Famous for 15 megapixels

Stef · at 12:29 am

One of the reasons why the output of this blog has tailed off a little recently is that I’m pre-occupied with preparing myself for a much-delayed move out of the UK in the first half of the New Year sometime.

All being well, I'm hoping to be able to get into New Zealand

I have personal reasons for trying to get in there but an awful lot of my fellow countrymen, part of the Exodus of British nationals now leaving the UK, have already made the move to New Zealand over the last few years

And if comments left under on-line newspaper articles are anything to go by, Brits moving to New Zealand and elsewhere can be broadly divided into those who are leaving because they believe Britain is filling up with ghastly foreign terrorist immigrants and those who are leaving Britain because they believe it is becoming some kind of fascist Dystopian police state.

I suspect both groups are in for a bit of a disappointment, as the signs are that the shit that’s been going down in the UK is going to be rolled out all over the developed world sooner rather than later

We’re just a little bit ahead of the curve. That’s all

Taking the financial system in New Zealand for example; personal debt, house prices and trade deficits have been pushed to extreme limits by the same bankers’ games that have been played here in the UK, the US, Spain and elsewhere. The end result will be greater social inequality and establishment of a form of neo-feudalism where the essentials of Life – food, water, housing - will be under the monopolistic control of the Few. Ten years ago I would have written off such ideas as Loontalk™. Now, all I have to do is look around

Or how about the War on Terror and the creation of a police state thing? Surely, a small little country like New Zealand would be immune? OK, New Zealand has been a handy source for Mossad operatives looking to obtain fake passports by impersonating severely disabled people...

Mossad agents pretending to be nationals from another country!!? Unthinkable...

...but, aside from that and the occasional exploding Greenpeace vessel (state-sponsored terrorism so that's OK), what does the Land of the Long White Cloud have to do with the Global War on Terror? Would such an out of the way place need to get involved and start rolling out all sorts of new anti-terror legislation?

After all, people keep telling me how really, really quiet it is there...

But apparently New Zealand does need new anti-terror laws, and hundreds of police officers devoted to waging the eternal, and somewhat loosely defined, War on Scariness…

New Zealand activists held after terror raid

A terrorist training camp was uncovered in New Zealand yesterday after police made a series of raids targeted on Maori extremists.

Tame Iti, a key activist in the fight for Maori independence, was arrested

More than 300 officers took part in the operation, arresting 17 people. A variety of weapons was seized, including firearms.

The most high profile arrest was that of Tame Iti, a Maori radical from the Tuhoe tribe, who comes from the thickly forested Urewera mountains of North Island where the camp was found. Mr Iti, 55, who advocates full Maori independence, appeared in court charged with possession of a firearm and petrol bombs.

A paramilitary group calling itself the Freedom Fighters had been training at the camp. Some reports suggested that their presence was disclosed when they tested napalm, a deadly petrol-based concoction used by US forces during the Vietnam War...

Napalm-spurting Maori radical, Tame Iti

not to be confused with Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond...

and, yes, in a fashion now traditional in the UK it subsequently turned out that much of the story was bollocks and those charges which are going to be pressed will be under the terms of legislation that existed long before New Zealand’s new anti-terror laws

The point is that it doesn’t matter who the terrorists are; Muslim or Maori, animal libbers or eco-freaks, or whether they represent a credible threat which genuinely warrants legislating rights away from the entire population. The point is that all over the developed world governments are grasping at any opportunity to put new draconian laws on their books. Laws which are being implemented in such a manner and often on the basis of such flimsy pretexts that it’s not so incredible to start thinking that there may be a degree of co-ordination involved

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As luck would have it a few days after the arrests in New Zealand a guy called John Key was making a presentation to a group of ex-patriot New Zealand professionals living in London

Key is the leader of the New Zealand National Party and is effectively the Leader of the Opposition in New Zealand

Billed as being a ‘Self-Made Man’ in the kind of mould that Kiwis respect, Key’s ‘Self-Made’ his fortune in the banking industry and sat on the New York Federal Reserve bank prior to his return home in 2001 to pursue a political career

Hmmm, the Federal Reserve ...my favourite

My Other Half was in attendance at Key's talk and without going into too much detail Key devoted much of his presentation to extolling the virtues of the kind of government policies, relating to private sector provision of public services and increased labour 'flexibility', that have become familiar fare to us in the UK plc. He also buys into the War on Terror paradigm big time and is prone to kissing US Neocon arse

If anyone in New Zealand politics is the globalist-anointed future leader of that country Key appears to be that man

At the end of his presentation he received questions from the audience. One guy nervously put up his hand and said something like…

‘I’m returning home soon and the big concern that I have is that New Zealand is looking like it’s going the same way as the UK with a lot more surveillance and assaults on civil rights. What’s your take on that?’

Key didn’t seem particularly keen on answering but was spared the effort by several dozen people in the audience laughing at the guy who asked the question as if he were a nutter...

My Mrs was still feeling guilty when she came back home hours later for not having approached the guy afterwards to let him know that he wasn't alone and that she didn't think he was mental

All things considered, I’m under absolutely no illusions about a possible move to NZ whatsoever

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(On the plus side it was heartening to read this story recently…

“NZ women most promiscuous: survey”

New Zealand women have the most sexual partners in the world, according to a global sex survey reported on Saturday...

though seeing this clip of New Zealand’s hottest new weather forecasters in action took the edge off the news slightly…