Oliver Hartwich writes:
Critiques of Trump often receive a predictable response, regardless of the source. Critics are promptly diagnosed with so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome, a supposedly clinical condition that renders them incapable of rational thought when it comes to the 45th and 47th president.
This diagnosis has become so standardised that Trump’s defenders simply use the initialism TDS as if referencing an established medical condition rather than engaging with substantive arguments. It functions as a convenient dismissal mechanism, allowing complex geopolitical concerns to be waved away as mere emotional reaction.
However, the diagnosis is more aptly applied to Trump’s defenders than his detractors. It is they who exhibit the defining symptoms of derangement: abandonment of previously held principles, immunity to factual evidence and a willingness to excuse behaviour they would condemn in any other context.
The moral compass of these devotees has been so thoroughly corrupted that it no longer points to true north but swivels toward whatever position Trump adopts, no matter how contradictory or problematic.
It must be exhausting to maintain this level of devotion. They champion tariffs when he proposes them, then pivot to supporting their cancellation when he changes his mind. They criticise endless wars until Trump threatens to start new ones. The only consistent principle is unwavering loyalty to Trump himself.
This is so spot on. It is hilarious seeing so many people whose entire online presence is devoted to slavishly backing Trump, regardless of what he does or say.
Grant Duncan alerted me to a new feature at the LA Times. In a column such as this one on Trump and Ukraine, they use AI to:
Quite innovative. I wonder if we might see that here? Maybe someone could design it as a plugin for the main news sites?
A reader inquired if the support lost by the major party of Government since the election is a record. I didn’t think so, but have now gone and checked the data. This compares the 1st 1 News poll of the middle year of a term against the last election result.
So the biggest gain at the beginning of the mid year was the 2008 – 2011 National Government which was up 9% and the biggest fall was the 1990 – 1993 National Government which was down a massive 22%.
More Governments were up than down in the start of the middle year of their term, but the 4% drop for the Government is far from the biggest fall.
These UK poll results from Matt Goodwin are disturbing. The number of adults who would refuse to fight for their country has more than doubled in 20 years from 19% to 41%.
In one sense it is no surprise. When “the blob” constantly portrays your country as an oppressor, and that you should be ashamed of history instead if proud of it – then little wonder people say they would not fight to preserve it.
Identity politics is part of this also, it undermines society and countries as you get taught to see people as part of demographic groups, rather than fellow citizens.
Simeon Brown announced:
The Government has agreed to progressively lower the age of eligibility for bowel cancer screening tests to align with Australia.
“Today, I am pleased to announce that we are taking the first step by lowering the age to 58, with redirected funding of $36 million over four years.
“This means free bowel screening will become available to all New Zealanders from the ages of 58 to 74,” Health Minister Simeon Brown says.
“Lowering the age of eligibility from 60 to 58 will see 122,000 Kiwis eligible for free tests in the first year and save hundreds of lives over the coming decades.
“This is the first significant step we are taking to align our screening rate for bowel cancer with Australia as funding and access to additional colonoscopy resource becomes available.
“The changes announced today are projected to prevent an additional 771 bowel cancers and an additional 566 bowel cancer deaths over the next 25 years.
“Advice from the Ministry of Health clearly states that lowering the age to 58 for all New Zealanders will save even more lives than the previous government’s approach to lower the age to 50 for Māori and Pacific Peoples only.
“Under our approach, we will be able to prevent 218 additional cancers and 176 additional deaths over 25 years in comparison to the settings proposed by the previous government.
“This also aligns with the Government’s policy of ensuring that healthcare is delivered on the basis of need.
Labour’s policy was close to evil. Their policy was that your ancestry would determine if you get free screening for bowel cancer. People aged 58 and 59 with the wrong ancestors could die because of that.
Bowel cancer is almost 100% preventable with regular screening.
Now it is true that more Maori and Pacific NZers get bowel cancer than other NZers. But this is correlation not causation. As the definition of Maori is one ancestor no matter how far back, that means that a 50 year old David Seymour would get free screening from Labour while a 59 year old Chris Bishop would not.
The major risk factors in bowel cancer are lifestyle. You are more likely to get bowel cancer if you:
There is a degree of genetics. If family members have had bowel cancer, you are more likely to. And some ethnic groups can have higher rates – in fact globally Ashkenazi Jews have amongst the highest rates in the world.
But here’s why you don’t need to screen on race. There already is free screening for under 60s if you have risk factors such as a family history or have diabetes etc etc. This is going off clinical need, not race. If you go off race or ancestry then you are saying a 50 year old with no risk factors at all (but happens to have a Maori ancestor 180 years ago) should have higher priority than a 59 year old (and age is a large factor).
An interesting paper found in NZ that bowel cancer mortality rates for Maori and Pacific increased massively from 1980 to 2000. The authors (including the current DG of Health) concluded:
In the absence of some other constellation of unrecognised risk factors of overwhelming importance, it must be presumed that there has been a change in diet over time among Mäori and an even more dramatic change among Pacific people.
If it was genetics, then the rates would not have skyrocketed.
So having universal screening of everyone aged 58+ , and targeted screening below 58 based on actual risk profile is the right thing to do.
Never thought I would be cheering on a speech by a French Senator, but in this case I think he nails it. And this is not a raging leftie. The Senator is the leader of a centre-right grouping in the French Senate.
Stuff reports:
Twyford, the Labour MP for Te Atatū, spoke against Destiny Church after the Pride events and called for the church to be removed from the charities register.
Twyford said earlier that Police Minister Mark Mitchell had confirmed 20 offenders had been referred by police to Man Up and Legacy in the last year.
“Referrals to Man Up and Legacy need to stop. Members of these groups violently disrupted a Pride Week event at the Te Atatū Peninsula library and are now at the centre of a police investigation,” Twyford said.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Twyford’s Government funded the Mongrel Mob to run drug rehabilitation courses for drug addicts and said that was a great idea, but now they say having Destiny run rehabilitation courses is unconscionable!
One group commits murders, armed robberies, rapes etc, and the other disrupted an event!
I am no fan of Destiny Church. I condemned their actions in disrupting the events. I actually agree that there is a conflict between one arm running anti violence programmes and another using force to disrupt an event. But the hypocrisy is what gets me.
The Herald reports:
Talking about the school’s previous lunch provider, Poole said: “We had a system that was working for us in our school, and now it’s not.”
The school orders 310 lunches a day and about 150 are left untouched.
“We’ve had a lot of kids not eating because of the look of the food, the taste, the smell … ” Poole said.
“Some students are now bringing their own lunches.
The fact that a principal regards it as a bad thing that more students are bringing their own lunch speaks volumes.
Stuff reports:
The Trump administration is pushing Australia to commit to a dramatic increase in defence spending to counter China’s rise, with one of the US president’s top Pentagon picks calling for military spending to rise to at least 3% of gross domestic product.
An increase to 3% from the current 2% level, which is about NZ$62 billion, would require tens of billions of dollars in extra spending each year, straining the Commonwealth’s ability to spend on other portfolios such as health, education and welfare.
2% used to be the target for NATO countries. Now in Europe people are talking about 3% being a minimum spend, and some saying they may need to go to 5%.
Meanwhile in NZ, we spend just 1.2% of GDP on defence. This is not a sustainable position.
The Herald reports:
He pulled the trigger five times in a daylight gang shooting in Rotorua and was responsible for a string of car break-ins and had ridden dangerously on a trail bike.
But he isn’t going jail. And his identity will permanently be kept secret.
That’s because the now 19-year-old has had one of the worst childhoods a Rotorua District Court judge says he has ever seen.
The teen is now turning his back on gangs and crime and striving for a better life, despite his challenges, the judge said.
I’m generally sceptical of name suppression and not going to jail for violent offences. Too often offenders with a long strong of convictions are allowed to keep offending. But in this case, I think the judge is right to see if he can overcome his childhood.
Judge Hollister-Jones said the teen connected with wider family members while living out of town on electronically monitored bail the first time.
“They gave you a birthday party which I interpreted to be your first birthday party thrown for you, which tells a lot.”
He described some of the issues the teen had experienced growing up, many of which could not be publicly reported to protect his identity.
His mother became pregnant with him to a gang member when she was 13. She went on to have a relationship with another gang member and the teen’s life was immersed in gang culture where they often witnessed violence.
His siblings ended up in state care.
Being born to a 13 year old mum and gang member dad almost dooms him from the beginning. But if his extended family can show him a better way, then it is worth the second chance.
NewstalkZb reports:
A Kāinga Ora resident managed to terrorise his community in just three weeks before being evicted and ending up behind bars for shooting four cats and threatening a neighbour at gunpoint.
Roger Allen Woodgate was originally a tenant at a property on Moodys Ave in Whangārei but moved into a Kāinga Ora house on Tiaki Rise, Tikipunga in October 2024.
Between mid-November and early December several incidents were reported to police and case managers of Kāinga Ora filed an application to terminate his tenancy based on the risk to the public.
This is what we want to see – action in weeks, not months or years.
Woodgate was not present at the hearing as he was incarcerated.
Based on his reported behaviour, that may be the only suitable home for him.
One clause of the Magna Carta says:
All merchants shall have safe and secure exit from England, and entry to England, with the right to tarry there and to move about as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and right customs, quit from all evil tolls
So tariffs have been hated for a very long time. We must continue to oppose them.
Richard Prebble writes:
Article Three, which granted the rights and privileges of being British subjects, has been reinterpreted to be a promise that successive governments will ensure equality, the socialist dream.
Governments can deliver equality before the law, the right of British citizens.
No government ever, anywhere, has delivered economic equality.
As we will never have economic equality, the tribunal has created an endless grievance that can never be met.
This is key – it creates an eternal cycle of grievance.
n my letter of resignation, I have recommended the Government implement its coalition agreement and upgrade the tribunal by appointing a senior High Court judge, as was done when the tribunal was first set up.
The tribunal insults the chiefs when it says the chiefs did not mean to accept the Crown’s protection, create a nation, protect their property rights and extend citizenship to all Māori.
I will not participate in turning the Treaty into a socialist manifesto.
The status quo is clearly in need of change.
The Herald reports:
A new report is calling for gang members to be segregated in New Zealand prisons to combat their significant and “problematic” influence over inmates.
Sociologist Dr Jarrod Gilbert’s new report, The Gang Influence of New Zealand Prisons, was commissioned by Corrections and found gangs had informal control over the country’s prisons.
Gilbert told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that while Corrections still “holds the keys” in prisons, gangs have too much influence and said it was detrimental to how they were run.
Seems a very sensible idea, as it would stop gangs using prisons to recruit new members, and also allow non-gang members in prison to have better options for rehabilitation.
As a huge supporter of free markets and personal liberties, I welcome this. Personally I would still allow contrary views on these issues (but Bezos owns it so he decides) but it is great to have the Washington Post state they will defend those two pillars of freedom.
Some think that this is Bezos taking the knee before Trump, but I think they are wrong.
I think this actually positions the Washington Post to be critical of Trump – but from a centre-right perspective. Trump is no supporter of free markets – he wants to put tariffs on anything that moves. And Trump is probably the largest threat to personal liberties today (his administration is now banning law firms from any government work, if they take on a client Trump doesn’t like), so the WP stance is unlikely to be cheerleading Trump on.
100,000 asylum seekers a year is massive, especially when you consider the many countries one has to pass through to get to the UK.
The right of asylum is an ancient right to flee a government or ruler that persecutes you. It goes back thousands of years. In the modern era the UDHR says:
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
The problem is that we have people who do legitimately need asylum, but rather than seek it in the first country they pass into which is safe for them, they choose countries where economic opportunities are greater – such as the US, UK, Australia etc etc. Now you can understand why they want to do this, but does a refugee have the right to choose any of 200 countries to move to, or is the right only to get asylum in the first safe country they travel to?
I think that it now has to be seen as a right only to the first safe country, not to any country they choose. I think developed economies should take in many refugees and asylum seekers – but they should not be forced to take in every refugee in the world that can get to their borders.
Liam Hehir notes:
The real issue is the unnecessary complexity and arbitrariness of the current law. That isn’t being addressed. Instead we are getting a deluge of hand-wringing about “vigilantism” and doomsday hypotheticals about how shopping in New Zealand is going to become like an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter.
The premise of the government’s reform is simple: New Zealand’s current citizen’s arrest laws are inconsistent and random. Right now, whether a security guard or shopkeeper can detain a thief depends not just on the crime itself, but on the time of day it happens.
Tonight is late night shopping at The Plaza Shopping Centre here in Palmerston North. If go and steal something worth $800 at 8.59 pm, the store security guard cannot legally stop me. If he grabs my arm, he has committed assault, battery and false imprisonment. If I am running behind schedule on my crime spree and steal the item two minutes later, at 9.01 pm, the guard has some measure of protection in law.
Geddis and Benson-Pope don’t argue that this is defensible. They simply argue that changing it is too dangerous. And so, instead of engaging with how to fix the law, they resort to pure scaremongering. They warn that these changes could lead to “excessive force,” wrongful arrests or even racial profiling.
A principled approach would be to advocate for no power to detain for any theft, ever. That would be wrong, but principled. But defending the current law is unprincipled.
Massachusetts is one of the most liberal, Democrat-dominated states in the U.S. If you’re going to point to a state that takes a cautious, restrained approach to law enforcement, Massachusetts is the one. It’s hard to think of a jurisdiction that better embodies the soft-on-crime stereotype.
And guess what? Like a lot of places, it has a shopkeeper’s privilege law.
Under Massachusetts General Law ch. 231, s. 94B, store owners are allowed to detain a shoplifter for a “reasonable amount of time.” There’s no requirement that the theft be above a certain dollar amount. No special night-time rule. No arbitrary three-year penalty threshold. If a shopkeeper has probable cause to believe a theft has occurred, they can hold the suspect and call the police.
Massachusetts is a deep-blue, progressive state. Do people genuinely believes that New Zealanders can’t handle the same powers as store owners in Cambridge, Massachusetts? If so, that’s a remarkable vote of no confidence in our society.
I am happy to predict that the changes will become law, and the only consequence is more shoplifters get detained and arrested.
The liberal reaction to the announcement hinges on the idea that allowing businesses to detain shoplifters is somehow a greater risk to society than shoplifting itself.
I think their view is that shoplifters are people, while companies are not people, so shoplifting is not a real crime. Never mind that people own companies.
At Patreon (paywalled)I have done my normal monthly summary of how Governments are looking placed for re-election. My intro is:
Nigel Farage is positioned to become the next UK Prime Minister, while the Liberals in Canada now have a real shot at retaining power thanks to Donald Trump.
My summary of relative chances in February is:
I would assess the order of likelihood of re-election as
1 The United States Presidency (Nov 2028)
2 Canada (October 2025)
3 New Zealand (Jan 2027)
4 Australia (May 2025)
5 The United Kingdom (Aug 2029)
An important speech by Chris Bishop:
He announced:
These changes are very important. Councils have slow walked developments because they often leave them with costs that all ratepayers must fund. These changes will fix that problem.
So how does each work:
So great to finally have a Government comprehensively tackle the barriers to housing.