Some closing remarks here there and everywhere

This will be the last newswithmorenews post. Any article which I write regarding politics, current affairs and other things can be found on getfrank.co.nz.

The last days of jovial John

Whoever is still aboard the John Key gravy train must accept that their saint and savior is betraying them. Many big priorities have been abandoned. New Zealanders leaving for Australia is higher than ever, yet somehow it's good for both nations. The GSCB fiasco has put the spotlight straight on Mr. Key. Mutilating the natural landscape for more ugly roads is more important than improving the embarrassing public transport system currently in place.

I grow tired of people who say that he has the best interests of New Zealanders at heart. If that were so, maybe he wouldn't have instilled a disastrous tax system in which only the top 10% of income earners benefit. Surely he wouldn't have encouraged Gerry Brownlee to shove up petrol prices 3c a year (though Labour would have done the same). Most of all, he would have put a heart back into the National party but he hasn't. Rather than stand for anything beforehand, he sits on the fence. Like a dog to a bone, he'll morph his views to remain the cool kid. This sense of phony patriotism is what has driven away what were once National voters to minor parties and others to the Labour party.

For anyone who has signed up to or looking to buy Mighty River Power shares, please think twice. The more you buy into the idea of owning SOE shares, the more fuel is added to the fire. "Look at the response" Mr. Slippery beams, "it must be a good idea then."

In celebration of the 21st century gullibility

April Fool's has always been a rather enjoyable day. At the Mystery Creek Camp, I'll admit I was conned into saying "mine" several times, with ten push-ups being the consequence of saying it. On April 1, I managed to convince the youth I lead into believing that April fools was actually on March 31st.

Youtube had a phony shutdown video, twitter removed the vowels from its tweets and Google had user pressing their noses onto computer screens.

Sometimes its funny to see what people are tricked into believing.

'For the most part though, its rude and offensive and disrespectful to people.' Ah gotcha, April FOOLS.

The starving, hungry, underfunded nation

North Korea poses no serious threat to anyone other than themselves. Desperately underfunded, there is not much the army can do, other than sit and hope their southern brother will throw some scraps over the fence. Much of what remains in this destitute country has proved to be frugal. Electricity is almost non-existent.

Yet mainstream media are managing to talk them up to be more powerful than they could ever hope to be. Secretly though, Russia, China and India know better than to launch an invasion on them. It wouldn't be fair on the destitute population to have their lives taken. After all, their head of state has been dead for almost twenty years. His grandson is mad to believe nuclear weapons can be launched on the enemy. There won't be enough funds to complete a workable one.

The hardest words for anyone to say these days is "I need help." Hopefully soon, Kim Jon Un can utter those words.

G.I Joe Retaliation

The second movie is a huge step up from the awful piece of work which came out in 2009. The action scenes are fantastic. Even so, that is not enough to rescue the movie from a rather average plot line, which depends entirely on fantastic visual scenery and wicked action scenes to keep audiences glued to the seat. An assembly of A-list actors give it their all. Overall, it's a solid 5/10. Better than the original but not great enough to recommend to everyone; only those who enjoy action films.

The Wacky Westboro Baptist Church

One of my upcoming book reviews will be for Lauren Drain's memoir "Banished: Surviving my years in the Westboro Baptist Church." The church not only gives Christianity a bad name, it allows a terrible group of loud mouthed self appointed preachers of God to heartlessly picket near dead soldiers funerals, lambaste Barack Obama as the Antichrist and chastise everyone as a "fag" or a "fag enabler," except for members in their church. "Only in America" as they say.

I laughed when statistics said that crime is the lowest it has been in 24 years. National loves to talk tough about crime. Yet if a person were to have access to those crime statistics, they'd probably see that petty crime has remained pretty consistent. National voters have criticised me for not giving National more credit in their efforts to reduce crime. Why should I? The Police continue to obsess over minor speeding infringements, whizzing by in cars and sitting in remote stations doing paperwork. Until they start patrolling the streets on foot again, enforcing the law and deterring people from committing so called petty crime, I'll remain skeptical about this supposed drop in crime.

Nobody should be panicking about water shortages in New Zealand being long lasting affairs. Anybody with a memory stretching back to 2008 will know about how dry that summer was. There about also happened to be the moment in time when it rained 90% of days in winter. No matter how dry it gets, you can always be guaranteed the rain will come back in full force. Rest easy farmers. Winter rain isn't too far away.



*******Thank you to everyone who has read my blog. It has been fascinating to write on so many different topics and lots of fun arguing with you. I've learned a lot and I hope you have too. Thanks for reading
Stuart.*******

The "GC" returns, as questionmarks swirl atop people''s heads

Don't be too surprised that the rather trivial show "The GC" is returning. A rather small, select group of people fervently watch the show with unwavering passion and enthusaism. They envision themselves as those characters living there. Characters because reality television has an entire assembly of writers.

Most people wouldn't actually know half of what goes on when the camera is not rolling. Supposing 50% of it is actual drama, 50% has been prepared for or premeditated. Too much emphasis seems to be placed on a rather ostentacious diaply of wealth and frivolity. There is more character development in a season of the American sitcom "Friends" than in season one of "The GC."

Watch out for it though. Just in case this season is worse than the last one, maybe it could be enough to see the show scrapped for good.

There is no "lesser of two evils" party

With each passing day, more people are dreading election day next year when it comes around. A worrying trend is that more and more eligible voters are not going in to cast their vote.

If anyone is curious as to why that is, they need only look and see how heavily Winston Peter's call for a referendum was silenced by sly conniving politicians, who prefer placing their own self interests ahead of their voters, whom many secretly despise.

The funny story I get from those who did go and vote is this suspect talk about National or Labour being "the lesser of two evils." Whilst you could make a case for or against both, voting for either does little to resolve something which is present. Many people do not believe either party is better or worse than the other.

Both parties are eager to increase government control, each one prefers having New Zealand in a politically correct mindset, both do nothing more than talk tough about punishing criminals-Labour's sentencing was weak and National introduced a warning for first time petty crime offenders-, each party supported the war in Afghanistan and will continue to do so, both parties cannot prepare a sensible budget.

Whilst my party of choice is not in parliament yet, I'd rather hold hope for it to get in than vote National or Labour.

A response to IDIOT

Some of you may know that I'm a contributor to Getfrank, an online mens lifestyle magazine. Some of you may know that occasionally I write about political issues. One opponent of mine actually happens to be a contributor who calls himself IDIOT/Savant. A self professed liberal, he spouts out tirades of scorn towards anyone who does not agree with him. Even on his blog, he says he's irreversibly liberal. In other words, closed minded. Something which was rather unsettling to see was how much he claims to enjoy liberty but is completely in favour of forceful totalitarian measures.

"Speaking of amendments, in addition to the expected referendum clauses (two versions each from Winston Peters and Brendon Horan), Louisa WallSu'a William Sio is also trying to expand the scope of her bigot amendment to give religious institutions the right to discriminate in the provision of services. That is unacceptable, and MPs should vote it down. The whole purpose of human rights law is to remove bigotry from the public sphere. If religious organisations don't want their buildings "polluted" by same-sex marriages, they have a solution: don't offer them to the public, and keep them solely for the use of their members"

As some may now see, newswithmorenews has ceased using the word "human rights" unless its in quote marks. This is borne out of a disgust in the measures it places on the liberty of free speech. Governments already have impeded our private lives enough. Nobody needs more of it. If a religious institution does not want to conduct a homosexual marriage, they must have the liberty to make the choice, rather than be bullied by the state into conducting it against their will. Sound familiar to East Germany, the Soviet Union and North Korea?

A little bait and switch here. Does IDIOT want to be told what clothes he can wear? If he says no and persists with this "human rights" view, why does he continue to buy clothes which are made in China? Isn't that bigotry against New Zealand clothes producers?

Poor old Jesse Ryder. Just one among many

With the recent news of Jesse Ryder going into a coma, one cannot help but wander if alcohol was a potential contributor to the lead up to these events. Why was Ryder out in a bar to begin with? If he'd had problems with alcohol before, would the self control to simply say "no" and move on not be enough? If so, then there's a small chance he may pay for this decision with his life. What about the thugs who decided to assault Ryder without cause? No doubt when this case is eventually processed these men will appear in court. The sentence will not be harsh and a "sorry" will win them a reduced sentence. Yet they may have avoided such date with justice if they had carried their drink more sensibly, instead of marching around in slobbering drunk fashion.

Once again, I'd like to refer any readers interested to my post about alcohol last year
http://newswithmorenews.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/a-generation-that-is-stupid-enough-to.html

This post debunks the myth that alcohol abuse has always been a problem in New Zealand youth culture. Perhaps they'd like to look back to as recently as the 1970's. Was endless intoxication, massive bar spillovers and brain dead decisions to abuse alcohol dominating news headlines. No.

Raising the drinking age will not make a huge difference in our attitude towards alcohol. But it will make access to such beverages just that little bit more difficult, particularly towards that 13-19 year old age bracket, where many bad drinking habits are formed.

The Te Houtaewa Challenge and personal change

Some of you may know I enjoy running. Yes there has been a long lost relationship between me and running.

The Te Houtaewa challenge is based on the legend of Te Houtaewa, who stole kumura from a local tribe and outran any opposition who tried to catch him. From a legend a race was born. Athletes come from around the world to live up to the legend of the man.

Tomorrow I will become one of those people. What has been memorable throughout the last sixteen months of preparation hasn't been the immense fatigue, mental pain or any other such challenge. None of those ever really last. Right through each training session, various people have volunteered their time to train alongside me.

Seeing some people develop extra willpower, finesse and toughness has been the most inspiring. Something which stands out among these people is courage. It's a really admirable quality of pushing through difficulty, even if it results in extraordinary pain.

One friend could barely run a kilometre when he first started. Now he's comfortably putting in 6km a week. Another had never set foot in a gym; they are now a regular attendee. They chose to transform themselves and have done a great job.

Pushing the envelope is difficult because today we often expect convenience to the easiest route toward happiness. Since beginning these races, I've found its the contrary. Pain and sacrifice are a necessary requirement in achieving long term goals. What is your goal and how badly do you want to achieve it? If you aren't willing to dedicate yourself completely to the goal, start thinking about ways in which you can be. Whether you want to run a marathon, climb a mountain, write a book, get a university degree or release a music album. As infamous cyclist Lance Armstrong says "pain is temporary. If quit though, that lasts forever."

To everyone who has trained with, helped and supported me in the last 16 months, thank you very much. This race has been difficult to prepare for but I feel ready and hopefully you too are ready to take on great challenges. Ultramarathons are about overcoming challenges. You go through pain which is truly horrific but come out the other side a new person. Ttfn and see you at the finish line.

Almost a year on

After one year, 8,000 page views, 122 comments, and readers from 50 different countries, its amazing how many people have taken to discussing issues which have been posted. These often contentious topics ranged from tattoos to man made climate change to Richie McCaw's memoir "The Open Side." As readers, you've helped me learn a lot and I hope I've done the same for you. Arguing with you has been enjoyable and civilized (99% of the time) and hopefully in real life these can continue.

Since November when I started working for Getfrank, it has been a challenge to contribute effectively to both them and on here, without a compromise in quality of the articles has been challenging. Now that University has gone back into full swing though, I can no longer split my time between both of them.  I've decided that at the end of the this month, newswithmorenews will no longer be operational.

I will continue to write for Getfrank for as long as possible and am happy to be a guest blogger in anyone else's blog. But giving 100% in two different writing spheres has drained me.

That said, there's still 12 days left in the month. I will upload anybody who wants to guest posts in this time and discuss any topic which you the readers want me to talk about. I'll even debate something I've argued in favor of from the opposing side if you wish to hear it.

So send me your posts if you want them uploaded, topics you want discussed, and any posts you want me to change my mind and argue against.

Thanks for reading.

Stuart