NX-Files

The Prime Minister’s son likes to keep the Prime Minister on his toes.  Max Key’s nick-name for his father is ‘Captain Tubb’ – a reference to his expanding waistline. 

I thought that John’s self deprecating response was just great:

"It's Max's to speak to, but I'm growing in stature in more ways than one," he said yesterday.

Heh.

With regards to exercise, I recommend he finds an exercise he enjoys and tries to do it as often as he can – then it doesn’t seem like a chore.  For example running or a treadmill is mind numbingly boorrrring. 

…… was Dr Brash’s response to the suggestion that Helen Clark is our country’s greatest living New Zealander.   NX agrees whole-heartedly!

The fact that she only achieved 33% of the vote and was subsequently booted out of office should indicate what the majority of New Zealanders feel about her. 

So why then would you nominated her….. for her long list of achievements?  Please… thanks to her complex nanny state programmes New Zealand now has to go into more debt just to pay for them.  So, is it her longevity?  Well anyone that has read my blog would know my feelings on how Helen achieved her third term. 

So I’m totally with you on this one Dr Brash – You’ve got to be joking!

I've done a couple of these quizzes now and I always seem to end up in roughly same place - centre right with libertarian leanings.  Which is probably exactly where I want to be.    A lot of issue's I'm neutral on and there were only a couple of issues I took a strong stance on.   

My philosophy is continually evolving, but lately I've been thinking that society wouldn't need as many rules or big government if people did the right thing.  Personal responsibility, personal freedom, and tolerance is the best way to foster a social conscious - all of which tend to be centre-right philosophy.  I think compassion, the most noble of human qualities, is less likely to be born out of a nanny state where it's always someone else's responsibility, always someone else's problem. 

In saying that, one has to be realistic.  People won’t develop a social consciousness if they have to worry about putting food on the table.  And then there’s greed.  So that is why I believe in a progressive tax structure – which one could argue is socialism.  The left is also good at promoting tolerance and social inclusion.  New Zealand is fortunate that the current and former leaders of the National party have been socially liberal; John Key and Don Brash.

To sum up, government should set the rules to allow everyone to stand on their own two feet and then leave it up to us.

John Ansell (250) Vote:  

January 7th, 2009 at 1:15 am

1. A majority of Palestinian voters elect a terrorist government.

2. Democratically-elected terrorists suicide bomb innocent Israelis.

3. Israel puts up a wall to keep the terrorists in. End of suicide bombings.

4. Democratically-elected terrorists fire rockets at innocent Israelis.

5. Israel fires back - with interest. (The same disproportionate approach was the only way the Americans could defeat the disproportionately stubborn and suicidal Japanese in WWII.)

6. Dozens of innocent, and probably just as many not-so-innocent, terrorist-voting Gaza civilians are killed, along with many more cowardly terrorists who hide behind them.

7. Democratically-elected terrorists keep firing rockets at innocent Israelis.

8. Israel invades Gaza to wipe out rockets. Likely to succeed. Palestinians increasingly resemble the Black Knight in Monty Python and Holy Grail. Israel wins another war and withdraws.

Question to critics of Israel: what would you do to defend your citizens against vicious terrorists who, like the Japs in WWII, are happy to use their own people as cannon-fodder and refuse to see sense?

 

I'm not hugely pro one side or the other, but I agree with John's point that civilian causalities are part'n parcel of elected a terrorist government.  Maybe they should've had a little bomb or a skull'n crossbones next to the Hamas party on the ballet sheet. 

If I were Palestinian, I would be very unhappy with Hamas's failure to advantage a peace deal.  Hopefully they'll consider that the next time they vote.