My Latest Conspiracy

I love a good conspiracy, in fact I love a bad conspiracy even more, but it’s important not to take them too seriously. So after that inauspicious start, let’s move on to what I really want to talk about here: my own latest conspiracy which I don’t necessarily believe.

Amongst my geeky interests is aviation, and especially military aircraft, so I usually go to New Zealand’s premiere air show, “Warbirds Over Wanaka”. Previously I attended this in 1992 ,1996, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2012, and 2024. I also attended the Omaka Air Show in 2017. Of course, I have reports on these shows, including photos, sounds, and movies on my web site.

This year I got tickets a few months back and was quite enthusiastic about going, mainly because an F-22 was going to be there. That is a fairly modern American jet fighter, with some stealth ability. I like old planes, but fast noisy jets are my favourite, and this is one I hadn’t seen before. Previous shows included an F-111, some F/A-18s, and an F-16.

So a few weeks back it was announced that the F-22 would not attend, and I never found a really detailed or convincing explanation why. In addition, other more modern aircraft, which are currently in use, from Australia and Singapore were also cancelled, and more recently the New Zealand Air Force also cancelled their visit, and the RNZAF has been at every other show I have been to.

Now, it is possible that the Americans needed the F-22s in Iran, but I doubt it. It is also possible that the extra cost of fuel made attendance too expensive, but I also reject this. By the way, those who criticise the show for its use of fuel during a global crisis should know that it uses about 50,000 litres of aviation fuel over five days, but New Zealand consumes around 24 million litres of fuel per day in total, so the use at the show is really just a “rounding error” (0.04 percent of the total).

I remember earlier this year that various activists were commenting that displaying current military aircraft while they were also being used in various conflicts around the world was “inappropriate”. This was before Iran, so I guess they were referring to Gaza and Ukraine. By the way, whenever I see the word “inappropriate” I assume we are talking about some major BS, because all it really means is something the activists don’t like.

So my conspiracy is that anti-war activists have threatened violence (oh, the irony) or damage of some sort if modern jets are displayed at the show. Alternatively the government has got involved and requested they not attend to prevent any embarrassing connection with current unpopular wars (this would have come from the pathetic National Party, not Act or NZ First).

This seems to make more sense than the aircraft being required in an actual combat role or the somewhat increased price of fuel being a factor. Can I prove it? Well, no, of course not, or it wouldn’t be much of a conspiracy theory, would it? The best conspiracies are those where there is some superficial evidence, but not enough to result in any firm conclusion!

Anyway, that’s my theory. if you have any better explanations, leave a comment, but I want you to know: all good conspiracies are totally unaffected by the facts!

So, What About Iran?

Well, the conflict in Iran is maybe the biggest global news story at the moment (sorry about that, Palestine, Ukraine, and global warming) so I guess I should present some opinions on it. Needless to say, these opinions will contain plenty of nuance, because that’s what I try to do. Anyway, let’s get started…

The war started at the end of February, so it has been going for a month now. Is it too early to know if it is a good or bad idea, a success or a failure, a moral necessity or an abomination? It’s a bit of all of those, and when the US gets involved with wars it is always terminating them and what comes next which is the problem, so it is too early to judge, but Im going to judge anyway!

The Iranian regime was recognised by almost everyone as a bad one. When a government kills tens of thousands of its own people for demonstrating against it, you know something is wrong.

When a country is not trusted even by its neighbours (and yes, I do recognise the difference in the Persian origin of Iran versus the Arab roots of other Middle Eastern states, and the difference in Shia versus Sunni Islam) that is not a good sign.

When a country is known to be supporting and funding terrorist groups whose intent is the eradication of its ideological enemies (especially Israel) then you can see why we might be right to feel a bit nervous about it.

And when a state is governed according to a religion which some people refer to as a death cult, and that country is desperately trying to create a nuclear weapon, well yes, we have a problem.

There were signs that the Iranian people might have been ready to rise up against the government, so you can understand why the US and Israel might want to use their military option to help that process along. It hasn’t worked out that way, but the idea was arguably good, and there might still be some possibility of success.

So looking at these factors you might conclude the war was justified, but for balance, let’s list some counter-arguments…

First, there are many bad governments around the world and many would ask why it is up to the US (and to some extent, Israel) to judge which are sufficiently bad that the use of force against them is justified. There is also the unfortunate fact that when the US does try to “fix” these issues it often turns into a complete debacle. Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan were not conspicuous successes, were they?

So we have to ask if there any moral basis by which this can be justified, and practically speaking, will there be a positive outcome, or “will the cure worse than the disease”?

Second, if we are going to criticise the theocratic elements of its culture, should we not also condemn the religious rhetoric from the US and especially Israel? I have often said that I think Islam is a far worse religion than Christianity or Judaism, but I also say “those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities” and that applies to both sides to some extent.

Third, it wasn’t so long ago that the US attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility was claimed to be a great success, so you might wonder why it is now necessary to start a genuine war against them for the same reason. Sure, I agree that some ability was maintained and they are not going to stop their nuclear program voluntarily, but maybe just additional strikes agains those facilities might have been more justifiable.

Finally, did the US and Israel understand the global repercussions of this war? The world is now suffering from fuel shortages and the associated increase in prices, which is turning a lot of opinion against the war. Did they not realise the tactical use of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran was likely, because they do not seem to have planned ahead to prevent it.

Some people are engaging in more extreme rhetoric and claiming they can see World War III or a nuclear Armageddon being the eventual result of this action, but I don’t think anyone with much credibility would believe that. On the other hand, by stopping a genocidal theocracy getting nuclear weapons and very likely using them, maybe those things can be prevented.

If you think the price of fuel is bad now, imagine what it would belike during a nuclear exchange in the Middle East! Maybe now is the right time to attempt a meaningful regime change and prevent a truly catastrophic conflict in the future. I’m not totally sure that is a reasonable idea myself, but it is an idea with some merit.

Maybe we just need to let this proceed and see where it finishes. And if that is not acceptable to people (especially the anti-Trump mob) because of the civilian and military losses, maybe they would prefer to go back to where the Iranian government was killing its own people instead? It’s important not to look at just what is happening now, but at what would be happening, both now and in the future, if this action had not been taken.

So those are my thoughts for now. As things progress maybe I will change my mind, but the only way to truly judge this will be how the US exit strategy unfolds and what the new Iranian government looks like. We can only hope that this will be the exception where things turn out for the better!

Been There, Believed That

When debating people it is always useful to have some perspective on where their ideas and philosophical preferences come from. By “philosophical” here I mean in a very generic sense, covering politics, religion, and other fundamental beliefs.

One of the reasons I think I am sometimes quite effective when debating against others is that I have “been there, believed that” myself in the past. For example, politically I used to be fairly firmly on the left and regularly voted for Labour, along with even the Greens on one occasion. And when I left school I was quite credulous about a lot of paranormal claims, and was quite the opposite of the skeptic I am now.

So when I see other people making those same mistakes I made in the past I know exactly where they are coming from, and I am often quite understanding of their position, because I used to have the same ideas myself!

I saw this comment recently on social media: “Everyone starts off as a lefty, and then wakes up at some point… After you start either making money, working, or trying to run a business, you realise what crap ideas they are and go right”.

Of course this claim of “everyone” cannot be taken literally. Maybe better would be “most people” or even “every rational person”, but even those claims are debatable.

There are also these quite common concepts: “If you don’t vote left when you are young, you have no heart; if you don’t vote right as you get older, you have no head” and “I still feel I support the left like I did 10 or 20 years ago, but the left has gone so crazy it has left me behind, so the right is now my only option”.

I can identify with all of these points. Many people who have more extreme views opposing mine are either very naive (especially younger people), or live in a “bubble” where they don’t have to face many of the realities others do (the main example here being academics and teachers), or base their opinions on emotion rather than rationality (dare I mention that many of these are women, especially young women).

Note that in no way am I saying that all young people, or academics, or women are out of touch. This is a purely statistical argument. There are plenty of older non-academic men who believe a lot of nonsense too, just like there are plenty of young people, academics, and women who are very reasonable.

Also note that when I use the word “right” I use it as a convenient shorthand rather than an exact description. I do not think of myself as a conservative, although I think some conservative ideas are good. Currently I think of myself more as a libertarian, although I also recognise many weaknesses in that belief system.

And many of my ideas might be seen by some people as quite left leaning, although I would say they are just common sense and supportive of individual freedoms. For example, I support gay marriage because what harm is it doing me? What right do I have to try to control the lives of gay people? And I am not religious, unlike many conservatives, so I tend to reject the religious ideas of people I otherwise might agree with (Charlie Kirk for example). And I agree with government controls over the worst excesses of capitalism, although I would prefer to see less of those rather than more.

So I fully recognise how ridiculous some of my opinions were when I was younger. I’m not an academic myself but I did work in a university for a long time and I know how many of them think and I agreed with them for years. And I’m not a woman (could I identify as one for a while to get their perspective?) so I guess the point of this post is a bit weaker because of that.

When I see the arguments some people try to use against me, I recognise them for the same arguments I used in the past. I can remember what caused me to change my mind and reject them, and I know exactly what the attraction of them is. This makes it a lot easier to fight against them. Sometimes I even say “been there, believed that”

Just Some Feghoots

I just noticed that I have written almost 2500 blog posts and I have not done a humorous one recently, especially about the worst form of humour ever: feghoots! It’s hard to believe, but it appears to be true. Anyway, what is a feghoot, I hear some of you ask. Well, it’s an amusing and rambling story which ends in a lame pun. It generally elicits a groan rather than a laugh. You’ve been warned! Anyway, here are some of my favourite feghoots and a brief explanation of each…

Feghoot 1: Some friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise the funds.

Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, the rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. He asked his mother to go and ask the friars to get out of business. They ignored her, too.

So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to “persuade” them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close shop. Terrified, the friars did so, thereby proving that…

Only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

Comment: The catchphrase “only you can prevent forest fires” comes from a US Forest Service campaign starting in 1947. It has become very well known, so I hope you know about it or the “joke” is even more lame than usual!

Feghoot 2: Back during the stone ages our ancestors mostly lived in grass huts supported with wooden rafters. The highest technological achievement was stone cutting and most tribes would have their best stone cutters craft elaborate thrones for their tribal chieftains. These thrones would be a source of pride among the tribe and stealing another tribe’s throne was a way to demoralize a rival and a way to show superiority without resorting to open warfare.

One such tribe wanted to honor its chieftain and so a group of young warriors crept into their main rival’s camp and stole their throne. Wanting to surprise their chieftain the warriors hid the throne up in the rafters of their grass hut. Unfortunately no sooner had the chieftain walked in then the rafter broke and the chieftain was killed by the falling throne. The moral is, of course…

People in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.

Comment: Starting to see how this works now? The pun sounds very much like the old proverb “people in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones”. There is even a Spoonerism here as well, but I will not discuss those on this post.

Feghoot 3: The big chess tournament was taking place at the Plaza in New York. After the first day’s competition, many of the winners were sitting around in the foyer of the hotel talking about their matches and bragging about their wonderful play. After a few drinks they started getting louder and louder until finally, the desk clerk couldn’t take any more and kicked them out.

The next morning the manager called the clerk into his office and told him there had been many complaints about his being so rude to the hotel guests: instead of kicking them out, he should have just asked them to be less noisy. The clerk responded…

I’m sorry, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.

Comment: Apparently, chestnuts roasting in an open fire are a great thing, although I’ve never tried them that way. Hopefully anyone trying to make sense of this joke will recognise the phrase, though.

Feghoot 4: Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him…

A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Comment: The last sentence resembles the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” when spoken quickly enough, and it is actually a real English word which was made famous in the Disney song from the movie “Mary Poppins”. This is one of my favourite feghoots, and not just because it is the shortest! The word actually pre-dates the movie and its meaning is explained like this: it is a compound word made up of: super- (above), -cali- (beauty), -fragilistic- (delicate), -expiali- (to atone), and -docious (educable), with all of these parts combined meaning “atoning for being educable through delicate beauty”.

So now you know. Never say you din’t learn something reading my blog!

Another Witch Hunt

There are a lot of people out there who I refer to colloquially as “control freaks”. These are people who aren’t happy with trying to control their own lives, they want to control yours and mine as well. They range from partners and friends at the bottom level, to managers and colleagues, to police and other authority figures, and (of course) at the top (or bottom, depending ony our perspective) we have politicians!

Of course, most of these people don’t think they are trying to control others for no good reason. They generally think they are doing what is best for everyone, including the person being controlled, because the leaders are either more knowledgeable, more moral, or just smarter than those “beneath” them.

I’m sure there are examples where this is true: where leaders genuinely are making good decisions which are for the good of the majority, but I am equally confident there are a lot of those decisions being made which are based on poor information, or toxic ideology, or just some sort of subjective factors which might not be easy to justify.

The need to control others is often based on some sort of moral panic. The leaders see a major problem in society which has to be fixed, and as the only holders of truth and high morality, it is up to them to do it. But they are usually wrong, deluded, and just distorting the true situation for their own benefit, often (I suspect) subconsciously, which is far nore dangerous than those who know that they are following a corrupt or irrational path.

Let me give you some examples of moral panics from the past: witch hunts and especially the Salem Witch Trials, McCarthyism, the Pedo Panic, the Satanic Panic, and many others. There is a list of moral panics on Wikipedia with 30 or 40 examples.

And what is the latest panic that we must rely on our “betters” (our esteemed political leaders, activists, and other control freaks) to fix for us? I say it is the internet and social media in particular, which allegedly causes a lot of harm to people, especially younger people and kids.

I have already blogged about this issue in “Too Much Control” from 2025-12-11, but more information has appeared recently, and I wanted to mention it here.

According to a guest on a recent podcast from the New Zealand Free Speech Union, there is no good evidence that social media specifically causes any harm, because the studies which might indicate this are not detailed enough and fail to account for the difference between correlation and causation.

So people who use social media might have higher levels of anxiety, but is it the social media causing that, does higher anxiety cause people to use social media more, or does a common cause lead to both? We don’t know, and don’t know what specific social media activities these anxious people are engaging in.

Surveys of young people about the causes of their anxiety don’t indicate social media is the major cause. In almost every case the cause is school, and especially exams and excessive homework. So if we want to reduce anxiety levels maybe we should abolish school, or at least abolish exams and homework!

There is research, by well known scientists like Jonathan Haidt, which does but more blame on social media, but this is just one view, and is not the complete picture. So it is possible to pick and choose evidence to support whichever side is convenient. Why do politicians emphasise the alleged problems but ignore the poor evidence and downplay the benefits?

Maybe it’s because it gives them a chance to be control freaks. For years now, they have wanted to control free speech with their so-called “hate speech” laws which were really nothing more than a way to control opinions they didn’t like. Sure, a small part of it might be reasonably classified as genuine hate speech, and there was undoubtedly misinformation involved as well, but I have seen what I might view as hate speech and what is by any reasonable definition mininformation come from government sources as well. But those would never be censored, would they.

The strategy of controlling young people in schools and universities has worked well for the groups wanting to destroy Western civilisation and capitalism in recent years, and this just seems like an extension to it. Stop young people seeing alternative views on-line now and you can control them in the future.

Sounds like a conspiracy? Sure, it is. But remember some conspiracies are real. They say that if you want to see who is oppressing you just look at those you’re not allowed to criticise. This sure does seem like a moral panic being created out of very little, then used as an excuse for draconian controls over free speech. I think a little bit of risk is worth accepting in order to gain greater freedom. Don’t agree? Maybe you’re part of the problem then. Is this just another witch hunt?

Double Standards

No one is entirely consistent in their beliefs, and as a person’s ideology becomes more extreme they tend to become less consistent than the average, at least in my experience. It is not limited to any particular society, culture, or political group, of course, but it does seem particularly bad amongst the stragglers who still haven’t moved on from woke-ism yet.

Before you feel like criticising me for that statement, let me save you the bother. Yes, I know I am somewhat infatuated with woke-ism but I do believe it has been the cause of many of our societal problems over the last few years, so I don’t apologise (well maybe a little bit) for concentrating on it. Also, my little dig about the “stragglers” suggesting that most people have already moved on is based on societal changes I think I have seen (that woke is no longer the force it was) but that could be debated.

But let’s move on to my main point: I recently saw a post reflecting this lack of consistency, specifically aimed at the woke mob, so let’s have a look at what it said and see if it is valid…

Comment: They call you racist, but say black people are too dumb to get ID.

Response: This is in reference to proposed voter ID requirements in the US, which some people claim are unfair to black people there. It seems to imply that those people are too incompetent or stupid or whatever to provide ID to vote, which does seem racist. Of course, they would claim it is because of “systemic racism” but have no evidence that it exists, as well as ignoring the ID requirements for many other parts of normal living, like driving, etc. So sure, there does seem to be some inconsistency here.

Comment: They call you a science denier, but say men in dresses are women.

Response: This is an obvious dig at the constant posts we see saying “trans women are real women” which by any objective standard is clearly false, although it depends on your definition of words, and woke-ism is very much an offshoot of postmodernism where redefining words is a common tactic. Again, there does seem some merit in this. If redefining words and ideas is fine in one context, why can’t it also be in others? Better still, let’s just stick to the definiton of words we already have.

Comment: They call Elon a Nazi and say you shouldn’t buy a Tesla, but buy Volkswagens.

Response: The Volkswagen company was originally created partly through pressure from Hitler, so it does have a problematic past, but I think we can safely move on from that by now. The Germans are now some of our best friends! But calling Elon Musk a Nazi is just stupid. He clearly isn’t one, and it just degrades the meaning of the word, just like has already happened to “racist”, “Islamophobe”, and “misogynist”.

Comment: They kicked religion out of schools because “indoctrination” but are fine with drag queen story hour.

Response: The drag queens would deny they are there for indoctrination, but it does seem in some cases as if this is a fair point. Young people are very impressionable, and it is OK to question their motives, just like we would question the motives of religious people wanting influence over children. So this is another fair point.

Comment: They call you fascist for wanting secure borders, but create “safe spaces” to keep out people they don’t agree with.

Response: There does appear to be a double standard here, although a case could be made that the people wanting to cross the border are often in dire need of help, but the people being kept out of safe spaces have little need to be there. Despite that, I think there is some merit in this criticism.

Comment: They preach to you about climate change, but fly in private jets.

Response: This is a very obvious case of hypocrisy, and seems to be very common. But the elites who are at the front of “climate action” are not well known for their connection with everyday life. Another very obvious case of double standards.

Comment: They say you’re intolerant, but shout down and try to ban speakers they disagree with.

Response: Yes, they love to push tolerance and diversity, but are very intolerant of some opinions and the diversity never extends to opinions they disagree with. Clearly another double standard here.

There are a few others but I’m sure you get the point by now. The post finished with the comment “Liberalism is a mental illness”, which is problematic because “liberal” means very different things depending on which country you live in, and on the context. All I will say is the American style of liberalism has almost nothing in common with the classic form of it. That would never succumb to these obvious inconsistencies.

Media Inconsistency

I often rant about the poor state of the media. It’s not that most media companies are lying to us, it’s more that they are biased, opinionated, and selective in what they tell us.

For example, every time Trump is mentioned on left-oriented outlets like RNZ and TVNZ (while I am concentrating on New Zealand media here, a similar argument applies to other countries) there is an explicit or implied criticism of him in various ways. I could say it is subtle, but when you are alert to this it really isn’t: anything which is clearly positive is ignored while anything the media disapprove of is reported with a negative spin.

So the media are reporting fairly factually, but they are selective in which facts they report, when they have opinions they are almost always from one perspective, and instead of just reporting the facts they can’t help adding some sort of moral judgement as well.

Here are a few examples…

The negative effects of climate change are constantly reinforced, but any positives are completely ignored. So we might hear that we expect more people to die from the effects of extreme heat, but we don’t hear how currently about ten times as many die form extreme cold and this number is likely to reduce.

And the negative effects of increased CO2 are openly reported, even when some of them have become more uncertain, but the greatly increased plant growth and forest cover which has appeared over the last 10 years is never mentioned.

I’m sorry to be repetitive about this disclaimer, but I need to say again I am not denying that climate change is happening and is likely significantly caused by human activity, but I am debating the net effect of it, and I am debating the effectiveness of the steps taken to allegedly mitigate it.

Here’s another one I saw recently on social media, which I think has some merit: “We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners and bikers by the actions of a few lunatics. Funny how that works.” (relating to recent events in Australia).

In other words, when a Muslim carries out an atrocity it is not connected (by the mainstream media) to their religious beliefs so the bigger picture is ignored, but when a crazy person uses a gun to murder someone that is connected to the alleged underlying cause: too many guns.

And from the same post: “Seems we constantly hear about how the Australian Old Age Pension Plan could run out of money. How come we never hear about welfare and illegal immigration support running out of money? What’s interesting is that the first group worked for their money, but the second group didn’t.”

TO be fair we would need to know the cost of each of these schemes before reaching a conclusion based on practicality, but to reach one based on morality I think is fairly clear that this biased reporting is deeply problematic.

How much reporting do we see on the current civil unrest in Iran? Considering the number and type of casualties there why is it that we hear almost nothing compared with the war in Gaza when it was at its height? Gaza was a real war where the target was terrorists, Iran involves a government murdering thousands of its own citizens for protesting.

And the general state of dysfunction in many other Islamic countries is also ignored, or at least minimised. Why? Surely this doesn’t represent a genuine effort to present the news in a factual way. It seems more likely that it is a deliberate effort to emphasise news which fits the ideology of the news source while ignoring the news which contradicts it.

And then there is news which is not even news, but fits a woke agenda. I often see items about people who are pursuing some sort of activity which is seen by the media as admirable but is actually quite inconsequential, and shouldn’t really be classified as news at all.

For example, a presenter on a local TV channel decided to leave her job to study the Maori language full time. This was news, apparently. But if the person had not been part of the media in-group or had been studying a language not currently seen as significant to the woke majority in the media, would it have been news? I can’t prove a counter-factual but we all know it would have been ignored, don’t we.

I do have to admit that there are exceptions where some news sources do make some sort of effort to present all sides of a debate. For example, my local newspaper, the Otago Daily Times, has published two quite significant articles defending a mining company involved in what is probably the biggest current controversy here: new gold mining activity in Central Otago.

I should add though that even when I am complimenting them there is still an apparent bias against the mining company, because more items against the mining are published and they tend to be in more prominent locations. Still, at least we heard both sides, so well done the ODT.

So how do we overcome this problem? Well, I’m not suggesting not consuming news from mainstream sources, because they do an adequate job on non-contentious issues, and they do present controversial material which is at least worth considering. But we should be doing two things: first, don’t believe everything they say; and second, try to get contrary opinions from alternative media (which we should also be suspicious of).

I really think that critical thinking skills should be taught at schools. Not only are these useful for any further study but they are also essential for functioning in modern society. I don’t think I would have gained these skills at all if I hadn’t taken a couple of psychology papers at university which emphasised them. But most people don’t to that, so they are more susceptible to media inconsistency.

Forget the Treaty

I often write a post about New Zealand’s (alleged) national day, Waitangi Day, and it is generally fairly negative because it isn’t a national day at all, it is primarily an opportunity for Maori activists to whine about how bad things are and how they should be given a whole pile of undeserved money and special privileges.

Many people will say I am a racist for calling out this phenomenon, because it involves a “minority racial group”, but I equally criticise any other group which utilises similar tactics, and it is the activists I am talking about, not Maori in general. Also, many activists for Maori causes are not Maori themselves, so I think it is fairly clear it is the idea I am against, not any particular racial group.

At this year’s Waitangi Day commemoration the leader of New Zealand’s libertarian party, Act, made a few comments which got the woke mob into a bit of a bit of a state. While that party is nominally libertarian, it is fairly moderate in fact, and it’s only because politics has gone so far to the left that some people dare to suggest it is “far right”, which it is not, or course. See my blog post on the Overton Window from 2024-06-19 for a discussion on how what is labelled, left, right, and centrist has changed in recent times.

The comment that got most attention was one on the positive aspects of colonialism. The British colonised this country and the Treaty of Waitangi (which is primarily what our national day commemorates) served as an official agreement on how the process of colonisation should proceed, to ensure that all groups were treated fairly.

Unfortunately there are several issues which affect how the Treaty is interpreted and utilised. First, there is more than one version, with potentially different meanings. Second, some words in the Maori language do not have an exact English equivalent (and vice versa) so the Maori and English speaking sides might have had different expectations. Third, in recent times a new concept, known as the “principles” of the Treaty has emerged which tries to add extra obligations which aren’t mentioned directly anywhere. And finally, both sides have not followed even the most basic requirements very well resulting in claims for compensation.

Many people think the Treaty is no longer fit for purpose (that is assuming it ever was). I tend to agree. The Treaty was written in a time when there were two very distinct cultures in the country, and when there was almost constant war, primarily between different Maori tribes, and it was necessary to bring some order to the situation. But New Zealand is now a modern, mainly peaceful and fairly affluent society, so the original pupose is no longer relevant.

Now the Treaty is more a mechanism to generate division than it is one to create unity. It is an excuse to give one group (Maori) special privileges that others don’t have (and yes, I can list those if necessary). It is a way to get woke ideology included in places where it can have the most effect, especially in education, where naive young people are being indoctrinated with pro-Maori propaganda.

So apart from a few Maori elites, and a group of super-woke morons, no one is gaining much from this worthless travesty of a document: it is time for it to go. Of course, that will never happen, because those groups I mentioned above have too much to lose, and too many people have been taken in by the propaganda about the Treaty being an important founding document. All we can really do at this time is to resist the nonsense they are trying to spin.

So the point that colonisation had both good and bad aspects, just like everything else, was seen as controversial. But this is absurd. Nothing is all bad, and even if you believe that colonisation was primarily a bad thing (something I reject entirely) it is ridiculous to say that we should ignore the positives.

It is because of colonisation, and not a lot because of the Treaty or anything Maori did, that we live in that prosperous and peaceful country I mentioned above. And those positive things apply as much to Maori as anyone else. Sure, it is possible that if the country had not been colonised that Maori might have developed an advanced society by themselves, but would they really? And even if they had, how much longer would it have taken without the colonisation process acting as a sort of shortcut to advancement?

There have been very few cultures, outside of Western society, which have advanced to the same degree as those which were colonised. Even India, which did have a quite advanced culture in some ways before the British arrived, benefitted hugely from colonisation. India, like almost every country previously colonised, is now independent, but the benefits the British brought with them are still there.

So I say let’s celebrate colonisation and when I am accused of being a coloniser I often say “yes, that is true, you can thank me later”. Of course, as an individual I am no more a coloniser than anyone else, because that is ancient history, but the culture I identify with (Western) was a coloniser, so I accept both the criticism and the thanks which should go along with that.

Colonisation was a thing of it’s time. It was bad, it was good, but it is no longer really relevant. The same applies to the Treaty and to our horrible national day which derives from it. I think it is time to forget Waitangi Day, and to forget the Treaty!

Why So Hard?

I work in IT and often have to help people who have run into issues with their computers, phones, and other devices. Sometimes the people I am helping sort of apologise for not being able to resolve the issue themselves, and it is true that sometimes if they just read the screen, slowed down a little bit, and put a bit of thought into it, they could have fixed it themselves, but more often there is something genuinely weird happening which is not their fault.

If you use a computer you have probably noticed that things don’t always work as advertised, and that the suggested solutions sometimes make things worse rather than better, and that an expert is needed to make any progress. Also, the solution is often to restart the device, log out then log back into a service, or wait an hour and try again. Do those solutions sound like they are really fixing the underlying issue or just temporarily disguising it? To me, it sounds a lot like the second.

In fact I don’t like restarting a computer to fix a problem because that is not a permanent fix, it is just resetting stuff to a previous state which could easily result in the problem returning. That’s not to say I don’t use that method some times, but when I do I don’t like it!

So now is the time to list a few recent examples of this phenomenon…

A client recently bought a new printer and was told by the staff at the shop some sort of convoluted story about using a smart phone to set it up. When he tried to do the setup he got nowhere because the instructions didn’t appear to have any connection with the actual printer he had (a Brother in this example, which are usually quite good). He thought maybe the instructions were for a different model entirely.

When I looked at it I could see that the instructions did apply to his model, so I followed them carefully to try to get the printer working. But did it work? By now you have probably figured that the answer is “no”!

I should clarify the situation here, and say that this was to get wireless printing set up. Normal printing through a cable on a Mac is usually very easy and reliable, but some wireless printers are not so simple.

In the end I just threw away the instructions and used my experience and intuition to install everything “the hard way”. This involved steps like entering passwords by selecting letters in a grid using up, down, left, right keys, and other frustrations, but in the end it did work and seems to be reliable.

A couple of months back I had another wireless printer issue which, despite many calls to the manufacturer (Canon in this case), was never resolved. The client had to give that printer away and we bought an HP instead, which worked after only one weird glitch: a miracle for a printer!

It’s not just me either: an IT geeks group I follow on Facebook often has posts making fun of problems with printers. A favourite joke is that the band “Rage Against the Machine” was named that after a particularly bad experience trying to get a printer to work!

I have several wireless printers at home even though I almost never print anything. In fact, you could say I use paper a negative number of times, because if someone gives me some information on paper I take a photo of it with my phone, store it as a file on my computer – and in iCloud so it is accessible from all my devices – and hand them the paper back again.

I don’t use paper for various reasons: first, I don’t want more trees killed just to store information in an archaic way (on paper); second, I can store the equivalent of millions of pieces of paper even on small devices like my phone; third, searching on a digital device takes seconds but a manual search for paper might take hours; and finally, I just want to show that the “paperless office” we were supposed to have decades ago is actually possible.

But sometimes I might want to print a poster, or a photo, so the printers do exist. Also my wife likes to print stuff, just like a lot of people do, and that’s fair enough: I have given up trying to convert people to a paperless system like I have. My printers are connected to a print server, so the server does the connection to the printer through a cable and the computers wanting to print communicate with the server wirelessly. This is more or less 100% reliable, although I do realise that most people don’t want half a dozen servers of various types cluttering up their house like I have!

This post was going to be a rant about IT problems in general but it seems to have degenerated into a whinging session just about printers. Maybe I will leave the complaining about other issues for a later date. All I want to ask the printer manufacturers at this point is this: why so hard?

Another Management Opinion

As most of my readers know, I work in IT, and I recently took voluntary redundancy from a job I have had for almost 40 years. I am at retirement age anyway, but I would have continued working if I hadn’t been hit with yet another restructuring: I guess about the 6th time that had happened since I started.

It is fine to change the structure of an institution, group, or company, but there has to be a good reason for it, and the changes need to be focussed towards making things better for the real people the organisation exists for. The restructurings I experienced though, seemed to be driven by the personal ideology of a senior “leader”, or just a bunch of idle managers trying to justify their existence.

In my case, the changes always made things worse for the actual clients I was supposed to be supporting. I’m sure they made things better for some people – most likely the management – but that really just isn’t good enough. Over the last 30 years the institution has grown the number for managers by massive amounts while technical, academic, and general staff have been “let go” in large numbers.

Morale has sunk to new lows, valuable people have left, and most people see the place as being a “sinking ship” after years of perceived gross incompetence in management.

Hey, I don’t work there any more so I guess I can tell those of you who don’t already know that the institution in this case is the University of Otago.

I used to discuss the state of the place with many people I worked with, and the opinion amongst the academics and general staff was almost universally negative towards the management. In fact there was only one staff remember I ever spoke to who thought the reorganisations we were forced into were a good thing, and that person is now in senior management. Apparently, if you support the power hierarchy and ignore the facts you can go far in an organisation like that.

Note that I am not saying the university is uniquely bad, because any large organistion infected with the curse of rampant managerialism will have similar problems. In fact, the only other really large employer in Dunedin, the hospital, is reputed to be even worse than the university. That might explain a lot about why our health system doesn’t work. I suspect the main problem there is not so much lack of funding, but overbearing and incompetent management, and many people who work there support that view, although most of them would also like more money as well!

So I am now self-employed, doing casual IT support work for the Apple users around town. Of course, I do miss many parts of my previous job, because I genuinely enjoyed working with the vast majority of people at the university, except for the managers of course, which I avoided interacting with at all costs!

For example, I almost never went to their silly meetings, which really just degenerated into a talk-fest where a bunch of self-important bureaucrats talked for an hour while saying nothing. Honestly, if I didn’t know better I would say they were trying to denigrate themsleves through satire. The mindless management jargon was so unbelievably awful that it was hard not to laugh at them some times.

And I know that IT tech people also sometimes use a lot of specialised language, but when I talk to people who aren’t IT experts I adjust my vocabulary to use words they will be familiar with. I suspect that if managers also did that the true vacuousness of their thoughts would quickly be revealed, because without all the gibberish there is almost nothing left.

And superficially I followed the rules while bending them to breaking point when no one was watching. Of course, I occasionally got caught doing this sort of thing, and on one occasion I had to hire a lawyer to defend me against management attacks, but they were shown to be wrong and had to pay me out for the stress and loss of reputation to me. But that made no difference to them at all: the nice thing about being a manager I guess, is you can be totally wrong and still suffer no consequences.

Some people say I am wrong to criticise managers because they can see the “big picture” which I can’t. But I say there is no the big picture: there are many big pictures and they vary depending on your philosophical and political beliefs. No one big picture is necessarily better than any other. The management’s is just one of many, and not even close to being the best, in my opinion. Yes, it’s just my opinion, but one which appears to be shared by many others.

People sometimes ask why I speak so critically of the university and why I continued to work there if I disliked it to that extent, but that is (maybe deliberately) misrepresenting my view. I criticise the management because I want the university to succeed. If I didn’t care, why would I have bothered make myself a target like that?

In fact, a few years back I realised that there was no way anyone could make any real difference, so what is the point in even trying. After that I still tried to do the best for my clients, despite the rules making that difficult, but I accepted that I had to work in a bureaucratic environment. You’ve got to understand what can be changed and what can’t. There’s no point in making your life harder for no good reason!