Regular service WILL follow shortly

Apologies for those who usually read this blog, I've been very slack, for a long list of reasons that I wont bore you all with. One of which has been extraordinarily long commutes for the past month which have taken up effectively 5.5 hours of each day, as well as some time off over the northern summer.

Between that, work, sleep and time with the missus, I really couldn't be arsed feeding my daily wisdom (or angry doggerel) to you all. I've enjoyed not giving a damn about the blog ratings as well - there is life outside the laptop!

However, regular service will return shortly. I've long thought I should blog quite separately on matters that I get into Aspergers' Syndrome like detail about - like transport policy and air travel experiences. So I will be doing that, and linking to it from here if it has national political implications.

Most of you couldn't give a rat's behind when horror of horrors, British Airways drops food except breakfast on flights less than 2.5 hours for people sitting in cattle class. Similarly, the intricacies of how the government structures the transport sector or the new Auckland megacity does it, are a minority interest.

However, I will continue to blog both on NZ and the UK as my main spheres of interest.

Starting again next week!

Bullshit about the Waterview Connection

There is so much so I thought I'd clear up some myths:

1. First the easy one to get out of the way, the one spread by some friends on the right - the route for this motorway has NOT been designated at ALL, the motorway designation for SH20 starts at Manukau and ended at Richardson Road. There is a gap thanks to Auckland local authorities dithering and abandoning the Avondale peninsula route option in the 1970s. So please don't believe private property rights for those on the route can be ignored - they did NOT buy land on a motorway route.

2. Idiot Savant says the announcement by the NZTA on the preferred route for the Waterview connection is “an affront to democracy”. Complete bollocks. When did people vote for the route of ANY road? It never happened for any other section of the Western Ring Route, nor the Northern Gateway, nor the Waikato Expressway, nor the Christchurch Southern Motorway. The system is designed to be a rational appraisal based on statutory criteria, not on counting the heads of the loudest. The USA has that, and you see bridges collapse due to lack of political interest. It is entirely within the role of NZTA to decide on its preferred route as the government wont be borrowing to pay for a greenplated route.

3. He also talks nonsense in claiming “the plan centres on using an existing rail designation for a motorway. So, Auckland won't be getting a proper rail-based public transport network because National will have already built a stinking great road there.” Funnily enough there remains room for the motorway there (the map he links to shows this) and even ARTA has no plans to built the Avondale-Southdown railway till 2030. The project isn’t worth it, so to claim Auckland “wont be getting a proper rail-based public transport network” because one line that would be barely used isn’t to be built, is extreme hyperbole.

4. Bomber at Tumeke thinks it is a conspiracy with National favouring its big business mates at Macquaries and hating public transport. For starters, Labour’s plans would have benefited Macquaries far more as it would have been a bigger scheme and a PPP. On top of that, the Waterview connection wont be tolled, nor will it be a PPP, Macquaries provides finance for PPP toll roads, it isn’t in the road construction business in New Zealand. The company can't benefit from this decision at all. So that makes this conspiracy theory totally fatuous. Tim Selwyn posts more intelligently on the issue to be fair.

5. The Standard tries to spin that the government is misleading on costs, something that NZTA clears up quite quickly. It also makes some of the same mistakes as others do.

All options require work at SH16 worth $242 million.

Labour wanted a four lane bored tunnel. $1.974 billion. National is now proposing a four lane mix of surface, bored tunnel and cut and cover tunnel at $1.165 billion, with provision for six laning built in (Labour’s option did not allow for that). That’s over $800 million difference. To put that in context, Transit’s total budget last year for ALL state highways activities was $1.2 billion. So National's proposal saves a lot of money, AND allows for future growth.

Labour had proposed a PPP for the motorway, so financing costs (interest) of $554 million had been included for its option. However, Labour had NO budgetary provision for the motorway at all. Financing costs are the costs of paying a PPP operator to borrow, build and operate the road. The money to pay the PPP operator would still need to come from somewhere

It did not know whether it would pay it back through general taxes or the National Land Transport Fund, or even some contribution from tolls. So the money for this motorway had to come from somewhere as yet unidentified. National is taking the money from road users, through the National Land Transport Fund. There isn’t enough revenue from road users to fund Labour’s proposal, so general taxpayers would have had to subsidise it.

In short, there was never money to build this motorway before (there was money for investigation and design), National has chosen one option (the most fair one, as it means road users pay for a road). Labour either would have to have chosen the same option, and take money from general taxation (from other spending like health), or take all the money from general taxation.

What National DOES need to answer is what the National Land Transport Programme looks like for the next few years. That will come out in June. Then we will all know how projects have been reprioritised to help fund this strategic section of motorway, although it will be a couple of years before construction can commence.

Finally, doesn’t this all show you how utterly inept arguments about things become when they are political? There is an alternative – it has been done in Australia – it means telling the private sector it can build, own and operate the road, and toll it, pick the route and do it all itself. It can even be paid a share of roading taxes collected from using the new road. Decisions like this should not be up to politicians – because they spend money like teenagers given dad’s credit card.

Post number 2000

There are times in one’s blogging life when it is an appropriate chance to look back at what one has done and why one blogs. This is my 2000th post so is a self-indulgent reflection on why I do this, and more importantly what’s important to me.

Bloggers generally blog as an outlet for their opinions and comments, with a particular bent politically and philosophically, and a particular focus on certain issues. For me, it is because, with the exception of Not PC, my views are consistently NOT represented in either the mainstream NZ media or blogosphere.

So what flavours of opinion do I add?

Well, I have specialised in New Zealand politics and in that sense the promotion of individual freedom. That being the freedom of being to do as they see fit with their own bodies and property whilst respecting the same right of others to do so. The banality of those who say this means the “freedom to hurt others” or “freedom to push drugs onto kids” does not detract from this core concept. It comes from the principle that adults generally know best how to run their own lives, and more importantly that other adults do not have a claim on their body or property. It is a principle that is almost universally disregarded across most of the political spectrum.

Those on the left treat private property with contempt, regarding the income and assets of people considered “rich” to be ready picking to supply what they see as the “rights” of the relatively poor – people who are wealthy by the standards of most of the world’s population. The sneering contempt that “the left” holds the financially successful is mean spirited and revolting. It implies that those who raise their heads above the average owe everyone else a share of their success, or at worst they must have earned it unfairly. However, the left does not confine its claim to people’s property, but to their bodies too.

The left proclaims the superiority of state provided health care and education, despite state health care regularly failing those who are forced to provide their services, and state education by definition standardising what and how children are taught. The idea that people might choose alternatives provided privately is seen as undermining these sacred signs of universal service, ignoring that monopolies rarely seem able to meet the varied needs of all those who use them.

However, the right is far from immune from claiming peoples’ bodies or property. Historically this was seen most specifically with conscription, but the conservative right also say its role to protect and reinforce “traditional role models”. Much of that is now gone, with few laws restricting or defining personal relationships or sex relations between consenting adults. However, the fight that many have had to demand equal treatment under the law was always resisted by some. Today the most egregious example of the right promoting interference in people’s bodies are laws on drugs. Criminalising people for what they put in their bodies is a gross infringement on individual liberty, when the real concern should be what people do to others – intoxicated or not.

So I start from the view that the individual is sovereign. That the individual should not be subordinate to other individuals, whether dressed up as “the public good” or “general will” or “will of the majority”. Those phrases are the tools of both the left and the right, both who believe the decisions of a small group of individuals (Cabinet, Parliament, bureaucrats) should be able to spend the money of others, and regulate them. The difference is I don’t believe in “public good”, as it implies that there is something higher than individual rights, and so individual rights can be sacrificed for the public good. Every dictatorship through history has justified its actions, and indeed every democracy has justified what it did for “the public good”, particularly when it was curtailing individual freedom and spending other people’s money.

The Greens, for example, appear to have a strong interest in many things that a lot think are good. Who argues against clean air, clean water and protecting cute animals from extinction? Yet the means the Greens wish to employ is violence – state force – to tax, to subsidise, to ban, to compel, to regulate. On top of this authoritarian desire to push people around is scaremongering against science and technology, such as genetic engineering and cellphone transmitters. The apocalyptic glee that evidence about global warming gives them to excuse their joyless agenda of restricting flying, driving, trading or even using appliances at home gives me despair. The forked tongue of opposing racism, but demanding racially separate Maori seats and saying it isn’t about race, when they are DEFINED by race. Meanwhile the anti-racist party promotes opposition to foreign trade and investment, because foreigners can’t have “our” interests at heart. No different from similar remarks Winston Peters used to have an audience for. Environmentalism has become the pathway for those who have a vision of changing people to fit a view of what they should be like. It has disturbing parallels with Marxism-Leninism in that respect, with the use of terminology like “climate change denial” to imply that those who debate science are debating actual events not theories of causation.

For me, I believe the jury is still out on anthropomorphic climate change, with contradictory evidence pointing in two different directions. However, I am most disturbed by the way that the climate change evangelists regard it all as an excuse to fanatically intervene in sectors from energy to transport to agriculture, without any serious analysis as to the implications of doing so except for the holy grail of CO2 emissions. Climate science is one thing, but the “answers” given are typically devoid of serious analysis then there is no wonder it is seen to be a religion.

Naturally, Labour and National pander for the middle ground, Labour especially now fertile fields for largely mediocre individuals to seek to spread their bile of envy of the successful, patronising the proletariat and scaremongering with the “we’ll look after you” attitude that sadly pervades this once proud party. National watches polls constantly, and forever runs away from principles even though so many inside it know that the state is largely incapable of delivering substantially better results in health and education. ACT has soiled itself lately with the gang patch law, and I await to see if Rodney Hide can cut the size of local government whilst he has been promoting the biggest council ever for Auckland.

The Maori Party being defined by race is a mix of good intentions and racial superiority, how else can one think of a party that treats the people it represents as being “special”.

Beyond that, religion has a low impact on New Zealand politics and for that I am glad. I am an atheist, and proclaim the doctrine of Voltaire in defending freedom of religion, but at the same time damning religion itself as being at best unnecessary, at worst a justification for murder and denial of humanity. My first priority for religion is to expunge it from the state, so that it has nothing to do with the supernatural. The secularisation of states that are populated primarily by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists should be a priority project for the 21st century for all who support civilisation and humanity. For conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia and Sri Lanka can be linked to those who reject this. I’m an advocate for reason and an objectivist, and derive my values and morals from objectivism, not religion, though I rarely blog about that.

So for me, I blog about NZ politics, UK politics, occasionally US and Australian politics, the Middle East, dictatorships in Africa and Asia and Europe, the European Union. I focus regularly on sectors I have professional experience in, such as transport, communications, trade and broadcasting, with a particular distaste for the European Union Common Agricultural Policy, environmentalist worshipping of railways and damnation of aviation and the private car, and a hatred for those who seek to restrict trade based on random political geographies.

However, most of all I detest the attack on the human mind, on human achievement and on reason. Which is why my greatest advocacy is for the removal of the initiation of force (and threat of force) in adult relations, and that means between states and between states and their citizens. Most people will say yes to this at first then “but”. For me there is no “but”. After all, what right do you have to initiate force against another adult?

So after 2000 posts I thank those of you who read regularly, and have seen my average daily unique reads average at around 200 a day the last couple of months. I’m no supporter of ACT or National, but will praise and damn either when I see fit, the same with Labour, the Greens or any other party anywhere. I am not aligned by political tribe, but by philosophy. A philosophy that says that human individuals have the right to exist for their own purpose and own reasons, and no other adults have a claim on that at all, that anyone claiming this is selfish is damned right. Because unless I own my life, I am a slave to another – and I’ll be damned if I’ll support any who advocate running other people’s lives because anything else is selfish.

So to you all, be selfish, live your life to enjoy it, share yourself with whoever you see fit, who wishes to share with you, and to be yourself, respecting the same in others. Be benevolent in sharing yourself and your values as you see fit, but do so being true to yourself, not because you feel obliged to do so. You exist for your values, for if that is not your first priority, then nothing else can follow.

More interesting facts from the Standard

Tane at the Standard presents a useful update on how the Labour government increased the largely unproductive sector (state sector - given you have to be forced to pay for it) from 1999 to 2008, whereas the previous National governments and the reformist Labour government cut it back tremendously (and of course unemployment also dropped from the mid 1990s).

Presumably the Standard intends to scare you into thinking that somehow you got a 50% added value from the 50% additional bureaucrats Labour hired over National.

Do you think you got your money's worth? Tane of course doesn't really consider it has been YOUR money that paid for it.

It's a pretty useful guide as to the bare minimum cuts the government should be implementing surely.

Remembering Nicky Hager

Given Idiot Savant has linked to far leftwing activist and "investigative journalist" Nicky Hager, I thought it was worthwhile to link to Trevor Loudon's useful bio on Mr Hager.

It is, after all, in the interests of transparency and fairness that people know Mr Hager is anything but an independently minded truth seeker, but has a long standing serious leftwing agenda that puts him to the left of the Green Party.

Standard distorts G20 protests

It reports tens of thousands protested, yet the BBC reports there were only 5,000. (The post on the Standard links to BBC News but clearly doesn't read it).

It ignores the direct attacks on Police which I saw live on TV, refusing to take sides of course. It ignores the rampant vandalism of the RBS branch in the city for being the reason why the Police contained the protestors.

See I watched the coverage on BBC News and Sky News channels for most of the day yesterday. The Standard is getting its news secondhand. Funny how it writes about inaccuracy when it writes such shoddy nonsense as this.

The Standard talks nonsense on rail and roads

Just when you thought Frogblog was the leading source of reality evasion on transport, I find I have new respect for Frogblog and that the Standard deserves the prefix "sub" that NotPC rightfully gave it last year. Frogblog recently posted on Kiwirail evidence that contradicts the Green view on things, it gave a flimsy rebuttal, but still all credit to actually looking at broader evidence.

The Standard on the other hands is the repositary of complete ignorance on the topic.

The latest post has Steve Pierson saying of Kiwirail (in a post about ACC, more on that later):

"even if it’s true in the sense that it won’t give any profit to government as a going concern, and will require the Government to put in more money, so what?"

So what? Yes Steve, taxpayers should bend over and let the government shaft them up their fundament right? An unprofitable business is no big deal to the Standard. Then again, the history of NZR in its various guises in my lifetime under state ownership was to be unprofitable from 1970 to 1982, when it was bailed out, profitable for 2 years (after contracted subsidised services), then unprofitable from 1985 to 1990, when it was bailed out again, and profitable for three years before being sold.

Then he says:

"If that were the criteria for whether owning an asset is worthwhile, we should get rid of the state highway system for a start - it costs the Government over a billion a year and there’s nearly nil revenue."

Nearly nil revenue? The government is forecast to receive $897 million from Road User Charges and nearly $1.9 billion from fuel tax (adding the $600 million currently diverted as Crown Revenue then recycled back to transport) from using all roads in the current year. 50% of vehicle kilometres travelled are on the state highway network. So around $1.4 billion a year of revenue is nearly nil?

Oh and the planned expenditure on the state highway network in the current year is $1.26 billion, of which 63% is on capital improvements.

The state highway system raises enough revenue to pay for its ongoing maintenance, with sufficient surplus that it can be used to improve the network, and there is over $100 million on top of that revenue used elsewhere (subsidising public transport).

Then we have mysticism dressed as economics:

"It’s the externalities that matter. Having a working rail system, liking a working road system, allows the economy to work much better than it otherwise could. That produces tremendous wealth, even though it doesn’t show up on Kiwirail’s balance sheet."

Externalities? Yet when the Surface Transport Cost and Charges study dug down into the marginal costs of road vs rail freight, the differences between modes varied considerably. In two out of three cases, road user charges revenue paid were in excess of all externalities, in the other case it fell short. So it is NOT cut and dry.

However, this nonsense about it producing "tremendous wealth" is pure mysticism.

Let's see the wealth creation from Labour and the railway system:
- $665 million to buy a company that couldn't pay its bills (track access charges), when its market valuation was around two-thirds of that;
- That same company needs hundreds of millions of dollars to just keep doing business over the medium term, and wont generate a profit from that.

The Standard has been a cheerleader for the rail religion for some time. It described renationalisation as such:

"The Government has acted in a way that makes economic and environmental sense. The only opposition has been from the ‘free market is always right’ lobby and National. Their childish comments about buying a train-set have fooled no-one."

Childish? Using analysis which the government itself commissioned from consultants?

Steve Pierson before that talked absolute drivel suggesting enormous demand for Kiwirail:

"Businesses are keen to take more freight off the road in the face of skyrocketing fuel prices and long-distance car travel is also getting out of reach for many; KiwiRail will provide an alternative."

Which businesses? Who is thinking of dumping their car for long distance passenger rail?

You see, the subStandard thinks it is about ideology not evidence:

"The only reason I can think of is that National/ACT doesn’t like KiwiRail and insulation because they were the Left’s iniatives. There is certainly no pragmatic reason to drop them. From both an environmental and economic stand-point investing in rail and warmer homes are the best options."

None Steve? When nobody has done a study on the economic or environmental benefits of subsidising rail? When a government pays well over the odds to buy an unprofitable business?

Dare I suggest the Standard has superseded Frogblog in abandoning evidence and preaching the religious mantra "rail must be good" - a faith based initiative if ever there was one.

Seven random or weird facts

Annie Fox, Not PC and Elijah Lineberry have both tagged me for this sort of doggerel (no it's not doggerel, but I love using the word - look it up). So here goes:

1. I once was told by a previous employer to look for pornography on the internet to find out how easy it was to find, including illegal material, because her boss wanted to know what all the fuss was about from conservatives in the early 1990s.
2. I once sat on a plane next to Winston Peters. I was in business class from Wellington to Christchurch, and the only other occupant of that cabin was Lockwood Smith (on the other side of the aisle). Air NZ cheekily sat us all side by side, even though all other seats in business class (3 rows) were empty. After take off Winston grumpily moved into the front row. I wasn't unhappy with that, he didn't even say hello - none of his voters, except fellow MPs, ever flew business class.
3. I have committed at least 4 criminal offences in Malaysia given that, the first time I visited, I was with my girlfriend (2 aren’t offences if the couple is married). All of these activities are legal in New Zealand.
4. I went to school with a girl who became Miss New Zealand, although at the time I must have annoyed her intensely as I followed her around a lot (must have been about 7 or 8).
5. I was twice a telephone Santa for Telecom, which was great fun, tempered by rude kids, sad kids (wanting a sick relative to get better) and excessively flirty teenage girls.
6. I was once strip searched at a departure gate at LAX before flying to NZ shortly after 9/11, the reason being that boxer shorts with a small stainless steel button would trigger off the hand held metal detector.
7. Radio Sweden once contacted me to participate in a Q&A programme about welfare policy when I was 22, as it wanted someone from New Zealand to talk about “radical” policies.
8. I spent 10 days at a nudist club when I was 12 years old, as I arrived at night, I didn’t know what it was until I walked out of the bach one morning and noted the tall bearded man with a chainsaw, naked.

Yep I can do 8 too, and since I have not read blogs for weeks I wont tag people who I don't know haven't been tagged. I am resisting reading too much because I know if I read Frog Blog I'll get annoyed, and life is too short to get too wound up too often.

It might be my New Year's resolution - to not get wound up as much :)

US election blogging

I'm about to take a break in the next 12 hours from the NZ campaign (unless something major happens), to blog about the US elections.

The apparently record turnout suggests Obama will do remarkably well, the rockstar has inspired this, it is likely to be a short painful night for the Republicans.

Libertarian radio

Adding to the NZ libertarian media sphere is Libertarian Radio it contains links to a number of free market libertarian podcasts and broadcasts including Lew Rockwell, Free Capitalist Radio and Libz radio.

Post 1500

Well it has been three years since I started blogging, meaning I have blogged, on average, more than one post a day. My main inclination was to have an outlet for my endless rants on global, NZ and UK politics, and it has grown a little bigger than that. It is intended to reflect my own profound beliefs in personal freedom, the role of the state and belief in reason and that the highest value is life, and the pursuit of the enjoyment of it - within the bounds of reason and respecting the same right in others.

You see my views on both the NZ and US elections are influenced by that set of beliefs. It starts, you see, with values. My highest value is life - the protection of life, and the enhancemet of it. I don't believe my life exists for anyone else, nor should anyone else's. Your life is yours, and you should enjoy it, as much as you can, as long as you do not interfere with the right of others to do the same.

You see this is where rights come in. Your right to life is fundamental, and in order to realise that life your body is owned by you - it carries life and is your greatest instrument, because it contains your brain. So you must control what your body does, what you ingest and your interactions with other bodies Quid pro quo that others have no right to your body.

So your right to life means your right to control your body, and those rights end with other people's bodies.

Of course you can't survive with body alone, for human beings to survive they need to apply their brains to the environment, and collect, farm, hunt or otherwise produce. So you need to have the right to what you produce - that is called property rights. So you have a right to not have your property stolen or vandalised.

So the right to life means your right to control your body and your property.

Now to maximise your life you almost certainly need to interact with others, but the only person who best knows your interest is you. So all of your interaction should be voluntary. Surely you should own what you produce, and trade on terms and conditions that are mutually agreed.

Reason is the means by which human beings must survive. You can't escape it. Faith wont work. Reason is why human beings know how to hunt, how to farm, how to trade, transport, how to combat disease, prevent disease - how to live longer, how to have enough time for leisure.

The antithesis of reason is force. Force is the tool of the murderer, rapist, thief and government. It is the tool of the censor, the warmongerer, the bureaucrat. Force denies debate, discussion or agreement.

So it is important for people to be protected from force. That is the right to self defence. However, when people commit crimes of initiating force or fraud, it often isn't clear who the perpetrator was, and that person needs to be caught, and tried. That is what government is for- to protect citizens from each other. It arbitrates disputes on contracts, it provides the objective legal framework that clearly delineates rights of property, contracts and relationships.

Anything beyond that by government is the initiation of force. It isn't human beings interacting voluntarily. Democracy isn't that either, it is the counting of votes for who you want to govern - it doesn't give a right to take away the rights of others to not have force initiated against them.

This is why I am a libertarian and an objectivist. I believe all adult human interaction should be voluntary - it doesn't mean I agree with it all, or like it, but it does mean that, fundamentally, what consenting adults do personally, contractually or in trade is not my business.

That's why I despise the cheerful statism of the Greens and the Labour Party, both loving how government can "do" things, meaning use force to make people pay for what they otherwise wouldn't choose to pay for, or to make people do things or ban them from doing things that, fundamentally, are not about initiating force or fraud. National ought to be opposed to this, but it is not much different, ACT is somewhat - but it isn't consistently committed to individual freedom.

So I'll be blogging from THAT perspective - the one that says freedom matters, whether it makes you uncomfortable, or whether it reveals failures in our current set of property rights (public nudity being one), or whether it means you have to convince people to care for others. It's a different way of thinking - the idea that you can't just force change on people - but you need to convince them - and that you can't force people to pay for things, you have to convince people.

Next time you get a chance to ask a politician about a policy ask him or her, why do you have to make people do this? Why can't you convince them, and if you can't, why is it moral to use force?

Number 21...

Bugger. down from a hat trick of 18, but the competition is heating up. Going to Ireland for five days completely away from net access had an effect on post, but even with my traffic going up, it is clear many leftwing blogs are coming to life. Of course I'm hardly objecting to healthy competition!

However, many have said it before and I can only reiterate a very warm thank you to Tim Selwyn for the excellent work, I am sure it spurs some of us to work harder at attracting audiences - rather like having radio ratings - except none of us has inane competitions to attract punters!

Ian, it's polite to ask ok?

I'm very surprised to see that Ian Wishart's latest weekly newsmag (which is available for sale at NZ$3 oer month, and then distributed for free online) includes a post of mine. You see I only found out because it was mentioned to me on the NZ Conservative blog (which I enjoy visiting for some good debate, as you can imagine we often disagree). The newsmag in question is on PDF here.

Now I don't mind, as what's important to me is that people read and think about what I have to say - this isn't my job. However I DO ask one thing. I don't care if you want to link to this blog and comment on posts on your own. That's part of how the blogosphere works. I also don't mind if other publications publish my blog URL and also post excerpts from it.

However if you want to repeat a post, in full, and publish it on a subscription based magazine or newspaper, ask. I know this isn't copyrighted, but it is simply polite and if you're seeking to make money from what I write I want to know.

Bloggers vs journalists

Not PC mentioned about David Cohen's amusing dig at bloggers in the NBR. David Cohen is one of the few NZ journalists I rate, because he can write well, and he thinks. Indeed, as I have said before there is a difference between journalists and reporters, and sadly far too many in the mainstream media (and TV is significantly worse) are reporters. Their idea of a story is:

- The government announced it would do X today. It said that doing X would solve a long standing problem of Y and Z. The cost of doing X is $A, which Minister B said would be great value. Lobby group C supported the move cautiously saying while a step forward, it wasn't enough. National spokesperson D said it was too little too late.

Cohen put forward a 20 point test that is meant to mean you've moved from being a "mere blogger" to being a journalist. How destroyed is my ego that I haven't passed, (well I got 10) though I'll live as I am lot happier actually doing stuff than just writing about it, and my bank balance is happier too.

After all I am paid for my writing, I think my formal qualifications in law and public policy don't make me cry about having not done journalism, my writing is typically peer reviewed, I know the difference between practice and practise, I've used the OIA (and see how poorly a few journalists use it as they don't know enough to ask the right questions), I've often met deadlines, I've had my work read by Cabinet Ministers and Chief Executives of public and private sector organisations. So on and so on.

Keith Ng has a good set of questions too in response. My favourites from his are:

Do you ever write stories where more than half the content comes from one press release?

Do you ever write a story about a report solely from the press release accompanying the report, without having read the report itself?

Both are far too common, and infantile. Why should people pay to read such drivel when they can go to Scoop and read the press releases as they are?

I have a better set of questions for journalists, to see how smart and honest they are:

Do you make your political and religious affiliations transparent to your readers? Do you declare any political parties you have been a member of or donated to?Do you questions assumptions made in government reports and press releases, as well as opposition ones?

Have you ever asked a politician whether the answer to a problem is for the government to do nothing? Have you ever written an article where you analyse what might happen if the government did less not more in a particular policy area?

Do you ever make an Official Information Act (or LGOIMA) request knowing exactly what it is you need to know to determine what has gone on?

Have you ever written about H2's control on the areas of government policy she has the greatest interest in and which the PM trusts her in? Do you even know what she does?

Could you get a similar level job writing for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, The Guardian or The Independent (UK not NZ!)? (or even the Economist?)

Do you understand that the value of money declines over time so quoting financial statistics without adjusting for this is not comparing like with like?

Can you accurately name under which Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers the NZ government privatised NZ Rail, privatised Telecom NZ, corporatised the Railways Department and privatised NZ Post? (trick question)

Do you know what onanism is (without going and Googling it now) and have you never had anyone describe your work as such?

Oh and while I'm at it here are some examples of journalism missing a point:

1. This article doesn't mention that Telstra Clear didn't install its own network, it is using Telecom's, so it is competition on unequal terms.

2. This article, didn't include any interviews with any school principals, even though it is about schools.

3. This article, quotes Chris Turver, ignoring that he was once a Wellington Regional Councillor until last year. It also doesn't even note that funding has been approved to extend the electrification of the rail network to Waikanae, so it looks like another problem ignored.

and that's just today.

Light blogging till Tuesday but

Since I've been working my arse off for the last couple of months I am fleeing for a break as it is Bank Holiday weekend in the UK - so you'll hear little to nothing from me until Tuesday 26 August.

Rural Ireland should be a good break from looking at this screen, meetings and answering phone calls.

Meanwhile may I recommend to some of you who are regular to use a blog reading aggregator. Bloglines is the one I use, it tells me if any of the 20 or so blogs I regularly read have anything new and allows me to skim the articles and figure if I want to read more or not.

While I'm at it, let me note two of the books I have recently read:

"No One Left to Lie To" by Christopher Hitchens. The Clinton family and how awfully evil they are. Now Hitchens was certainly more leftwing then than now, and some of his criticisms are for Clinton supporting welfare reform, but it is the personal behaviour that is most telling. The fact Hitchens effectively calls Bill Clinton a rapist and hasn't been sued for it speaks volumes, and it is also damning how the Clintons got away with their lies and behaviour by a complicit mainstream media uninterested in giving ammunition to the Republicans. The critics of G.W. Bush would do well to read this to see how Clinton's foreign policy was, in some cases, an absolute disaster and i one case particularly cynical and evil.

"The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice" by Christopher Hitchens. Mother Teresa, friend of dictators, no friend of the poor, running her home for the dying whilst celebrating in the suffering of the poor as it brought them and her "closer to Jesus". Read how this angel of death raised millions of dollars, yet her homes for the dying were spartan affairs without medical staff, which in one case refused to send a 15yo boy to hospital because "if we sent him, they'd all want to go". Determine for yourself whether this celebrity raised vast sums of money for the Vatican's aggrandisement and global crusade, and if not where did the money go?

Have a good weekend.

Ian Wishart - really that popular?

Now Ian Wishart's blog "Briefing Room" claims that his online publication "TGIF edition" is a huge hit, with 20,000 downloads and counting. Who knows, maybe it is true and it hasn't got through to Alexa, because Alexa doesn't rank his site highly at all.

You see Briefing Room gets a ranking of 3,542 in New Zealand.
Investigate Magazine gets a ranking of 8,594
By contrast I get a ranking of 2,002.
Tumeke ranked his blog at 29th in June, and it will be interesting to see where it was in July.

I know I get on average 241 hits a day at present. Weekends dip below 200 and weekdays can regularly get over 300. To get 20,000 downloads would take around 10-11 weeks.

However this all pales into comparison with the likes of Kiwiblog, Public Address, Whale Oil and Not PC. Naturally I don't want to deny Wishart any genuine success he has, I may not like some of what he writes, but that isn't the point. The point is that either Alexa is badly wrong, Wishart is claiming success over a longer period than some may think or it's hyperbole.

NewZeal/Trevor Loudon is back

and NewZeal has had a major facelift.

Welcome back Trevor, your intensive research into modern day leftwing "luminaries" will be enlightening as the election comes closer, but I am also fascinated about Barack Obama's socialist past.

I don't always agree with Trevor, for example on China, but he is a committed opponent to the vile bankrupt philosophy of Marxism and can run rings around anyone looking at some of the apologists for murderers who now reside in the Greens and I suspect the Maori Party as well. I look forward to him updating such posts, and perhaps reviewing the party lists for such lowlifes.

Congrats to David Farrar

Well it is slightly late, but still well worthwhile giving David Farrar a cyber slap on the back for five years of good work and being the number one political blog in NZ.

Yes I know he's a Nat, but he is generally a more liberal one.
Yes I know he's a hardline leftwing statist on telecommunications policy, he'll see the light one day and stop wanting to thieve from everyone else eventually.
Yes I know the comments on his blog are a mix of conservatives, some bigoted, and socialists, some more bigoted.

However, Farrar is an astute political pundit and is no mere lapdog of the National Party. His blog isn't funded by the taxpayer, and is probably the most reliable place online for commentary on New Zealand politics.

My only serious criticism would be one shared by Not PC. It comes from his latest comment on Chris Trotter.

Trotter said:

Those charged with governing our country, hold in trust the resources – both natural and social – that are the common property of all our people.

Farrar said: "Can’t disagree with that."

Oh dear me. If there was one thing I'd really like David to post on it would be a statement of his own political philosophy and beliefs. It may lay him bare to criticism that he and the Nats are not exactly in sync, but he appears to be a man who thinks a great deal and has some degree of consistency in his philosophy (with major lapses).

So go on David, what ARE your core beliefs. Whether it be from religion/atheism, to individualism, the role of the state, and what drives you philosophically and politically? If that's too hard, describe what you DON'T belief in - it ought to be a long list.

New blog rankings

Tim Selwyn has kindly published his latest NZ blogosphere rankings, for March/April. No point in going through the results, but I am glad to say that my ranking is up to 34 (from 51) and Not PC from 6th to 4th place, knocking back Frogblog and No Right Turn (two of the leading leftwing blogs).

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The rankings are interesting for listing some blogs I never new existed. Others than have significantly gone up OR down (by at last 14 places) in the top 50 are as follows, with the previous ranking followed by where they are today according to Tim. Inastrangeland (gone from 41 up to 26), Silent Running (16 to 30), Craig Foss MP (81 to 31), Hot Topic (68 to 35), Maia (23 to 38), Big News (29 to 47), Aotearoa a wider perspective (69 to 48).

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I know I'll be looking at the blogs I've never seen before to check if they should go on my blogroll or my regular feed, just to see what is interesting.