The Green view of freedom is eerily Leninist

It is hardly surprising that the Greens oppose voluntary student union membership. After all, such organisations are the training grounds for all too many leftwing political activists, and having such undisciplined access to power and money is a great entree into how the state works.

The great ideological myth around student unions has its direct parallels with the Rousseau view of the "general will" taken to its logical end by Marxism-Leninism.

It goes like this:
- Students are an identifiable collective body of people with a common set of interests. As they are deemed to lack power, having a representative body is in their interests to put the "student view" to the university and more widely to government.
- Student unions can provide that representation, and as such embody the "general will" of students. As long as they are elected, regardless of turnout, the student union can perform this task.
- The "general will" is comprised of the interests of students. Those who disagree with the student union are against the interests of students. As the media, government and universities listen to student unions, this proves they are seen to be representative;
- Students who disagree with the student union are a minority. Their views would only be legitimate if they were carried by the union. If it isn't the view of the union it doesn't represent the 'general will" of students, and could possibly be against it;
- The strength of students is dependent on the strength of the student union. Allowing anyone to opt out of the union would be seen as weakening the expression of the general will of the students. It is an attack on students.
- Students collectively can decide to allow for opting out of membership of their unions, but if they choose not to allow that, then students can't complain. It is the general will of students whether or not they want voluntary student membership.
- Those who wish to contradict this are "anti student" even if they are students.

That twisted perverse logic is what Gareth Hughes is expressing.

He claims making all student unions voluntary somehow takes away the right for students to choose because to him students have a "collective brain".

It's complete snake oil and quite disgusting. If students want to be represented by a student's union they should feel free to set one up by choice or join one, by choice. If they don't then let it be.

It is a diversion to claim universities would charge the same money and fund the association itself. Universities shouldn't do that either.

It's so simple. If students don't want student unions (and their services) then they fail.

Most importantly, if any individual student does not want a union to represent her or him, then the student union should get the hell out of the way.

and the unreformed Leninist merchants of Orwellian collectivism should not get in the way of this!

Australia sits on the fence

As much as some on the left and right might want to make of it, there were not two profoundly differently views of how Australia should be governed offered by Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Neither offered inspiration and indeed both may be in parties quietly wondering whether the previous leaders of both major parties would have had a better chance at winning.

Julia Gillard offered a vision of "the state is here to help", which sold the total lie that somehow the Australian Federal Government had anything to do with Australia largely escaping the global financial recession. Indeed, it is more that Australia escaped in spite of the Federal Government's efforts to waste the money of future taxpayers by borrowing and spending pork like it was going out of fashion. None on the left in Australia care to note how without a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, without laws that forced banks to lend to those who could not afford to pay and without net Federal government debt (one of the positive legacies of the Howard administration), that the banking sector down under was far less vulnerable to the vagaries of the property bubble.

Ah but Australia does have a property bubble right? Well yes, and that is something that Gillard and Rudd have helped maintain, with a great deal of help from China (and its neighbours) treating Australia as the great mining pit of the southern hemisphere. Nobody can start to pretend that the key reason for Australia's immunity from recession and having its property bubble pricked is the maintenance of high commodity prices whilst China still rides a wave of immense increases in domestic productivity, fueling domestic domestic.

So Gillard tried to sell the snake oil that Labor saved the Australian economy. The biggest snake oil of all was that somehow the Federal Government deserved a share of mining profits over and above existing taxes.

Tony Abbott rightfully knew this, and confronted both that and the persistent claims that Australia should kneecap its economy to help most countries in the world grow their CO2 emissions. However, he himself was a little more disconcerting. It is clear his social conservatism turned many likely Liberal voters off. The poor results for the Liberals in Melbourne likely reflect that.

Yet as much as Gillard and the ALP might like to play on it, neither she nor Kevin Rudd (hardly socially liberal himself) have a glorious record on personal freedoms. The attempts to employ a Singapore/UAE/China style filter on all Australian ISPs smacks of the nanny state par excellence. Bearing in mind that New Zealand politicians sometimes have the tendency to follow our cousins across the Tasman, this was rather disconcerting.

So neither deserved endorsement, and neither got it.

Instead, Australia has rather quaintly dabbled with the Green Party, which if it was honest would effectively shut down much of Australia's primary industries if it could. Like Green Parties elsewhere it blends some social liberalism with a warm cuddly embrace of higher taxes, more government, bans, compulsion and an anti-Western foreign policy.

However, its single House of Representatives MP wont be the deciding factor, it is the independents. The big question is what pork they will demand for their constituencies to grant Gillard or Abbott a majority.

The longest standing independent is Australia's Winston Peters - Bob Katter. Katter was with the National Party, and resigned because he was opposed to privatisation, deregulation and free trade.

Oh and just before those on the left get excited he was also a fan of the politician that has been perhaps Australia's closest example of genuine fascism in recent times - Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The man who banned street protests, who had his political opponents in his own party under Police surveillance reporting directly to him.

Although Katter was with the Nats (and is a climate change sceptic), his father was with the ALP, so where he swings could be about the amount of pork he gets.

Other independents are ex National or Liberal (Rob Oakeshott andTony Windsor) and left because of differences over whether Australia should be a republic or of a clash of personalities. Both of them are likely to be warmer towards Abbott. Another possible independent is Andrew Wilkie, an ex. Green (and ex. Liberal), who is probably warmer towards the ALP.

So who knows what will happen.

However, if it is about pork, the danger is that the "winner" gets tainted for giving preferential treatment to certain electoral divisions (a "division" is a constituency in the Federal Parliament). Let's hope Australian taxpayers don't get such a blatantly raw deal.

So what now kiwi lovers of less government?

Some voted for National in 2008 to get rid of the big government "the state is sovereign" leadership of Helen Clark. Labour openly preached what it saw as the benefits of government spending more on health, education, welfare, housing and subsidising business. It also created new bureaucracies, gave local government almost unlimited powers to do what it wished with ratepayers' money and sought to tell people how they should live, for their own good.

Labour unashamedly embraced big government, a partnership where the iron fist of state regulation, tax and subsidy would direct the economy, and all major areas of social policy.

National was thought, by many, to offer something different, a change in direction, suspicion of the state, belief in less taxes, less state intervention in the economy, and being more open about choice in education, health care and superannuation.

After all, National offered part of this in 2005, and to a limited extent went in that direction (haphazardly and inconsistently) between 1990 and 1999. Isn't it fair to assume a change in government is a change in direction?

Well no. You see this National government runs deficits, doesn't reduce the size of government, spends more on state health and education, maintains the national superannuation ponzi scheme and has continued to subsidise and interfere with the economy. Property rights are no better off. National is being what it is used to being - a conservative party that keeps what Labour did before and tinkers.

To be fair to National, John Key didn't offer too much more than that in the first place. So some thought it was right to vote ACT.

Bringing Sir Roger Douglas back into the fold gave some hope that a Nat-Act coalition could see one of NZ's two bravest former Finance Ministers having a key role in Cabinet. After all, if Labour scaremongered over Douglas, it wouldn't be hard to ask why Clark, Cullen, Goff and King would complain about a man being in Cabinet who THEY all shared Cabinet with. However, John Key (and the National Party) are political invertebrates.

So ACT got Rodney Hide as Minister of Local Government. Well that was something. Time to reverse the Labour/Alliance "powers of general competence" granted to local government, time to at least cap rates to inflation, time to have local government protect rather than abuse property rights.

No. Not only did it mean none of that, but the Nats took Labour's Royal Commission of Inquiry into Auckland Governance, and implemented almost all of its recommendations. A new big Auckland council, with almost unlimited powers to do as it wishes.

Is that what ACT voters wanted? Bigger, stronger local government?

No. Same with the dabbling with the "hang 'em high" crowd represented by David Garrett.

ACT had potential, it did believe in less government once, it did have senior leaders who would talk the good talk. As flawed as Rodney Hide is, and Sir Roger Douglas, there were more than a few occasions when one could say "bravo".

However, ACT's first real chance at power (it wasn't part of the 1996-1999 National led governments) hasn't just been disappointing, it has even seemed counter-productive.

So what now?

The obvious answer I would give is to offer Libertarianz, although some may say it is still a small party, and many have harbour hesitation whether those within it have the capability or the interest in stepping up to be a serious electoral option for the next election.

So I might suggest this, from afar. It is time for those within ACT and National, who do want less government, less tax, the shrinking of the state consistently, to contact Libertarianz. To attend at least one meeting, and talk about how to move forward.

You don't need to agree with all of the policies, but to believe in the principle of much less government.

No one else is going to do it.

Morally bankrupt feminists

It's awfully nice to sit in Cambridge, England as a female academic. You can enjoy a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle, choose to study as you wish, travel as you wish. You don't need to rely on men to defend your rights, indeed you can associate with whomever men and women as you wish (and who wish to associate with you). You can be unmarried, married, a mother, childless, heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, chaste, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever. You can pose nude, or live the life of a hermit. You have a range of freedoms delivered through law, but more importantly culture and modern social norms that are the envy of many in the world.

So why does Priyamvada Gopal writing in the Guardian think that what the West offers women in Afghanistan is

"little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators"

because..

In the affluent west itself, modernity is now about dismantling welfare systems, increasing inequality (disproportionately disenfranchising women in the process), and subsidising corporate profits.

You see she opposes the military intervention in Afghanistan, whilst also opposing "misogynistic violence". Yet she offers the women of Afghanistan absolutely nothing in return.

Her claim is that "The real effects of the Nato occupation, including the worsening of many women's lives under the lethally violent combination of old patriarchal feudalism and new corporate militarism are rarely discussed."

Her evidence for this is patchy. Besides scorning a single book about something called "Kabul Beauty School", she trots out the usual Marxist/new-left rhetoric which is more about language than substance.

The patriarchal feudalism of Afghanistan is appalling, but the Taliban was the codification of it as law - with all women and girls effectively property of fathers and brothers The phrase "corporate militarism" implies a sinister profit-driven military mission, an assertion which has little substance when there are now substantive efforts to extricate national armies from Afghanistan.

However, it is party of this privileged academic's view that the West is not worth her pissing on, in comparison to Taliban run Afghanistan.

Her hyperbole continues:

"The truth is that the US and allied regimes do not have anything substantial to offer Afghanistan beyond feeding the gargantuan war machine they have unleashed."

Gargantuan? By what measure? By the fact that much of Afghanistan remains outside allied control?

What does she have to offer?

The usual vacuous bleeting "social justice, economic fairness, peace, all of which would enfranchise Afghan women".

Nonsense. Peace existed IN Afghanistan when the Taliban was in charge. It enfranchised no Afghan women. "Economic fairness" is the typical Marxist platitude which means "give the people I support more money by taking off those I don't support". Quite how this is meant to happen spontaneously is curious, but since she doesn't have to say what it is (and you'll be accused of being foolish for not knowing what the hell "fairness" is), then it doesn't matter of course.

Finally "social justice"? Does she expect that if Afghanistan is left well alone, that the culture and traditions of that society, with the heavy dose of Islam than runs through it, will produce "social justice"?

Is she just stupid and naive, or is she simply part of the cadre of leftwing feminists who hate the relatively free and open West that grants them unparalleled choice, economic opportunity and individual freedoms who overly romanticise cultures that have none of it?

She believes in "radical modernity", and with the exception of her neo-Marxist buzzwords, says nothing about what this looks like or how to get there. However that's ok. Like all of the West's critics you can damn what is happening, claim the West is, in effect, little different to stoneage patriarchal tribalism, and feel you've done your bit to spit on the USA and carry a torch for Afghan women.

It's morally bankrupt. Bankrupt because without major intervention, the prospects for serious change in the lives of Afghan women are glacial. Bankrupt because with intervention there have been positive changes, but nothing remotely on a scale necessary to make Afghanistan a haven for basic individual rights.

However, anti-Western fifth-columnists like Gopal would reject that. She would damn a wholescale military and political occupation that, as in 1945 Japan, would instigate a constitution, government and laws that would explicitly protect the individual freedoms of Afghan women, girls AND men and boys, and create a secular state. Her interest in Afghan women is exactly the type of tokenism that she accuses Western nations of applying. She believes Western powers treat the plight of women in Afghanistan as a way of gaining sympathy for continued military action. She is not entirely wrong, but the motive is not a mythical "corporate militarism", but part in parcel with the need to defeat the Taliban. It is one of the clearest examples of the Taliban's moral bankruptcy.

No, you see for her the plight of Afghan women is part in parcel of her being able to blame the West for it, and not only that but to deny the blatant differences in the rights and freedoms of women in the West with those in pre-modern societies.

Toby Young in the Daily Telegraph goes a step further, in claiming that the very same feminists remain muted about the treatment of women in Iran. They don't want to join what they see as "racist" or "far-right" criticism of Islam, so the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani gets neglected. Young says that with few exceptions, notable Western feminists keep their mouths shut:

"We’ve heard nothing from Germaine Greer, nothing from Gloria Steinem, nothing from Jane Fonda, nothing from Naomi Wolf, nothing from Clare Short, nothing from Harriet Harmen."

Another case is now that a 14 year old girl in Abu Dhabi is now in prison for "consensual sex" with her school bus driver. She claimed rape, and in much of the Western world the issue of consent would be irrelevant, but this is the UAE. A stone's throw from Iran and similar moral standards.

You'll notice that the standard leftwing feminist blogs are silent on all of these cases.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil makes it better does it?

What is this silence about?

Is it fear that damning Islamists will result in retribution? In which case these feminists are like the meek little girls they never wanted to be treated as, and don't deserve to hold their heads up as defenders of the rights of women.

Is it the very racism they may accuse others of? That is, that women in "those" countries live in different cultures and it would be wrong to judge their torture and abuse by "our" standards. "Exhibit A" in moral bankruptcy.

Is it the fear that damning systems or countries that are not Western aligns them with the very West they all live in, enjoy the advantages of, but continue to criticise? Maybe so. However, is this not just childish political tribalism that keeps one morally blind to the seriousness of what is being ignored?

Or is the more honest point that none of them know what to offer? Without the use of force to overthrow tyranny, it isn't obvious how to confront brutal well-armed dictatorships of one kind or another. Yet if thousands or millions of women in the West confronted the embassies, politicians, companies and media of those regimes that have warped moral standards around women surely it would make a difference. Would the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have quite as much moral fortitude if most of the Western feminists weren't docile in the face of his butchering clericocracy?

As Toby Young says, we don't know, but if would be nice if those who claim to care would speak up:

"Could the West’s self-appointed defenders of women’s rights have done anything to prevent the wholesale slaughter of their sisters in the developing world if they’d taken up their cause? Could a feminist outcry today about the plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani do anything to prevent her death? We will never know, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that their continuing silence reveals the moral bankruptcy of their movement."

EU = socialists that are out of touch

There is a budget deficit crisis in most EU Member States, which of course is meaning they are no longer particularly keen on funding the European Commission's endless demand for more tax victim money to fund feather-bedding of farmers in western Europe, grand infrastructure projects in eastern Europe, ridiculous projects (such as duplicating GPS and CNN) and the jobs for life in Brussels.

The EU is seeking a 5.9% increase in budgets this year, which is laughable given virtually all EU Member States are cutting their overall budgets, some on a grand scale, to live within their means.

The response from Member States has been to look askance at this, as the EU is acting as if there isn't a recession and isn't a fiscal crisis across Europe. The Eurorats simply want to close their eyes and ears and continue wasting money as usual - bearing in mind that almost all of what the EU spends money on is destructive to economic growth (the only good thing is to police Member States from introducing discriminatory interventionist policies).

So what is proposed? The EU will liberate Member States from this burden, to make them all full of glee that they don't have to worry any more about paying for the EC (the European Commission being the bureauratic arm of the EU).

Instead, the EU will impose a tax on the PEOPLE of the EU. According to the Daily Telegraph, the EC is pushing for the powers to impose pan-European taxes on financial transactions and air travel.

This somehow is meant to be palatable to Member States because it wont be their burden, it will be the EU taxing the public.

You see the EU only thinks of itself and Member States as the legitimate actors here, the long -suffering European taxpayers are merely cogs in the machine of the grand project.

Take this quote:

Janusz Lewandowski, the EU budget commissioner, said: "If the EU had more of its own revenues, then transfers from national budgets could be reduced. I hear from several capitals, including important ones like Berlin, that they would like to reduce their contribution."

Note the euphemism "revenues". Not revenue from selling goods or services to willing buyers, or making investments in commercial businesses that generate dividends or capital gains, no it is revenues taken by force, where the only sliver of accountability will be voting for the European Parliament, where every vote has the fraction of influence of a vote at a national level.

What is astonishing is the bizarre belief that somehow having Member States to reduce their state contributions (but have the people living in the Member States pay new ones), is somehow a great achievement?

The UK Government is thankfully having none of this, with Commercial Secretary, Lord Sassoon (who despite the name doesn't have great hair) saying "The Government is opposed to direct taxes financing the EU budget... The UK believes that taxation is a matter for Member States to determine at a national level and would have a veto over any plans for such taxes". None of the Liberal Democrat wishy washiness about Europe there.

However, it does show how the EC is a funny little world isolated from political and economic reality. It should face budget cuts, which would make Europe far better off as a whole, although the French would object as the biggest beneficiary of the status quo.

The EU's only value today is maintaining open borders and in rules that stop national governments providing assistance to their own businesses or in protecting local businesses, beyond that it is a project of tired old failed Euro-socialists whose own vision of the state has just been demonstrated to be a recipe for stagnation.

CER's last hurdle

The largest barrier to free trade between Australia and NZ looks like it finally has a good chance of being addressed according to the NZ Herald.

For decades now Australia has blocked imports of New Zealand apples on spurious grounds of biosecurity. I participated in a couple of CER bilaterals in the 1990s where this was the key issue (I was fighting for another sector) and Australia would never relent. CER offered no recourse if Australia kept blocking access other than the political ones. Naturally for NZ, access to Australian markets was far more valuable than for Australia to get access to another market the size of Melbourne (if you're generous).

So the WTO, hated by the Greens and the anti-free trade luddites, has proven its worth once again, by showing up the Australians for being protectionist hypocrites - calling for free trade in agriculture through the Cairns Group at the WTO, but unwilling to offer it to its closest trading partner.

It wont be easy, no doubt the socialist Gillard and farmer friendly Abbott will both reassure Australia's cosseted apple industry that they will appeal, but it's simple - you cannot block New Zealand apples under the excuse that they all contain fireblight and will ruin your precious crop.

So good on the WTO, it needs some words of support, especially since neither the President of the United States nor the "President" of the European Union nor the Prime Minister of Japan have any interest in free trade!

The joy of capitalist "exploitation"

"The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all"

So said economist Joan Robinson writing about underemployment in South-East Asia at the time.

(hat tip: The Economist Leader, 31 July 2010).

Damn, missed...

Iran's military leader, who runs a regime that executes children who are raped, executes teenagers who have sex outside marriage, has avoided being despatched to the only place he deserves - oblivion.

Bits and pieces

Yes, I do now have broadband internet at home, but this little interregnum of blogging will be brief as I will be away for a couple of weeks sans any sort of electronic communication at all.

So what's been happening?

1. The right concerns but the completely wrong answer. While Nicolas Sarkozy proves there is nothing a French politician likes doing more than regulating the lives of others, Old Holborn makes the point quite succinctly here. After all, plenty would be offended by the scene of a man walking around with a woman on a collar and lead, but why should it be banned? Meanwhile, is one of the key reasons for this issue being raised because the liberal socialist left refuses to confront Islamism directly, and is willfully blind to the oppression of women by most Islamic cultures because it sees any enemy of the West as a friend?

2. The Con-Dem British government is off in several directions, primarily focused on cutting spending it has decided to slash spending on its core responsibility - law and order. Whilst there are undoubtedly efficiencies to be gained in the sector, and undoubtedly many people shouldn't be imprisoned for a whole raft of offences that are more civil (e.g. not meeting child support payments) than criminal, is the question being asked as to whether there should be less criminal offences at all? In other words, if there is no victim, why should it be a criminal matter? Prison is effective at its core role - protecting the public from criminals. One report suggests that replacing prison time with community sentences will increase crime.

3. The Obama Administration is showing how empty headed and vapid it really is, by its continued embrace of xenophobic anti-capitalist rhetoric against BP. Now it is accusing BP of lobbying to release Libyan terrorists from British custody, when Exxon-Mobil and Shell did exactly the same thing. It is accusing the British government of being a party to providing succour to terrorists, when it happened over a year ago under the Gordon Brown regime, and was in fact the devolved Scottish government (albeit with Downing St tacit approval). Quite what the Obama Administration thought would be gained by hassling the newly elected Prime Minister about something he had nothing to do with, is rather curious.

4. Australia is having a Federal election. A choice between a feral unionist and a feral evangelist. Neither are deserving of a vote from a libertarian. Whilst it is tempting to back the "mad monk" Abbott, because of climate change alone, the Liberal Party remains liberal in name only.

A better choice, given the preference/AV based voting system is the Liberal Democratic Party which lists Ayn Rand as one of the great classical liberals of history. It seeks to abolish victimless crimes, significantly cut taxes (income tax would have the first $30,000 tax free then a flat tax of 30%), engage in a major privatisation programme, replace welfare with negative income tax and promote free trade. Think of it as ACT with balls AND a belief in personal individual liberty.

It has more to it than the Secular Party which seems more a reaction to the Christian politics of Abbott and the now defunct Rudd. It is broader based than the Shooters Party, which is essentially just about the freedom of peaceful people to own firearms. It also doesn't have the obsessive believe in anti-discrimination laws of the Australia Sex Party, as tempting as that party may be to some.

4. A city councillor in Wales is suspended for Tweeting "I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off." Apparently this is against the local authority code of conduct according to the Public Services Ombudsman. If ever there was a reason to abolish this body or to make those on it undertake training in fundamental individual freedoms, this is it. Britain is a country where expressing your opinion about a religion is restricted, because it might upset the precious little flowers who believe in ghosts.

5. New Zealand's government continues to disappoint. The weak will surrounding mining in national parks, the continued evasion of reality over climate change and the inability to lay down an agenda that directly confronts the anti-human anti-science statism of the Greens, and by default the Labour Party, should cause many more National and ACT voters to weep. Now you're going to vote for an Auckland Mayor who will be more of the same.

UPDATE: Well it would appear the Australian Liberal Democratic Party is more disappointing than it may seem. I have been informed privately that it is largely marketing driven, and that the presence of Ayn Rand on the front page was for marketing purposes. I'd be curious if any Australian libertarians and especially objectivists would interrogate Liberal Democrat politicians as to what they REALLY believe in. A laudable goal would be to return the Liberal Party to its core principles, but the chances of that may be as much as there is in getting the (New Zealand) National Party to do so as well.

Mines, railway or jobs

I just had to comment on this.

Green MP Catherine Delahunty is waging war against Nightcaps, a small town in Southland I have long been aware of, as it is the locality of a collection of lignite mines. Well it isn't the town, but the mines she hates.

There is some local concern about the pollution arising from the mines, which have existed in one form or another for over a century. The mining is carried out by two companies. One is Australian (boo hiss bad) which she mentions as "Eastern Corporation of Australia", the other she doesn't mention is state-owned Solid Energy.

Now let's be fair here, if the mines closed, then the town would be a shadow of its current self. Jobs would be lost, and people would have to relocate (although Catherine would probably want a generous welfare state to keep people living there off the taxpayers' back).

What she neglects to mention is that the government COULD actually cut back the mining there rather easily. Solid Energy is the obvious first target. Presumably the Greens would close the company down.

However a less visible target is Kiwirail. You see most of the mined lignite leaves Nightcaps on a railway branch line, which has a daily coal train. The line is the last railway branch line in Southland (other than that there is the Main South Line running from Dunedin to Invercargill and onto Bluff), and if it was being run commercially it would probably face closure. Unless, of course, the mining companies would pay commercial rates for freighting the coal (they did under privatisation, but the line needs bridge and track replacement as it has not had serious renewals since it was built).

Yet with Kiwirail now state owned and subsidised, a policy endorsed and cheered on by the Greens, it effectively subsidises the mining operations they despise.

On top of that the mine she talks about is apparently on local authority land. Presumably she believes in empowered local government, yet Southland District Council doesn't do what she likes

So one state intervention - propping up a railway, is having results (keeping open some mines) that those who PROMOTE state intervention, despise.

So what will it be Catherine?

Keep subsidising the railway?
Keep local people employed in mining and supporting those employed?
Let local authorities continue to own land used for purposes you don't like?
Close the mine and the town?

What a choice for those addicted to planning the world around them.

What would I do?

1. Run the railway commercially or offer it to the mining companies to buy if it is that important to them.
2. Enable the property owners of Nightcaps (and across New Zealand) to enforce property rights against noxious levels of trespass of gases (smoke) and dust.
3. Tell the local authority to sell the land (as it should with any surplus land).
4. Leave the mining companies to do as they wish.

What law do you want abolished?

Yes, it may be hard to believe, but the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government is asking just that.

Now it would be too much to hope for taxes, planning laws and much much more to be abolished, but there IS a chance here to do some good.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said in today's Daily Telegraph:

"today we are taking an unprecedented step. Based on the belief that it is people, not policymakers, who know best, we are asking the people of Britain to tell us how you want to see your freedom restored.

We are calling for your ideas on how to protect our hard won liberties and repeal unnecessary laws. And we want to know how best to scale back excessive regulation that denies businesses the space to innovate. We’re hoping for virtual mailbags full of suggestions. Every single one will be read, with the best put to Parliament"

Now you may be cynical, and I am a little, but this is STILL a great step forward. Imagine anyone from the Brown/Blair regimes saying anything like this. Administrations that thrived on passing new laws to fix problems.

So it is a great chance. The website to make suggestions is here. It helps if you have a UK postcode and probably helps most to vote for the best ideas (there are many wingnuts out there and people wanting new laws passed).

So what would YOU abolish?

Osborne’s emergency budget accepts Labour’s larger state

The Conservative-Lib Dem emergency budget, presented yesterday by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, was meant to fix the fiscal nightmare created by Gordon Brown’s decade or so of profligacy. The man who borrowed and spent up large in the boom years, increasing public debt year on year, and then suddenly switched to a half-baked version of Keynesianism (whereby he does the same in the bad years, ignoring that Keynes did say that in boom years such debts should be paid down).

The fiscal position Britain is in is stark. It is NOT because of the government bailing out banks. By 2016 the UK public debt will be £1.3 trillion, that is even WITH the cuts in spending and increases in taxes from the emergency budget, being over 70% of GDP (and that does not include PFI and pension obligations which are not counted as debt). What Osborne has done is effectively halve the deficit – deficit being overspending – by 2015. He is making the problem grow at half the speed of Gordon Brown before the UK reaches a theoretical balanced budget by 2016.

How is he doing it? Well if you listen to some it sounds like he’s been tough on spending. He hasn’t. 23% of the reduction is by pilfering even more from British taxpayers than before. In other words, the Con-Dem administration is ACCEPTING that Gordon Brown was right to spend more. The argument is a matter of degree. As much as George Osborne is cutting spending, he isn’t cutting it back to remain within the relatively high tax envelope Britain has, he is raising taxes as well.

Most stark is that VAT is being increased from 17.5% to 20%. A significant hike which will choke off retail spending and hurt almost everyone. Perhaps it is the price for the inane British worship of the NHS, but it isn’t presented as that. A Bank Levy is being introduced, punishing all banks for the foolishness of some. Capital Gains Tax is increased as well. He is even investigating a “Financial Activities Tax” (or a tax to chase finance out of the UK to Switzerland). Hopefully that will go nowhere.

There is some modest good news on tax.

Some tax thresholds change, which lowers taxes on some smaller businesses and those on the lowest incomes. Company tax is being dropped by 1% a year every year for four years to reduce it to 24%. That in itself will be positive for business growth in the UK. Small companies will only pay 20%. A stark contrast to some! A proposed tax on phone lines is to go. Fuel, tobacco and alcohol taxes have not been increased. The minimum income threshold for income tax is being increased slightly. However, of course none of this offsets the hit on VAT.

On spending the picture is very mixed as well.

He announced an average of 20% spending cuts across departments (excluding health and overseas aid), which will be detailed later in the year. How that might affect core spending such as defence, justice and police will be curious, but the devil will be in the detail. Sadly he hasn’t simply decided to abolish departments to make that easier.

Public sector pay is frozen for two years, when it should be frozen until there is a surplus. Quite what business would increase pay when it is bleeding red ink (especially for people often unemployable elsewhere) is beyond me. Those earning less than £18,000 wont be subject to the pay freeze, but are all getting flat pay increases – regardless of performance (and Labour say the Tories hate the poor?).

The retirement age is to be raised to 66, but pensions have become another huge bribe. Future state pension increases will be linked to earnings, not inflation, producing a huge demographic based fiscal nightmare for the medium term. Nobody is telling pensioners they don’t get back what they put in, but what their children and grandchildren will be paying in taxes.

As welfare spending increased 45% in ten years, that had to be tackled too. Benefits are only to be increased according to consumer prices, not retail prices (a lower level). A host of tax credits will be wound back. The ridiculous £190 grant to pregnant women (which the last government said was to encourage them to eat healthy, when it typically was used to buy a TV, clothes or any other luxury item) is being abolished. Child benefit is frozen for three years, but absurdly is NOT being taken away from those on middle to higher incomes.

Housing benefit, which costs more than the police and tertiary education combined, is being scaled back by capping the total amount paid. Apparently some families with earnings of over £100,000 have been getting housing benefit legitimately!!

Privatisation is part of the picture too. The sale of the high speed rail line to the Channel Tunnel, the NATS (air traffic control system), the student loan debts and the Tote were announced. None of this is controversial.

Yet so much more could have been done to avoid any tax increases. Simply ensuring all benefits/tax credits were only available to those in the bottom quartile of earnings could have saved billions. There could have been a clear and decisive end to corporate welfare of all kinds. Finally, whilst it would have been politically unpalatable, the greatest gains could have come from raising student fees and charging for basic NHS services (say half the cost of doctor visits).

Yes, the Con-Dem government has avoided the UK facing the kind of run on its currency and public debt that the socialist countries of the Mediterranean are now facing. However, it has retained the dependency mentality of entitlement to benefits because you breed, health care on demand rationed by queuing and enormous bureaucracy and government always “being there” to help individuals, businesses and the like.

Gordon Brown’s big state is still there, most of the cuts are not cuts, but just stalling of the growth of the state. The fact that 23% of the deficit reduction plan comes from increasing taxes should tell you that this is a conservative government with a small “c”, it is not a government of smaller government and free markets.

Cuts are not painful

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is preparing the country for austerity, mk III.

Mk 1 was the easy part, the 1% trimming of public spending to save £6.2 billion in the current year, essentially the spending the Conservatives had promised to cut. Was not much, but a taste of what was to come.

Mk 2 was last week. £2 billion worth of projects were cancelled, and another £8.5 billion deferred. Almost all of it spending approved in the dying years of the Brown regime. This included the absurd "investment" of £80 million that the government didn't have to "create" 200 jobs, although I doubt the average wage was close to £400,000 each!!

Mk 3 promises to be much much "worse" say the papers. Actually, it mostly wont be painful, if it weren't that 20% of the austerity will comprise of tax INCREASES in one form or another. Capital Gains Tax and VAT are likely targets, and it is they that will threaten the recovery, not the spending cuts.

There will be major cuts hopefully. Public sector pay is expected to at least be frozen if not cut, and public sector pensions are expected to face severe cuts because they are becoming unaffordable. Welfare benefits are likely to be frozen as well, with a scythe taken to the "middle class welfare" Labour built up to buy votes. One of the absurdities of the UK welfare state is how many recipients are on above average incomes. Hopefully it will be the end to that and more.

You see the Tories have stupidly ringfenced health and overseas aid spending for no cuts, which means it will be welfare and public sector pay that get hammered. Painful?

No. It isn't painful unless you think living within your means so you are lumbered with debt (or your children aren't) is painful. It is called being prudent. It isn't painful to stop stealing money from future generations. The UK public sector is already better paid that the private sector - yes you read right, the average income in the public sector is 2% higher than the private sector for similar jobs.

It isn't painful to wean people who are on average and above incomes from the state tit, so they actually bear the cost of raising their own children. It isn't painful for the private sector to no longer be shouldering the burden of competing against a bloated public sector staff.

Already the government is announcing new privatisations, the latest being the high speed railway between London and the Channel Tunnel.

It would be too much to hope for no tax cuts, or for the NHS to start charging for GP visits and face its own cuts, or for student fees to be at least 50% cost recovery, or for welfare to be time restricted (and only restricted to UK citizens!). However, it will be the start of rolling back the creeping (and bankrupting) state of New Labour.

Labour's lies about it are too easy to refute. It "threatens the recovery" if the state doesn't keep borrowing at record levels. Furthermore is the deceit that the deficit is about bailing out banks, when the truth is that the proportion of spending related to the banks is close to 2%. Labour is claiming it is ideologically led, as if overspending and growing the state by Labour wasn't.

The deficit is a legacy of Labour bribing voters with their kids' stolen future earnings, it was immoral then and is now. It is only moral for this government to end this as swiftly as it can, and start to confront the debt.

Note the difference with a certain government on the opposite side of the world.

Bloody Sunday reprise

30 January 1972 in (London)derry is a day that sadly will always be in infamy. A day that Catholics in Ulster will see, with much justification, as the day the British Army turned on those it was meant to protect, but also a day that many Protestants will see as a provocation by terrorists.

The report of the Saville Inquiry will be released today, and so i wont predict what it will say. However, I do have three points to make in advance.

1. For those who seek justice, seek convictions and imprisonment of British army officers who killed, it is worth bearing in mind how many IRA terrorists who also have killed before and since that day, who have been pardoned and released. Was that right? No. Does it mean the British soldiers who gunned down civilians deserve to not face justice? No. However what should happen?

2. Reflect on how utterly disgusting and repulsive it is that the Blair Administration seems to have given a blank cheque on time and money for this Inquiry. £191 million is so far beyond what even compensation for the victims and their families would be, that it shows once more what happens when governments treat those they are meant to serve with contempt. It should not take twelve years and £15 million a year to gather evidence, and come to conclusions. I don’t expect much self reflection from those who have profited indirectly from Bloody Sunday.

3. More important than all of this, consider how tribalism, this time flavoured with religious sectarianism, can completely disregard the rights of the individual. How mind numbingly stupid it is to label anyone Catholic or Protestant, when it is simply about "us and them", with the same mentality that has seen the blood of millions spilt. The same mentality as in Rwanda, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Nazi Germany, former Yugoslavia and the list goes on, and on. The surrender of the individual to the group, the demonising of the "other" (outsiders), and glorification of the "group". It is only tragically funny when you consider how unlikely in most cases to find such people in Northern Ireland capable of holding cogent arguments about theology. The Northern Ireland peace process has NOT been about rigorously pushing individual rights,and reason to reject the knuckle-dragging mentality of religious sectarianism. Instead it has been about ending the fighting, keeping quiet and moving on, whilst British taxpayers have poured a fortune to prop up an economy on life support.

The malignant, evil philosophy that blends religious hatred (fired up by churches on both sides, seen most recently in the insane rants by Reverend Ian Paisley shouting "antichrist" at the previous Pope), tribalism and scape-goating has left Northern Ireland still full of many who think the poverty, desolation and decay of the region is due to what the "other side" did. Meanwhile, with a British government facing fiscal ruin, perhaps the chance exists for the 70% of the Northern Ireland economy "produced" from the state sector, to be paired back, and for the people of Ulster to start focusing on themselves, generating wealth and prosperity and treating each other as individuals, rather than members of communities that exist in their heads.

Dutch elections, victory for freedom

The elections in the Netherlands have produced two substantial winners and two losers. However, I will let you count the number of times in the media YOU see how one of the winners is portrayed.

The first winner is the new leading party, the VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) which is a party of economic and social liberalism. It is similar in mould to how ACT (NZ) presents itself. It believes in free markets, welfare only for Dutch citizens, and reductions in taxes. It appears to have gained nine seats, increasing vote from 14.7% to 20.4%.

The second winner, is the new third party, the one that will get the most publicity, the PVV (Party for Freedom). It is led by Geert Wilders, a man who the British government sought to ban because he opposes Islam. The PVV believes in substantial tax cuts and reductions in the welfare state, the abolition of the minimum wage, is sceptical about the European Union, and believes only immigrants who embrace Dutch humanist and Judeo-Christian values should be admitted. Wilders is radically opposed to Islam, which means he is portrayed in much media as being "far right nationalist". However, like the late Pim Fortuyn, Wilders is no fascist. He simply vehemently defends the social liberalism and tolerance for individual diversity that the Netherlands hold dear AGAINST those who wish to destroy it. On top of that, he would implement a radical programme to cut the role of the state. It has gained 15 seats, rising from 5.9% to 15.5% of the vote.

So between those two, 36% of Dutch voters supported scaling back the size of government.

The losers were:

The CDA (Christian Democrat Appeal), a centrist conservative party. It believes in reducing state spending, but also tougher controls on drugs, prostitution, abortion and euthanasia. It supports decentralised control of schools and hospitals, and wider European integration. It is the party of the outgoing Prime Minister, Jan Balkenende. It lost 20 seats, to drop from 26.5% to 13.7% of the vote.

The SP (Socialist Party), which believes in the welfare state, state health and education, and opposes privatisation and globalisation. It was originally a Maoist Party during the height of the Cultural Revolution. It lost 10 seats, dropping from 16.6% to 9.9% of the vote.

It would seem Dutch voters rejected conservatism in favour of small government, and the financial crisis has also seen them turning from Marxism.

Other results were modest losses for the centre-left Labour Party (from 21.2% to 19.6% of the vote), and the centrist (conservative socially, economically leftwing) Christian Union (from 4% to 3.3%).

There were also gains for the Democratic 66 Party (an unusual blend of liberalising labour markets, supporting tax cuts and market reforms to healthcare and education, combined with environmentalism, radical social liberalism and a federal Europe) which soared from 2% to 6.9% (arguably another party that believes in less government) and the Greenleft party (which is an unsurprising mix of environmentalism, former communists and believers in big government socialism) which went from 4.6% to 6.6%.

So capitalism is hardly under attack in the Netherlands when the main parties that gained support believe in more free market policies, with the only leftwing party making any gains hardly making up for the losses from other leftwing parties.

Blogging disrupted

Just to note my blogging regularity has been disrupted because of:

1. Being overseas twice in the last few weeks (with glacial speeds available);
2. Moving home;
3. Two and a half weeks to get a phone line installed to carry broadband (and no, there is no cable TV option, as Virgin Media hasn't cabled my street).

So whilst I wait another 7 working days to get POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), after which I can get broadband, service is not going to be regular. No, I'm not getting it from BT, not only because it is an expensive and poor quality deal, but also because since BT has lobbied hard to destroy BSkyB's property rights in programming (which were built up commercially against two government owned competitors, and three government licensed ones) I figured I no longer needed to give a damn about BT's property rights on local phone lines.

Meanwhile, the British media has been focused on:
- Gunman who went on a shooting spree (but few have asked whether others having guns might have stopped him earlier);

- The Gulf of Mexico oil leak, Obama's xenophobic attack on BP to make up for his own impotence on the issue, and BP's own incompetence;

- The World Cup (which sadly is unlikely to see a New Zealand-North Korea final, as much as it would upset millions) is hyping up England and South Africa;

- The next stage of austerity, as the Con-Dem government "warms" up the British public for spending cuts perhaps ten times that already agreed (whilst the public continues to remain ignorant about what cuts actually MUST mean, such as cutting the welfare state and increasing university fees). Much good is being said about focusing on the role of the state. Few yet understand how drastic and urgent the cuts have to be, and sadly it will also include tax rises;

- The ultra-tedious contest for leadership of the British Envy, Spendthrift and Spin Labour Party, now no longer including a relative unknown who said Margaret Thatcher should have been assassinated in the 1980s. Most recently it now include Diane Abbott, who is notable for being a black woman. One of the contenders, Ed Miliband, said it showed the diversity of the Labour Party. It was pointed out to him that two of the contenders share the same mother (his brother David Miliband is also standing), and of course another man called Ed is standing as well.

Much ado about 1%

The big news in the UK yesterday was the announcement of £6.2 billion in spending cuts by the government in the current year. It's a cut that both sides of the House of Commons are not being fully honest about. How many lies or evasions of the truth are there? Let's count:

Lie number 1. The Labour Party is claiming that these spending cuts are about "taking money out of the economy" and will precipitate a "return to recession". There is no evidence that running a deficit that is as high as 12% of GDP (higher than Greece) bolsters the economy. In fact quite the opposite. After all, if running huge deficits saves the economy surely it should be steaming along, when in fact in the last quarter it grew by 0.2%.

Allister Heath in City AM proclaims the arguments in favour of continued the high levels of deficit spending are "intellectually bankrupt, pseudo-Keynesian" as the bloated state crowds out the private sector. Why? Because when the state borrows on such a scale, it does so by issuing sovereign debt. It has to do so at market interest rates to attract investors, so it attracts investment from the private sector, in everything from manufacturing to services to banks seeking deposits to boost their own leverage. One of the leading lights of leftwing journalism in the UK - Polly Toynbee of the Guardian - shows up her own economic illiteracy in saying "If Europe causes a second dip, cutting is a bad decision; if Treasury receipts strengthen, then such deep cuts so fast may not be needed." So it is NEVER a good idea to cut government spending according to socialist Polly.

You see the British government is dependent on private investors lending it money to pay for current spending. If confidence lapses in the government's ability to do so then witness Greece. One need not be a libertarian to see how unsustainable fiscal profligacy is. In a world where the term "sustainable" is a buzzword thrown about promiscuously like the favourite harlot of the age, it is curious that most don't understand it outside the platitudes of environmentalism.

So Labour is dead wrong, and largely to blame for the current set of affairs (most of the deficit is not about bailing out the banks, but about the collapse of tax receipts to prop up the bloated state built up by Blair and Brown, and overextended by Brown in recent years). Yet before the election it didn't completely shy away from cutting spending.

Lie Number 2. Labour wouldn't have cut spending. You see Labour did pledge to halve the deficit in five years, which would have meant a sustainable reduction in spending of at least £20 billion per annum. While Labour wouldn't cut spending in 2010, it would have been under enormous pressure to impose significant cuts in 2011. However, its new Great Leader will no doubt simply oppose cuts regardless of the 2010 Manifesto.

Lie Number 3. The savings are all going to cut the deficit. No. £0.5 billion of the savings are actually going to be spent elsewhere and used to start some tax cuts. The latter will be a miniscule boost to the economy, but in essence it sends the message that cutting spending means having money to spend elsewhere. It doesn't while you still have a budget deficit, especially on this scale.

Lie Number 4. The cut in spending is substantial. No. The saving of the total UK budget is less than 1%. Yes that is all that is being saved. It tells you something that total UK government sector spending is 100x this. That comes to the real issue. The budget deficit this year is £163 billion. Less than £6 billion off of that is 3%.

Shifty evasion number 5. There will be further cuts, but this was the hard part. No. Even an optimistic view about the economy, which given the crisis in the Eurozone (which is easily the UK's biggest trading partner) is unlikely, would likely generate sufficient tax revenue to cut the deficit by between a third and a half over time (time during which debt will have increased and the debt servicing costs as well). So there needs to be, at the very least, cuts 12x those implemented yesterday.

Shifty evasion number 6. Future cuts can be made through "efficiency savings" and "trimming budgets". No. Let's assume there needs to be cuts of around £105 billion in spending. You could not do that without hitting some combination of welfare, education, health, defence, or cutting public sector salaries. In other words, significantly limiting the welfare state. The "pain" has just begun, and the dirty little secret is that the UK welfare state as it stands is unaffordable and unsustainable. At some point hard decisions are going to have to be made such as:
- Will health and foreign aid both remaining untouchable areas, both with real increases in spending?
- Should public sector salaries be cut by up to 20% on average?
- Will tertiary sector funding increases have to come entirely from fees?
- Will pensions and welfare benefits be frozen or cut?
- Will middle class welfare, such as winter fuel allowances for the elderly be severely curtailed?
- Will government housing expenditure be halted?

The Conservatives probably know that, and also know that having the Liberal Democrats part of the government that does some of these will help spread the political blame.

However, the public still remains ignorant of the scale of the problem. Which brings me to:

Incompetent explanation of the need for spending cuts. George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer has done a shocking job of selling the need for cuts. He hasn't explained that interest rates could rise if cuts aren't made, he hasn't explained that a bloated state does not allow the private sector to grow, he doesn't convincingly make my first point above, that continued deficit spending is NOT about keeping the economy going - it takes money from the private sector to make the state take it from taxpayers in the future.

What the 1% cut in public spending means is simply a sign of willingness to take steps to deal with Britain's fiscal catastrophe. It is seen as a first step, but sadly is being portrayed as "taking the tough decisions early".

The cuts announced are easy and obvious, although a minor point is that it is odd for government to cut spending on roads when it doesn't allow the private sector to enter the market (and already recover revenue 4x that which it spends on roads from road users).

On top of that it is nice to see the UK doesn't have privatisation -phobia like New Zealand does.

The Royal Mail is to be part-privatised (49%) to raise money and to get private investment into the firm. Far more interesting is that the government is considering a serious proposal to lease the entire motorway network to the private sector.

Hone Harawira is right

Yep I don't say that too often.

According to Stuff "He was having difficulty supporting a tax increase that made things easier for the wealthy "at the expense of those in need".

"GST hits poor people the hardest because nearly all of their money is spent on things that you pay GST on – food, petrol, electricity – so any increase is going to really hurt them.""

Yes, and you don't need to be a socialist like Hone to realise that consumption taxes do this because those on low incomes spend more than they save.

There can, of course, be income tax cuts. In fact simply winding back government spending in real terms to what it was in 1999 would enable the deficit to be abolished and for the top rate to be scrapped and the 33% rate to be cut without raising GST.

Imagine the change in economic activity and international perceptions of NZ if government did scrap the spending outlined by Roger Douglas, wound back spending to 1999 levels, scrap middle class welfare such as "working for families", put serious caps on welfare and see the top rate drop to 21% for income and company tax, and make the first $14000 tax free.

Hone Harawira would be arguing about spending cuts (yes you wont get subsidised broadband, your university fees would go up with inflation and welfare would be far tougher), but he'd not be arguing about tax because those he is interested in would be paying less. Everyone would be.

However, I forgot, many of you elected a Labour Lite government led by Helen John Clark Key with Michael Bill Cullen English as Finance Minister.

After all Labour only increased income tax once (the 39% rate) and then reduced income tax once, and did not ever increase GST.

UPDATE: Oh NOW I know why you voted for Labour National, David Farrar makes it clear it is about staying in power for three terms. Quite why you'd choose the blue team over the red team to keep implementing the red team's policies is beyond me

Fifth bailout in twenty years

The announcement by the New Labour National government that it is spending NZ$750 million of your money, to strengthen a company that the Old Labour government bought for NZ$690 million ought to provoke outrage on behalf of those supporting the current government, and should condemn Labour and its cheerleaders the Greens to history for being the most egregious destroyers of taxpayer wealth since Sir Robert Muldoon.

It should be so obvious to a child that buying something that is worth NZ$690 million and having to spend $750 million to save it is lunacy. Labour receives the blame for the former, and now New Labour National does for the latter.

What to know why you're not getting a real tax cut? Ask both of those gangs of reckless spendthrifts. Why their parents didn't spend a couple of hundred bucks to buy them train sets when they were kids so they could indulge in this pastime is beyond me? (mine did by the way).

Will Kiwirail make a profit that will even approach to recovering this (and the other money poured into it in the past year or so)? No. Indeed, the goal is to be "self-sustaining", which presumably means make an operating profit, not recover the long run cost of capital in this very capital intensive business.

The problem is we've been there before. Government is regularly using your money to rescue railways in New Zealand. The first time was understandable, the second time could even be partly excused as due to the legacy of Think Big, but ever since then it has worn a little thin.

The simple truth railway enthusiasts (and I count myself as one of those) have to accept is that the economically viable future for railways in New Zealand is to operate a severely curtailed network carrying moderately high volumes of containers and bulk commodities.

Two years ago I wrote this post, still valid today, where I outlined what looked to be viable and what did not. Railways north of Auckland have little future, as does the line north of Masterton and between Stratford and the main trunk. The Napier-Gisborne line has had a fortune poured into it, so may be best to keep mothballed in the event of traffic.

David Heatley from the NZ Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation has an excellent presentation called "The Future of Rail in New Zealand". I wrote about it as well.

You see the railways were bailed out in 1982 when transformed from a government department to a commercially oriented corporation (the first "SOE" before the term SOE was coined).

The railways were bailed out again in 1990, in part to pay the full cost of the main trunk electrification approved before corporatisation (and which was found to be a loss making capital investment even if the electricity was supplied for free), and in part to pay for the restructuring following the removal of the monopoly on long haul freight.

Then it was privatised in 1993.

It was bailed out once more when Dr Cullen bought the track from Toll Rail (having earlier paid over the nose for the Auckland rail network), and then refused to enforce the cost recovery track access charges needed to pay to maintain the network.

The fourth time was the renationalisation, by paying well over the market price for the "business" it kept it open, except that it is unprofitable.

Now you're paying more, this time to make it "viable".

Darren Hughes has said the $750 million isn't enough, because $11 billion is being spent on roads. Yes well done Darren, noticed a railway to every business and home? Noticed how many people use roads compared to railways (most lines you can wait hours for a train of any kind to appear)? Might you be better asking why YOU voted for taxpayers to pay over the odds for this dog of an asset? What is he trying to achieve besides looking like he's addicted to spending bad money after bad? Does he want to spend $11 billion on railways??? He says "I think we need to be looking at how we move freight from, say Gisborne on the east coast, to Napier port". Who is this "we"? Because almost all of it goes by road, as it is substantially cheaper. This was looked at when you were in government Mr. Hughes the simple answer is that there is damn all freight from Gisborne to Napier, because Gisborne has a port. The distance is far too short for a viable rail freight operation.

This example shows all too obviously how inane the Greens are on railways (believe in them, believe in them), how blatantly wasteful the Labour was in renationalising it and how the Nats are too damned scared to do what actually needs to be done - get Kiwirail to borrow the money for its renewal itself.

If there are people willing to buy trains and run them on the network paying to use it, then let them. If there aren't then mothball parts of the network and offer to sell it to whoever wants it.

The arguments that the railways save money are clearly ludicrous.

If there is a desire to ensure rail and road are on an equal footing then set up the highways as a profit oriented corporation that borrows and invests in its network paid for by user fees.

Then both networks can be self sustaining, and be privatised. Hopefully then the ongoing political fetish of saving a network that, by and large, has had its day and is now only viable for a few core freight tasks, will be over.

Gareth Hughes a clown once more

What the Greens say about an unprofitable Hamilton-Auckland passenger rail service.

Ohhh a new rail link? Yes, we want it, you should pay for it, it must be good, it's a railway. People like trains, see the petition of those people who want it? No we didn't ask how often they'd use it, stop being mean, we want it, you pay for it. Go on, it's good for you. How much? We don't know, who cares, you'll be made to pay anyway. It will reduce congestion? How much? We don't know, we ignored any evidence that says it will do nothing.

Gareth Hughes is proving he is as much of a clown as Keeping Stock showed he himself demonstrates.

He says "the commuter rail connection had real merit and offered a long-term option for linking Auckland and Hamilton. Yes, so hard to get between those cities with that state highway, the buses that use it and even the Overlander rail service.

He goes on as the Waikato Times reports "Hughes pointed to the 2011 World Cup as a "great incentive to get a commuter service happening"". Yes, nothing so good for the environment as encouraging Aucklanders to live in Hamilton and commute, and commuting has everything to do with the Rugby World Cup, right?

Follow the thinking so far? Well Gareth doesn't even know there is a railway already between Auckland and Hamilton (most of it double-tracked) "The Greens wanted to see a "corridor of national significance", with construction of a rail-line – or space for it to be built – alongside the Waikato Expressway". Presumably he's never actually travelled between the two cities by land.

This staggering level of ignorance should render the Greens as being a laughing stock. Let alone the wilful blindness of the Greens and local authorities in Waikato ignoring that the last time such a service was trialled, it was for 16 months from 2000 to 2001, undertaken by the then privately owned and unsubsidised Tranz Rail (you know that awful foreign company that leftwing legend has it destroyed the railways). The trial was not a success, even though it used the relatively comfortable Silverfern railcars, it carried on average 12 passengers a day south of Pukekohe.

That's not even a profitable busload. A profitable rail service would need to carry at least 12 times what the trial did, every day, in each direction.

However, the Greens aren't about economics, or reason, for them railways are a religion, and any idea of a new service must inherently be good because trains are good, always.

You should be forced to pay for them because of this, because it is about faith "Mr Hughes said the Greens did not have costings for a Hamilton-Auckland commuter rail link, but they believed the cost-benefit ratios would still be greater than those for new roads.

No costing, no idea about how many people would use it, but they BELIEVE it would be more beneficial than new roads.

If the Greens are so blindly ignorant about something which is rather easy to dismiss, can you imagine how often the Greens engage in such a faith based view of the world (especially given how they dismiss those who have one they disagree with?).