…and he’s a Leftist idol along with Comrade Jacinda.

This is Bill Gates' $645 million megayacht.

You know, the guy who constantly lectures you about needing to reduce your carbon footprint by eating lab-grown meat and getting rid of your gas-powered car. pic.twitter.com/5tx3jvml4x

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) April 25, 2026

It says something about the nature of California — a state totally controlled by the Democrats — nowadays.

Let’s train the next generation to be lifelong investors

One of the biggest issues facing the next generation is that too many young New Zealanders leave school without a basic understanding of how wealth is created, how capital grows, or how businesses generate value.

If protecting property rights is a core role of government, we also need to create real pathways for young people to build wealth and get into property.This could be one of them.This week, David gave a speech at ANZ in Christchurch, where he floated a new idea for financial education. It goes like this. Every fifth former, or year 11 if you’re under 40, is given $500 in a controlled investment account, with a structured pathway into real investing.

This would not be abstract theory, students would have skin in the game.

Over the year they graduate to higher levels of risk and reward, so long as they pass tests of their knowledge. If they don’t pass, they stay at lower levels. Students would be able to track earnings and losses, and will be tested on it.

“Suddenly, they would want to know things like: Why is one company worth more than another? What makes a business grow? What makes it shrink? Why do future earnings matter? What is the net present value of an income stream? What the hell is ‘net present value?

’These are important ideas, but too many people do not encounter them until well after school, sometimes not until after university. Many people go their entire lives without encountering them at all, the Green Party’s electoral prospects rely on this.

We should be teaching young people how wealth is actually created. Business is the beautiful human synergy of investors, entrepreneurs, workers, and customers coming together to meet one another’s needs.

This policy would change how many people see the world.If you are an investor, even in a small way, you stop seeing yourself as a passenger in the global economy and start seeing yourself as someone who can take the wheel.” –David Seymour

Backing volunteers who restore war graves

Over the past eight years, the Remembrance Army has restored more than 300,000 service graves. That’s been achieved by volunteers and private sponsorship, restoring around 30,000 graves a year at a cost of barely more than $2 per grave.

“Despite delivering results, they’ve had to navigate a fragmented, inefficient system. The Remembrance Army has had to deal with 62 different councils, with different processes and interpretations of cemetery rules, which has made it very difficult to manage their work on a national scale.

“The Remembrance Army wrote to David Seymour and asked us to cut through the bureaucracy. ACT has listened.” – Mark Cameron

This week, ACT announced we will:

• Require councils to accept grave restoration work under a national standard developed by Veterans’ Affairs in consultation with the Remembrance Army, instead of under dozens of local rulebooks.
• Designate the Remembrance Army and similar groups as nationally recognised heritage restoration partners.
• Remove additional red tape on organisations doing nationally significant work.

ACT is prepared to set aside up to $1 million for the development of this framework, and for a direct Crown grant to the Remembrance Army enabling them to clear the remaining backlog of neglected graves.

If the state asks you to lay down your life for Crown and country, the least it can do is back the volunteers who keep your memory alive and your gravesite tidy.

New initiative for children to explore Anzac history

This weekend we commemorated the 1915 Gallipoli landing, marking the first major military action for Australian and New Zealand forces (ANZACs) in World War I. While it’s a solemn day of remembrance for those who died, we give thanks to returned servicemen and women, and to the Anzac spirit of courage, mateship, and sacrifice. 

This week Brooke announced a new digital initiative for children to explore Anzac histories and stories from the battlefront to the homefront.

Anzac Stories is an online visual storytelling experience highlighting heroes and heroines from past New Zealand conflicts, including nurses, soldiers, animals, and people at home.

Anzac Stories has been created by Archives New Zealand and the National Library from their national collections.

“Children can navigate the website anywhere, whether at home with their families, or at school with their classmates. It makes learning about our past engaging with photographs from archival collections, maps, timelines, and minigames to test their knowledge.   Because of this great initiative from Brooke and Archives New Zealand, now many of our fascinating ACT encourages children, families and the education sector to make use of this new resource.” –Brooke van Velden

Link to resource: https://natlib.govt.nz/history-explorer/anzac-stories

Standover tactics exposed by $180 million ‘pound of flesh’ for a gold mine

An iwi group’s alleged demand for $180 million in order to approve the Bendigo Santana gold mine reveals how New Zealand’s resource management system has been warped by standover tactics and backroom dealing.

In an interview with Duncan Garner, ACT’s Simon Court exposed the rort.

Kā Rūnaka say extracting $180 million from Santana has not been their ‘focus’, but they haven’t directly denied the report.It’s an outrage, but not one that surprises us.Up and down the country, from minor subdivisions to major infrastructure, people are encountering standover tactics and sending ACT the receipts.

“In some cases, councils have effectively given iwi veto power through how they interpret the law. That creates a system where resource consent depends not on environmental effects, but on the applicant’s willingness to grease someone else’s palms.

“The fact a previous seven-figure payout for a hydro project was cited by Kā Rūnaka as a benchmark tells you everything. This is how rent-seeking becomes embedded.“These costs get passed on in higher power bills, more expensive housing, pricier infrastructure, and in many cases, projects that just don’t go ahead.

“We should have a system where the question is simple: does the project meet environmental standards or not?“ – Simon Court

What we have instead is a culture where people expect a pound of flesh for every sod turned. It’s opportunistic graft enabled by a broken law. ACT is replacing the Resource Management Act because we believe in clear rules, property rights, and a system where decisions are made on evidence – not ancestry.

Anyone Can Dance – Now Pouring

We’ve bottled something special with one of our supporters, Jonathan Ayling – an ACT Pinot Noir that’s smooth, bold, and a little bit cheeky, with a story behind it.

It’s called “Anyone Can Dance”, inspired by the speech David gave, when he became Deputy Prime Minister – proof that with a bit of grit (and maybe a questionable waltz), anyone can step up.It’s also a nod to his 2018 run on Dancing with the Stars, nine weeks of persistence, and just enough rhythm to prove the point. Turns out, if you stick at it, you don’t just find your feet, you finish strong.

Buy three bottles of ACT’s Anyone Can Dance premium Pinot Noir for $90 + shipping today and help us raise $100,000 for this year’s campaign. Every cent of profit goes straight back into ACT.

by Wally Richards

HOUSE PLANTS CARE IN WINTER

Winter can be a tough time for indoor plants if people don’t recognise the problems that the plants face.

The factors that affect indoor plants are, light, temperature and moisture levels.

These three factors are interlinked and if they are not all correct in relationship to each other, then plants will be in a stressed situation.

Let’s consider each of these starting with light; Indoors light is what I call sidewise light, it is not overhead light but its natural light that comes sidewise though windows or glass doors.

All plants need a certain amount of light and they will always grow towards the light source.

Outside plants grow straight up, indoor plants tend to grow sideways.

The best light in a home is within a metre of an unshaded window facing in a northerly direction.

During summer with long hours of natural light daily, plants will do well and much of their foliage will be facing the window to trap all the light possible.

Once we move the same plant a couple of metres from the window, but still in line with the window, the light level the plant receives drops a fair amount and the plant stretches towards the window making it lopsided.

Move the plant to the far side of the room and it is likely to be getting only about 10% of the light it was getting in the one-metre zone.

A low-light plant will be happy in that spot with all its leaves facing the window once it adjusts to its situation.

If we had a room that was pure white with all furniture white, the room would be quite dazzling to our eyes because of the amount of reflected light (plants would love it).

On the other end of the spectrum if we had a room that was totally black the room would appear dark to us except for the area immediately around a sunny window.

Indoor plants rely on a lot of reflected light and the lighter the colours in a room the better the plant will be for its light requirements.

When we look at the situation in midwinter our daylight periods are down to 8 hours, about half the hours as we have in mid-summer.

So naturally, plants are getting far less natural light in winter.

This is why some plants do well in the summer months but fail in the winter with foliage browning or yellowing off (leaf drop), and many tend to hibernate also.

The temperature in summer is higher and more constant in the 15 degrees plus area.

In winter the lower temperatures (without artificial heat) is the factor that sends plants into a more dormant state. We have situations then with people who are not home during the day and the room is cool to cold.

On returning home to a cold room, artificial heat is turned on raising the temperature to a nice level.

On retiring for the night, the heating is often switched off and temperatures quickly drop to zero or a few degrees above.

In the morning the room may be warmed again for a short time and then allowed to return to the normal indoor temperature of the day.

These up and down temperatures do have an effect on the well-being of the plants.

Next is the moisture level and it’s an aspect that we have control over completely. Plants need moisture in the air to keep nice clean foliage.

When the air becomes too dry the plant keeps pushing moisture to the foliage to replace the moisture lost into the drying air.

Tips of leaves or the edges tend to yellow and brown when the plant can’t replace sufficient moisture to the leaves. It’s especially noticeable in palms and ferns.

If we water the plants well, we have the problem that when the temperature drops they have cold wet roots which are prone to rotting.

Lack of good light, wide temperature swings and too much water in the mix is the death of many plants in winter.

You can control to a degree, two of these factors, ensure that plants that require good light are very close to (in front of) good light-supplying windows without net curtains.

I have had people tell me that their plant is getting good light because it is right near the window.

 On further questioning it turns out the plant is either beside the window or below the window which is actually worse than being on the other side of the room. It must be direct light on the foliage, through the window.

Low-light plants such as philodendrons will be happier in lesser light spots, but a maidenhair fern would die down.

Keeping a steady temperature in winter can be a high cost when you are not at home.

Heating does dry the air and to overcome this, and take advantage of the fact, place a clothes horse in the lounge to dry that day’s washing. The drying of the clothes puts ample moisture into the air and helps to keep the plants happy.

If you run a dehumidifier your plants will suffer unless you compensate by say placing wet sphagnum moss on top of the potting mix and wetting it every day without actually watering the mix.

Bowls of water near plants is another way to ensure moisture in the air near the plant’s foliage.

The biggest control in the three aspects that you have is the moisture level of the potting mix. In winter it should never be wet, just evenly moist to nearly dry.

If you have wide variations of temperature in a room, keep the mix fairly dry with only little amounts of water applied when the plant is showing signs of lack of water.

In rooms in which heat comes on when you come home, that would be the time for a little drink which might be every few days to once a week or less.

The odd plant may need say 50 ml of water every night to prevent water loss and leaf drooping.

Another plant in the same room might only require a weekly drink of 250 ml. You have to watch the plants and judge.

If there is ample moisture in the air because you made it so, then your plants will require far less drinks. To sum up, ensure plenty of light (artificial light does help), go easy on the watering, endeavor to keep a reasonable amount of humidity in the air and if possible avoid rapid changes in temperature.

Plants can handle this aspect if they are fairly dry in the mix. Except for flowering plants in winter, don’t bother feeding.

Good luck with your house plants this winter.

ooo

Phone 0800 466464
Garden Pages and News at www.gardenews.co.nz
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🇩🇪 What the AfD has to offer:

• REMIGRATION
• Borders: CLOSED
• Tax cuts for GERMAN families
• NUCLEAR energy
• No gender propaganda
• No foreign wars
• FREE SPEECH
• The end to EU TYRANNY❗️ https://t.co/mpi1iLCLyC

— Naomi Seibt (@NaomiSeibt) April 25, 2026

Führer Merz is obsessed with ‘Project Ukraine’ and his intended war with Russia in 2028 — why does he think he can succeed when Hitler failed?

The 3rd Reich tried to conquer Russia over 1941-1945 — it didn’t work out well.

Everyday with the EU’s beloved gangster state based in Kiev.

from RT.com

The attempted murder was part of a Ukrainian campaign to radicalize young people in Russia, investigators believe

Story

One leader all along. Pulling the strings for decades pic.twitter.com/NnUfUB1LUt

— Ultracrepidarian (@Lwv1010) April 24, 2026

As of early 2026, roughly 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products passed through the Strait of Hormuz daily, accounting for 20% to 25% of the world’s total seaborne oil trade. Trump has told Albo to Stuff off, but is NZ buying from the US? Does MBIE consider that “commercially sensitive”? It seems unlikely that NZ would buy oil from Russia, given how choc full of Leftists that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is.

from the Epoch Times

The global energy climate may shift once again after scheduled peace talks between the United States and Iran collapsed.

America’s energy exports have hit record highs as the world navigates the uncertainty surrounding oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. exports of crude and petroleum products surged to a record 12.9 million barrels a day last week, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The Energy Information Administration predicted, in a separate analysis, that U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) net exports would grow 18 percent this year and another 10 percent in 2027.

Read the rest

There is one in Los Angeles:

• It served as a home for a daughter after law school for two years, and subsequently for her younger sister.
• Features: The space includes a Murphy bed, compact kitchenette with a retro-style refrigerator, a modern air fryer-toaster oven, and a designated workspace.
• Impact: The small space offers privacy and independence for young adult children in a dense, expensive, and often isolating urban environment.

Full story here

But Waikanae isn’t LA, and with the lack of a shortage now, all house prices have dropped; yet ever more houses get built —

But that could change if — God help us — a Hippy Chippy regime regains power and the floodgates are opened to ‘refugeees’ again.