Bank Holiday weekend

Which means 3 days without any time in front of a computer - because I'm off to the Bosphorus. Back late on Monday BST.

Don't spend all weekend partying away your imminent tax cuts on ... a kebab, a pint and, oh yeah that's about it isn't it?

Post 1000

I have been blogging for over 2.5 years and so today this is my 1000th post.

So why do I bother? What has been the result?

There is some effort involved in having a daily rant. It started and still is about that, but I’ve noticed the hit rate rise and drop. I average about 100 users with about 130 page views a day. I've been linked to by numerous sites from time to time, and am grateful for that.

However, what I want to do most of all is make people think, beyond simply a rant. I blog primarily about NZ politics from afar, but also UK and US politics, international affairs, and occasionally trip reports and personal matters. Given I am a transport sector management consultant I have a lot to say about that, but know the audience is limited. Indeed transport almost highlights why I have a suspicion of government doing good, as in most cases it makes foolish decisions.

So I am a libertarian, objectivist and atheist. You figured out that easily enough. However why? What was my philosophical, political journey to take me to something that is, frankly, a highly minority opinion?

My first ever exposure to politics was my maternal grandfather who was a card carrying member of the Labour Party. I briefly remember the 1978 general election, and that “Mr Muldoon” was the Prime Minister. My grandfather told me why he supported Labour though I understood little, I listened to his criticisms of Muldoon. Sadly he died when I was 10, but from that I followed politics a little more. It seemed to be a contest between good and evil. I remember the 1981 election and more specifically the party political broadcasts that Labour, National and Social Credit put out on TVNZ, which then had a statutory monopoly. Labour argued that income tax was too high, but business tax too low. National argued Think Big “Jobs for our children and our childrens’ children that’s what this is all about” bellowed Muldoon. Social Credit was difficult to understand, but the idea of a third party automatically appealed.

The political environment of the time was full of conflict. The Springbok tour, protests against US nuclear powered/armed ships, and the economic malaise all caused concern and divided opinion. I remember inflation at 18%, and interest rates BELOW that for the bank, thinking I was getting a good deal on my paltry savings at the then Post Office, when in fact Muldoon was ripping me off, like he did hundreds of thousands of children. Those are the days Jim Anderton and Winston Peters remember fondly for some reason. I also recall learning from books how dictatorial East Germany was, with citizens prevented from leaving by big barbed wire fences. I wondered how bad a country can be that it needs to force its people to stay.

The 1984 election was an exciting one, not least because Bob Jones’s New Zealand Party made it amusing. I was loyal to Labour, not least because it was the party that could unseat Muldoon and National, which I thought was a party of economic madness. At school we were meant to do a project on the election, and I remember going to the Social Credit office in Wellington to ask for a manifesto, only to have a weird little bearded man mumble and hand me something. Bob Jones’s diatribes on Skoda driving grey zip-up shoe wearing bearded teachers made some sense at that point. Nevertheless, I was convinced David Lange was honest and would do what was right – in some respects had Labour embarked on a mad socialist programme I would have accepted that at the time, but no…. it was all going to be very different.

I was astounded by the reason behind pulling the plug on subsidies, the opening up of markets and the general willingness by the fourth Labour government to get out of the way of business. The sheer mind numbing ineptness of the Post Office, Railways, Petrocorp and the like was patently obvious. Why couldn’t these be businesses, why should businesses receive taxpayer funds at all? How possibly could politicians know better than consumers, producers and entrepreneurs?

I was convinced by Douglas, so supported Labour even up to voting Labour in 1990. Why? Because of the sheer audacity that politicians would do what is right rather than obtain short term political advantage. The fourth Labour government outraged farmers, manufacturers, unions (albeit somewhat muted) and many others, yet who could argue to retain the bloated state sector and its inane regulations of things such as international air fares! Who could argue that the government could keep overspending ad infinitum?

However, it didn’t all please me. The Treaty of Waitangi became centre stage, and the cries of victimhood and claims that Maori committed crime, did badly at school and smoked, drank and ate themselves to early graves because of Treaty breaches sounded suspicious. The establishment of new Ministries such as Women’s Affairs seemed like an unnecessary increase in the size of the state. On top of that Labour had reintroduced compulsory unionism, and effectively severed military ties with the USA- the anti-nuclear rhetoric appeared largely emotive nonsense, and the anti-American insinuation was ridiculous. Few protested Soviet nuclear weapons.

However National did absolutely nothing to confront any of this, except voluntary unionism. National was totally unwilling to deal with the Maoist attitude to debate on some of these things that I encountered at university – all Maori were disadvantaged and I should be disadvantaged to give Maori a “hand up”. Funny how I noticed some who had such a “hand up” came from wealthier families than I did. I am the first from my family to go to university.

I also was far from enamoured at the conservatism of some in National. Graeme Lee had a strong influence on censorship law in the early 1990s, to the extent that it became an offence to possess “objectionable material” even if you didn’t know it was or reasonably should know, and that definition included depicting acts that are legal.

I believed in freedom and wanted less government, the only voice in the early 1990s appeared to be Roger Douglas and the newly formed Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. However while ACT promised radical reform of health and education, it never spoke about freedom – that was when I discovered the Free Radical.

The notion that adult interaction should be voluntary was so clearly obvious as to make it strange to think otherwise, yet that was what government was all about. I became a libertarian because I was tired of people demanding governments use force to make others do what they couldn’t convince them to choose to do. Those on the left are particularly keen to tell others what to do, but many on the right do too. However it is more than just freedom, it is about life.

That is how I discovered being a libertarian and the philosophical underpinning for it – objectivism. You see I value human life. I don’t seek purpose outside existence, I am alive and I may as well enjoy it. I want to be free to do this, whilst respecting the same in others. My body, my property and my life, and others have the same. I can’t conceive why others can have any right to tell me what to do with any of these, given I do not want it over anyone else. Government should exist to protect people from each other and from other governments, it should not exist to do anything else.

However objectivism goes beyond the role of the state, and is actually about why we live and how to live. A life of reason and passion, enjoying what time we have is what objectivism is about.

Contrary to this is so much in statist politics, whether it be socialism, fascism, conservatism or more recently environmentalism. All are an abandonment of reason. Environmentalism selectively uses science to spread fear of doom and death, whilst often advocating anti-science, in objecting to biotechnology, or anti-economics, in advocating protectionism, subsidies and higher taxes. Religion all too often, besides being explicitly an abandonment of reason for faith, is concerned about the after life, not life. At its worst it has been the banner for murder on a grand scale, at best it is a distraction and a private comfort for some.

My overwhelming mission in this blog is to question the role of the state in almost all aspects of human affairs. The state, after all, is simply a collective of human beings with only one difference from everyone else – the right to use force against them. The idea that in many instances politicians and bureaucrats know better than other people how to spend their money, use their bodies or their property is rather peculiar – yet it is the core belief of those who join the Labour Party or the Green Party, or dare I say it, National.

The liberty of the human individual is a beautiful thing. You can see this most clearly in a child, who unsubconsciously explores the world around her, who smiles, trusts and seeks to learn, and make the world into what she wants it to be. That is before being told not to be “too clever” or “how important it is to be liked”.

Today, thousands of young people grow up concerned most of all about being liked and “belonging”, when they should celebrate being themselves, pursuing their passions and respect others doing the same. Millions live today demanding the state take more money off of others because it is “fair”. Fair apparently that others should live for them, make a living that must be paid to others. The insipid socialism that there is something wrong with the “rich getting richer”, and the “poor” standing still –and that the rich should fix their lot, not the poor.

The violence of the state is every bit as abhorrent as the violence of individuals who mug, steal, attack and take from others as crimes. However it has the veneer of respectability – it is ok to vote for your neighbour to be robbed to pay for what you like. After all, taxation is theft, regardless of any justification one may make or other cliché claimed, taxes are taking money by force.

So I ask you, when you read this blog, or read others or the rants of politicians who want something from you, do politicians not have the powers granted to them by the people they are meant to represent? If politicians only have the powers granted to them by the public, why do they use powers that no member of the public could ever have? You have no right to steal, so how can you grant that to a politician? You have no right to stop your neighbour painting his house the colour he wants, so how can you grant that to a politician? You have no right to arrest someone because he ingests something you disapprove of, so how can you grant that right to a politician?

That is why I advocate freedom – I don’t think politicians and bureaucrats are better than me, or anyone else. What could be more egalitarian than that?

Blog lite

Well it's been a very busy week and I'm flying down under tomorrow - spending a week in Sydney to visit my other half who is there at the present, and then to NZ for Christmas, then Hong Kong for New Years, before shooting back to the mother country. So it will be blog lite for me for the coming weeks. I hope you all, wherever you may be and whoever you may be with (or without) that you take time to enjoy yourselves and have fun over the holiday season.

Death

Dead – what a word, how final, empty and completely awful. I never understood people who said death is a part of life. It is like saying war is a part of peace, or bankruptcy is a part of property ownership. It is cold comfort that it is, currently, inevitable. I say currently because I don’t doubt that as long as humanity proceeds on a path whereby science and reason can continue to make significant advances, that the onset of death will continue to be delayed. One need only look at comparisons in life expectancy. In 1800 in London it was 28, today living to your 60s is the norm, and averages now tend to lie in the late 70s and early 80s.

I don’t think there is anything beautiful or wonderful about death, the only comfort I ever think there can be is when it is the alternative to excruciating agony. Those who consciously choose euthanasia for themselves are to be respected in that light. Beyond that though, death of those you love is a loss, a waste. It isn’t a “fact of life” or anything beyond what must be accepted, it is a cruel devastating removal of someone that is valued and loved.

The loss is noticed because you can’t talk to the person anymore, can’t hear their thoughts, share laughter, stories and experiences. That is irreplaceable because people are individuals, and the pain is only real because you have loved and lost.

You can avoid grief rather easily, be a hermit. You’ll never get close to anyone, never enjoy who they are, their mind and their sense of life, and you’ll never attend a funeral. However I don’t want that, and I value what time I’ve had with those who I have lost recently. That time is precious, and so easily wasted and frittered away on nonsense.

One point is to value memories, and to have memories to value you have to create them, live them and as you get older you can share them, smile and look back upon all those years.

Eventually technology will allow more transplants, the growth of replacement components for the body, and may even allow consciousness to remain forever intact. The desirability of this will be the subject of much debate, who wants to be conscious without a body, and who wants to be forever patched up in old age. This sets aside the typical debates about the sustainability of perpetual life and breeding. However, as lives extend it will continue to become more interesting, until, of course, I am dead.

I don’t have religion for comfort, as easy as it would be and in some moments I did wonder if those I lost could hear and see me. However, I don’t feel they are in a better place, there are no place, they are no more, as romantic as alternatives may seem (and frankly as pleasant as that seems at first). The most recent loss has also hit me about my own mortality, dying at 56 of a blood clot to the brain from a varicose vein, with cancer also spreading. She was a fit, slim, non-smoker.

I’ll do what I can to delay it all, but it is only when a parent dies young that the truth of ones own mortality is clear. Realism strikes hard, and I have to live, frittering away time is over. It is not a time to be reckless, but a time to embrace life and those who you love – for some of them will die before you, and then your time will come, and if in the moments beforehand you can reflect, then reflect upon what you had – and remember every day from now until then is all you have.

Carpe Diem has never felt so true.

2007 will forever be in my memory

In 1970 a young woman from South Canterbury gave birth in Kenepuru Hospital north of Wellington. She went there following the placing of an ad in the three daily newspapers of Auckland Wellington and Christchurch some months before - she did that because she was pregnant, unmarried and it was 1970 in South Canterbury.

^

She wanted to give birth to this child and adopt him out because of the shame attached at the time to unwed mothers. I had only been a fling with a young man who was a boarder at the time, a bottle of wine and a romantic evening for a couple of teenagers produced the unplanned result. She informed the young man, who fled and was never heard of again. She then did what she could to resolve this little problem growing inside her. She tried a number of options, but decided on temporarily moving away in order to spend the last few months of pregnancy outside of public gaze and judgment. She had arranged this when her mother found her crying, she told all, and both her parents lovingly supported her during this pressing time.

^

So it happened, and as was the custom of the time after giving birth, she had to ask to see the baby, but was not allowed to touch. She was, after all, a sinner in the eyes of the state.

^

She would not touch that baby again for 28 years. Following a change in the law, some research and support from loved ones, he wrote to her at that time, placing a delicate toe in the water to say hello. What followed were more letters, an admission to almost her entire family about her past. After an initial shock, especially from her husband - they accepted and welcomed the new family member.

^

He had been brought up by two very hard working and loving Glaswegians who always treated him as their own. They supported him during this process, met his birth mum and then followed nine years of visits, phone calls, cards and presents.

^

She was diagnosed with bowel cancer late last year, went through extensive surgery to remove the tumours, and chemotherapy. She was diagnosed clear of cancer only two months ago, although further surgery was required.

^

Last weekend she collapsed and in minutes had passed away in her own bed, at the tender age of 56.

^

Life is too fucking short at times. Blogging will be light... again.

What's next

Well I've been home and I'm on my way back.

Some simple questions....

Why is service in almost all cafes and restaurants in New Zealand superior to that in almost all cafes and restaurants in the UK? (not the Richard Pearse Restaurant in Timaru, where it varies but the food was good)

Why does TV3 bother with news at all? (Why do NZers bother with TV at all?)

Why is air pollution in Timaru worse than in London?

Why has nobody said the Wellington Inner City Bypass is a half arsed stopgap that should be replaced by a cut and cover motorway?

Why did nobody think that the Wellington Inner City Bypass means that the end of the motorway dumps traffic on the capital's rather revolting red light "district" with that vile looking adult bookshop on the corner of Vivian and Cuba Street now one of the features greeting visitors? (before it wasn't so visible going towards the motorway)

Why is Air NZ almost unfailingly good to me, going out of its way to give me service beyond expectations? (I know others with different experiences)

Why is there a man who has worked in two government departments in the last few years or so tried both times to ban Christmas parties/celebrations, and succeeded? Will he succeed again at his latest locale?

Why is it inflationary for New Zealanders to spend their own money the way they choose, but not for Dr Cullen to spend their money the way he chooses?

Why is what was once 2XSFM now 92 More FM Manawatu - what was wrong with 2XS, why does nearly every radio station in the country have to be some bland variation on a national brand? (and yes I know it is because listeners don't care).

Why does what a cop did with a bestiality film over 2 decades ago matter -except to a news media that thrives on anything prurient in a country with, by and large, bugger all news.

How can a small cafe in Upper Norsewood do coffee better than most places in London?

Why does Radio NZ news include items that are little short than government press releases? The BBC doesn't, and it is hardly politically neutral.

Why does it appear that no one is standing for Mayor of Wellington who believes the council should do less and take less money from ratepayers?

Will the NZ Maori underclass get as bad as the British white trash underclass?

Why is there no history department at Rongotai College?

What does Mark Blumsky do to bring the government to account and demonstrate National is a government in waiting?

Why is it ok for the Australian women's soccer team to tour North Korea but not the Australian one-day cricket team to tour Zimbabwe? Is it because enough Zimbabweans are fortunate enough to live in Australia, whereas North Koreans are few and far between? or is there an inkling of truth in Mugabe's comment that this is racist?

Why does the 38 By the Sea Motel in Petone bother having Prime TV tuned in, when the reception is so shite, even though there is a clean line of sight to the transmitter tower?

Why are there Tararua, Masterton, Carterton and South Wairarapa District Councils, within one hour's drive between them all?

By what measure of naivety does anyone think that boy racers can be stopped unless either:
1. Boy racers are rounded up and put in prison until their balls drop and they are useful;
2. Roads are privatised and road owners face nuisance lawsuits from adjoining property owners unless they charge boy racers enormous tolls;
3. Brainless bimbettes stop seeing the measure of boy racers' cocks in the way their (largely) sad little mass production cars look like tacky white trash bogan wet dreams;
4. A culture of respect, personal responsibility and guilt for hurting, harming or disturbing others is inculcated by the education system and parents.

This blog is about to be revamped, revitalised and a new life, purpose and energy put into it.

It is time to suck the marrow out of life.

Off I go

I'm flying back to NZ for a wee while, just to do what I must do.

Memories

"You're as good as anyone else, and a damned sight better than most"

"Don't ever forget how very very proud I am of you, like a son to me, I couldn't be prouder"

"Don't ever forget how incredibly special you are to your parents, and how much they have given you, they have helped make you into one remarkable young man"

those are things you would say

I am lucky to have known someone who knows the dignity of the self, who doesn't ever let that falter and who demonstrates the same - the quality of not following the herd, of not being concerned of what others think, of not doubting anything about you. No deceit, no pretences, no spin, no weasel words - pure honest passionate humanity, knowing strengths, admitting weaknesses, but not denying the self and what is worthy of that. You taught me what I needed to learn to be able to say "amo". Enlightenment man indeed.

It was...

listening to Bach, Beethoven, Rimsky Korsakov, Wagner

discussing history, politics, education, love and life, people

what I learnt of cultures ranging from Chinese, to Pacific to Jewish.

sharing moments of grief, delight and laughter

while sipping fine Scotch or brandy

looking out upon the harbour or the lights and sky at night

a haven from the world, a beacon that always shone inside me

a place I was welcome, free and which I took with me and is where I always am.

my mentor, my friend, my lifelong inspiration.

the true legacy of one lies in what of oneself is passed onto others

I carry so much of that, and through all the grief and the regret that you were unable to travel out here, it is that privilege that will bring me strength.

I may say thank you, but I know the greatest thanks for you are in seeing me living.

Farewell you beautiful man.