It's your lucky day! [UPDATE 1]

[Update 1]  140+ Km up and decreasing, re-entry starts at 100 Km up. 75 mins till re-entry starts. Looks like somewhere in south Pacific toward Cape Horn (passes well north of NZ).

Well it could be... (website overloaded)

A heavenly body is to drop in within the next few hours.  Coming to a place near you. All 8.5 tonnes of it!

Labour to a 'T'

The Minister for Open Government would do well to read the following and dismount ASAP:

Riding a Dead Horse

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

In modern education and government, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Threatening the horse with termination.

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Visiting other sites to see how others ride dead horses.

6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Re-classifying the dead horse as “living, impaired”.

8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.

10. Attempting to mount multiple dead horses in hopes that one of them will spring to life.

11. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.

12. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.

13. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.

14. Re-writing the expected performance requirements for all horses.

15. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

An oldie but remains ever applicable.  Especially to those in Labour.

Flogged from a Stuff comment.

Why doesn't the unelected thing Foxtrot Oscar?

Easy to see the thing recently fired from the UN is back in control.  She never left NZ politics.

Helen Clark says it's "unbelievable" that Jacinda Ardern was not told about sexual assault allegations at a Young Labour camp before they surfaced in the media.

"Jacinda was let down. She should have been told immediately, actually, then events would have taken a different course.

"And I cannot understand why she wasn't told. Unbelievable."

Never doubted who has been pulling the strings all the time, as her protege is failing at every utterance. Rewriting the narrative to continue the cover up. 

Between her and tax everything Cullen this country is doubly stuffed.

Far too late!

Should have happened last year.  Immediately without question.

"The de-population of entire herds on all 28 Infected Properties (IPs) in New Zealand is a critical measure to control the spread of the disease and we will be working closely with those farmers to plan how this will happen," said MPI's response director Geoff Gwyn.

"This will be a big job and won't happen overnight, but we'll be meeting with the affected farmers in the coming days to discuss the operation, develop the plans and talk through compensation."

I'd hate to see how they'd handle a foot and mouth outbreak.

"Eradication is what everybody would like but it has to be technically possible, practically achievable and affordable for all. If we can't improve NAIT [National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme] compliance, we cannot get past go."

One thing, long suspected, it has proven to me beyond question is that OSPRI / NAIT is an expensively useless bureaucracy.   The two co-reside in the same building and do not talk to each other. The $64K question yet to be answered by MPI is how did the disease get here in the first instance?

It is a pity we cannot similarly depopulate the Beehive and its environs.  No need for further conversations or compensation.  None would be missed at all.

Engineering: Bridge failure

2nd video:



1st video:



Down to earth explanations on the failure.

An upcoming Easter egg

The window narrows:

China's Tiangong-1 space lab will likely fall to Earth between March 30 and April 2, according to the latest prediction by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany.

Prepare to wear bits of space junk.  Still anywhere from 43N to 43S.

Some Easter egg.

National MP's: Wrong f*cking answer!

There was only ever one correct answer to today's question.

Bridges is the wrong choice to get this voter's attention. 

As as for your choice of deputy...



Time for JC to break right and ditch the Nat wets.

Would be thieves squabbling over spoils

A heads up for any Nats squabbling over the spoils after the useless Mr Double Dipper departs for Dipton.

To get my vote you'll need to continue where Don Brash left off before the nice Mr Key shafted him.  And you'll need to stop being leftards chasing votes.  Get back to the right of centre and adopt all the party principles that you've abandoned over the past decade.

He also believed being Maori meant he had broad appeal.

"I understand my whakapapa. As a minister, I've spent a lot of time with iwi. This is something I understand the interest in."

In my book, pretender to the throne Bridges has soiled his dance card already today rabbitting on about 'iwi relations and lineage'.  Coleman, the other one sitting in the wings without declaring his intent is not an option.  Too smarmy for my liking.  The others - forget it!  You're not in the game.

The country needs someone with business experience and the balls to put archaic union practices and natives with their endless 'full and final' handouts in their places.  Kowtowing to minorities using race as your calling card will only lead to apartheid.  We've just had a decade of your Finlayson doing just that.


I see JC currently being the only option to get my well right of centre vote, but we haven't heard from her on those crucial topics.

You've got 30 months to get my vote.

Guaranteed to trigger vegans!

Love it!

H/T Blazing Cat Fur

WTF? - #001 in a series

In yesterday's rag:

the storm lashing the country will create the perfect conditions for kauri dieback to spread in the Waitākere Ranges, an Auckland iwi says.

Te Kawerau a Maki performed a rāhui ceremony in early December to help stop the spread of kauri dieback in the West Auckland rainforest. 

A rāhui is a form of tapu restricting access to an area.

WTF?  I'd say they're another group looking for a cash handout whilst trying to enforce Stone Age practices with zero mandate believing they are witnessing another New Zealand species extinction.

with hundreds of visitors still visiting the 16,000 hectare forest, ... the wet conditions were perfect for spreading the killer disease

The general public rightly thinks "Up yours!".    Also the local council is having a bob each way sitting on the fence knowing the the public will never wear full closure whilst trying to pander to the natives.

I've always wondered how the Agatha Australis weeds that infest many a Titirangi section seem to thrive with zero dieback evidence in spite of close human contact on puggy clay.  They seem to survive OK even with trespassing rabid feral greenies roosting in them.

Their bigger cousins up the road are apparently succumbing to an early grave.  Maybe it's the natural cycle of such forest giants.  All that tens-of-centuries-old swamp kauri had to come from somewhere.

Deluded MSM: "Monster storm" [updated]

Been lightly raining in these parts since 0230.  Nothing unexpected, even under the solid blue rain radar of Metservice.  Barely 20mm in 8 hours, the farm drains have only just filled with running water in the past hour.  Unfortunately looks like it will ease in a couple of hours, it is almost clear of the murder capital of NZ (Kaitaia).

Campers in West Auckland and Coromandel have been told to evacuate or risk being caught up in a monster storm due to hit the region today

So much for the media beatup of a monster storm.  Certainly no Bola or Giselle, barely worth getting wet to check things like water tanks are functioning.  And zero wind - 10 knots at the most.

A load of media bollocks looking to fill the holiday pages of their rags.

[update]
A total of 85mm over a day and half.  Looks to be clearing from the West, a couple of half decent sub 50 knots puffs.  So much for the "monster" - nothing to get exercised over - an expected and normal easterly for this time of the year.

Enjoyed the idiot box entertainment seeing nutters living on low lying coastal land waiting for the cavalry to arrive and fix their now flooded overpriced baches.  Ever thought of moving away from the eroding seafront?

And to keep the "it's all climate change fault" meme going at full steam, Taxcinda has an article.  When it gets to around 100 knots + I'll take notice of weather.

The hordes depart

Summer Hols are at an end in the Far North today as the lemmings queue to rush southward to service those Jafaland mortgages.

Already in the dogbox...

Happy New Year!

Keeping an eye on dodgy government appointees, crony-by-crony!

Occasionally I trawl the sewers of the feral left.  Just so you don't have to.

With Aunty Snaggletooth was recently seen in the news pleading with an ancient recently touted as 'the fresh face of Labour' for some freebie dentistry (supposedly not affordable on her top 0.00001% wage), I hear H2 has also been installed in Snaggletooth Junior's retinue of political cronies.  Or was it crones?

Anyway here's another crony about to reap a massive taxpayer stipend.  Not content with buggering the NZ economy with KiwiRail I thought he already had another overpaid job buggering NZ Post.

Former Labour Finance Minister Sir Michael Cullen will chair the Government's controversial tax working group

I guess this leftie blog post will be shortly updated to reflect the current state of affairs.  /sarc

Ready for your taste of leftie sword?

Winston goes with the toothy cow and the sodding treehuggers.

God help this country!