Don't like the government? Blame the National Party

For the second time in over 20 years of MMP, the left has got, pretty much, what it wanted in a government.  This time, a Labour Party led by a complete neophyte (Jacinda has never sat in Cabinet, never been a junior Minister), with a caucus inhabited by unionists and ex.public servants, with the Greens (led by an ex. Marxist student activist - yes I remember him at university) and Winston the country's leading political whore-monger (look how he , will lead a leftwing government.

This government is already opposed to capitalism (although mind-numbingly can't work out what system means New Zealanders produces goods and services that get exported or sells services to tourists to pay their way in the world).  It is keen on identity politics and not only believes that climate change is damaging New Zealand, but that New Zealand reducing its emissions will make a difference to it.  This is pure scientific nonsense, but there's more.  This government believes that child poverty can be solved by giving people more of other peoples money for having children they can't afford to raise, and that it is not up to people to be responsible parents.  This government doesn't even realise that the biggest problems it campaigned on in the election, such as housing, healthcare, education, river pollution and welfare, are almost nothing to do with capitalism, but rather government intervention.

The problem with housing is primarily due to local government, applying the Resource Management Act, to constrain the supply of housing, in part to meet the new urbanist ideological objectives of densification that is the dominant philosophy of urban planning departments in major cities (not just in New Zealand, but also Australia and the US cities with the most expensive housing).  

The problem with healthcare is that there is little relationship between what consumers want and what they are able or willing to pay for, as politicians, not the market, drive the supply of healthcare.

The problem with education is that it is centrally driven and only recently has been opened up to additional competition, so that it can be innovative and meet the diverse needs of students and parents.  The new government is completely beholden to the producer interests of the suppliers of health and education, who in education in particular, are completely uninterested in being rewarded on performance.

The river pollution problem is a failure to apply private property rights, which could be applied to adjoining land owners including Iwi, to provide a framework to control water quality based on the self interest of multiple private owners of the rivers.  However, this government wants to kneecap one of the country's leading industries, even wanting a debate about "how many cows" there should be.  Why would anyone think they would know how many cows there should be, when they don't know how many of anything there should be, when it should be a matter of supply and demand?

The child poverty problem is a failure of the welfare state, which has never been so generous to people who want to have children, but can't afford to pay for them.  It is also the failure of policies that inflate the cost of living, primarily for housing (see above), but also the regular increases in GST, fuel tax and tinkering with the energy market (albeit not on the disastrous scale seen in Australia and the UK).  

Yet what real difference will be made?  Nine years of National saw little done in any of these areas, housing belatedly had some movement recently, charter schools were a start that was far too little too late, and National just fed the middle class welfare addiction that Helen Clark started.

This government wont do much different from National (yes you'll see uneconomic railway and tram line built instead of motorways), the difference is this lot actually believe in what they are doing.

You see the National Party has been a very poor promoter of the free market, private enterprise and individual freedom.

After leading a courageous government that started tackling welfarism and waste in government, Jim Bolger lost all sense of courage to do what is right and for no sound political reason whatsoever held a referendum on electoral reform that would obviously make it more difficult for one party government (and certainly was being backed by the left because they thought MMP would give them more power, and they were right).  He then led a chaotic government for two years with Winston Peters, before resigning and the final year limping on with Jenny Shipley.  Jim Bolger, remember, cut his teeth in being a Minister under Rob Muldoon, the most economically socialist government to date.

John Key got elected on a platform opposing the high tax, big government philosophy of Helen Clark and spent more, and how much really changed?  Was the welfare state reduced?  No.  Did the state's role in education get scaled back? Hardly.  Was the planning system liberalised?  Only for the government building roads.  Did corporate welfare get scaled back?  No, the opposite.  Yes there was some partial privatisation, but the fundamental causes of the housing crisis were barely touched.   John Key with Rodney Hide's help implemented Labour's local government policy on Auckland, creating a behemoth of a bureaucracy, with more employees than the councils it replaced, spending more.  Of course National also funded the multi-billion dollar underground rail fetish in downtown Auckland, which will never make a single dollar of operating surplus to pay for it.

What New Zealand now has is a government that believes in something, most of it is at best misguided, at worst destructive and ignorant, but it IS driven by philosophy.  A philosophy of "we know best" of "problems are best fixed by throwing money at them" of "climate change can be changed by whatever we do, and if you question it you're evil" of "a person should be judged by their identity group/s and intersectionality of them, not what they actually do, experience or think" of "you are a means to an end".

National only offered a diluted version of this, a half hearted "it's all going well" belief that "we're entitled to rule".  It didn't offer anything different, anything new and never challenged all of the assertions on poverty and the environment spouted by the left.

So while Bill English might say he is leading a "strong opposition", what is he actually opposed to?

The new government is just National with the courage of the philosophical convictions in implementing essentially the same policies, on steroids.

Do you really think National would reverse anything Labour is about to do?

Don't fear Winston

I am wholly relaxed about a government of which Winston Peters is a part, not just for the reasons outlined by Peter Cresswell, but because his bite is actually rather small when compared to many of those who despise him.

For a long time, Winston Peters was the second coming of Robert Muldoon, except of course when it came down to it, Winston wasn't that interested in turning back the clock of the reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson (except that he wasn't keen on privatisation).  Despite his rhetoric, after all, central government privatised its shareholding in Auckland Airport in 1998 while Winston was in government.  

He isn't an acolyte of environmentalism, in that he doesn't believe in sacrificing prosperity and wealth to engage in what is virtually nothing besides virtue signalling about climate change.  In that sense, he is much less toxic than the Greens, who combine welfarism with environmentalism and the glorification of identity politics.  Winston has NONE of this (although his willingness to buy votes with the elderly could be described as a form of welfarism).

So the so-called rightwing commentators who think a National-Green coalition is a good idea are demonstrating how utterly beguiled they are with the image of the Greens and ignoring the substance.  Either a National-Green coalition would kneecap the Greens on principles and policies, causing them to splinter and disintegrate below the 5% threshold, or (more likely) a National-Green coalition would be led by the Greens pushing climate change, getting the baubles of railways and tramways that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year for many years to come in losses and continuing the slide towards identity politics that National has done nothing to reverse.  Furthermore, it will encourage more welfarism.

After all, it is the National Party that is willing to sell out its principles for power (Muldoon 1975-1984 being the most egregious case study).  The Greens are a party of principles and policy (the wrong ones in my view, but still).

That's why I'll be more comfortable with Winston calling the shots over National or Labour.  National doesn't lead the fight against leftwing ideas or concepts touted by Labour and the Greens and their supporters, it just plays personalities and fear.  

Winston may contain the growth of identity politics, he wont sign up to mindless environmentalism (even though he has policies that might feed into it) and he wont embrace welfarism on a grand scale.   OR he may just get a Cabinet post and go away.

In either case it is better than the Greens driving public policy.

NZ election result: winners, losers

First the biggest loser:  

You, that's assuming you're not seeking to extract other people's money from the state.  

You, if you believe that freedom of speech matters, and that there shouldn't be a Harmful Digital Communications Act.

You, if you believe that you own your body and shouldn't be criminalised for what you put in it.

You, if you believe that government should stick to justice, law and order and defence, and should not be involved in the delivery of health and education, that it should not seek to be parent to everyone and should not respond to all of the calls to impose "social justice" (a euphemism for "take money from people we don't like and give it to people we do").

The news from overseas sources makes New Zealand seem like it still basks in the age of the reforms of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson.  However, that's only because if you look at subsidies, protectionism and regulatory rent-seeking, NZ looks better than Australia and the US.  If you look at taxation, NZ is much simpler than most economies.  Yet, that relative position doesn't make NZ a free-market haven, and certainly not on personal freedoms.  

So what about the parties?

National, optimistic but too soon to tell will think it won, and to be fair Bill English did shake off his reputation as the biggest loser as a party leader in generations.  He did it by being evasive, by focusing attention on his rival's spending plans, even though his own plans are not fundamentally different.  It is on form, as a party that doesn't really reform anything.  Riding on the back of an economy that gains from the reforms of the 80s and 90s, on high commodity food prices and the spending power of new migrants, its approach to most issues is not to change much.   At best it does seek to cut taxes, but at worst it rolls back virtually nothing Labour does.  The middle class welfare package instituted by the previous Labour Government was kept.  Yet, in an MMP environment the Nats did successfully frighten people into turning out and voting for it.  It deterred ACT supporters from voting ACT (and indeed some NZF supporters too).  Being in a position to get a fourth term is an achievement historically, but you have to ask for what?  Does National exist primarily to stop Labour et al from doing stuff?  The number of National supporters keen on governing with the Greens tells you exactly that.  Principles don't matter, the role of the state doesn't matter, nor is there interest in pushing back against a culture of dependency and statism.  National exists to stop Labour, this time we'll see if it worked.

Labour disappointed but too soon to tell  thinks it has won, because it could conceivably lead government with the Greens and Winston Peters.  Yet it did so mainly by consolidating the vote on the left.  It decimated the Maori Party strategically, it presented a leftwing manifesto and took the Greens back to its core.  Yet the widespread "Jacinda-mania" star status proved to be for little effect.  Few National voters were convinced that a young woman who has never had a job in the private sector, and has never even been a Cabinet Minister could be Prime Minister.  Labour did win the media narrative (along with the Greens) about relative child poverty and river pollution, all without much scrutiny about the statistics (or the causes or better yet, the solutions).  It has a chance at power, but has a long way to go to attract votes from groups other than public servants, beneficiaries, students,  Maori and Pacific Island voters and unionised workers.  It hasn't broken through in most regional towns and cities, nor significant parts of Auckland.  Yes Jacinda has almost done it, but if she does become PM, she'll be getting wagged by the tail of James Shaw and Winston Peters, and that is NOT a winning position to be in.  

Winston Peters won (I mean really, he runs it, it is his) lost seats, but is the master of political positioning.   Seriously, he has won, whilst Bill and Jacinda slut around him for the next few weeks.

 He puts himself in the centre, whilst being a populist who embraces the left (more money for pensioners and opposition to privatisation) and the right (sceptical about immigration, sceptical about higher taxes and opposition to identity politics by race if not nationality).   He leads the only truly fungible MMP party, in that he could support either main party and no longer would he really upset his base of supporters (like he did in 1996, but only because he broke up from the Nats to oppose them, and misjudged that his supporters cared about policy - when they are largely driven by gut emotion).  He'll get a good job and do little with it, he'll give a bunch of ne'er do wells (most of whom couldn't hope to get a job as "highly paid" as an MP) employment, and he'll one or two totemic legacies.  One might be the economically ridiculous idea of relocating the Ports of Auckland to Marsden Point, better would be a referendum on the Maori seats.   Winston won and why are you surprised?  He knows MMP better than anyone else, and no other politician is willing or able to replicate him.

Greens never really lose and were hit fairly hard, not least because it showed itself to be the party of welfare cheats.  Jacinda-mania attracted the airheads back to Labour, but it showed itself to still be a ginger-group of hard-left finger-waggers whose main instincts are to tell people off, tax what they don't like, subsidise what they like and virtue signal.  The good news for the Greens is that they still get an easy ride on most of their policy positions, particularly the constant false claims that "action on climate change" will save lives, the war on fossil fuels and their obsession with identity politics.  The media still loves them, even given the Metiria scandal (which actually exposed their fundamental belief that everyone owes everyone else a living).  Yes the Green Party has never actually been in a coalition, but it is very very influential and relies on new cohorts of optimistic state worshippers being recruited year on year.  

ACT lost badly in part due to the Nats successfully scaring voters on the right to voting National, but also because David Seymour moved too far away from having a coherent position on issues.  He was seen as backing National, but whether it was too hard for him to get traction on multiple issues or he lacked ground support to campaign, the only policy that got a lot of publicity was in increasing teacher pay.  ACT once had a coherent less government, lower tax position that promoted more competition in public services, was tough on law and order and rejected identity politics.  Yet Seymour couldn't break through with such a message.  The brand is mixed, he made statements about abortion which would alienate some, but he tried hard.  ACT needs to work out who it is targeting and what message it is giving.   There is a gap on the right, one that will open up large when a certain Maori ex. National MP finally retires.  ACT can't fill much of that gap, but it sure can grab some of it.

Maori Party is nearly finished as Labour branded it as National's patsies, which was unfair.  Maori are smarter than identity politics warriors fighting "colonialism" as Marama Fox implied. It will probably remain for some time, but looks like it is slipping back to be another Mana Motuhake.  It would have a chance if Labour gets power,  with the Greens, as it could position itself as the Opposition for Maori again.  However,  its real future is threatened by a referendum on the Maori seats, which if it includes Maori who choose to be on the general roll, could completely render the Maori Party obsolete.  

TOP did well for being led by a vulgarian.  For all of the rhetoric, TOP had policies based on a philosophical position, not simply "evidence led".  The philosophy was to penalise asset ownership as a solution to a market failure, rather than address the supply side element.  Everything else it stood for was a redistributionist/environmentalist agenda that competed with the Greens and Labour.  Gareth Morgan got the party attention, but also turned off many.  He topped it off by blaming voters for being selfish and stupid.  What more is there to say?

United Future has no future

The youth didn't turn out in the magical numbers to vote for the left, and if they did turn out they were not a single bloc (who is?).  After all the left is the mainstream.  Besides housing (which has become a problem because of the enviro-left approach to planning, through the RMA and the application of new urbanism to city boundaries in Auckland and Wellington), the narrative about child poverty was from the left (Beth Houlbrooke from ACT was hounded down when she suggested people on low incomes should not have children they expect taxpayers to pay for), the narrative around the environment was partially a banal question around "should there be fewer dairy cows" (the sort of nonsense seen in adolescent level policy debate).

What now?

Winston will make his choice, either Bill English will get to have three years of do little, conservative (literally) government.  Otherwise Jacinda Ardern will suddenly find she has gone from MP to PM without even having sat in on a Cabinet meeting, with Winston wagging her dog and the Greens on the sidelines providing confidence and supply.  I am uncomfortable with the latter, primarily because culturally the bent of Jacinda will be to support more identity politics based on race and sex, less freedom of speech and fewer private property rights.  Not that the Nats are practically better, but Labour and the Greens actually believe in state power and collectivising people over individual rights and individual responsibility.

ACT needs to refocus

For those who think government does too much, who think individuals alone or with others should have more power and responsibility to find solutions to the problems of today, there is little to offer.   The best hope might be for ACT to be in Opposition, regardless.  To campaign more clearly on principles, which should be around private property rights, everyone being equal under the law (including the abolition of Maori-only political representation), opening up education to choice and diversity, tackling the culture of welfare dependency, opposing state subsidies for business, more taxation and more state ownership.  ACT should firmly come down on limiting the scope and powers   of local government, on ridding central government of wasteful politically-correct bureaucracies and taking on identity politics.   Yes it should support other parties when it comes to victimless crimes, but there should not be a unified view on abortion.  It should be tough on real crime, tough on parental responsibility, but also take on measures that governments have done that increase the cost of living.  This includes the constraining of housing supply, and immigration policies that mean new migrants utilise the capital of taxpayer funded infrastructure, without actually paying for it.

What Winston does as his possible swan song is of minor interest, what matters is there being a party that stands up for something different.  For now, only ACT can do that.

Auckland Airport debacle should be celebrated by the Greens

As Peter Cresswell has rightly pointed out  little is more hypocritical and sanctimonious than the Green Party joining in the criticism of the Government for the accidental disruption to the pipeline from Marsden Point refinery to Auckland.

The accident, which is essentially a grand scale version of the sort of minor accident that contractors cause on water, gas, electricity, telecommunications utilities from time of time, is the first time this has happened for the over thirty years that the pipeline has been in operation.  The pipeline is privately owned, having been privatised by the fourth Labour Government (and is owned by a consortium of all of the major oil companies), and was built for sound reasons.  It is cheaper and much more energy efficient (and has much more capacity) than the coastal oil tankers, railway and road tankers used previously.  Note that much of the rest of the country is served by coastal oil tankers that then get fuel distributed by road.  

Yet consider how the Greens treat fossil fuels now or indeed the entire environmental movement?  Imagine if NZ Refining Company was seeking to build that pipeline today under the RMA.  It would take years to gain consents, and the Greens would oppose it, claiming it "intensifies Auckland's dependence on fossil fuels, which are killing the planet" etc.   I bet there would even be murmurs had Auckland Airport sought to expand its storage facilities for jet fuel, after all no transport mode is more fossil fuel dependent than aviation.

So the widespread cancellation of domestic and shortfall international flights should be celebrated by James Shaw and his band of serial underachievers in the Green Party list.  Think of the CO2 emissions cut, as serial planet killers (airline passengers) are shepherded onto fewer flights.  Think of the hurricanes stopped, think of the oceans that stop rising, think of the glaciers saved.

The Greens want no more oil exploration in New Zealand, no more oil extraction,  they along with their sister outfits like Greenpeace, and the analysis free virtue signalling zone called Generation Zero, cry foul anytime there are any steps to increase production, reduce the cost or provide new ways to use fossil fuels.  

You can be sure the Greens will one day campaign for Marsden Point to be closed, and that they will oppose Auckland Airport's proposed second runway when it seeks resource consents for it to be built (on its land) after 2020.   You see this is the same Green Party once led by Jeanette Fitzsimons, who some years ago wondered why there couldn't be less international trade, as she talked about ships that went between countries carrying the same goods ("why couldn't we just make more of what we need at home"), this is the same Green Party that wants you to pay more for energy and transport (whether directly or through taxes) so that there can be a zero carbon future.

Well you sure are now, these are Air NZ airfares from Auckland to Christchurch tomorrow.  Stay home peasants, save the planet:

So it's like this.   If you really want to boot out National and annoy me with a Labour Government, then vote Labour.  Leave the Greens alone, let the simpering, hypocritical, virtue signalling haters of science, individual freedom and Western civilisation drop below the 5% threshold.   They lie openly about the impact of their policies on climate change, for it is like telling a child to stop peeing in Lake Taupo because it will save the lake from pollution, they conceal the impacts on energy prices, taxes, transport and the effect on the economy.   Let's be VERY clear, if the philosophy of the Green Party was applied across the world today, New Zealand would be a much much poorer place, because many of our exports would be shut out of overseas market (with the inane "food miles" idea), tourism would drop dramatically because air fares would be much higher, and imports would be much more expensive as import substitution is attempted - again.

Make the Greens history this Saturday. 

New Zealand General Election 2017: The choices for freedom

Well as many think the election is interesting, I find it mind numbing.  It has become the Bill vs. Jacinta show.  Bill, who is not media savvy, not very good at tough decisions (especially around cutting loose liabilities in his party, who keep stacking up in every growing numbers) vs. the shallow, empty headed Jacinta, who has ridden on the back of the same vacuous enthusiasm that brought Macron and Trudeau to power (and is partially responsible for both Obama and Trump).

The bigger picture is there is a fairly simple choice between two governments.  A National-led one almost certainly needing support from NZ First, and as usual ACT, possibly the Maori Party (although that looks difficult).  A Labour-led one with the Greens hand in fist, possibly with the Maori Party, and maybe even needing NZ First.

Frankly, either look grim.  National is looking tired, and the McCully nonsense smells, Steven Joyce is fast and loose with figures and Simon O'Connor is appalling.   After three terms, most governments run out of ideas, and the Nats are overrun with kneejerk, reactive politics.  It is difficult to know what it stands for, except staying in power and keeping Labour out.  Reminiscent of how the National Party has governed almost always, and even campaigned, except perhaps from 1987-1993 when it believed in the government doing less, or 2005 when it stood for tackling the growth of identity politics in New Zealand.   Now it is a party of "we wont tax you as much as Labour".  It is a party of corporatism, the status quo and of being in government.  It has had nine years to fix the housing bubble and is only now starting to appreciate that the fundamental problem is in the planning system, that it defended, and the obsession of local authorities to restrict the supply of land for housing.  Does it tackle the narrative about child poverty by noting that absolute poverty is low, that the solutions of the left of more welfare wont work, that the fundamental problems of poverty are poverty of aspiration and attention from parents, insufficient use of birth control and the shocking incidence of intergenerational welfarism?  No, it wont point out the size of the welfare state, the urgent need for education, stable and safe family structures, and to address cost of living issues that are due to state intervention (e.g. housing, cost of local government).  It embraced the middle class welfare Labour put in place.  It only looks good for one reason.

Look at Labour.  It has a manifesto filled to the brim of ideas that are as if nobody learned from the 1980s, with the law of unintended consequences devoid from its policy.  Its policies on housing are xenophobic and based on hundreds of thousands living in state owned ghettos, but at least it would abolish Auckland's urban growth boundaries.  It will constrain the rental homes market, presumably so the state can be landlord, with all of the success that has brought in recent decades.  It will tax water (but daren't think of commercialising and privatising water or rivers).  It wants everyone to pay for tertiary education and is committed to not raising the age of National Superannuation.  Nothing like bribing both ends of the age spectrum with borrowed money is it?  It wants more welfare.  Yet it's what else Labour embraces that concerns me.  It wants net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, regardless of cost (and certainly regardless of benefit, which is zero).  It's the warm embrace of identity politics, there needing to be special programmes for every group, and topped off with the application of the Human Rights Commission against discrimination based on gender identity - which raises the prospects of trans-women having access to women's facilities (and even questioning this is treated as an act of "hate", rather than establishing boundaries between the objective and the subjective).   It is the Labour Party that continues to see nuclear weapons as bad generally, putting our allies in the same camp as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia.  It wants to grow media by making you pay for media that will suit its perspectives on the world.  State media rarely provides an outlet for the views of those who want less government, in part because its very existence depends on left wing politics. 

So I'd prefer National over Labour, simply because the changes Labour wants to bring all involve more spending, more taxation, more regualtion, more government and less treatment of people as individuals before the law, and more as "categories".   There would be less economic freedom, less prosperity, less individual freedom and more rent-seeking from the public sector, Labour's preferred groups (media, unions, local government) and less accountability to consumers and taxpayers.

The Greens are beyond the pale, demanding vast amounts be spent (or taxed) to pursue high cost virtue signalling around climate change, despite it having no net impact on climate change.  The Greens resist treating people as individuals, as they promote structuralist identity politics on a grand scale.  Everyone is judged on sex, race and other victim/oppressor identity classifications.  Labour in power has a high chance of bringing the Greens on board.  The Greens want to gut the private rental market by making it almost unviable for small scale landlords to operate.  The only element of Green Policy that is worth supporting is on drugs, but that is small in the scheme of things.  This is the party that wants to wage war on gambling,   It has policies on umpteen minor matters, it wants people to be able to get leave from work as victims of domestic violence, but proven by whom?  It perpetuates the radical feminist myth that raw stats on pay mean women are being actively discriminated against in pay.  It wants Treaty of Waitangi claims to be perpetual and maintains the Maori nationalist myth that Maori and non-Maori are two nations who are working separately, with the Maori nation in a form of separate development, with race based democracy entrenched and expanded.  It doesn't think of Maori participation as Maori people participating, but in Maori organisations being treated as having a special interest on all public policy matters.  The Greens would impoverish New Zealand, reward poor behaviour and parenting, tax success and restrict who you can trade with, what you can do with the money you have left, and treat everyone as belonging to an identity group.

The Maori Party, of course, is primarily about identity.

So what's left?  Legalise Cannabis? Well yes, but it has no chance of any influence and it wont confront any other issues.  TOP?  Well the party led by the man who wanted to sue me because I confronted him on his idiocy on North Korea could be dismissed by me on that alone, but on policy as well it is dire.  It wants to tax wealth, so that anyone who has saved gets their savings taxed, as well as the income on it.   There is no fairness in widening the tax base, and it is claimed to be a way of addressing issues that are largely unrelated to tax (such as housing supply).  Beyond legalisation of cannabis, TOP would take a decidedly nannying view on healthcare with new taxes on food that it doesn't like to subsidise food that it does like.  

So what about NZ First?  NZ First I have always written off, because the economic nationalism and populism is largely nonsensical.  However, there is one element of NZ First worth supporting, which is the rejection of Maori nationalism and identity politics.  No other party is prepared to argue for all New Zealanders being treated equal under the law and abolishing separate political representation for Maori.  This is toxic in itself, and is one reason I am less concerned about NZ First than I used to be, but beyond that it is a party of economic lunacy and more state control.

So I am left with ACT.  ACT is weak on dealing with identity politics, but strong on reducing the size of the state on economic issues, and in reducing the state's power on education (which is very important).  ACT largely gets what is needed on housing as well.  It takes a more pragmatic evidence based view on environmental policy (unlike almost all of the others).  On immigration it strongly supports migrants embracing liberal democracy.  I'm not keen on David Seymour's views on abortion, and ACT is silent on drugs (except for reducing police efforts on personal consumption) but that isn't enough to dissuade me.   It is the only party seeking to constrain the welfare state, lower tax and has a strong tendency to support less rather than more solutions from government.  It is welfarism, mediocre education, the sclerotic planning system and the culture of dependency and identity politics that is holding New Zealand back.  It is a shame ACT wont confront the latter as strongly as it once did.

So I party voted ACT and electorate voted National (my candidate in Wellington Central seemed ok, although her chances are poor).   I'm hoping that it will mean National needs ACT to govern and so will be positively influence further in education and hopefully in other ways.   However, I'm far from enthused, I'm more motivated by avoiding the Jacinda and James show. 

UK General Election: A choice between uninspiring statism and barely concealed evil

There is nothing to inspire me to vote Conservative in the UK General Election.  Theresa May is an unreconstructed statist big-government conservative.  She is instinctively authoritarian.  She advocated for the security and police wet-dream on surveillance as Home Secretary, so that UK ISPs and telcos now keep a record of every single website visited in the UK over the past 12 months - because somehow what you read should be able to be accessed by the state when it sees fit.  She is pushing further, driven by concern over terrorism, but wanting to sanitise the internet to make it "safe" - the state working with parents, parenting us all.

Yet, it was all known that she takes a "trust me with your private information" approach to surveillance, rather than focus on the real issue, which is Islamism.  She explicitly says that we should remember "the good that government can do" and then outlines plenty of areas the government intervenes extensively in, such as energy, but instead of blaming virtue signalling policies like the Climate Change Act (which has seen the UK Government guaranteeing to a French led consortium that it will ensure it gets paid a price for electricity generated at its forthcoming nuclear power plant double what is the current market price for electricity).  She thinks libertarians are atomistic and people who seek to take advantage of others and thinks she is as distant from that as she is from Jeremy Corbyn.

That may well be true.  She said this:

We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We believe not just in society but in the good that government can do. Paying your fair share of tax is the price of living in a civilised society.

Tom Harris in the Daily Mail said she was a real socialist offering left wing policies.

I couldn't vote for her if she was my Conservative candidate, like I couldn't vote for Amber Rudd (who thinks a solution to terrorism is to "make" WhatsApp end encryption, yet stands on a platform with a known Islamist because the UK Government is too ignorant to call them out.  Fortunately I have a tolerable choice and it is a safe Conservative seat.  The Conservatives have pledged not to increase VAT, unlike the previous election when there was a pledge to not increase income tax and National Insurance (another form of income tax), because the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants "more freedom" but pledges the Conservatives are still the "low tax party".

It's nonsense.  The Conservative manifesto could almost be one from any of the Labour leaders since 1997, except the current one.  It's a cynical move to move to the centre-left to try to hoover up votes from the middle and to destroy the Labour Party, but there is one problem.  It has backfired due to ineptness, a lack of enthusiasm from the rank and file of many Conservatives and the simple fact that May does not ooze authenticity.  That doesn't mean Labour will win, thankfully, because it isn't just led by an inept naive idiot, but a nasty hater of capitalism, individual freedom and even Western liberal democracy.

I disagree with most of what the Labour Party advocates, and accept that it holds a fundamentally different view as to the role of the state from me, but Jeremy Corbyn and his closes allies are not like that.  Jeremy Corbyn has never, repeat never held any office of significance in Parliament under any Labour Government.  He was never an under-secretary, nor Chair of a select committee, although he has been on select committees.  He was never trusted with power by his colleagues, he was no Michael Foot

Corbyn invited senior members of the IRA to Parliament three weeks after the Grand Hotel bombing in Brighton which targeted the Conservative Party conference, both killing and maiming people.  His history in supporting the IRA and campaigning for those who had killed for the IRA, is brushed aside as saying he wanted to talk to "all sides", but no one can recall him ever meeting Unionists. Corbyn opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement (which set out between the UK and Ireland how devolved government would work in Northern Ireland) and his right hand man John McDonnell opposed the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 (which ended the terror campaigns from both sides).  

Corbyn opposed the UK ejecting the fascist military dictatorship of Argentina from its invasion of the Falkland Islands.  He has called Hamas and Hezbollah "his friends" (although has apologised for his use of words), but spoke on a platform with Islamists who were calling for war with Israel.

His Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell called Lenin and Trotsky his greatest influences and stands on a platform alongside Stalinists.  Indeed Andrew Murray, a Stalinist open supporter of north Korea (which he calls "People's Korea"), is now helping Corbyn with his campaign.  The same man who after the Paris terrorist attacks said:

“The barbarism we condemn in Paris is minute compared to the barbarism wrought by imperialism across the planet in the last 13 years and we must condemn that… It is a sad lesson we have to re-learn from the attacks in Paris, it needs bringing home again and again.”

Of course Corbyn blames the US for "escalating tensions" with north Korea, not the totalitarian police state that has developed nuclear weapons and keeps testing missiles whilst uttering bombastic rhetoric about attacking the United States.  You see Corbyn was Chair of the ironically named Stop the War Coalition.  An organisation that has never once campaigned for any anti-Western regimes or militant groups to stop waging war.  It never took on Russia, Hamas, the Assad regime, Al Qaeda, ISIS, north Korea et al.  Stop the War is only too much in favour of war, as long as it is waged against any Western liberal democracy including Israel.

Corbyn claimed that 9/11 was "manipulated" into blaming Al Qaeda.  He has been paid by Iran's international propaganda TV channel, Press TV, to appear, but not, of course, to criticise human rights in Iran, but to criticise the West.  

Corbyn has admitted that he would never use nuclear weapons, effectively making the UK's nuclear deterrent worthless.  He has long campaigned for unilateral Western nuclear disarmament, including during the Cold War.  Was he a pacifist who just believed the USSR would follow, or was he not too fussed if the Red Army had rolled its way across Europe to "liberate" it from capitalism and "US imperialism"?  In any case the British Communist Party wont be fielding candidates in this election, but is uncharacteristically supporting Labour.

Corbyn is a strong supporter of the Chavez/Maduro authoritarian socialist disaster in Venezuela, but you can't be surprised at that.  After all, he says Castro was a champion of social justice, what with all those opponents he got murdered.  Corbyn also seems to attract anti-semites, not just Ken Livingstone's obsession that the Nazis were in cahoots with Zionists and Jews, but supporters.

These people appear again and again.  However he does join in on Quds Day rallies organised by the Islamic Republic of Iran (yes that bastion of peace, diversity and human rights) to criticise Israel and call for it to be pushed into the sea.

Corbyn is a sympathiser of Russia's position on Ukraine and Georgia, presumably because it is the opposite of the US and European position.  He blamed the Russian insurgency in Ukraine on "NATO belligerence".  After all, how dare Ukraine dump mother Russia led by such a nice liberal democratic regime to embrace the evil West right?

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said on balance Chairman Mao did more good than harm, which will be news to the tens of millions murdered or starved by his policies, with the bizarre justification is that he left China on the verge of a great economic boom (even though China's economic success has been because the Chinese Communist Party abandoned socialist economics).

So as awful as Theresa May is, and corporatist and centre-left as they may be, it is not a party led by IRA sympathisers, appeasers of Islamism and sympathisers of Stalin. 

The moral turpitude of these entities is utterly beyond contempt.  Corbyn refused to condemn the killing of Osama Bin Laden (much better to put him on trial, give him the benefit of the doubt), he has linked terrorism to British foreign policy (but doesn't explain, of course, why neutral Sweden and non-interventionist France get attacked).  

He and his ilk have spent decades on the backbenches campaigning for "understanding" for just about every group that sought to wage war with the UK, whether the IRA, fascist Argentina or Islamists.   He has campaigned for the UK to be disarmed, to withdraw from NATO and to distance itself from the US.  He allies himself with political leaders that torture and murder people, and who use violence.

Of course many Labour MPs know and hope he loses, just that they don't lose their seats.  It is because of them that Labour remains committed to NATO and the nuclear deterrent, both positions Corbyn opposes.

He isn't a nice guy, despite his softly spoken manner.  

He is an advocate of political violence who has appeased and turned a blind eye to brutal murderers, because he shares their political ambitions.  He supported the IRA because he believed in a united Ireland by all means necessary, and to hell with the opinions and concerns of Unionists (whose views he never courted and sought, presumably for a Marxist they were the hated bourgeoisie).  He supported the Galtieri military dictatorship, the same one that imprisoned and tortured socialists in Argentina, because it dared take on the bigger evil - Thatcher's government (hence why he didn't care less than the IRA tried to murder her and did kill several Conservatives) over the Falklands.  He is warm towards Hamas and Iran because he supports the Palestinians and supports just about any regime that dares take on the hated United States and its ally Israel.   I understand concern for the plight of the Palestinians (although keeping Hamas in power is shooting yourself in the foot), but to treat Iran as a partner is morally bankrupt.

He is without doubt the worst candidate for Prime Minister put up by any major UK political party in modern times.  Those who stand with him should be ashamed of him, and the ONLY reason to vote Conservative is to send the strong message that Corbyn and his group of violence touters have no place in government.

 

France wont reform, wont improve, for now

Regardless of the result of the French Presidential election the outcome will, at best, see little difference to the structural sclerosis that contains the French economy, nor will it see a reform in terms of support for basic freedoms and individual liberty that France also needs.

As appealing as anti-Islamism of Marine Le Pen is, the bottom-line is that she is not from a tradition of liberty, but one of collaborationist fascism.  The facade slipped when she went into denial over the actions of the Vichy regime, which not only appeased, but collaborated and worked hand in glove with the Nazis to terrorise France, deport and execute Jews.  The fight against Islamism is not won by handing power to one who channels fascists, even though she had made significant efforts to distance herself from it (including, to be fair, rejecting the explicit anti-semitism of her vile father).

Some conservatives and even some libertarians regard her as a hero, and are cheering her on.  I'm not and I cannot see how anyone, ANYONE, with a critical mind and appreciation of individual liberty can give her support.  Even if you accept that France needs to contain and confront Islamism (and it does), to then hand it over to a fascist, nationalist, protectionist movement is figuratively cutting off your nose etc, but is more counterproductive.

Nothing will play more into the hands of France's Islamists than Marine Le Pen making it difficult for  non-Islamist and moderate Muslims to go about their daily lives, for it will recruit thousands to the Islamist cause.  Similarly, whilst she would admirably likely defend the likes of Charlie Hebdo to publish cartoons lampooning Mohammed, she is adamantly opposed to Charlie Hebdo depicting her the same way or depicting Christianity in an offensive manner. 

Notwithstanding that her economic policies would be as ruinous to France as similar policies have been to Venezuela.  She is, very much, a national socialist.  Having said that, it is likely that if she were elected, the UK would be better off, at least in respect of the Brexit negotiations, because she would be friendlier to the UK.

Macron on the other hand, is pablum.  He may deliver some modest tax cuts and a "sinking lid" civil service (not replacing those who retire or leave, in net terms), but will not address France's sclerotic attitude to free enterprise and new business.  France needs the level of reforms Fillon was advocating, as a bare minimum, but his own corruption ruined his campaign.   Macron wont seriously confront Islamism, he will embrace the EU and move too little too late.  Worse, he will seek to punish the UK for leaving the EU, and will continue the main stream dirigiste economics of glacial reform that France has experienced for years (in part because the EU pushed it along).

France's fundamental problem lies in its civil service and the closed system by which the only people who advise the French government, by and large, are those qualified by a school that teaches one philosophy of government.   Until a President is elected that takes that system on, that breaks out of the single ideological domination of French domestic policy, France will remain unable to confront the primary causes of unemployment, regional stagnation and relative decline compared to northern Europe.  

I expect Macron to win, and France to continue to muddle through, but unless he has a secret agenda of serious reform, he will make little difference.  Le Pen at best will provide a distraction and a shock, but she not only would stagnate France, she would chase away private enterprise, reduce individual freedom and make her supporters poorer.

Neither is worth voting for, but I think the majority of French voters, who dislike Macron, would rather not have a President who is an apologist for Vichy.  They would be right to make that choice, to vote against opportunist blood and soil nationalist socialism.

Main trunk electrification was always a dud

The usual howls and wails of emotive knee-jerk reaction have come from Kiwirail's announcement to stop operating electric locomotives on the Main Trunk line.

It would cost NZ$1b to extend electrification to the Auckland network, and to Wellington.  However, Wellington's network is electrified to a different voltage and on DC not AC, so dual-voltage locomotives would need to be bought.  Even then, many of the trains on the line, going to and from branch lines (such as to the Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and Hawke's Bay) would still be operated by diesel.

However, the North Island Main Trunk electrification has always been a dud project since Rob Muldoon made the NZ Railways Department (NZR) embark on it as part of his Think Big central planning programme.

Main Trunk electrification was considered in the 1950s, after the line north of Wellington was electrified when it was deviated from what is now the Johnsonville line and placed in two double-track tunnels, so that trains were already operating electric from Wellington to Paekakariki (as steam locomotives couldn't run through the over 4km long Tawa Flat Number Two tunnel).  A set of electric locomotives were bought that could have served on the main trunk (and were the most powerful locomotives in NZ until 1972), but spent their lives almost entirely dedicated to operating the Wellington to Paekakariki trains (until tunnels on the line north of Pukerua Bay were lowered to enable diesel to run all the way through).

However it was rejected and the decision was made to go diesel, not least because the government owned railways was conservative technically, and was not keen to adopt what it thought then was the "risky" AC electrification system (being widely rolled out in Europe, but not yet used in New Zealand).  The DC system used in Wellington, Christchurch and Arthurs Pass was going to be too expensive, so diesel locomotives were bought to phase out steam.

The Think Big project came from an age when NZR had a general statutory monopoly on moving freight further than 150km.   NZR was facing delays on the main trunk line because of growing export traffic.  The problem, as it saw it, was a lack of capacity.  Its solution was to upgrade the line, bypassing several bottlenecks with shorter deviations, new viaducts able to take heavier trains and some steep winding sections avoided, but also to electrify the line between Palmerston North and Hamilton.  Why not to Auckland and Wellington?  Because the bottleneck was in the middle, and the way NZR operated meant that many trains were broken up and shunted along the route at Hamilton and Palmerston North.  

This was also an age with guards vans, with lots of small stations and sidings, as NZR's monopoly on long haul freight meant it handled small consignments of single wagons or even box loads.  Towns like Paraparaumu, Otaki, Hunterville, Otorohanga and Huntly had shunting locomotives to handle freight, like they always had.

In short, NZR ran an old fashioned, inefficient railway, handling consignments better suited to trucks, and its solution to its congestion was not to propose competition (naturally), but an expensive grandiose engineering based solution.   

Yet the Muldoon Government wasn't completely economically illiterate.  Main trunk electrification was committed, and would end up costing $350m in 1990 prices, but in 1982 NZR was converted into a corporation, effectively becoming the first SOE.  It would be required to make a profit, was no longer subject to political direction (except a Ministerial veto on closing lines) and would be subsidised directly for services that were unprofitable that the government required it to operate.

In 1983, Minister of Transport George Gair opened up domestic freight transport to competition, abolishing the 150km limit on road freight competition.  In 1984, a major consultancy report by Booz Allen Hamilton for the Railways Corporation made major recommendations for it to be competitive and profitable with competition from road freight.  This included closing two workshops, removing guards vans, closing small stations, moving from handling small lots of freight to trying to handle multiple wagon and train loads of freight.  

The Railways Corporation reformed, but it still lost freight to road competitors over many years.  In 1987, it commissioned Coopers & Lybrand to assess whether the main trunk electrification (that it was required to complete) could be an asset.  The report concluded that even if electricity were free it would still be a net loss to the Railways Corporation annually.  The only part of the project that made sense were all of the deviations.

As a result, when the Railways Corporation was restructured into a full SOE, it received $350m from taxpayers to bail it out of its Think Big project (after all the others were).  Officially, the Main Trunk Electrification had no net value that could ever be recovered from users of the line.

In short, the main trunk electrification has ALWAYS been a dud.  

After 30 years, the locomotives have become unreliable, many of the trains that now operate on the line have little operational need to be stopped at Hamilton and Palmerston North to change locomotives, wasting time, labour and fuel.  

A project that was inspired by technocrats running a monopoly, decided by politicians engaging in Soviet style central planning, has come to its natural conclusion.

It's not worth spending NZ$1b to incrementally reduce CO2 emissions, which will make no more difference to climate change than stopping a child urinating in a lake will stop it being toxic.  

Yet that wont stop the hyper-emotive railevangelist central planners making every hyperbole about this being some giant leap backward.   The Otira-Arthurs Pass electrification was closed in 1997 once technology enabled diesel locomotives to run all the way through from the West Coast to Canterbury, the Christchurch-Lyttelton electrification was closed in 1970, as equipment was due for replacement and with the age of steam coming to an end, it could be dieselised.  

Is it a shame that such a large project has proven to be not worthwhile? Absolutely, but it wasn't Kiwirail's fault, but the fault of the central planners of the Muldoon era - those the Labour Party and the Greens now ache to emulate, who chose to waste hundreds of millions of taxpayers money solving a problem that existed because of their regulation and archaic business practices it protected.

Kiwirail is a marginal operation at best, it doesn't need to have around its neck the vanity proposals of politicians who think they know best, and who think that saving every tonne of CO2 is worth unlimited amounts of taxpayers money.   

Note though how odd it is, that the Greens, who all claim to care about CO2 emissions, continue to oppose foreign ships on international trips carrying domestic cargo as they travel between NZ ports. This has next to no impact on CO2 emissions, as the ships are sailing anyway, by using spare capacity on the ships to carry freight within New Zealand.

Why?  Because the Seafarers Union doesn't like the competition.  The bottomline is that the Greens prefer even socialism to reducing CO2 emissions. 

Syria is what most in the West wanted

What did you expect with Aleppo?

Syria's hereditary socialist/nationalist (Ba'athist) dictatorship has flagrantly used chemical weapons against its own people and dropped barrel bombs on them, for daring to oppose 46 years of repressive family rule.  Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama, said the use of chemical weapons would be a "red line", then did nothing besides let Assad (and his father) 's ally Russia "supervise the destruction" of the weapons.   

Obama, leader of the world's only superpower, then did nothing.  His excuse was that the UK House of Commons had voted against military action against the Assad regime (which it did, as now former leader Ed Miliband wanted to prove how much the "anti-Blair" he was and burnish his leftwing credentials).  Non-intervention, the preferred policy of rightwing isolationists and leftwing "pacifists" is the new norm, except for Russia.

Of course it isn't pure non-intervention.  The West has been funding and arming some of the rebel groups in Syria, including those with Islamist leanings.  They aren't ISIS (despite some claims), but there are no angels in Syria.   No one is fighting for Syria to be a secular liberal democracy that respects individual rights and political plurality.  

The surrender of Aleppo to the Assad dictatorship was the inevitable outcome of Russian intervention in favour of its long standing ally and the flagrant ongoing violation of international law by the Assad regime in using chemical weapons and barrel bombing civilian areas.

Chemical weapons and indiscriminate bombing by the Assad regime has worked.  China, Russia, Iran, all of which execute political opponents, don't care.  The part of the international community that should care (the "West") has shrugged, said lots, but Obama handed over responsibility to Russia.  This was like handing over responsibility for addressing North Korea's human rights atrocities to China.

The experience of Iraq - successfully overthrowing tyranny, followed by utter failure in replacing it and achieving control of the country, rightfully gave cause for caution.   

However, the result of that vacuum has been to give Russia an opportunity, to be the new power in the Middle East.  There were opportunities to contain Assad's use of chemical weapons and air power over civilians, with no fly zones, but doing anymore would have been much more difficult.   

Now those on the left are complaining that "we" sat by and did nothing, yet that is exactly what they campaigned for.  Dictators will murder opponents, will slaughter civilians and unless you are willing to put our own taxpayers' money and military force to intercede, it will continue.   Obama in 2011 said Assad either had to lead a transition to democracy or get out the way, but he did neither - he fought on, gained support of his strong ally - Russia - which already knew the West was going to do nothing.

The isolationist right of course also believed in leaving Syria alone, a few because they accepted Assad's propaganda that all his opponents are "terrorists" and all his opponents are "Al Qaeda and ISIS" whereas he is moderate and reasonable.   A few because they see Putin as a "friend".  However, mostly because they have no interest in what happens to people in foreign lands, as they are far away places of which they know little.  Syrians wanting freedom from tyranny should do it themselves, and not expect foreign government support (even if it means foreign governments actively support the tyranny).  At least that position has a consistency - governments should only defend the rights of those within their boundaries, even if other governments engage in mass slaughter that sends hundreds of thousands fleeing to other governments.

So Aleppo is awful.  Yet, it is the end result of the policies of both leftwing so-called "peace" supporters and rightwing isolationists.  The biggest threat to the lives of individuals are tyrannies, and the only way to redress that is to arm opponents or to take them on yourselves.   The Western appetite for this is slim indeed.

So why is China upset about Taiwan?

Because Taiwan is, de facto, a separate country, but the mainland wants to keep up the pretence that it is entitled to do violence to it at any time if it so wishes.

It is the only a part of China that is not governed by the Communist Party of China (the People's Republic of China (PRC) because the Communists didn't manage to take over Taiwan and a handful of islands off of the mainland coast at the end of the Chinese Civil War.  The effect was that the previous government of China, the Republic of China (ROC), "temporarily relocated" its capital from Nanking to Taipei, with the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) putting Taiwan and other islands (Kinmen, Penghu and Matsu Islands and some others) under its control in a state of emergency for over forty years.

The effect was not dissimilar to that of the two Koreas, except the two Koreas are of roughly equal geographical size and at one time similar GDPs (indeed the Republic of Korea "south" was poorer than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea "north" until the late 1960s). 

So as mainland China suffered under the jackboot of Chairman Mao for nearly thirty years, and lost tens of millions to executions and starvation, and stagnated, Taiwan was under the less brutal jackboot of Chiang Kai Shek for a similar period and became a rapidly developing industrial country. Of course since Mao died, China embraced corporatist capitalism and its economy has grown much like Taiwan did since the 1950s, but Taiwan also reformed although spent many years under tough authoritarian rule. In 1969 the first legislative elections were held to have representatives of Taiwan elected (all others were legislators who were elected before the end of the civil war representing Chinese provinces under "occupation" by the communists).  As those legislators passed away they were not replaced so by the 1990s, the entire legislative assembly was subject to competitive elections.  Martial law was ended in 1987 by Chiang Kai Shek's successor and son Chiang Ching-kuo, as Taiwan moved to being a fully fledged liberal democracy.  By 1992, remaining mainland representatives were removed so the entire legislative assembly was subject to competitive elections.  

Taiwan, as such, is a role model for China as an open, relatively free, liberal democracy, with rule of law, capitalism and political power tempered by the separation of powers.  This, of course, is a complete anathema to the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China.

Of course, Taiwan (or rather the Republic of China in Taiwan - remember Made in R.O.C. labels on goods made a few decades ago?) has had an interesting history of international relations.   With the exception of the UK (primarily out of concern of Hong Kong), most Western countries did not recognise the Communist takeover of China immediately.  Australia and New Zealand did not until 1972, and even the United Nations seat for China was held by the Republic of China until 1971, as the United States vetoed the Chinese Communist regime (as it was called) from taking its seat despite strong efforts by friendly communist countries and developing countries lobbying on behalf of the PRC.  Albania became Beijing's biggest champion.  Both Beijing and Taipei regimes rejected each other being represented on the UN, but the US pushed for the PRC to be represented, not least because it seemed absurd that the world's most populous country (and a nuclear power) were not represented.  So the PRC was admitted, and the ROC expelled.   In 1979, the US switched recognition from the ROC to the PRC, but gave Taiwan a military security guarantee, as the PRC had always (and still does) reserve the right to reunify Taiwan by force.  

Both Chinese regimes refused to have diplomatic relations with any country that recognised the other, but the ROC on Taiwan dropped this in the 1990s, as it had lost recognition and embassies with almost all countries as few could refuse the commercial, diplomatic and strategic benefits of having good relations with mainland China.  Once Saudi Arabia (which had resisted the PRC because of its atheism) and South Africa (which shifted recognition not long after the end of apartheid) had dropped Taiwan, the ROC would only retain diplomatic relations with small Pacific Island, African or Latin American states, mostly through aid programmes (although this ended in 2000 as the PRC was able to outbid the ROC).

So Taiwan remains an oddity.  In every de facto sense, it is an independent country, with a military, government and informal diplomatic relations with many countries.  However, the PRC stops it from having formal diplomatic relations because it doesn't like the only part of China it didn't win in the civil war having a parallel status to it in international organisations or bilateral relations.  It claims that to do so would imply there are "two Chinas", which of course there are as there are two Koreas, and were two Germanys and two Yemens (and even two Cypruses) regardless of claims of legitimacy.

So Donald Trump accepting a phone call from the democratically elected President of the ROC should not be a big deal, except for Beijing, it ruffles their sensitivities over reality.  The US has a defence treaty with Taiwan, and should make it clear than any attack on Taiwan will be rebuffed by the US.  The ROC on Taiwan shares the values of the United States and other Western democracies, the values of freedom, individual rights and government that is determined by the consent of the governed.  The fact that this concerns the Chinese Communist Party is good, for it could do much worse than look at Taiwan and see an example of transition from one-party authoritarian rule to vibrant vigorous liberal democracy.   Peace between Taiwan and the mainland is critical for both, so I think there is little real risk of any aggression from the PRC, but it should be clearer than that.  A renewed US commitment to Taiwan because of its values.  

Fidel está muerto

So there is a reason to cheer, the death of Fidel Castro, should be a cause of celebration and reflection for everyone who believes in individual freedom, world peace, human rights and has both liberal and conservative values.  For the regime he founded continues to be one marked by violence, intimidation, intolerance and denial.

Castro interrogating a farmer as private property rights get abolished

Castro was a thug, a murderer and a warmongerer.  He urged Khrushchev to attack the US with nuclear weapons, which would have triggered World War Three.  

He incarcerated political opponents, labelling anyone who opposed the regime as "mentally ill" so they could be locked up indefinitely for not realising how lucky they are to be under socialism.  

He imprisoned Cubans who had HIV, he ran a prison state that saw Cubans flee at their own risk by boat to the United States.  Americans didn't flee to Cuba to embrace socialism.

Cuba under Castro was propped up by the USSR, in effect, poor Russians helped keep Castro's revolution alive.  A policy that ended with the collapse of the USSR, but from then on Cuba's rhetoric was that it was poor because the US embargo hindered it.  How a socialist state can claim that its prosperity is dependent on trading with a capitalist liberal democracy remains a mystery.

Cuba's joke is the large numbers of vintage American cars roaming the streets, only recently supplemented by Chinese vehicles.  This is seen as quaint, but is reflects poverty. 

One of the great claims about Cuba's "successes" is statistics around education and healthcare, because it claims low levels of child poverty and life expectancy that is high compared to other Latin American countries.  Yet the source of these statistics is entirely the Cuban one-party state, which imprisons its critics, so has to be at least treated with a high degree of scepticism.   Whenever foreigners inspect the Cuban healthcare system, they get to see what the regime wants them to see.   The UN may take the reported statistics from all member states on face value, but that's naive and absurd.  Only once Cuba is free will the veracity of these claims be clear, for now it is at best opaque. 

Of course, the usual suspects have come out singing paeans over Cuba.  Red Ken Livingstone couldn't help himself on BBC Radio 4 today saying that Cuba was "open and relaxed", even though it is a criminal offence for anyone other than the state to publish or broadcast, and when confronted with the regime's intolerance he said that in the UK anyone supporting Hitler was imprisoned. Odious little worm.

Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn said he was a "champion of social justice" and dismissed imprisonment of dissenters and continued authoritarianism as saying "there are problems of excesses by all regimes",  confirming the man is a moral relativistic sympathiser with dictatorship.

Vladimir Putin said he made his country free, well maybe by his standards..

President of the EU, Jean Claude Juncker said Castro was a "hero to many", which indicates the quisling relativist tolerance of a man and an organisation that ought to be celebrating the end of a man, whose regime provided support and succour for brutal regimes that impoverished and denied the human rights of citizens of 12 current EU Member States.  

Canadian Prime Minister, the illiberal Justin Trudeau lionised him as having "deep and lasting affection" for the Cuban people, including those he killed for opposing him.

Sinn Fein, which until recently lionised terrorism as a legitimate technique to change minds and power, is commemorating him as a hero.

The position people take on Castro should be your litmus test for their morality.

Castro used violence against those who opposed him.  He criminalise anyone who published or broadcast any criticism of his regime, so he was intolerant and authoritarian.   Dismissing any politicians whose core strategy is to do violence to his opponents is appeasement of dictatorship, rejection of any liberal values whatsoever, and places his supporters in the same mould as fascist apologists.  

To claim that "well he gave them education and healthcare" justifies a system of terror for anyone criticising the government or any of its policies or any of those with the privileges and trappings of power, is the justification of a fascist.   For "he" gave them nothing.  He ran a prison slave state which forced teachers and doctors to do the bidding of the party, he used his comrades of another slave state - the USSR- to supply the equipment, technology and training - to deliver a system that could have been delivered under liberal democracy.   Indeed, Chile's post-Pinochet success demonstrates that a liberal free-market democratic government can deliver the prosperity, including high standards of education and healthcare, without pointing guns at its citizens for criticising the regime.  

The best that can be said of Castro is he replaced another vile dictatorship - the Batista regime - and that he could have been worse.  However, pardon me if I don't think reaching the abominable barbarities of Kim Il Sung, Enver Hoxha or Nicolae Ceaucescu is an "achievement".

So to hell with Castro.  Some of the people who claimed with Donald Trump being elected, he is the "new Hitler" are mourning the loss of a man who was much closer to Hitler than Trump is ever likely to be.  

If someone is an apologist for Castro, or says he "made mistakes" or " his human rights were dreadful but", then they are excusing the blood spilt, the poverty, the propaganda, the utter denial of human liberty, and the politics of fear, terror and the jackboot, over the politics of debate, diversity and tolerance.

Treat the apologists of Castro accordingly.  The people in Miami celebrating his death lived under him, or have relatives who do.  The people elsewhere mourning are exercising the freedoms that Castro never tolerated and Cuba doesn't tolerate today.

Let's hope Mugabe doesn't see out the year as well.

Let's hope Cubans in the New Year gain the freedom to speak openly and honestly about the past 55 years of their country, even though thousands of so-called "liberals" in the West couldn't really care less.

UPDATE:  In 2008 I wrote the Top Ten Reasons Castro should be hated.

In 2010 I wrote on how the Green Party of NZ appeased the Cuban dictatorship

Read Katherine Hirschfeld's critical review of Cuba's healthcare system, including how much of it is "informal" and how it is illegal to refuse any healthcare including abortions. 

Trump or Clinton or damn them all?

I've thought a good deal about the US election today.   It is difficult to think of two people who were both about the worst candidates either major party has put forward in recent history.  Oh yes there have been some lousy ones, but both lousy and so incredibly awful in their own ways? No.

So in some ways I'll treat the election as a reason to gloat about whoever is defeated, whilst ignoring the gloating of the victor.  

Hillary Clinton oozes entitlement, is a shape shifter on issues time and time again (remember when she was against gay marriage until it became popular?).  Her ambition for power should be a sure sign of someone who should be kept as far away from power as possible.  The vast fortune the Clintons have amassed from speeches and running their Foundation, travelling first class, staying at five star hotels "for the people who need our help", indicates the usual concern of powerful socialists for those in need.   If she is elected, she'll demonstrate not that she has broken the "glass ceiling", but that First Ladies have a chance at becoming President.  She is not an example to other women, except those women whose ambitions at the jobs their husbands have had.   It's clear her tolerance for Bill's extra-curriculur activities (which are frankly neither here nor there to me) resemble more the wife of Francis Underwood/Urquhart in House of Cards, for the trappings of power and money matter more than anything else.   Hillary has been pro more-trade (never "free trade", she's never want to let go of influence by removing controls) and anti-trade, she is a traditional populist.  However, little goes past what is obvious, that when she says she has been "fighting for families" all her life, the family she fights the most for is her own, and it has benefited royally from it.

The only bright side to Hillary is that she may partially reverse Obama's isolationism, which has seen Russia fill the gap left by Obama's (empty) moral posturing.  Few would have thought after the end of the Cold War that a government could use chemical weapons against its own population again, with impunity.  Yet it has and Obama's words that it would cross a "red line" were proven as vacuous as his "hope" and "change" electioneering slogans.

Trump has had so much said about him that I needn't say much.  He and Hillary both lie as frequently as they use cutlery.  His stance on trade is economic lunacy,  his spending promises are loose and careless.  His utterances about Mexico (and almost all foreign policy) are ludicrous and about the only thing good thing is his interest in cutting taxes.   He's a rank populist who is a classic cardboard cutout celebrity politician.  Some may say he would take advice if he were President, and much of what he says is attention seeking. 

Both Trump and Clinton are the epitome of the airhead age of politics, where identity politics is fanned as much as it ever was.  Hillary Clinton, who has expressed her utter contempt for the 30% core support for Trump, and Donald Trump, who has talked generally about Mexican migrants being rapists.  Hillary knows her place in history is assured if she becomes the first female President of the United States.  About the only reason to celebrate a Trump victory is knowing how angry she would be if she lost,  but then what?  A Trump-Putin pact to divide the world into spheres of influence?  The utter destruction of the international trading environment?

Of course most media coverage is fairly one-sided.  Trump is irredeemable and all major media outlets share and express the same contempt for him, with much less contempt for Clinton.   The left-wing liberal bias is palpable, yet Clinton is such a heavily flawed candidate they both deserve contempt.

Yet the likelihood is that, unless the Democrats sweep through both Houses of Congress, Hillary will find her big empty expensive promises difficult to fulfill,  but even if the Republicans hung onto the Senate, it is much less clear that Trump could rely on a Republican Congress to facilitate his agenda unimpeded.  However, on foreign policy, the President has much more autonomy and power.  On that front, Trump seems a little unsettling, given his penchance for threatening US allies to pay up or lose support from the US. 

Sadly, the hope that Gary Johnson could break through and be a more significant third party candidate seems forlorn. 

I expect, given the polling, Hillary will win and there will be a nauseating display of faux humility and sloganeering, as she sinks her claws into the prize she long sought.   Yet the United States was not founded on nepotism or some sort of familial succession (and yes the Bush family started that, but this was rejected the third time round).  If Trump wins, watch the panic and doom and gloom emerging, but this too will be hysterical posturing, although he is obviously the less certain quantity.

The USA is going to get an utter arsehole as President, but I'll be cheering for the other arsehole losing.  What's utterly astonishing is that millions are willing to give moral endorsement to one of these vile entities.

Yes, it's been a while.  For the want of a better term, 2016 is "annus horribilis" for my family, with an uncle diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in February and dead in May, then my mother passing away unexpectedly in September, weeks before her birthday after months of a nuisance, but not anything like a life-threatening condition.  Let's just say some things matter more than a rant about politics.