Regular readers of Sir Bob Jones’s blog, No Punches Pulled would have been aware that his last posting was the 16 April.
For a prolific commentator like Sir Bob, not posting something for close to three weeks is unheard of.
It was for this reason that I have been scanning the media for news on the Knight’s health.
Alas, sadly, today Sir Bob has died.
A polarising personality
Bob was a strong advocate of Libertarian principles which sometimes grated against the attitudes of others. A successful business men, and a vocal commentator with his own strong opinions, Sir Bob was someone who polarised the public into two separate camps:
- Positive readers for whom Sir Bob’s views were fresh air in a media landscape increasingly devoid of fresh critical thinking, and capable journalists. To us, Sir Bob was a beacon that in this increasingly absurd world, we weren’t losing our marbles, things were actually getting worse, and
- Negative readers who despised Sir Bob’s wealth and individualism, and who classed him as authoritative, conservative, and a proponent of “neo-classicalism” economics. Sir Bob was the a very public face of everything bad in the world, with ideas that lay at the root of all of societies evils.
Do what you want but don’t fool yourself
His libertarian views would lead to ideas around the intersection between the concepts of sex-gender, the real root cause of Māori activism, the absurdity of religion, and senselessness but growth in group think.
On the former, he felt every bloke had the right to wear a dress if they so chose. But wearing a dress and wanting to be female did not make them women.
Same with the Māori Renaissance – no problem with it, but the blatant rent-seeking and the herd-like group thinking which went along with it, he had no time for.
And it will probably have tickled him pink to have bumped into the recently deceased Pope Francis. Which one’s views on religion would be right?
Yeah, I can imagine that would be quite funny to him.
He didn’t walk on water
Not everything Sir Bob wrote I agreed with.
Some of his criticism about public servants working from home sounded like biased thinking from a guy whose business owned most of the Wellington CBD business, with the corresponding downward pressure on demand and rents working-from-home entailed.
But I will miss his highly entertaining blogs, and his inciteful commentary of the Issues de Jour.
I hope his family preserve his website for future years: https://nopunchespulled.com/
RIP Sir Bob. I’ll toast your passing with a drink tonight.