Reader Brad sent me this link about bird-hunting in Britishland, with the result that I immediately emailed Mr. Free Market and told him to book me a spot in his hunting party for next year. I don’t care where the shooting takes place; I just want to be there. In fact, as I told Mr. FM, I’ll even schedule Kim’s European Vacation 2019 around those dates.
Here’s Dave Carrie on the topic.
Reader Brad is a total bastard.
I’m not quite sure what to think of this situation:
New Zealand is set to ban foreigners buying homes after a spate of millionaires creating luxury doomsday bunkers has apparently pushed property prices up for local buyers.
It comes after purchases by PayPal founder Peter Thiel and disgraced former NBC host Matt Lauer, who lost his job after allegations of sexual misconduct.
The country’s centre-left government, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, has blamed the wealthy expats for their major housing crisis with homelessness rates being among the highest in the developed world.
Yet David Parker, Minister for Trade and Economic Development, said the bill, for which he is responsible, isn’t only about house prices.
‘In this world of concentrating wealth, we don’t want this coterie of ultra-wealthy people overseas being able to outbid successful New Zealanders for what is our birthright, not theirs,’ he said.
From a free market perspective, it’s not right; but on the other hand, seeing how Californians have done pretty much the same thing Over Here when fleeing their home state for other, less burdensome ones, I can sort of see the Kiwis’ point. It’s also happened in Britishland, where wealthy Londoners have bought themselves country pieds-à-terre and have driven up real estate prices beyond the reach of the locals.
Here in north Texas, we’re facing a similar situation with regard to both Californians and Yankees moving into the area — real estate prices are constantly increasing — but there’s so much land around here for expansion that we haven’t yet reached that stage of feeling “trapped”, so to speak, by soaring prices. That’s not the case in tiny Britain and New Zealand, of course and as I said, I can sympathize with the KiwiGov for wanting to at least arrest the phenomenon somewhat.
That said, New Zealand is prone to having some humdinger earthquakes from time to time, so the rich farts’ “doomsday bunkers” may ironically not be quite the secure bolt-holes their owners believe them to be.
(By the way, the OCD and Germans [some overlap] will be freaking out that none of the travelers are standing in the official footprints…)
…even if it’s coming from the French, surely one of the loopiest nations on Earth.
Smartphones and tablets have been banned from all French schools ahead of the academic year, after a new law was voted through Parliament yesterday. The phone ban will apply to all pupils in France up to the age of 15, as of the start of the new term in September.
I’ve always thought that giving kids smartphones was a recipe for disaster — similar to letting them go play all day and night in a mall, unsupervised. And I don’t want to hear whines of “What about their securityyyy?” either. If that’s so important to Mumsy (or actually, Madamesy), she can buy little Francine or Jacques a flip (dumb) phone. Calls and texts only (and only a few of those, too).
Perhaps — and I know this is a radical thought — the schools can actually keep a closer eye on the little dears for a change.
And if the kids go all whiney at the indignity and the oppressive injustice of it all, we can call it a cheap life lesson.
Today will be snippets of news that are guaranteed to make your eyes squint and Red Curtains Of Blood (RCOB) affect your vision. The fact that most of the items happened in Britishland makes no difference whatsoever. You have been warned.
1) “Help! My Mum’s been stabbed!”
2) “Give us your stuff or we’ll chop up your babies!”
3) Gun ban in the U.K. is still effective
4) #74
6) “You think you Brits are the only ones who can go crazy with a knife? Banzai! ”
7) And lastly, just so we know that the rozzers are going after the serious criminals, there’s this one:
Tearful pensioner, 79, slams police for ‘threatening to prosecute her for feeding her neighbour’s pet’
8) Or maybe they can go after this kid’s parents, for giving him a toy gun to play with.
Now you can all go off and clean yer guns. I know I will.
That would be the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of course, or rather its modern-day major components. Fresh on the heels of Hungary’s Viktor Orban causing trouble with the Muzzies in Budapest comes this news from just over the border:
Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut down seven mosques and expel up to 40 foreign-funded imams in crackdown against Islamist ideology
Austria said today it could expel up to 60 Turkish-funded imams and their families and would shut down seven mosques as part of a crackdown on ‘political Islam’ that was described as ‘just the beginning’, triggering fury in Ankara.
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the government is shutting a hardline Turkish nationalist mosque in Vienna and dissolving a group called the Arab Religious Community that runs six mosques.
His coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe’s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and clamp down on benefits for new immigrants and refugees.
In a previous job as minister in charge of integration, Chancellor Kurz oversaw the passing of a tough ‘law on Islam’ in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim societies to have ‘a positive fundamental view towards (Austria’s) state and society’.
‘Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation have no place in our country,’ Kurz told a news conference outlining the government’s decisions, which were based on that law.
‘This is just the beginning,’ far-right Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache added.
I love that the Austria’s (democratically-elected) government is branded “far-right”, when a cursory examination of the parts of their platform not to do with immigration reveals that they’re about equivalent to centrist Democrats (if any such thing still exists) — i.e. closer to the sainted John F. Kennedy’s political philosophy than to anything truly rightwing.
And incidentally, please note the recent electoral victory by an anti-immigrant party in Slovenia (also once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).
Anyway, needless to say that this attitude is pissing off the Muzzies, especially the Turks, who’ve been sponsoring these Islamist Fifth Columnist mullahs for decades. Too bad, fuck ’em. You’d think the “Gates Of Vienna” would have warned them, but they’re idiots.
Somebody pass the popcorn…
P.S. If any person of the Disney-lawyerly-persuasion wants to take issue with the title of this post: fuck you. The expression predates Star Wars — and for that matter the entire Disney corporation — by over a thousand years (check Cicero’s writings), so if you think you have a copyright beef with me: you don’t.