When rule by the stupid gets me down, I seek a boost from the incredible achievements of Sir Peter Beck and Rocket Lab.

Being second to Space X in one of the most competitive and difficult high tech industries in the world is just extraordinary. Rocket Lab was in mind when listening over the weekend to an intriguing podcast discussion between Bari Weiss and Peter Thiel.
Thiel is a major investor in Space X (and I think Starlink which is at last giving my farm the safety of mobile coverage).
The objective intelligence of the interview reminded me of the dumbness of Wanaka’s nasty NIMBYs who gloated over blocking Peter Thiel’s house building there.
What an own goal! We’ve had one of the world’s top entrepreneurs and thinkers wanting to spend time here. He’s best mates with Elon Musk who’s contributed more to EVs and combatting climate change than anyone else alive.

Did the government in Wellington think of intervening? Even just to show ineffective sympathy for what QLDC put Thiel through. We spend $millions thru MFAT, wining and dining and schmoozing with trips and facilitators to cultivate people who could help us. People who might influence trade policy, and reduce the risks of vindictive damage to NZ interests.
The US could cost us $billions in a casual flick of a policy tail. We could desperately need friends at court in the US, if the tariff walls are going up. And we have the good fortune to number one of their top insiders, as a New Zealand citizen. But our MSM could not disguise their joy at the jobsworths of the QLDC giving him the finger. At the bidding of the privileged of Wanaka.

I compare current NZ hostility to change, with the shrewdness of some Maori leaders 200 years ago. They welcomed whalers, missionaries and traders. They fed them, gave them land, helped them build houses (mansions in comparison with their whares), even gave wives to those looking for them.
Though proud, they knew they needed more contact with the powerful foreigners, not less. The ones who sponsored settlement to gain their own links with powerful foreigners, got the muskets. Many of their neighbours who did not were despatched to history.