysing a press release in which the group said they targeted the MPs’ offices because the politicians had refused to condemn alleged war atrocities. 

“This incoming Government will be a coalition of complicity,” stated the press release, which included photos of the damage.

The release was sent out as a Word document, and police only had to look at the metadata to see the listed author: “Hannah Swedlund”.

She sent out a word document talking about the criminal damage they had done, and she didn’t remove her name as the author from the author tab. This makes me think she is possibly too stupid to be a lawyer.

Incidentally I don’t think she should lose her career over her actions. I think there should be consequences, but not to the level of being disbarred.

The Free Speech Union announced:

Remember Oliver Jull, the New Plymouth Boys’ High School student who was excluded from the school’s speech finals last year? Well, I have some exciting news for you! 
 
Late last week, our legal team supported Oliver and his parents in a mediation with the school, and the outcome was a great one. 💪  
 
New Plymouth Boys’ High School: 
 
✅ Acknowledged that Oliver Jull was excluded from participating in the finals of the school speech competition because of the content of his speech. 
 
✅ Apologised for this and the distress it caused. 
 
✅ Stated they remain committed to giving effect to the freedom of expression rights of students. 
 
✅ Will host the Free Speech Union later in the year to provide training at the school on best practice guidance on freedom of speech in an educational setting. 

This is why the FSU is so important. Before they existed all the power was with the institutions. But when you have an organisation that can come in and threaten legal action the incentives change massively. You actually achieve culture change.

Oliver’s censored speech is here. It is great the school has explicitly acknowledged that Oliver was excluded based on the content of his speech, as they were previously lying and saying it was because he wasn’t good enough. A shameful way to treat a 15 year old.

Curia did a poll for the Taxpayers’ Union asking:

“The Government is planning to introduce a law that would cap how much local councils can increase rates by every year. Do you support or oppose there being a rates cap law?”

This has huge support. Overall 64% in favour and only 22% against. Net support by each party was:

• New Zealand First +65 percent
• National +61 percent
• Undecideds +48 percent
• ACT +38 percent
• Greens +37 percent
• Labour +22 percent
• Te Pati Māori +19 percent

If I was the Government I would be passing this law as quickl as possible. Then Labour, Greens and TPM have to go into the election vowing to repeal the law as their policy to reduce the cost of living!!

ABC reports:

Former WA senator Linda Reynolds has won her defamation case against former staffer Brittany Higgins over social media posts.

Justice Paul Tottle ruled the posts were defamatory and ordered Ms Higgins to pay $315,000 plus $26,000 interest, though one post was deemed as an honestly held opinion and fair comment.

Higgins was almost certainly raped by Bruce Lehrmann who made up an implausible story that he went back to Parliament House with her at 2 am not to have sex with her, but to do some work.

Sadly for Higgins, she didn’t make this an issue of a fellow staffer acting appallingly, but instead tried to make it a political issue with allegations that her Minister and the Government generally covered it up etc. She worked with Labour Party MPs and the media to run it as a political campaign. And a court has found she defamed her former Minister.

In his judgement, Justice Tottle wrote that “whatever the defendant may have felt in 2021 about the way she was treated by the plaintiff and (her chief of staff, Fiona Brown) in 2019, the allegation of a cover-up had no foundation in fact and the allegation of inadequate support was based on an incomplete and misleading account of the facts”.

In fact the Minister even suggested they take it to the Police, the exact opposite of a cover-up.

Supreme Court Justice Tottle found the disparity between Ms Higgins’ recollection in media interviews of how she was treated during the 2019 federal election campaign, and actuality “was so dramatic as to cast doubt on the reliability of her evidence generally”.

That is a polite way of saying she lied.

With a third of polling places counted it seems clear Peeni Henare has been thrashed, barely getting half the votes Orini Kaipara is getting.

A humiliating loss. Based on this Te Pati Maori could sweep all seven Maori electorates next year.