The Mike Hosking Breakfast

At the end of each week, Mike Hosking takes you through the big-ticket items and lets you know what he makes of it all.

Netball: 7/10
Because the pleas I have heard this week from players, and coaches, and fans to save the thing have all had passion attached to them, and passion is no bad thing.

Michelin: 9/10
It did exactly what we paid for; got buzz, got vibes, got tables booked, and reps confirmed. It's quite possibly a tourism-cum-marketing masterstroke.

Chris Hipkins: 4/10
The Michelin misread was next level cloth-ear. Keep that up and the campaign is over.

Serena and Mark: 4/10
As in Williams and Mitchell. The common thread? Age and injury. You've got to know when to fold 'em.

The All Blacks: 8/10
New era, new season, easy spanking for the opener given it's the French away, and not even a good French away.

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I've got a couple of questions around Mike Smith.
Mike is back in the news because of his court case against big polluters. His case got upended by the recent Government move to block what they call "tort-based litigation" over climate change.
Roughly speaking, the Government didn’t like the uncertainty these sort of cases create for business, and also that the decision in such matters lies with the Government, not the Mike Smiths of the world and adventurist judges who like the idea of a bit of legal exploration and dabble.
That should have been that. Except it isn't, because Smith is back in court looking to argue the argument.
The questions:
1) Who pays for Mike Smith to spend his life in court?
2) What do we do about the judicial process that allows seemingly endless claim and counterclaim, to the claim and counterclaim?
3) What happened to the idea that the Government is the ultimate court, and we might want to bow to that idea just a bit more often?
For every Mike Smith, who presumably has a legal mind or two on tap to dabble, there will be genuine cases of importance that are not heard.
The judicial wheels are already hopelessly slow and exploratory musings can't be helping.
America should be all the warning sign we need to avoid, at virtually all costs, the idea that you can simply have a stab at an idea in the hope you can find some sympathetic judge to rubber stamp Lord-knows-how many years and how many millions of dollars of mind-bending ideology that ties up businesses, lives and people in a process that may well end up nowhere.
Clearly there are people like Smith who are born agitators, probably slightly bored, perhaps a bit aggro, but nevertheless dedicated to the idea of upset and stirring.
Equally there will be those who have passed the bar who find the intellectual idea of bouncing a few controversial concepts about the place stimulating, if not fun and perhaps profitable.
But most of the rest of us have a life to get on with and that includes Z Energy and Fonterra and the Government of the day.
If Mike Smith wants to make law let him run for Parliament, our ultimate court.
But short of that, surely there should be some rules that prevent the professional legal menace from wasting our time?
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More details have been revealed about the high-rise proposal on the Empire State Building.
Two people were arrested yesterday after they climbed up an antenna on top the New York building, staged a proposal, and unfurled a peace banner.
Angela Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov have been charged with burglary, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, criminal tampering, disorderly conduct and possession of burglar’s tools.
US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking the pair entered the building with tourist tickets, hid overnight, and emerged early the next morning.
He says they then used tools to get past the cables blocking access to the 104th level, before continuing to climb up to the antennae.
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It’s Friday, which means Kate Hawkesby and Tim Wilson are back with Mike Hosking to Wrap the Week that Was.
They discussed the Michelin star hype, Fish and Chip Friday, and the naming of former MP and broadcaster Michael Laws as an NZ First candidate.
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More people are going electric amid global fuel uncertainty.
The June quarter saw a boom in electric vehicle sales, with fully EVs seeing a 19% increase compared to the same period last year.
When combined with plug-in hybrid vehicles, the market saw an almost three-fold increase.
BYD New Zealand General Manager Warren Wilmot told Mike Hosking a fuel crisis in the 70s caused people to shift from big cars to small ones, and a similar thing is happening now.
He says couple that with huge leaps in technology, a car is no longer a car, and people are now seeing the benefits of switching to an electrified product.
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