Flick The Pricks In 26

@RpsAgainstTrump I had no idea Albert Speer was still active

Trump: I am pleased to announce that TODAY my Administration officially filed the presentation and plans to the highly respected Commission of Fine Arts for what will be the GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World

@mauriceraiti Future historians will call this line of reasoning "The Hosking Paradox"

Even for Mike Hosking never have I seen a reckon so far fetched that no amount of spin would see this one fly. Luxon’s number one fan knows he’s a lemon.

@chrisluxonmp Where are our fucking ferries then?

Auckland is New Zealand’s economic engine and today we’ve backed it to go further. We’ve signed the country’s first-ever City Deal with Auckland Council. It’s a long-term partnership to unlock growth, build infrastructure, and lift living standards. This means getting on with the big stuff: delivering projects like the City Rail Link and Eastern Busway, planning for the next Waitematā Harbour crossing, and unlocking new housing and jobs in places like Drury and along the CRL corridor. It’s a more coordinated, more accountable way of working, focused on actually delivering results. Because when Auckland succeeds, New Zealand succeeds.

@bbangizbang @ianchappellroan "Arsehole of the world" (K. Richards, 1965)(

@ianchappellroan thoughts about invercargill

i don't respect a city unless it has a good nickname auckland = the city of sails: good hamilton = the tron: interesting and unique chch = the garden city: obviously great dunedin = edinburgh of the south: really good wellington = the windy city: bad, chicago reheated nachos

@StuartHumphryes @jjulieanderson @HobeckBooks @JohnSimpsonNews That all-too-brief postwar era when anything seemed possible. A stunning piece of design.

@jjulieanderson @HobeckBooks @JohnSimpsonNews I've been cleaning-up a rather nice colour photo of the skylon, which you may like to see -

After yesterday's interest in my Festival of Britain post, I thought today's should be of the Skylon, with the edge of the Dome of Discovery to the left and the Transport Pavilion (on which more tomorrow) to the right/ @HobeckBooks @JohnSimpsonNews

@tmurphyNZ That’s the sign of a well-spent youth then, not picking that word

That word on Wordle today was an outrage. Just saying.

@matroked @mcnaughthelen1 @FedFarmers It was Labour who took on M. Bovis and won.

@mcnaughthelen1 They should have lost them when they canceled school busses and spent the climate resilience fund and when they refused to act on m. bovis @FedFarmers

Fed Farmers on Radionz saying the Government needs to make a decent plan over the fuel situation. The Government may be losing the farmers.

@war_zap @MarioNawfal In your dreams mate. All you’ve done is make the rest of the world despise the Israeli government even more, and really piss off the Iranians, who will regroup and continue to do battle with the Zionists. Not a great outcome.

@MarioNawfal It’s already a win for Israel. They did so much damage to Iran. Iran must do everything possible to ensure they accept the offers of the ceasefire, else it will be worse.

🇮🇱🇺🇸🇮🇷 Netanyahu is publicly calling the ceasefire a win. Privately, he reportedly lobbied Trump against it, arguing it came too soon and gives Iran room to regroup. That tension tells you everything. Israel went into this war with goals: degrade Iran's nuclear program, gut its missile capabilities, maybe topple the regime itself. A 2-week pause, brokered without Israel even at the table, does none of that, it just stops the bleeding for now. At home, his coalition's hardliners wanted to keep going; they see this as leaving the job half-done. And the opposition, led by Yair Lapid, is already calling it the worst political disaster in Israeli history. The Lebanon carve-out is his lifeline; by keeping that front active, Netanyahu can tell his base he hasn't gone soft. Israel is still hitting Hezbollah, and he can frame that as staying on the offense while the U.S. handles the Iran diplomacy track. But this deal exposed how much Israel's military campaign ultimately depends on Washington's appetite for it. When Trump decided the Strait of Hormuz mattered more than another month of strikes, that was the end of the conversation. Netanyahu didn't get the decisive outcome he was selling to his country. Whether that catches up to him depends on what the next 2 weeks produce. Source: AP News, Times of Israel, Politico, Al Jazeera

@JosephMooneyMP Explaining is losing

It’s been interesting hearing Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins saying that the closure of the Marsden Point refinery was a “private business decision.” While strictly correct, it omits significant government policies and decisions which made that “private decision” the only realistic one. I haven’t seen any media commentary on this. A May 2021 letter from the Refinery’s CEO to the then Minister of Finance described Marsden Point as one of “the safest and most reliable refineries in the region.” Notwithstanding that, the letter said it was considering a major change to its business to significantly reduce its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and become an import only terminal. It noted that the Minister had directed ACC to accelerate moves to divest from fossil fuels. The letter noted that ACC held around 10% of Refining NZ’s shares, and as significant investments would be required to change it into an import only terminal, it asked the Minister to distinguish investment in Refining NZ from other fossil fuel investments given its critical infrastructure role. But why was Refining NZ looking at shutting down its refinery despite being one of the “safest and most reliable in the region”? A 2019 Ministry for the Environment Regulatory Impact Statement lays it out plainly. Refining NZ’s Negotiated Greenhouse Agreement - protecting it from full ETS exposure since 2003 - expired 31 December 2022. Under government policy settings it would then receive zero industrial allocation and face the full cost of its emissions. The ministry’s own analysis said this would “nearly halve the profitability of the refining business” - at 2019 prices of just $18 per NZU, it would produce an annual ETS bill of ~$20 million. The RIS recorded Refining NZ’s profits over five years: ∙2012: $31M ∙2013: -$5M (a loss) ∙2014: $10M ∙2015: $151M ∙2016: $47M Average that out and you get roughly $47M per year (with an exceptional 2015 year). The ministry itself said full ETS exposure would nearly halve profitability even at $18/unit. NZU prices didn’t stay at $18 which was readily foreseeable. The NZU price hit a record high of $88.50/unit in late 2022. Applied to the Refinery’s Scope 1 emissions of 1 to 1.3 million tonnes per year, that’s an annual ETS liability of $88.5M to $115M, and that’s before Scope 2 costs on purchased electricity and gas. On a business losing money in bad years, a potential $100M+ annual carbon bill isn’t a headwind. It’s a death sentence. The ministry knew this in 2019, and suggested options the government could take in terms of emissions liabilities to keep the refinery in operation, warning: “The closure of Refining NZ, which employs approximately 300 people, would have a significant negative impact on the Northland economy and would leave New Zealand dependent on the supply of refined petroleum products sourced from overseas refineries that may choose to prioritise supply to other nations ahead of New Zealand at times of shortages.” Read the Ministry’s RIS for yourself (that specific comment is at paragraph 25) 👇 environment.govt.nz/assets/Publica…

@henrycooke Cookie cutter press release. “You’re allowed one paragraph at the end to talk about yourself. Don’t screw it up.”

INBOX: National selects Jonathan Pitts as candidate for Wellington North

@mangonui08 You aint my matua

A message from the Matua...

@henrycooke My worst nightmare

Column today: What would a coalition with a far more powerful NZ First look like?

@winstonpeters Good grief Winston, methinks thou doth protest just a little too loudly. You are painfully ignorant about gender and sexuality and boy does it show. You really should talk to some experts in the field (no, not the H. Potter author) before you start spouting your hate.

We didn’t realise the NZ Herald now thought that printing verbal diarrhoea was their new standard for so-called ‘opinion pieces’ – maybe it’s just the fact that Jonathon Ayling is clearly a mouth-breather and they felt sorry for him. Either way, at the very least they should have fact-checked what he was saying before allowing it to be printed. Ayling used a half-page spread to make it obvious to all and sundry that his motivation for writing his ‘opinion piece’ was that he is very hurt personally or more likely politically aggrieved. It always happens when New Zealand First is winning – the pasty incel losers come out from their mother’s basements to hide behind a keyboard and start crying into their soy lattes. He attempts to accuse New Zealand First of not being a socially conservative party by saying that we supported the liberalising of abortion, euthanasia, and strangely uses the example of the initial government decisions when the pandemic hit. Only a four-flushing moron wouldn’t know that when the abortion legislation was voted on in parliament it was an individual conscience vote, not party vote, and one which I voted against. Only a half-wit dunce wouldn’t know that the legalisation of euthanasia was not decided in parliament, it was decided by the people of New Zealand via a referendum. It was New Zealand First who demanded that referendum so that it wasn’t decided by politicians - it’s called ‘democracy’ Mr Ayling. Assuming Mr Ayling is neither a four-flushing moron nor a half-wit dunce, for him to use those examples as ‘proof’ that New Zealand First is not a socially conservative party, only shows he must’ve known those facts before he wrote his nonsense - it will be up to the readers of the Herald to come to their own conclusion about what that then means. The most astonishing part of his ‘opinion piece’ is when Mr Ayling decided to criticise the way New Zealand First is utilising Members Bills and the ballot – specifically how we keep adding pieces of legislation via our four backbench MPs and rotating them when our party policy and election manifesto keeps on growing. Putting aside the obvious fact that we have just had one of those socially conservative bills drawn from the ballot and now will be read in the House, the reason it is astonishing is that Mr Ayling himself, when he was the head of the Free Speech Union, actually contacted us and gave us a bill to put into the ballot as a Members Bill. It seems the irony is lost on him that he is now complaining about the very process he was gladly a part of. Or maybe it is not lost on him and he is just the definition of the word that starts with an “H” and ends in “ypocrit”. The fact that at the time he fell over himself to thank us for doing that for the Free Speech Union makes it even more poetic. This type of pathetic baseless attack full of misleading missives and lies does not surprise our party one bit. It just gives us confidence that what we are doing is working and that we are winning. We are packing the halls around this country and people like Mr Ayling clearly don’t like it because he votes for his mates in another political party. There is one thing he did get right – we are a nationalist party, and we are a populist party. Newsflash Mr Ayling, what New Zealand First is doing is very popular – and what political party wouldn’t want to be popular. Whether you like it or not Mr Ayling, New Zealand First is the only socially conservative, nationalist, patriotic party in parliament - and we aren’t going anywhere but up. Good luck on your newfound long journey ahead to try and find some relevance – maybe you should have the courage to take the risk like the rest of us did and run for office, then we will see how many people would be foolish enough to listen to your vacuous ‘opinion’.

@SubRosaMagick Of course! And if you don't, you should.

Be honest… does ANYONE actually use these words in real life? 🤣 Bamboozled Flabbergasted Discombobulated Shenanigans Cattywampus Lollygag Malarkey Kerfuffle Brouhaha Nincompoop Skedaddle Tomfoolery Flibbertigibbet Pumpernickel

@henrycooke Well I guess we'll be moving of from Watts/Energy jokes to talk of Brown outs

RESHUFFLE: Simeon Brown is getting the energy portfolio from Watts. Chris Penk enters Cabinet with Defence and Space. Penny Simmonds also enters Cabinet. Chris Bishop loses associate sport and leader of the house.

@Pazienza82 @radionz Chippy handled the interrogation like a true pro, but sheesh it sure went on way longer than was warranted

@radionz Melissa Chan Green is desperate to pick the detail with Chippy's Covid response. He gave her a clear timeline of the sequence of papers released. Is she running another royal inquiry? Does she think she knows more than those that led the official inquiries?

@SimeonBrownMP Fling enough shit and some of it will stick eh, Simeon? Well that works both ways, so I'd start ducking for cover right now if I were you. And please just stop lying. Aren't you supposed to be a good Christian or something?

Parents are right to ask whether Hipkins raised questions when concerns about 12-17 year olds were put to him. Transparency is essential to building and maintaining trust, and it underpins our focus on lifting immunisation rates so Kiwi kids get the best possible start in life.

@toddmstephenson The only thing that’s “stationary” is your brain

Almost every week I receive emails from New Zealanders asking why some government agencies are still using te reo ahead of English. The English-first policy is not one of ACT’s coalition commitments, but I decided to look into it. In fact, the Government’s main public-facing webpage, govt.nz, still uses ‘Te Kāwanatanga o Aotearoa’ ahead of ‘New Zealand Government’. This is the Public Service Commission’s official branding for the Government. The Public Service Commission sets guidelines for branding across government, so it’s no wonder many agencies are lagging.

@GayleneABarnes @toddmstephenson The world is burning but the Terfs just don’t give up.

@toddmstephenson Hi Todd, more urgently, the Public Service Commission must issue guidance on what the word "woman" and "female" means across all agencies, the biological definition. I have a large complaint on the OmbudsMAN's desk. We are losing ... the word, the truth and common sense here.

@PTurnerNZ There seemed to be a LOT going on in 1900. Sad to see the telautograph didn’t stick around…

This is amazing. I can understand the way we add words when technologies are invented such as aeroplane and petrol. But ‘pragmatism’? How did we cope without these words?😅