Kedgley's latest brainless rant

The government announces a trial whereby existing trucks (not bigger ones) might be able to fill up more capacity to carry more freight! What a travesty, time to wide up Sue Kedgley and have her spew forth a press release of absolute brainless emotive nonsense.

Give me strength! The same woman who constantly claimed the two-lane one way street in Wellington called the Inner City Bypass would be a “motorway”, now claims that letting existing trucks carry 50 tonnes instead of 44 tonnes (when their design weight allows it) will be juggernauts (they are the same trucks as we use now you dizzy bitch) and “endanger lives”.

According to the government's own study in 2003, 5.5% of road accidents are the fault of trucks, a rather more relevant figure than Kedgley’s unsourced claim that they are involved in 23% of crashes.

She claims that you have less chance surviving a 50 tonne truck crash than 44, well Sue much like you have less chance surviving a bus hitting you than a car, but it doesn’t stop you promoting buses does it? However, trucks baaad, trains good.

The proposal is simply a trial existing trucks that are designed to handle heavier loads filling up their capacity to carry 50 tonnes instead of 44. In other words the truck will be more fuel efficient, and more productive, but it’s a truck – and in the faith based world of Green transport policy trucks are baaaadd like brainless sheeple worshipping a religion.

She bleets out the discredited “rail is five times more fuel efficient” piece of history ignoring the fact that rail and road freight have similar environmental impacts on average per tonne km, because it doesn’t suit her creed of truck baaaaad, train good. She then argues that "We need to get freight off our roads and onto rail where it belongs, and invest in building more track to places not currently serviced." What Sue? All freight? Why does it belong on rail, what would YOU know, you don't consign freight, you don't operate any sort of business involving goods or trading? What the fuck do you know about transport in the real world instead of your maniacal ramblings like some sort of fundamentalist worshipping at the side of a railway track? When was the last time you consigned 100 tonnes worth of goods?

What's this abuse of the term "invest in more track to places not currently serviced"? What everywhere? Nelson, Kaitaia, Waimate, Queenstown, Taupo, Havelock North, Raetihi, Akaroa, Te Anau, Roxburgh, Alexandra, Murchison, Opunake, Foxton, Miramar, Takapuna, Kerikeri? You mean like roads?

She is either seriously unhinged, or just a purveyor of manipulative hysteria, trying to scare families into thinking enormous trucks are going to bear down on their children? Either way, she ought not to be in Parliament -

What post-modernism does to the mind

Two children die, due to serious head injuries, inconsistent with accidents and consistent with murder, manslaughter and a family environment of neglect and hedonistic irresponsibility.
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However in the world of the Marxist post-modernist, "colonialism and capitalism" are to blame. So presumably there shouldn't be a Police investigation, violence towards children is simply the fault of "the system". Smashing an infant's head is, not the fault of the person doing it -no - it's what you do when you're a loser who blames everyone else for your problems or when the state doesn't give you the life you think you deserve. She's said it before. "It's part of a bigger project to blame people in poverty for making bad choices on an individual level, rather than seeing the structural issues which leave people so broken that they torture a three year-old"

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So if she had a child, and a "person in poverty" tortured that three year old, she could point a finger at all those business people and blame them. It's rather like accusing the Jews of ruining Germany's economy in the 1920s, or educated people for the war in Cambodia. It denies people have conscience choices, and justifies doing violence to another because of "structural issues". One could argue such issues might "make a man rape a woman", except the post-modernist identity politics type classify people, like Leninists and Nazis did, into powerful and powerless, so that women by definition have less power than men DENYING that it varies enormously by individuals.

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You see when you're infected by post-modernist relativism, individuals are irrelevant to your grand theory of the universe- the theory that says it's not the fault of Maori people who abuse their kids, for example.

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Oh and don't forget that when she says "capitalism and colonialism played a large part in those babies deaths" (sic) no alternative is offered. Certainly not the alternatives of communism, Islamism and post-colonial nationalism which have blighted much of the world for decades, although she shows some sympathy towards Islamists fighting for Iraq to be another Iran.

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Of course I wonder that if "capitalism killed Mrs Muliaga" (despite the evidence of her family having at least made multiple mistakes along with herself, the evidence of multiple warnings of disconnection of something that hadn't been paid for), why Maia didn't pay Mrs Muliaga's bill herself? In fact why don't those who "blame the system" use their own money to help those who "suffer"? For indeed if you are going to blame "the system" for the reason why some people abuse kids, then you should blame yourself for not doing enough for the victims. Her death is sad, but frankly I care about people I love, not some stranger dying because she and those who loved her didn't pay her power bill, didn't call the hospital and didn't follow medical advice.

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Then you can say "The idea that we can all control our own health, if we have the right 'lifestyle' runs strong in our society" which is true, because to some extent it IS true. If you smoke and take drugs it will more than likely shorten your life, if you are a vegetarian who exercises it will probably lengthen your life. If you don't exercise, eat a lot of saturated fat and sugar, then it will probably shorten your life. It's medical fact, but then if it doesn't suit a post-modernist, she will evade this as being "culturally inappropriate" or whatever new means there is to be wilfully blind. However then to accuse the public hospital system, taxpayer funded, of being culturally insensitive and claim this is "capitalism" requires even more contortions of reality. How is a compulsory state funded hospital's poor advice to the Muliaga family the fault of capitalism? Might the hospital have been more responsive had the family been paying it?

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So does one book therapy when your mind suffers from the contradictions that:

- People who commit crimes were "forced to" by the system;

- People who neglect their own welfare or that of their family have no responsibility to themselves or their families;

- Those that have not the slightest link at all, on any measure of evidence, causality, intent or responsibility, ARE to blame for the crimes, neglect or simple foolish irresponsibility of "victim groups" (defined by race, sex, class and whatever other silos make you a powerless victim of the oppressor groups);

- Parents who abuse kids are not responsible for it, but policemen who rape women are responsible, but while neither should go to prison, there is no alternative given?

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Maybe I'm being a "right wing idiot" (another banal simplistic generalisation that there is just a left and right) but when do people become responsible for their own lives, their own actions and their own families? Why are people to be collectivised like sheep in the minds of the post-modernist collectivist, instead of being judged by their actions as individuals? and when do post-modernists ever recognise that, applying their own philosophy, everything they think is coloured and biased by their own experiences and so is, relatively speaking, not applicable to anyone else?

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I'd simply like to know what the alternative to capitalism is and how it doesn't involve initiating violence against others.

Shallow academic gets pay cut

The Melbourne Age reports that public transport evangelist Paul Mees of Melbourne University has had his pay cut after saying " the authors of a 2007 report on privatisation were "liars and frauds and should be in jail". It's called defamation you lunatic. He says it is an "attack on free speech". He claimed "the comments were not "insulting or derogatory"". What planet does he occupy?

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Well it isn't earth. Mees has long been an environmental evangelist's pinup boy eager to damn any road building and cheerlead on rail and especially light rail projects (you know the sort of people who when talking about this sort of thing sound like they are engaging in foreplay), with rather appalling economic analysis. He's had a pay cut of A$8,000 a year as a result. I wouldn't hire the man for A$8. Tim Blair pointed out that Mees persists that cars are no more fuel efficient today than they were in the 60s and no more cleaner burning, both of which are ludicrous claims.

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This same man claimed on the ABC once that the Melbourne Citylink toll road, which has been a roaring success, would be a failure and need taxpayer bailout.

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Of course the Green Party quotes him, for their anti-road fanaticism, so beware - the media often thinks academics on a subject don't have a barrow to push. Paul Mees is a leftwing, environmentalist car hating light rail enthusiast. If you ask for his opinion, I'd approach Wendell Cox for a rebuttal - and watch the sparks fly.

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Hat Tip: Tim Blair

The Waitangi gravy train - who will end it

No, it's not the vivid imagination of conservative punters. A former member of the Waitangi Tribunal, Dr Michael Bassett, is hardly a paragon of conservatism, being a former Labour Cabinet Minister. He has written in his latest column about the taxpayer funded claims process:

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"Both major political parties know that what is happening is wrong, and that ordinary Maori in whose name the claims are made, aren’t getting a cracker out of the money being spent on lawyers, researchers and Tribunal staff. The spinelessness that we have come to expect of politicians in an MMP environment assists the greedy, when it was the needy we set out to help in 1985."

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Of course you've been paying for the "jobs" involved in this process, he continues:

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"By the time I joined the Tribunal in 1994 hearings were awash with lawyers, most on Legal Aid, with the claims before us being funded by the CFRT or the Tribunal’s taxpayer funded resources. Virtually none of the costly process was paid for upfront by the claimants. They therefore had no incentive to be careful with taxpayers’ money, or even with the Maori money that many were eventually to receive from the CFRT. Rorting the Tribunal process has become the name of the game. A whole industry numbering somewhere around 1,000 people gathered around new grievances that keep being dreamt up.

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When politicians settled on land grievances as the cause of Maori problems they made a mistake. It would have made better sense to examine welfare and the huge damage it has done to Maori society. The Waitangi Tribunal should be scaled down. The industry is of no use to 99% of the people it’s meant to serve. "

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However, don't hold your breath. National of course nurtured this industry when it was in power, it will do nothing now as it anxiously seeks support from the flotsam and jetsam of anti-semitics and Mugabe appeasers in the Maori Party. The Waitangi Tribunal should be wound up, claims of state theft of land should be heard through the courts, for both Maori and non-Maori claimants. However, no doubt far too many who suckle from nanny state (i.e. you) will ensure the Maori Party holds us all to ransom for this industry - and of course call everyone who criticises this as racist.

Still going to vote National? I know Libertarianz would abolish the Waitangi Tribunal, but what will ACT push for? Wouldn't things be different if National had to rely on ACT and the Libertarianz to govern, rather than the racist party?

Racism on the left

Now imagine if a Maori dominated company was overseas and seeking to buy shares in a company - imagine if a national of that country said that after lowering the value of that investment "The fact that it may annoy the Maoris is just icing on the cake"

Yet Idiot Savant is saying just that - except it is about Canadians. Yes, annoying Canadians is a GOOD thing. Evil Canadians. You see, it's ok to be racist on the left as long as you are racist when a handful of the people of that nationality want to legally buy shares in an airport in your country. The British National Party would agree wouldn't they?

No doubt he would claim this ISN'T racist. However it IS racist to want the New Zealand Parliament made up of seats that represent one people by party vote and by electorates determined by demographics and geography, not race.

Confused? Well you can't ask him directly on his blog, but it is a peculiar kind of reality evasion that the left undertakes when it refuses to be TRULY colourblind.

I am. I don't care about whether one is foreign or not, or Maori or not. It is the behaviour and what an individual advocates that concerns me.

So many on the left claim to be anti-racist, but have a deep suspicion of foreigners who do business, and positively embrace racism by those they deem "oppressed". I guess if you think of people as pigeonholed in groups, then it is hard to give up a habit.

Greens Canadaphobic

Sue Kedgley is at it again, hysterically trying to ban something. This time the sale of private shares in Auckland airport to a (wait for it, it is horrifying and disgusting) FOREIGN company. Those wogs (well they are Canadian, but they are foreign, so they must be inferior) can't be allowed to have "our" airport (well actually it is owned by the shareholders, but Sue doesn't understand property rights), I mean after all, think what they could do. They might want it to run efficiently, at a profit, encouraging people to use it and that would NEVER do.

Sue's press release on this says "The Green Party sees no reason why a Canadian pension fund should be allowed to gain control of the gateway to New Zealand"

Well I see no reason why it shouldn't? Why is a Canadian pension fund less of a good owner than a New Zealand pension fund, or local government, or central government (remember Wellington airport when it was majority government owned?)? Sue doesn't say, just apparently as long as the Green Party doesn't see a reason to allow something, it should be banned.

Then she goes on a little to suggest that "New Zealand cannot afford the economic, environmental, biosecurity and security risks of letting control of our main aviation gateway pass into foreign hands"

What are these Sue? Economic risks. Hmmm that it will be efficiently run, will seek to encourage passengers and airlines to operate there. Are you concerned about monopoly pricing? Well apparently not since the Green Party opposes outright Whenuapai being developed as a second airport.

Environmental risks? What are the Canadians going to do Sue? Use the airport as a toxic waste dump? Encourage less fuel efficient planes to fly in? I mean those Canadians are such environmental vandals.

Biosecurity risks? Oh yes, apparently they will take over the MAF role too will they Sue? Or the Canadians will just let it rip on foreign plagues of insects and plants to ravish our countryside.

Security risks? Yes they'll let those Canadian terrorists in to hijack planes, or Canadian thieves to steal luggage.

Not a single rational reason to stop the sale, other than xenophobic hysteria.

Blame Canada, with their evil little eyes and their heads that flap with lies.

Bloody hell Sue, take some pills and get some therapy, it's not nice to discriminate against those from other countries.

Unfair trade : download the Adam Smith Institute report

It is here

Here are the highlights of the executive summary points, which are even more damning than I expected. 10% of the fairtrade premium goes to the producer, the rest is retail markup:

• Fair trade does not aid economic development. It operates to keep the poor in their place, sustaining uncompetitive farmers on their land and holding back diversification, mechanization, and moves up the value chain. This denies future generations the chance of a better life.
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• Fair trade is targeted to help landowners, and not the agricultural labourers who suffer the severest poverty. Fairtrade rules actually make it more difficult for labourers to gain permanent, full-time employment.
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• Four-fifths of the produce sold by Fairtrade-certified farmers ends up in non-Fairtrade goods. At the same time, it is possible that many goods sold as Fairtrade might not actually be Fairtrade at all.
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• Just 10% of the premium consumers pay for Fairtrade actually goes to the producer. Retailers pocket the rest.

So I challenge the Green Party, and promoters of so called "fair trade", to present the evidence. Show it is more than spreading guilt, feeling good and paying more.

Ask everywhere if your council or employer has hopped onto this bandwagon, why. Send them a copy of the report, and tell them to stop wasting money on this fraud, and instead lobby for free trade, or support a genuine NGO charity in a poorer country.

Fairtrade damned further

Following on from yesterday's reports on Fairtrade, a comment on the Daily Telegraph website makes for sobering reading - about the reality of Fairtrade:

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"I was the acting Chief Exective of the largest independent coffee and tea trader in the world in the early 1990's and found all that you have mentioned and even worse to be true. I want to highlight some of your points toward the end of your article to make clear that the mega-growers also ship and sell their lower quality beans into the Fairtrade markets through brokers and receive the subsidized "charity price" from the "socially responsible" rather unquestioning public. This is exactly what was meant to be avoided, and it is done in huge volumes. This type of illegal activity is almost impossible to police at the level where it occurs, and where supervision has been pursued it has either failed or been simply too expensive to maintain (especially when the bribes at the storage and market delivery locations are factored in). So what happens is that the small farmers end up competing directly with the mega-producers for "shelf-and-mouth" space, which is a losing battle and exactly the opposite of what was intended to occur. Please, everyone, do not buy Fairtrade unless you (or somone you completely trust) can track your purchase back from the cup in front of you to the fields/farmers that the beans (or other produce) came from."

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So there you have it, Fairtrade markets get exploited by the large producers that Fairtrade lovers so abhor, and it is difficult to thwart this.

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One of the most damning criticisms I have of Fairtrade is that it diverts attention from the REAL "fair" trade issue - opening up of markets. Perhaps the most wealth generating and liberating move that could be made for people in developing countries would be for both developed and developing countries to open up their markets.

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Developed countries need to end export subsidies that mean their producers undercut those from competitors, they also need to end prohibitions, quotas and tariffs on imports so that the most efficient producers have a fair shot at the wealthiest markets. Developing countries need to abolish legal monopolies on imports and infrastructure, open up internal markets to competition and remove prohibitions, quotas and tariffs on imports, especially those that can aid in improving productivity.

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Fairtrade diverts attention from the fight to remove these barriers to productivity and wealth, by claiming that fiddling with prices can make people wealthier.

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Of course those in poorer countries should not be maltreated, should not have their property stolen, should not be expected to work in extremely dangerous conditions, but the answers to this are complex, and lie significantly in having governments which apply a rule of law, which protect individual rights and property rights.

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So what is "fair"? Janet Daley in the Daily Telegraph today notes how the word "Fair" has been misused by the left and is now used as a synonym for equality of wealth, yet is highly destructive.

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She said:

... even more dangerous is the peculiarly lethal principle of "fairness" that seems to prevail in the NHS (or at least at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which determines what treatments the NHS may use): if everyone can't have it, no one should. On this basis, procedures and medications that could save or transform individual lives must be barred if they cannot be made available to every patient who might conceivably benefit from them.

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Once again, "fair" must mean "the same": so the breast cancer patient who is a young mother may be denied the drug that could lengthen her life because it would not be feasible to provide it for all the breast cancer patients who are over 80, and if she offers to pay for the drug herself she may be barred from receiving any NHS treatment (because it is "unfair" for her to use her own money to buy what others cannot afford).

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How have we come to accept such vindictive uses of the word "fair"?

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Of course it was initially the fault of the Left and its special pleading lobbies, which - like some Fairtrade promoters - had a lot to gain. But the Right has been complicit: it has surrendered words like "fairness" and "opportunity" - and accepted caricatures of other words such as "selfish" and "greedy" - with scarcely a murmur of dissent."

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Indeed. Expect John Key this year, and David Cameron two years from now to talk about fairness a lot - and both will be peddling the status quo.

Socialist economics - the land of the simple minded

The BBC reports that Hugo Chavez has called on OPEC to charge a lower price for oil exports to poor countries, say US$20 a barrel, compared to rich countries (he suggests US$100).

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Of course he expects this will ease the burden of the poor countries, because then they can buy and use oil cheaply.

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It's so clever, I'm sure he doesn't know what arbitrage means. You see, I'd set up an oil importing company in say, Tonga. I'd then start importing as much as I can, and reselling my $20 oil to "rich" countries at say $90, (maybe $80 if I want to break through). Don't worry about storage, as a Tongan importer I happen to use storage facilities in New Zealand and Australia - thanks.

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OPEC is cleverer than that, so will dismiss Chavez as the charlatan he claims to be, but hopefully Venezuela will flood the developing world with cheap oil, that can be resold on at a lower price. Let's watch socialist economics fail once more!

In the "no shit Sherlock" files

Stuff reports "A family's fatal attempt to drive out a Maori curse may have been performed by charlatans, an expert in Maori culture says."

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Perhaps those who are not claimed to be charlatans will participate in double blind experiments on this

Woman dies due to lack of reason

Stone age beliefs have killed Janet Moses. It is believed she drowned as people tried to remove a Maori"curse".

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The dark ages are still here, and as Stuff reports, Dr. Hone Kaa is a part of this by saying ""It's a very difficult process," he said. "I'm personally very wary of removing them." He said while water was often used to cleanse the victim: "I've never heard of great gallons being used".
Kaa said there could be a physical element to the removal. "You may have to hold the person down because the spirit may fight within the person to stay, so you need others around you to restrain them."

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Or maybe you could leave someone alone and not assault them in the process, which is what this is really saying. Or how about simply recognising that this is all witchcraft and nonsense.

It's not the fault of the child torturer because

structural issues have made them do it.

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Consider why most people who survived the Killing Fields, or the Holocaust, or the Cultural Revolution didn't, perhaps the revolutionary experience of being part of a new society that had nothing to do with evil capitalism meant the trauma of their family, friends and neighbours being executed helped.

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I wonder in a world of feminist post-modernist jurisprudence whether rapists could claim that they are so broken by the structural issues of society that it makes them rape women? "Sorry I raped that woman judge, I've been unemployed for three years, can't afford a Nintendo Wii, my favourite food and don't have a girlfriend to beat up to resolve my structural disadvantage because of capitalism - will you join me in revolution against these capitalist scum, or lock me up like the capitalism scum you are because I want to rape women like we proletariat are raped by the capitalist exploiters?"

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You see my problem is that I am part of this "It's part of a bigger project to blame people in poverty for making bad choices on an individual level"

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I'm so damned stupid, poor people don't make bad choices - they were put there. When you look at their lifestyles most of them work just as hard as everyone else, and they are just as intelligent and skilled, none of them did anything stupid or self destructive, and they are all supportive of one another in bettering themselves. I'm astounded at how brilliant they are at breeding without having the means to support themselves and the kids, abusing substances, gambling and other habits that aren't THEIR choices. They are legally insane or forced to do those things, or maybe another species. Self-destructiveness is never your fault is it? It is "society's".

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By and large most people are dealt a hand in life in terms of opportunities, some have far more than others and waste them (a man was recently in a major UK paper for having been a millionaire a couple of years ago and is now homeless living off charity), other have next to nothing and make something of them. Those who choose to evade this fact are either stupid or simply beholden to an angry agenda of violence, like most Marxist Leninists.

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but you've seriously lost touch with the real world when you think that people torture children for "structural reasons", and those who believe that will only be challenged to rethink if it happens to their children. Explaining child abuse as anything beyond something the abusers are responsible for is the last bastion of the lunatic. You can understand why it happens, but it does not mean it is not a choice. Only the insane do not choose, and perhaps only they don't believe you can choose.

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Notice John Minto (the man who couldn't give a flying fuck about his mate Mugabe halving life expectancy in Zimbabwe or his mate Kim Jong Il's gulags in North Korea) is part of this "blame capitalism for torturing kids" brigade. He doesn't look at other times of economic hardship or other cultures and see kids being tortured because the family is poor. Chris Trotter even more disgustingly says WE pay a toll for our comfortable lives somehow linking those of us who don't abuse our kids being to blame for those who do. The culture and philosophy of Marxists has always been to play the card of historical inevitability, as if our lives are not ours to control, but we are cogs in wheels being manipulated. It is a complete disconnect from reality.

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Go on Chris, go to the poverty stricken communities you care about, go rescue this kids, go give a damn - or maybe you can ask why so many low income families would never ever abuse their kids, and why you would excuse them if they did, but not richer families?

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New Zealand has the lowest unemployment rate in over 30 years, but until the likes of Minto, Trotter and Maia see blood spilt in wealthy homes they wont be happy - whereas deep down I wonder if they are glad when the see the blood spilt by the poor, because it allows them to blame anyone but them for it.