China controls the supply of rare earth elements. The US doesn't seem to have a solid grasp of this and it has also been using its ordnance by supplying Ukraine and Israel, meaning that without China resupplying these critical elements, US production will have to be scaled back.
The world is in a strange place at the moment.
I drew the following map of New Zealand to illustrate the areas worth exploring for oil and gas. The area marked in orange is a producing area, while the pink areas are highly likely to be producing. You may notice that offshore two of these pink areas overlap the productive zone.
Get your drilling rigs ready, there is oil and gas, natural shows where up from the ground came a bubbling crude, oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.
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| New Zealand Oil and Gas Strikes Likely |
It's nice to see New Zealand's remote and very beautiful locations being promoted. Apparently, Wharariki Beach is a Windows 10 screensaver and a very popular image. The beach is at the top of the South Island, on the West Coast, and accessible only from Golden Bay, which is part of the Tasman District.
The video below saw the visitor drive there from the South Island east coast. Maybe they were unaware that you can fly into Golden Bay via Golden Bay Air. From their aerodrome in Takaka, it is possible to rent a car to drive to Wharariki Beach via Puponga, which is right next to Farewell Spit (Puponga used to have a coal mine, for those interested in that sort of thing). Flights to Takaka are operated from Nelson and Wellington.
New Zealand has many scenes like these, views that are so beautiful they take your breath away. Your eyes well up, and you stand there glad to be alive.
I'm starting to think the White House is caught in some kind doom loop, where they're agreeing with one another, but everything they're thinking is complete nonsense.
The following video is a classic example; Donald Trump suggests suspending all imports from China, and then some woman pipes up talking about a pending golden age for farmers, or something.
Firstly, the USA cannot afford to suspend imports from China, and farmers are going bust under current trade policies.
The North Korea weightlifter had her clean and jerk ruled out by the judges, after she got all lights up from the referees. She made a perfect lift, textbook. This is flat out political, nothing else explains it.
The new international rugby series, R360, is set to kick off in 2026. One of the founders is former England Captain and 2003 World Cup winner, Mike Tindall. Someone else involved was behind LIV Golf.
The promotion is based in Dubai, so it sounds like oil money is behind things. A key factor is that the contracted players will be able to base themselves anywhere. Many may choose to domicile in Dubai or other zero-tax territories. It is speculated that salaries will be around the million-dollar mark, so no tax on that would be a big pull, I would imagine.
The thing is, players only have a few years to make the money before injury and old age slow them down. It is all very well dangling World Cup glory in front of them, but few will win one, and the players must earn a living.
Next year, the Southern Hemisphere Rugby Championship is being put on hold, with New Zealand touring South Africa instead. This will be an old school tour, taking weeks. I wonder if this is a reply to the R360 they saw coming?
R360 could work; they have to attract quality players and play an attractive brand of rugby. It will be a circus format, with mini-tournaments being played in key cities. Rugby worldwide is in the doldrums at the moment, and I read somewhere that every Premiership club in England is effectively bankrupt, and in the Southern Hemisphere, crowds are staying away. Games are stale, boring, and the modern rules have killed things. R360 going after Rugby League players suggests they're intending to play a better style of rugby, one that involves a high level of skill and toughness.
If the competition ends up like LIV Golf, though, it will fail. The LIV Golf format is uninteresting, and the player talent is not good enough. I appreciate the effort being made, but I'm not interested in that. I wonder what you all think?
According to this video, without Africa, France is nothing. I did not realise just how much France had rigged its trade with Africa. But, Africa has awakened.
China has stopped buying soybeans from the US. They now mostly buy from Brazil and Argentina. Then peculiarly, for some reason, the US has just bailed out Argentina after its economy collapsed yet again. Yeah, it doesn't make sense.
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| Source: NY Times |
Sir Iain Duncan Smith points out just how weak the UK has become. It buckles under pressure from China. Is the UK now just China's branch office?
Reform UK is a relatively new party in Britain, led by the mercurial figure, Nigel Farage. They have five members in the House of Commons, with one of those members being a defector from the Conservative Party. They are polling well, consistently above 30% these days, leaving the much larger Labour and Conservatives scrapping over the crumbs.
I've seen many pundits simply assuming Nigel Farage will be the UK's next prime minister. But, that's unlikely, surely, as current Prime Minister Keir Starmer is deeply unpopular. More likely is that the next prime minister will come from within the ranks of the Labour government caucus.
Four years remain until the next general election, we'll have to see if Reform UK has the stamina. Many may remember the UK's Social Democratic Party of the 1980s. They were a breakaway from the Labour Party and held 32 seats at one point. They rose to as much as 25% of the popular vote. However, by the end of the 1980s they were effectively defunct and merged into the Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats, currently Britain's third largest party by seats in the House. The LibDems did form a government with David Cameron's Conservatives back in 2010, but to all intents and purposes, they've not been a major player.
Reform UK does not have the defections they need, not yet anyway, and they appear to be a party centred around one man, Nigel Farage. They did have someone else, Rupert Lowe, who now sits alone in Parliament, but he appears to have been jettisoned as he was too much of a threat to Farage. That may tell you something about Reform UK; it is a one-man band. Such organisations rely too much on one man, and they often fail. I'm going to stick my neck out and say, Reform UK is likely to fall away, and will probably merge into the Conservatives by the time of the next election. Remember, you heard it here first.
I'm going to say it, the current New Zealand rugby union team, the All Blacks, are very average. Their latest performance against Australia in Perth, Western Australia, displayed both a lack of skill, and tactical nous.
The skill deficit meant they could not make simple kicks, often missing a kick to touch off their own penalty; and then missing routine kicks for goal. They beat Australia 28-14 but it should have been a victory by a lot more.
Toward the end of the game they passed up easy kicks for goal and one has to wonder whether they did this as they weren't confident of making the kick, or whether they're just a bunch of amateurs.
The blame for this poor performance must lie with the coaching staff and the captain. It is simply not good enough. And what is it with Sky TV commentators? They refuse to criticise obviously poor play. If a kick to touch off a penalty was missed, they'd say nothing at all about it. It was a case with them of, oh well, play on. Err...no, that is a big error and needs to be pointed out. For those who don't know what I'm talking about: a kick directly to touch off a penalty means you get the ball back from where the ball went out. If you don't get that ball out, the other side runs it back at you, meaning losing possession and field position. Do this often, and it is a sackable offense, but the Sky commentators were silent. Is this some kind of corporate thing now? Sky TV are such twits.
I got this right. Many were saying 1-2 years but that sounded too light. I predicted 4-5 years and that's what he got.
Remember earlier this year when Donald Trump and Elon Musk were going to check out the gold in Fort Knox? It never happened, and the story was buried. This raises many questions. My guess is that there is a serious discrepancy between the amount meant to be stored there and the real amount.
Here's an interesting company out of New Zealand, manufacturing drones for air, land and sea.
The company can be found here: https://syos-aerospace.com They've recently signed a $66m contract with the UK Ministry of Defence.
The complete sale of McLaren Racing is being touted as a boon for the car racing sector. I'm not so convinced; I have noticed sports teams selling for huge sums recently, I just don't see how these sums can be justified. Many team owners seem to be cashing up and getting out. Is a crash imminent (excuse the pun)?
https://www.newsweek.com/sports/mclaren-valuation-skyrockets-after-confirmed-sale-10801376
I thought this animation was pretty good. I note that New Zealand stays separate but all others merge together to form a supercontinent. Shame there won't be any of us around when that happens, unless of course, some humans leave now, do some tripping around the galaxy and then come back later.
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is back as a proposed leader of Gaza. How does Tony Blair manage to get himself inserted into things?
I don't even like Katie Hopkins, but this is absurd; she's been arrested after calling herself a spaz. The UK has fallen:
About time New Zealand heard this; the country has done very little to add electricity generation despite the population growing and demand for electricity increasing.
"We spent 30 years consistently underinvesting in rail in New Zealand. Then we privatised and hoped for the best. That failed. We had to bring it back into public ownership, and we're having to reinvest to get it off the ground.
"We're facing exactly the same problem with electricity in New Zealand, we spent a decade or more underinvesting in electricity generation - clean, renewable energy generation in New Zealand, the problems we face are a consequences of those under investment."
