I see there is another phishing scam running; this time involving the IRD. There is something particularly scummy about this – sort of like conning someone out of money by pretending to be collecting for the local protection racket… Anyway, in service to humanity, here are some quick tips on avoiding scams. I have kept [...]

Labour and the Green’s odd electricity price control policy has clearly been designed with only one real purpose in mind – to disrupt the sale of Mighty River Power and reduce the amount realised on the sale, to the detriment of National. This type of “scorched earth” thinking from the left is hardly unusual; Cullen’s [...]

If ever there was a dangerously inappropriate political football, it is the potential sale of Crafar farms to the Chinese company, Shanghai Pengxin and the hysterical xenophobia it has induced. While the furor has managed successfully to paint National into a very uncomfortable corner, it has also made all future overseas purchases significantly more difficult. Like [...]

I hope everyone over at the Standard has had their shots. They have someone there called RedLogix who apparently has rabies. In the interest of public mental health, I will not be linking to the post entitled “Treachery”. You can go there if you must but I don’t advise it. In one long bizarre spasm [...]

The man who was arrested after he flew into a rage when Wendy’s staff got his burger order wrong, insists he is not a violent man: He described the incident as a “communication breakdown kind of thing” that escalated out of control. The furniture removal worker, who said he was not an aggressive person, said yesterday [...]

A survivor of a hunting “accident” asks the question “Why are people still being shot?“. The MacDoctor can help with this one. He was an ED doctor for 9 years in Southland, literally the “Happy Hunting Ground” of New Zealand. Of the dozens of shooting incidents he has seen, he has yet to see one [...]

New Zealand is, apparently, the third fattest nation in the world according to OECD statistics. Yet fighting the obesity “epidemic” is not rocket science. Apart from the very few people who have some serious metabolic disorder, all that causes obesity is taking in more calories than you burn up. Yes, it is rather more complicated [...]

It is probably just as well that the Idiot at No Right Turn does not allow comments on his blog, because the drivel that he writes would attract the very worst of trolls. And terse comments from the MacDoctor. Take one of today’s offerings: John Key’s response to introducing charter schools despite never having campaigned [...]

The mask slipped briefly on Cunliffe yesterday. “if the Government is going to sell off precious state assets then we would not rule out re-nationalising some of them. And people need to be aware of that regulatory risk.” Today he is back-pedalling a lot: “At no time have I said that would have to be [...]

I have to say, I much preferred the WHO when they were only a rock and roll band and not a teeming hive of health BureauPrats*. This week, a meeting of the terminally stupid (otherwise known as the International Agency for Research on Cancer – IARC) issued a statement that flies in the face of logic, [...]