A New Zealand National Party Farmer Candidate Speaks His Mind

Mike Butterick is remarkable for having sharply identified the flaws or “own goals” as he describes them in the Emissions Trading Scheme and even more remarkable for publicly pointing them out.

Why, he asks, is New Zealand hell-bent on “restricting its export income?”

This is the income that pays for the “expectations” in health, education, and welfare the “teachers, nurses, and police…..”

The ETS, emissions trading scheme, he describes as inflationary in that can “only add costs.” At the heart of the problem is that dividends are paid out only on the first forestry rotation, the first crop of trees.

If the forest remains a forest say after 30 or 40 years he points out, it has also deprived the country of the farm export income that would otherwise have been earned for those same 30 or 40 years.

“The cash flow into New Zealand has been lost for that same space of time.”

Who makes, he asks, “the phone call to the foreign developers when after this period of time they head off into the horizon with their ETS money and the forest still unharvested?”

He adds. “Who says: Hey! You said you would harvest this – and now you have left us instead with a liability?”

It adds up he says to a financial incentive to leave the trees in the ground for as long as possible.

This in turn also deprives the nation of the export revenue it would otherwise obtain from shipping them out even as logs.

Also, he adds, these foreign forestry developers receive as income New Zealand carbon units which are sold in New Zealand.

Thus New Zealanders are paying for something that has not been produced which is inflationary in itself because it is an internal cost.

All this and much else he ascribes to the yearning of politicians to parade the nation and thus themselves “on the world stage.”

Yet he asks “What is the point of being green when the nation is in fact in the red?”

He laments the pervasive impression given by politicians and other authority figures to the effect that in New Zealand money quite literally now “grows on trees.”

It is he reminds us in fact created by the 80 percent of the nation’s earnings derived from food and fibre exports.

Yet there remains he insists a make-believe and deliberately nurtured impression that artificial constructs such as offsets pay for the police, teachers and nurses…

Does anyone, he asks, really, truly believe that offsets “feel right?”

Mike Butterick started as a shepherd in Canterbury. His wife Rachel, a police woman, was assigned to the North Island and the family moved too. Soon after he acquired his own farm outside Masterton.

His experience with irrigation in Canterbury was now applied to the flatland farm and as proprietor he now experienced directly the benefit of accessible aquifers.

He believes that water has become politicised to the point at which only a very few understand that it is the central ingredient of the agri economy.

“We have 12 times the amount of water per head of any population anywhere.

“Yet only two percent of it is used: one percent by the rural population and the other one percent by the urban population.”

It is the application of the nation’s water resources that he insists “de-risks” agriculture.

He believes water gives the agribusiness here the “diversity” (his word) that enables it to “adapt” to the known and the unknown. Water he underlines should be allocated exclusively “on need and nothing else. “

On climate change he comments that the government effort so far to combat nature has been to “stop it.”

The emphasis must now be deployed on “how to adapt to it.” The government’s emphasis he cautions has been on the abstract publicising of the climatic shift instead of on the “practical” measures of coping with the extremes such as the ones being experienced now.

The high profile given to intercepting nature rather than coping with it has given rise to widely held misunderstandings about climate and farming.

The Paris Accords he stresses exclude food production from the climate regime. He adds that New Zealand’s very climate allows the nation to produce food “with half the carbon footprint per unit of production “of any other producer nation, anywhere. And it is unsubsidised

He remains unconvinced by the various computations underpinning New Zealand’s stated contribution to the green houses gases effect.

“As a country we should take into account everything that is accountable.”

He is perplexed by the way in which any “narrative” about climate at all is “required to fit the in-place agenda.”

As someone who has had to produce in three dimensional form whatever he earns, he points out how successive governments raise expectations without any reference at all to how these expectations will be paid for.

Why, for example, is it never explained that the New Zealand economy is “unique” in that it is a developed economy yet one with most of its income deriving from agricultural products, a ratio normally associated with developing countries.

The National Party candidate for Wairarapa, a rural seat, echoes the perplexity of someone from the productive sector contemplating the florid, abstract, yet so often lavish expectations emanating from Wellington.

“I am constantly being told what without a shadow of doubt will happen decades away in the future and what it will cost, when farmers cannot with any confidence predict what will happen even next year……..”

Mike Butterick personifies and symbolises one side of the rural/university-urban divide increasingly looming as the deciding factor in the pending general election.

This is the clash, the contradiction, in which those calling for greater spending on health education and welfare simultaneously openly and determinedly “seek to shrink the earning power of those who pay for it all.”

Gender Definer Revealed Real Urban Mind Set in Oceania

It might have been coincidence but gender arbiter Posie Parker’s incendiary visit to New Zealand was followed by a series of political shifts that starkly revealed a realignment of loyalties that share one single characteristic which is that the institutions involved shy away from discussing them.

Miss Parker’s visit illuminated the intense urban focus on identity sensitivities centred on race and gender at the expense of mundane matters such as the cost of living.

New Zealand’s Labour-led government nearly six years ago inserted itself into Great Power scale moral movements by cancelling the issuance of oil and gas exploration permits thus effectively closing the nation’s only oil refinery and introducing an era of accelerated consumer energy costs.

In the event what sociologists know as situation ethics has captured the urban imagination replacing the quite recent Labour-Green recipe of global virtue known as being on the right side of history.

This shift to urban individual self- determination is the still unrecognised theme of the reaction to the Posie Parker visit.

People took out of it whatever suited their personal preference, whatever made them feel better about themselves.

The stronger they felt about their own reactions to Posie Parker the more the urban university cum public sector class believed themselves to be personally purified.

This is why the National and Labour political parties are now so inner-urban focussed.

This feel-good craving is largely missed by the legacy media both print and broadcasting.

These give pre-eminence to the old trans Atlantic refrain characterised by ETS readings and adding the word “crisis” to any report dealing with the weather.

It took the one year old start up The Platform radio station to spot the trend.

It rammed Posie Parker down the self-regarding throat of the prime ministerial press conference by asking the surprised premier the mild mannered Chris Hipkins to define a “woman.”

Post Posie Parker’s squirmy topic symbolises the new political configuration.

So did the announcement of the president of Federated Farmer Andrew Hoggard to resign and become a candidate for the more conservative ACT party in the pending general election.

In its determination to winkle out the professional class urban vote the National Party, once the farmers party, has abandoned its own constituency.

The twinning of the Covid 19 epidemic and the climate became a weird if curiously embedded duality syndrome in the upper reaches of the international bodies that codify levels of nation-state virtue.

It was said that the experience and the resources used in fighting the Covid virus would be re-deployed to even greater effect in fighting climatic fluctuations.

This giddy chorus was taken up in New Zealand which now officially supercharged its grip on these twin horsemen of the contemporary apocalypse.

The government now introduced the direct subsidy of approved print publications and broadcasters. The government already controlled the main television channel and also the main radio channel anyway.

If any questions did arise as to how New Zealand was to actually cope with this “crisis” when it arrived these questions became utterly submerged under the dogma of the nation’s contribution to this same crisis.

This devolved onto the nation’s modelled contribution to world atmospheric carbon dioxide of 0.15percent (recently boosted to 0.17percent.)

This barely calculable notional figure became weaponised when rendered in terms of gas-per-head of the population of five million.

Utterly pre-occupied with its global positioning “on the right side of history” the government was heedless to the arrival of the actual crisis.

Strategically its emergency services were focussed on eliminating things like homophobia or misogyny. It was blind to the southerly migration of the cyclone belt. Ironically due to the very “warming” that so alarmed the government and its media chorus.

Jacinda Ardern as premier held the institutional media spellbound with her wide-eyed proclamations of global recognition for the nation and its taking its place on Mt Olympus summit reserved for the virtuous.

Posie Parker in her brief appearance in an Auckland public park provided a revelation of the new and rather less glorious aspirations of an urban professional class which is now being so ardently courted by the political parties.

Australia-New Zealand one way love affair aflame as No-Hopers remittances extinct

Drenched in the victim-oppressor theme of their own country’s politics New Zealanders of all stripe have woken up to the knowledge that their country is internationally the most bountiful source of taxpayer-funded remittances to those of its “family” it would prefer lived in another country.

The reprise of the colonial era system of the established dynasties keeping their feckless and wastrel family members at arm length by funding them to live in the antipodes has been institutionally reprised.

What is known is that from the 20 years from 1999 Wellington paid $1,268,373,000 to Canberra in subsidising the federal government’s welfare payments to New Zealand citizens living in Australia. This does not include pension entitlements.

The government of New Zealand it has slowly been leaking out has been funding the Australian federal government to harbour tens of thousands of its citizens which both governments recognise as liabilities.

New Zealand taxpayer money used to fund these modern remittance men, and most of the recipients do appear to be male, has flabbergasted many.

Especially so in tolerant academia with its impression of Erewhon and other such romanticised literary renditions of upper class remittance-funded Antipodean settlement.

Contrary to a widely-held belief this remittance arrangement actually began under Helen Clark in concert with Australia’s John Howard (pictured.).

 The arrangement was that New Zealanders could flock there,

But not receive the same benefits as the Australian born and bred.

The genesis of the remittance scheme under a New Zealand labour government has been conveniently forgotten.

Now the thaw, known as the re-set, is well under way.

It is claimed that the discarded remittance process eased demand on housing which is seen as New Zealand’s greatest domestic problem.

The counter argument is that the money earned by New Zealand taxpayers has been spent in Australia and not New Zealand.

The less charitably inclined have compared it to a modern Danegeld….paying to keep the troublemakers at a very safe distance from your own shores.

Until now the New Zealand–Australia relationship has been a one way love affair with all the passion and peek-a-boo looks coming from New Zealand.

This rather embarrassing unrequited passion takes the form of a faux familiarity demonstrated by broadcasting presenters always prefixing anything to do with Australia with the words “across the ditch” followed by a grating repetition of the word “Aussie.”

It is currently being demonstrated by the quaintly naïve New Zealand side of this affair which cannot find anything wrong with the other side’s face-value open-handedness.

It actually disguises a win-win “reset.’

The new citizenship path smoothing will accelerate Australia’s dependence on New Zealand’s technicians and applied professionals such as nurses and teachers.

In other words Australia seductively takes the most productive workers while leaving New Zealand with an increasing proportion of the unproductive such as policy analysts, social scientists, human capital managers, “comms” practitioners and international relations professors.

Behind the one sided love affair there resides a key ingredient in such imbalanced relationships which is guilt, unworthiness.

This centres on the well-publicised New Zealand-derived criminal element in Australia.

This in turn rests on the little-discussed plunge by New Zealand into identitarian-driven politics which was quite some time before Australia did the same thing.

This uneasiness started at the time that Australia was getting to grips with its tsunami of boat people.

The issue arose about New Zealand’s own contribution to the assimilation problem.

This and then the more recent subsequent forced repatriations focussed the debate almost exclusively on the crime component of the relationship.

In human relationship terms the question of which side in the relationship was doing the other side the favour was easily answered.

In the popular mind it was Australia.

Camouflaged in this was the value being derived by Australia in the presence of large numbers of New Zealand skilled workers, notably craftspeople, and others who actually create wealth.

And yet…and yet every relationship has its highs and lows.

Before the current euphoria we can cite 1983 as the high point.

This was the year of the signing of Closer Economic Relations between the two countries.

Forty years later comes the new dawn commemorated by the promise of Australian citizenship for the worthy.

The lop sidedness of all this is underlined by the 670,000 New Zealanders living in Australia which compares to the 70,000 Australians living in New Zealand.

A restoration of balance in this affair could start by running a check on the 70,000 “Aussies” living here to ensure that they are pulling their weight.

If they aren’t then remittances are due from Canberra. To be paid retrospectively.

Why was Ventilation machinery Inside gassy Mine instead of Outside it?

Pike River Families access to official documents relating to the mine detonation and the death of 29 miners could shine light onto the mystery relating to the ventilation equipment and its associated electrics being installed at the bottom of the mine instead of outside the workings.

The Royal Commission in the aftermath of the Pike River mine tragedy described the internal position of the ventilator as a “world first.”

Experts consulted during the inquiry constantly returned to the conundrum relating to why the ventilation equipment was housed within the coal mine instead of outside it….the practice everywhere else.

Precisely why was the ventilation plant within the mine instead of safely outside it?

Was this electrical plant location related in any way to adhering to environmental considerations?

The Paparoa National Park was created in 1987 a number of years after the area had been identified as a source of premium grade coal used in steel making.

On Friday 19 November 2010 at 3:45pm there was an underground explosion at the Pike River coal mine. Twenty-nine men lost their lives, and their bodies have not been recovered..

The High Court has now ruled that the bereaved families may now examine the privileged material that led to the decision to abandon charges against elements of the Pike River Mine management.

There will be interest in the extent to which this material may relate to the circumvention of standard practice in order to meet environmental covenants.

The structural framework of the coal mine and its planning coincided with the era in which the nation’s green movement was intensifying in its electoral grip and was doing so in large measure through seeking to cancel fossil fuels in general and coal in particular.

A coal mine that operated in the vicinity of an only recently proclaimed National Park now of itself became an intensely volatile project.

The mine to a certain amazement went ahead.

It did so because of its own position in a district susceptible to and sensitive to unemployment which is the West coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

The implementation of the mine also intersected with a dilution of emphasis on the nation’s mine inspectorate resources.

Technical specialists in the aftermath of the mine explosions questioned the positioning of the ventilation equipment at the bottom of the mine instead of being positioned outside it.

This was especially so because the mine from the outset was known to be exceptionally gassy in its workings because of its coal seams being so prone to absorbing and then leaking the invisible methane gas

Methane threatens all underground coal mines everywhere especially New Zealand coal mines.

This is simply because these mines are of relatively recent geological formation meaning that the vegetation that eventually becomes coal is still decomposing and in this active reduction process emits the extra volumes of methane.

Ventilators are driven by electrical motors that by definition emit sparks.

Sparks fly upwards.

So does methane which being much lighter than air seeks to become part of the atmosphere.

Methane in common with other fossil gases becomes combustible, ignites, when mixed with the air.

The mine disaster aftermath coincided with a still evolving societal sensitivity most evident in the mass media sector.

Its haughty disdainful we-know-what’s-best-for-you condescension adds up to a reluctance, even refusal, to challenge or even question anything from the climate industry’s well-placed alarmists.

The decision by the High Court to permit the Pike River Families free access to the official papers relating to the abandonment of the pressing of charges against mine management opens up what may be the most revealing chapter of the disaster.

Were there other priorities than the preservation of human life?

Who or what persuaded, insisted, or allowed the mine management to take the additional risk of positioning inside the mine its ventilation plant?

The families of the brave miners in their persistence may now be instrumental in solving one of the biggest operational mysteries puzzling the extractive sector everywhere.

Perhaps even the biggest.

Highly qualified forestry scientist Minister failed to weather storm

Members of Parliament of all stripes have discovered a common purpose in diverting public attention from the havoc wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bay.

The reason is that having touted climate change as one of the great issues of our time, even the greatest, they did nothing to implement the change needed for climate change- ---and continue to do so.

An example is the Helensville power generating site ardently sponsored by the government and which is scheduled to occupy a loop in the Kaipara River which flooded last year.

The site then flooded three times between January 27 and the Cyclone Gabrielle which completely inundated the site of the eagerly sought solar plant with its house-sized structures

Two other such solar generating sites on low-lying river land are scheduled for the Wellington region.

King Canute–like officialdom believes that words, the more pious the better, can turn back the climate change which they confidently assert is upon the nation, and compounding in force by the day.

One reason offered for problems associated with the Hawkes Bay response to Cyclone Gabrielle was that there had been a prediction that it would pivot westward drifting south of Hawkes Bay. This means that it was expected to cover the river land now under proposal for approximately 1000 acres of daily land scheduled for these same solar installations.

While politicians found themselves unable to utter more than a sentence without capping it with a climate change intonation their policies meanwhile were ensuring the utmost vulnerability to this same climate change.

Why exactly were forestry projects in the Hawkes Bay leaving in their wake extensive piles of debris which washed downstream and cluttered the beaches?

The Minister of Forests was Stuart Nash. He was one of the few members of the government cabinet with a technical education instead of the usual socio-political tertiary background. He is a highly qualified forestry scientist.

Did Mr Nash warn his colleagues of the danger they were inviting in the form of ignoring climate change by failing to implement and then enforce a regime in which foresters tidied up after them?

In the event Mr Nash found himself washed out of the cabinet with a velocity similar to the bridge-destroying water propelled timber deluges that became the trademark of this particular manifestation of climate change.

In the immediate aftermath of the Hawkes Bay disaster the Hawkes Bay MP found himself engulfed in a weird drama centred on long-ago emails dealing with contributors and the direction of cabinet policy.

The source and the timing of these disclosures had the effect of diverting public attention away from the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle in Mr Nash’s own Hawkes Bay bailiwick. It had the quite extraordinary effect of rumour and innuendo trumping real news, disaster news.

Both parties Labour and the Opposition fell upon Mr Nash with, well, cyclonic force.

The multiplier was that Mr Nash from the start had been identified as prime ministerial material.

The politico media all-sides pile on was successful

Attention was diverted away from how Napier and Hastings became cut off, how the vaunted Heretaunga Flood Control scheme with its numerous pumps, stop banks, and deflection banks was washed away.

Also how public health and policing had become centralised in Hastings and was thus inaccessible to those in Napier .

There is here a detectable reverse ratio.

Politicians are ruthless in their cynical exploitation of the new urban professional voting class with its compulsion to be seen as greener than green

Yet the more they talk about climate change the less they are willing to implement the policies required to adjust to the main manifestation of climate change of which Cyclone Gabrielle was a stand-out example.

Mr Nash’s own transition can be seen now as a weather vane, a barometer for this all-party grab for the votes of this now so definable class with its inner-suburb roots.

One day his career needle was on Fair. Then it slipped back to Change. Another day or so of media drip-deed and it was on Stormy where the needle jammed.

In a political context it is hard not to consider Mr Nash as the first victim of climate change.

Riotous republic less apology demanding for Royal first tour than braving Commonwealth politics

The fact that the first foreign state visit by King Charles was characterised by an apology was hardly a surprise.

The surprise was that the apology was from France’s president Emmanuel Macron saying he was sorry for the postponement of the visit due to disruptions in his own country most notably in the specially-selected Bordeaux which was once part of England.

The significance of the reverse apology disguised how Palace advisers have at last achieved a firm grip on the royal projection of influence.

These counsellors correctly gauged the folly of King Charles undertaking any inaugural tour of what was until quite recently known as the white Commonwealth meaning Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

In all these countries the governments are arranging their future grip on power around identitarian politics.

Australia for example is now in the throes of adding to the eight parliaments it already has a ninth parliament of new nation members which will have a supra veto over the other eight.

The government of New Zealand meanwhile has only in the past few weeks pulled hesitatingly and tremulously from the brink of introducing the first steps of a condominium rule in which first nationers or those identifying as such take over exclusive swathes of governance.

The significance of the French tour kick off was demonstrated notably by the decision by palace counsellors to resist the temptation of Canada often considered in British diplomacy as the royal home-away-from-home.

Here of course identitarianism is turbo charged. In addition to the first nationers there are the French Canadians who resent Ottawa as much as they do London.

So King Charles at every whistle stop would have had to utter a string of apologies which in Canada’s case would have been duplicated. One to first nationers. The other to the original colonists, the French ones, dispossessed by their British usurpers.

The canaries in this combustible commonwealth coal mine were the Prince and Princess of Wales more commonly known as William and Kate.

Their so recent tour of the Caribbean added up to one long apology.

Its enduring image was of the royal couple standing up in Jamaica in a colonial era Land Rover with on their faces the frozen smiles of public figures who know that the planned and expected acclamation has turned visibly sour.

Continuing to swerve away from the awaiting identitarianism trap awaiting King Charles in New Zealand and Australia will test the resolution of Palace counsellors.

The reason is that the governments in both countries see identitarianism as the key to holding onto power. No single person on the planet presents anything approaching the ability to signal their righteous application of it than King Charles.

He would present the governments of Australia and New Zealand the opportunity to perfect and exhibit their most exquisitely honed set of triangulation strategies.

In this process politicians would praise the apology-demanding first nationers for having the courage and the candour to seek to avenge past hurts along with their demonstration of the government-consecrated values of free speech.

They would meanwhile slyly praise the visible royalists for their devotion to an institution, the royal one.

Then would come from the real pay-off.

At some stage they know someone, perhaps an anguished royalist, would take a swipe at the first nationers and their entourage. This would ignite the desired blue touch paper which would now take over the entire visit. There would be a tsunami of governmental crocodile tears.

Then commentators, barely able to contain themselves, faces a rictus of sorrow, would release their repertoire in which the words far right would be the mildest refrain.

Germany under Hitler would be routinely invoked.

To borrow a German linguistic inflection we find that realpolitik has at last descended on the Palace advisory corps.

It is symbolised by the decision to send on his first state visit King Charles to the paradoxically much more secure anti monarchist France.

They understand that even given the Latin and therefore riotous temperament of republican France, it offers a safer and more predictable and less embarrassing rendezvous for King Charles than anywhere in New Zealand, Australia, or Canada.

Politicians are Diplomats Soft Shoe Shuffling a Plantation Cult

Unquestioning adoption of northern hemisphere climate creeds by the main political parties in New Zealand threatens the nation economically and environmentally as the cyclone season pushes south.

The most recent of these transatlantic doctrines is the one to carpet the nation with the shallow-rooted, fast growing, North American tree species Pinus radiata.

The reason that the introduction of this short-lived species is under intense acceleration is that it is deemed the most instantly-realisable counter weight crop to absorb the trace gas carbon dioxide.

The fear by the main political parties of detonating the anger of the urban professional class now considered to base their vote exclusively on climatic doctrines is now evident.

This is because Pinus radiata plantations were the proximate cause of much of the damage in the recent Cyclone Gabrielle floods.

Nobody, and especially those in authority, chose to see the connection between the piles of forestry debris at the river mouths and at the beaches and the upstream unstable mountainous clutter accumulating as the result of selective logging.

The untrammelled go-ahead to use the Pinus radiata species as the overriding instrument for banking the offset credits required by investors in allowing them to pollute in other parts of the world has introduced a fresh threat and one which is not even whispered.

This is monoculture which means that the introduced species is prone to extensive infection. An official Farm Forestry Association group from New Zealand has inspected such infestation known as pitch canker first hand (see illustration.)

The mutually agreed information blackout on this threat from the re-intensified Pinus radiata plantation fever obscures a number of other dangers inherent in using the species as a gas exchange trading mechanism.

What happens if the liability exchange market collapses and the trees end their short lifetimes unharvested?

Will these abandoned hulks lie on the ground ready to be swept away by cyclones?

Why was all the forestry debris never considered for fuel –pelleting and thus become a readily available substitute for the hated fossil fuels?

As recently as 10 years ago there was widespread complaint about the effect of the logging trucks on the nation’s roads as they conveyed the selected logs to port of shipment.

This too was allowed to fade as radiata took over the national importance once accorded to native timbers.

These were once held in such high regard that native timber facia was ripped out of public buildings on what can only be described as sacrilegious grounds.

New Zealand party leaders have become diplomats rather than politicians.

They know for example that exports derived from ruminants are many times greater than exports from forestry.

The constant and consistent official scheming to cover the nation in Pinus radiata has about it an essential characteristic of any imported cult in that those espousing it cannot bring themselves to find anything wrong with it.

Dissenters are denounced for their heresy.

The New Zealand general election is already showing signs of an action replay of the last Australian one.

Australian former prime minister Scott Morrison, who shares a similar background to his New Zealand Opposition counterpart Christopher Luxon.

Mr Morrison sought to deflect and sidestep any direct challenge to the climatic high moral ground because he knew his privileged urban constituencies so ardently clung to it.

In the event and by failing to challenge the climate industry he created a vacuum in which the Teals successfully claimed the moral high ground and Mr Morrison was out of office.

Nobody still dare to question the forestry/offsets exchange lobby even after the Ukraine invasion triggered food and power shortages.

Even Cyclone Gabrielle failed to shake the doctrinal faith.

It failed to dent a long running scheme to erect near Auckland a solar power generating plant on a river loop drowned twice in the past two years.

Its flood-born house -sized reflector panels would have become the high tech version of the forestry residue responsible for so much damage wrought by the cyclone.

Several other such sites on flood prone river land are still planned for the Wellington region.

Cultural Safety and No-Go Belief Systems Meant Storm Severity, Clouded Response

An official single-issue focus on forestry in order to conform to an international climatic regime blinded regulators to the compounding threat of logging leaving in its wake mounds of debris to be washed away in bridge-busting waves.

Since it took office over five years ago climate has been the proclaimed centrepiece of all the Labour government’s objectives and along with it forestry as the instrument of sequestration and related offsets.

It was the “tool” of the nation being on the “right side of history.”

Mesmerised by the climatic taboo surrounding forestry a community of interest refrained from inquiring why the practice of removing all the tree components such as branches mandatory in other nations was ignored in New Zealand.

Commentators imbued with reverence for anything to do with forestry voiced concern over the heaps of timber debris building up on beaches, yet ignored the effect of the hinterland detritus, tailings, stockpiles in the event of flooding.

By the same token unquestioned cultural ideals imposed on wider emergency handling hampered the initial response to Cyclone Gabrielle when it initially broke on the Auckland conurbation.

An official and exhaustive and long-running review of the umbrella civil defence agency known as Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) ignored operational effectiveness.

It concentrated instead on what was described as “workplace culture.”

It was not focussed on the ability of the organisation to respond in operational terms to catastrophic events such as those inflicted by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Instead the attenuated review procedure delved into what was described as personnel “behaviours,” and especially into “bullying.”

The Auckland initial uncertain chain of command and ill-defined areas of responsibility coupled with an emphasis on holidays may one day be attributed to this priority given to the sociological rather than operational performance of the first-reaction emergency structure.

An obstacle to a lucid assessment of the effects of Cyclone Gabrielle will be the inability of the politico media sphere to climb down from its hallowed ideological imperatives.

The approval of housing estates on low-lying land has long been considered a known risk yet one worth taking.

Yet the ideological version of the extension of this in the form of the official encouragement to build industrial generating sites on flood plains now seriously requires questioning.

One example is the Helensville, Auckland, solar generating plant scheduled to be built on a neighbouring town dairy farm site which now demonstrably after two inundations in two years lies on an active river bed in the form of the Kaipara River estuary.

Similar large scale solar sites are planned for low-lying flood zones in the Wairarapa Valley.

In the doctrinal drive to meet international approval with such vulnerable showpiece sites there are now demonstrably being ignored the all-too-visible and present dangers posed by floods.

The series of government reviews on the Fire and Emergency sector’s sociological behaviour continued until right up to the advent of Cyclone Gabrielle.

The government for the past five years has strained all its ample communications sinews to warn of climate change and this has been echoed by its compliant media outlet chorus.

Yet in practical and operational terms the threat was treated as a long term one curable by variations in human behaviour in certain countries.

In the event and as the Nelson floods among other auguries indicated it was a short to medium term one. Imminent in fact.

Tangible evidence of the diffusion into sociological doctrines of natural disaster emergency management was evident by for example the determination of officials throughout the cyclone and its aftermath to inject in for government policy diversity’s sake linguistic words and nomenclature not immediately understood by the population as a whole.

An obvious recommendation is that in any real emergency the words used to describe any situation are the words that are understood by the bulk of the people listening to them.

The government and its bureaucracy preach that hostile weather “events” are on the increase.

The lesson of Cyclone Gabrielle indicates measures to be taken to ensure that the velocity of official belief systems is firewalled from the spheres of risk assessment and the parallel emergency management structure.

A separation of cultural and operational powers, in other words.

No time to Spare in Finding Freedom as Titles Deprivation Axe sharpens in UK

A Pretender is of the blood royal yet who has somehow found themselves sidelined from the royal line of succession and who insists on maintaining their right to the throne. Paramount is their own Restoration and in Harry’s case this recovery manoeuvre will be by proxy.

It is achievable by his wife Meghan in the mooted bid to enter United States politics probably as a congresswoman in a Democrat-run city such as New York or Los Angeles.

This chimes with the Hanoverian succession because Britain acquired and then lost the United States while ruled by this same dynasty now known as House of Windsor.

King Charles meanwhile will be advised that if the stormy pair get on the Coronation invitation list it inflates their value for another round of media stunts at the monarchy’s expense.

The couple’s alternative trans Atlantic option has been made more intense by the threatened re-activation of the Titles Deprivation Act originally applied after World War 1 to prevent the German-based branch of the Hanoverians from flaunting their titles and Honours in Britain.

Applied to Harry and Meghan this is serious because by law they could be restricted to just plain Mr & Mrs with the consequent evaporation of their mass media value.

This sector’s formula is an inverse one. Low doings in high places.

The lower the doing and the higher the status of the person doing it, the greater the demand and thus the value

The Danish monarchy (pictured) in the last few months picked up on the problem of princely titles becoming lightning rods for excitable institutional commercial media prurience and reduced Its own surplus familial title-holders to the more manageable rank of Count.

In the United States, a republic, titles are only applied to those in elective public service.

This means that upon election Meghan would forever be known by her highest ranking obtained such as Congresswoman, Senator, or given fevered speculation, Madam President.

Harry meanwhile would be endowed with the title Ambassador once he becomes a United States citizen and officially represents it overseas.

Historically the Pretender has gathered around them a court which proclaims the justness of their cause and which also served as a focal point to exhibit the force of arms ready to expedite the restoration.

As a modern Pretender Harry has combined the roles of a princely court and men-at-arms.

He uses as propaganda and attack arm various media institutions such as broadcasters, live streamers, newspaper chains, book publishers and assorted hagiographers.

In the will-he-wont-he? Around whether or not he will attend his father King Charles’ coronation he may decide for example to turn up as a commentator for a United States broadcaster.

Family feuds it is said start at weddings and are resolved at funerals.

The high hatting of Meghan began at their royal wedding as we are constantly and confidently informed.

The wrath instead of cooling only heated up upon the funeral of Her Majesty head of the family that Harry declares must be “saved from itself” and upon which Harry has imposed a standing order for an “apology” of imperial dimensions.

In Germany the Pretenders remain socially rather than politically prominent. Residual Hanoverian Pretenders are the Dukes of Brunswick and Cumberland.

Yet within living memory there lingers an experience leading to an impression that highly entitled and disaffected Hanoverians pose a threat to stability.

An evolving body of documentary evidence supports the suspicion that following his Abdication King Edward V111 and his consort now the Duke and Duchess of Windsor intrigued with Nazi Germany about becoming puppet rulers of Britain and its Empire in the event of a German victory in World War 2.

Harry and Meghan are hardly in this league, to be fair.

Commonwealth governments were consulted prior to the Abdication of Edward V111.

As Duke and Duchess of Sussex there can be no royal parade without them raining on it. Their white anting of the monarchical structure imperils the Commonwealth and as the Coronation draws near Commonwealth leaders will advocate sterner measures than the existing hope-for-the-best ones.

Flood-prone dairy farm power stations emerge as being global energy trade-offs

An official scheme to encourage the development of immense solar generating sites on dairy farms outside North Island tourist townships has emerged as the proposed Helensville site (pictured) became again submerged in the region’s most recent floods.

The power site, an immense one, complete with large scale batteries and complex current conversion towers might even have been on its way to completion had not a local action group constantly drawn attention to the risks involved in the low-lying pastoral site.

The Helensville Group Opposing Solar Farm Construction has been a long term lone voice pointing out the dangers of the generating site to planners and also even those involved with the site implementation itself.

Because of its devotion to official ideals the mainstream media remains mute on these obvious and dangerous flaws.

New Zealand is 82 percent powered by renewables and any energy shortage is contrived due to state interference in other sources.

An explanation of the state’s backing of solar energy farms in the neighbourhood of North Island tourist townships is the existence of an approved formula to implement offset schemes for industrial foreign energy consumers.

This means that the overseas energy consumers could offset anywhere in the world their power requirements derived from oil and gas by pointing out their contribution to renewables In New Zealand in the form of the solar plants.

Such solar plants in the tourist towns can be established cheaply simply because they can literally plug into the existing substations of the towns. The offsets inducement explains the reckless insistence in locating these electrical plants on these low-lying dairy farms.

Plans put forward for the other North Island tourist town, Greytown, illustrate this strategy.

Plans for Greytown mirror those for Helensville because of the use of neighbouring dairy land which is similarly on flood prone pastoral land.

Ironically the dairy sector and tourism are New Zealand’s major foreign revenue earners

It is known that the government has involved itself in identifying finance for these power schemes.

It is known too that the government has ensured that very senior personnel of ultra large scale power consumers have had removed impediments to residence here.

The Helensville site inundation which was forecast by the local action group also points to a willingness to suspend the otherwise rigorously-enforced regime of nationwide ultra-cautious health and safety measures whenever is involved any construction project of any size at all for anything at all.

The existence of an offsets trade off scheme for industrial solar plants goes a long way to explaining why New Zealand dairy farms adjacent to townships and thus the accessible electricity sub stations have suddenly become an international focus for solar developers.

This is when there are so many much drier, hotter and much sunnier locations in the southern hemisphere and which are remote from townships.