David Cameron believes in something right!

"We talk about people being 'at risk of obesity' instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

"Of course, circumstances - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make."

Yes! Amazing these words from the Conservative Leader David Cameron, according to the Daily Telegraph. Just when I think that the Tories are going to disappoint again, David Cameron actually makes a play for reason. Yes, by and large you ARE responsible for your lot. Yes, your own choices are actually what is important here. Revolutionary? Well the government didn't have much to say other than "He wants to hug a hoodie", true, but it shows something else - there is a bit of a philosophical underpinning to this man.

He continues:

"There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get any where near solving some of these problems, that has to stop."

Yes THIS is the moral nihilism that is at the heart of the decay of values, and the unwillingness of all too many to take responsibility for their actions and to not set boundaries. The simplest boundary is to respect the body of others. How hard is that? Well for too many teens with knives, it's clearly outside their (im)moral compass.

Now what this means in terms of policies is another thing. He went on about tax breaks for married couples, and that was about it. However for me, this is an important breakthrough. It is the confrontation of the idea that the mistakes people make are "society's fault". What is also notable is that David Cameron said this in Glasgow East - the latest constituency facing a by-election. Glasgow East is a textbook example of the abject failure of the welfare state, and it would be fair to say that Labour has taken it for granted and failed it miserably.

Glasgow East by-election or why socialism has failed

The Glasgow East by-election is occurring because its sitting MP, David Marshall, is standing down for health reasons. It shouldn't surprise, at 67 he is already outliving the average man in his constituency.

In the 2005 election he won with 60.7% of the vote. Yes he is one of those MPs with a strong true majority. The Scottish National Party (SNP) came a distant second with 17%, the Lib Dems third with 11.8% and the Conservative Party fourth with 6.9%. You get the picture, this is heartland Labour territory. Much of the media coverage is about whether Labour might lose, as the SNP is campaigning strong calling for nanny state to help food and fuel prices. Once addicted to nanny state, always addicted, although I hope the Tories might squeeze into third place (which happened, just, in 2001).

What's actually more telling are two sets of statistics. First, those about the constituency itself. This is a part of the UK that is not middle class, it is the absolute pits of despair - funded from the loving caring generous welfare state.

UK polling report describes the seat as follows:

"This seat contains some affluent suburban areas like Mount Vernon and Bailleston, but it is mostly made up of the post-war product of slum clearances, soul(l)ess tenements and terraces thrown up in the 1950s and 1960s into which the population of Glasgow’s substandard housing were decanted. The resulting estates, lacking employment and amen(i)ties were ravaged by unemployment, hard drugs, violence and gang culture." (sic)

It is poor white Scotland, with only 1.1% of the population not European. A quarter of the population under 18 and 20% over 60. Parts of the seat have a life expectancy for men of 62 - one of the lowest in the UK and akin to Bangladesh. Good ol' NHS doing wonders isn't it?

Only 7.6% of the population are graduates and just over 50% of adults have no school qualifications at all. Good ol' state monopoly education working then?

46% live in "social housing", about the same again in owner-occupied homes. 15.6% of homes have either no private bathroom or no central heating - in Glasgow!

Fraser Nelson of the Spectator explains further: "I once had the job of signing up the good people of Glasgow East to the electoral register — at the time, regarded as an invitation to pay poll tax. Gang graffiti scars the walls, police are virtually unseen. This no-go-zone status is new, and cost billions to achieve. Houses there are in good condition, money is being spent. But it has funded a hideous social experiment, showing what happens when the horizontal ties which bind those within communities to one another are replaced with vertical ties, binding individuals to the welfare state."

You see this is the dire world of welfare, drug and despair addicted Scotland "A boy born in Camlachie is expected to live to 64.5 — the same as in Uzbekistan. In Parkhead it is 62, the same as Bangladesh. Just outside its boundaries lies Dalmarnock where the figure is 58 — lower than Sudan, Cambodia or Ghana. The lowest is Carlton, where the figure of 54 is lower than even Gambia’s equivalent"

Nelson continues, pointing out the vile levels of dependency of those there and how irrelevant they are to Labour "It is invisible because the people in this Labour stronghold are of no use to politicians, who only do battle nowadays in marginal seats. When I last visited a pub there, to research an article, I was asked if I was a missionary — church groups are about the only people who bother with such places these days. Its horrors are hidden by statistical manipulation. Official unemployment is just 6.7 per cent. But add in such factors as those claiming incapacity benefit, and it quickly emerges that a scandalous 50 per cent of the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits."

However, you might think as a Labour heartland seat, this should be easy, this sort of seat is apparently what Labour is meant to be about.

Well no.

The people of Glasgow East have been rewarded by their loyalty with Labour by being ignored. Channel 4 reported that the party has as few as three dozen active members in the seat, and that it has never actually campaigned there in recent history on a door to door basis. After all, why would you campaign when those who vote do so as zombies, ticking the same formula as they are told time and time again that only Labour represents the working man, an irony given how the majority don't actually work. The Labour Party doesn't even have a database on the seat's demographics show where it's weakest and strongest. It has taken most of them for granted. With one part of the seat excepted, poor, destitute, welfare ridden, they'll vote Labour - nobody else will bother campaigning in this seriously dire part of Glasgow.

Of course as David Cameron says, the truth is that those in this electorate have, to some extent, given up. Although you do wonder how the inquisitive bright kid in this place fairs, when he risks being beaten up for being "smart", hounded at a school where intelligence makes you a social pariah, where one parent cynically thinks he's getting "too big for his boots", and with temptations towards drugs and other mindless decadence all around. They all vote for the status quo, and get it of course - and get it from a party only too glad that it gets a guaranteed House of Commons vote so it can have power, to look after the floating voter.

You see that's where, hopefully, all that will be proven wrong. This heartland Labour seat speaks volumes about the arrogance of many on the left for those they purport to give a damn about. Labour ignores them, doesn't even have enough local members who LIKE Labour, and the other parties completely ignore them too - until now. What has Labour done for Glasgow East? Kept the benefits flowing, kept the state monopoly schools open, refurbished some housing and left law and order to the gangs.

So the failure of socialist is apparent - starkly apparent. The formula is not more money for state monopolies and welfare. Yet this seat may offer a chance for the taste of change.

I'll leave the end to Fraser Nelson from the Spectator again:

"Labour, forced for the first time to focus attention on one of its ‘safe’ welfare ghettoes, may find it has nothing to say. Is it to promise more of the same? Or blame the wicked Conservatives? It is one thing for Labour to lose the leafy suburbs which Mr Blair won over in 1997. But to be rejected in a supposed heartland like Glasgow East would plunge the party into existential crisis, and rightly so. Because after all those years in power, and all those billions spent, its main legacy has been, quite simply, the most expensive poverty in the world."

3 years ago today

I used the tube twice today, and was gently reminded by coverage in one of the free papers that today is the third anniversary of the terrorist bombings that killed 52 innocent people and injured 700 in London.

It is notable that it had a low profile today. London has been scarred, but neither the economy nor the culture of the city has been substantively hurt. In the regard, the Islamist terrorists did not achieve their goal of frightening Londoners nor frightening the British government to withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan.

However I do wonder whether the relative nonchalance is naive, or a reflection of the success of the security forces in combating terrorist plots. I hope the latter, because Britain has paid a high price in individual freedom for security.

There is no doubt that it has proven more difficult than the Islamist terrorists thought to undertake their own filthy form of civil war against British society - but Britain remains vulnerable - and has to remain vigilant. Hopefully the naivete about Islamists who preach jihad in British mosques has been shattered - for too long the UK has relied only on its tolerance to battle the intolerant. The message ought to be that if you, as an individual, wish to declare war on Britain's government and society, you will no longer receive the generosity of tolerance. An (effectively) secular United Kingdom must never be negotiable.

Gordon austerity Brown tells Britain off

"There are poor kids in Africa who would love that food" says Gordon Brown in effect, as he puts on the school headmaster outfit and tells the UK off for throwing away "too much food".

Like a little protestant guilt monger he snarls at us all, eyes darting from right to left with that dour expression permanently etched on his tightly judgemental face. Already lovingly taking between 20 and 50% of our incomes, because, after all, he knows best how to spend that money (no longer "ours"), he's decided we don't spend the rest of it well either.

According to the Daily Telegraph he said "If we are to get food prices down, we must also do more to deal with unnecessary demand, such as by all of us doing more to cut our food waste which is costing the average household in Britain around £8 per week".

Furthermore "If you don't eat your meat, how can you have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat...(whipping sound)". (OK so I made that one up).

Talking to the British public as if they are children is hardly going to endear him with them all, but no doubt he thinks it is good. Maybe he was raised to eat everything off his plate, overcooked dried peas, boiled to a pulp carrots, bland mashed potatoes and lard fried sausage products, and be damned lucky he had that.

Now don't get me wrong, I KNOW people waste food. I do. Sometimes things go off, sometimes something you buy is quite awful (like the pasta we had last night). Maybe some people who moan about it could be more economical, but it's the same about petrol, electricity, clothes, gambling, alcohol, entertainment - hell, anything.

However, what is particularly grating when the G8 summit he has gone to has ensured he is well fed with a banquet including caviar. Yes Gordon, eat up!

What I care about more is whether Gordon can stop his rapacious consumption of taxpayers' money. He bailed out a bank with it, he is pouring money into the Olympics with it, he's pouring money to pay for other people to have easy access to the property market, he's pouring money into a long list of petty welfare projects that are nothing but politics. Gordon, maybe people would be under less stress if you didn't spend so much of their money? By the way, hope the caviar was good, and you saved doggy bags for your constituents.

oh and by the way, next time you want to tell me how to spend the remainder of my money after you took over half through taxes, just fuck off. You're not my moral superior, and the money you take from me already is not that well spent. I learnt enough about being thrifty from my own Scottish Protestant parents, I don't need a highly paid new one who constantly has his hand in my fucking wallet!

60 years of NHS- time for a rethink

The past week has seen the BBC and the UK, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the nationalised health service - the NHS. The system based on the openly socialist philosophy that the state should provide health care free at the point of use to all.

The reality of the risks of that system was largely ignored by the Labour Party at the time it was introduced. Britain was bankrupt from World War 2 and the Atlee Labour government used ample funds from the Marshall Plan supplied by the USA (and the UK got more than any other country in post war Europe) to fund its socialist plans of the NHS, iron/steel, coal, railway, bus, truck, airline etc nationalisations. The point that the NHS would result in over demand (with some going to doctors when they had little wrong with them), few incentives for healthy living (you pay the same regardless if you smoke, exercise and eat fatty foods or not), and a lack of accountability for any failure to perform as promised

Now the NHS is probably the UK's biggest sacred cow - it shouldn't be. For years the argument was that it needed more money - Labour did that, increasing NHS spending by 80% in 11 years. Improvements are difficult to see, as most of the extra spending has been sucked up by increased demands and increased pay. Another argument was that there needed to be administrative tinkering, which also has sucked in more money.

The Sunday Telegraph's editorial rather boldly proposes something else - an insurance based model which includes the private sector.

It states that the original vision of the NHS was that it would require less money over time as people became healthier, but ignored that people would expect more over time:

"It was assumed that, as the nation's health improved, so demand for medical treatment would diminish.

But the opposite has proved true. Increasing life expectancy means more people live to an age where they contract diseases that are expensive to treat. People are also less inclined to queue than they were in the austere days of the 1950s.

In a consumerist age, people compare their healthcare with the provision of other services and expect to have the same choice and speed of delivery.

Yet, while the NHS has evolved over the years, its structure and the way it is financed still owe more to a 1940s belief in the efficacy of state monopoly than to the realities of the modern world."

The paper continues, pointing out that both Germany and France have insurance based models with larger private sectors:

"Insurance schemes that let people decide how much of their own money to spend on healthcare and top up what they contribute in taxes are the way to bring greater investment into the system. Politicians must prepare the country for the realities that need to be faced; yet the totemic power of the NHS to stifle debate seems undiminished."

Indeed, the incentives of insurance could assist in encouraging people to look after themselves, and manage the costs of healthcare, in particular exposing people to the costs of what they expect. However, it is difficult to see the Tories (much like National in NZ) making any worthwhile change.

"Proposed Conservative reforms risk replacing Labour top-down targets with their own. The party must be willing to take on producer interests in the NHS and give greater choice to patients by embracing new ideas such as easier access to specialist doctors.

People no longer see the NHS as the property of its practitioners, but of those who pay for it. The NHS must respond to that mood - or voters will want to put their money into something that delivers the care they expect"

People will complain and moan about public health care and fail to recognise the simple truths, that the price of socialised healthcare is queuing, not always getting what you want, and paying the same regardless of your good or bad behaviour. It is time to put healthcare in the hands of those paying for it, by moving towards insurance, private provision and competition. The status quo has failed, and will fail more as the population ages and biotechnology pushes the cost of the best treatment beyond a socialised system. People will simply not tolerate ever increasing taxes for a system that produces ever increasing queues.

Drug addict? go on a benefit and don't get treatment

One of the arguments given for the welfare state is how caring and compassionate it is, and how mean, greedy and nasty are the people who actually would rather have their own money back, and then choose to spend it as they see fit, including charity or other acts of genuine benevolence.

The left would argue that the state is best trusted to care for those in need, and those who want tax cuts are less compassionate and moral that they.

So you may ask yourself why, according to the Dominion Post, 5270 drug and alcohol addicts can be on sickness and invalids benefits, defined as those who identify their addiction as the reason they cannot work - AND that none of them are required to engage in any form of treatment as a condition of receiving your money.

Imagine a single charity giving out money to addicts and saying "go on, come back for more every fortnight, and we don't care whether or not you go to treatment".

What is more alarming is the number has gone up so much in a short time "there are 2540 beneficiaries who have drug abuse listed as their primary reason for being unable to work - almost twice the 1297 listed in 2004."

Apparently "case managers could not force beneficiaries into treatment programmes". I would have thought if the government changed benefit eligibility so that if you refuse treatment you cease to get the benefit, it might be an effective way of incentivising them into treatment.

Work and Income deputy CE Patricia Reade has said though that "Many had other mental or physical health problems which prevented them from working, such as cirrhosis. Alcoholism in itself was not a reason to be off work." So presumably those problems should be listed shouldn't they, not alcoholism. Alcoholism if listed shouldn't be a grounds for the benefit if that is the case.

So what to do?

Now some on the conservative right may say that everyone getting the benefit who is a drug abuser should be incarcerated. That, after all, is what the war on drugs is about isn't it? It makes it a crime to ingest banned substances, so why should people get money for being an addict, and why shouldn't those receiving those benefits get a knock on the door from the cops with search warrants with pending charges? (Then for good measure, being tough on crime and all, if they find nothing, there is benefit fraud from NOT being a drug user!).

The better solution is that, while accepting these benefits exist for now, the system should use a carrot and stick approach to treatment. Addicts who are unable to work because of their addiction should only receive the benefit whilst they undertake treatment (and have been certified as having attended). Similarly, they should not receive the benefit whilst they use. That means testing. Whilst some of those receiving the benefits are no doubt trying on the system, others will be sad cases - feeling trapped and alone, and unsure what to do. Pulling the money away unless they undertake treatment is the only kind thing that can be done in those circumstances. You'll find the ones who are trying on the system will drop out, and maybe those who are in genuine need drop out after weeks and months of help (helping their families too).

You see it's how private welfare would ultimately work.

It is kinder than the mad Green idea of throwing more money at beneficiaries, kinder than Labour's "here's the money now you could seek treatment, but if you don't just see your doctor every 13 weeks and if you're still an addict, we''ll keep paying you", and kinder than the "throw you in jail for being a (drug) addict" of the "tough on crime" brigade.

Hitchens tries waterboarding

One of the most controversial actions of the Bush Administration has been the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique at Guantanamo Bay for terrorism suspects.

Critics have described it as torture - and the use of torture by a liberal democracy is an abomination, it markedly weakens the moral position of those who wish to defend free secular society from the tyranny of dictatorships whether theocratic, nationalist, Marxist or otherwise. One of the dividing lines between civilisation and the barbarity of tyranny is the unwillingness of civilised states to inflict physical harm and pain upon those it incarcerates or to use the deliberate infliction of pain to seek confessions. It is not because it is always unreliable, at times it is not. Those enduring pain that would otherwise drive you mad are more likely to do what is necessary to avoid it continuing, than concoct some elaborate fantasy. Which is why some soldiers receive waterboarding as training to prepare in the event that they face the horrors of an enemy which wouldn't dare have this debate. The preparation is because of genuine fear that torture produces results.

However torture is wrong. Interrogations are not meant to be fun, they are harrowing, lengthy and can deprive the suspect of comfort and some sleep - but they should not cross the threshold of actually inflicting pain and suffering. To inflict such suffering upon one who may be innocent is simply sadism, to trust the evidence of one who confessed or revealed information under threat of pain is far more questionable than a confession given freely.

So what is waterboarding? Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens decided to find out first hand. His account is here. As far as he was concerned it was torture to go through with it, but he also gives the argument against it. He takes a considered view which gives me pause for thought, in both directions.

"a man who has been waterboarded may well emerge from the experience a bit shaky, but he is in a mood to surrender the relevant information and is unmarked and undamaged and indeed ready for another bout in quite a short time. When contrasted to actual torture, waterboarding is more like foreplay....On this analysis, any call to indict the United States for torture is therefore a lame and diseased attempt to arrive at a moral equivalence between those who defend civilization and those who exploit its freedoms to hollow it out, and ultimately to bring it down. I myself do not trust anybody who does not clearly understand this viewpoint."

The counter is a number of arguments, but ones that I find most compelling:

"It may be a means of extracting information, but it is also a means of extracting junk information. ... To put it briefly, even the C.I.A. sources for the Washington Post story on waterboarding conceded that the information they got out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was “not all of it reliable.”

It opens a door that cannot be closed. Once you have posed the notorious “ticking bomb” question, and once you assume that you are in the right, what will you not do? Waterboarding not getting results fast enough? The terrorist’s clock still ticking? Well, then, bring on the thumbscrews and the pincers and the electrodes and the rack."

If you could prove that a crime you had been accused of had been confessed by you because the Police tied you and shot water up your nostrils repeatedly, your confession would be meaningless. This is, of course, completely right and appropriate in our judicial system. However, even taking the argument that this is a form of war, the question of where you draw the line emerges.

Finally:

"One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true?"

Read for yourself, there is little doubt that waterboarding has helped extract information of value in the war against Islamist terrorism. However, the line that has been crossed is a dangerous one, and one that must be subject to full, free and frank debate. It is not a debate between those who want to be soft on Islamist terror and those who are sadistic fascists - it should be a debate about what constitutes that behaviour which is acceptable for the governments of Western free democracies to undertake. Waterboarding is, as Hitchens said, foreplay compared to how Al Qaeda operates, or Iran or North Korea or China, or indeed many other countries. The moral equivalency some on the left, including Amnesty International, applies to this is repulsive, but somewhat inevitable. I look forward to our friends on the left waging an orchestrated protest and campaign against Camp 22 in North Korea for example. However, a line has been crossed which gives reason to say the US engages in torture.

Hitchens is not soft on terrorism or Islamists, neither am I. I believe it slightly undermines the moral authority we have against Islamists who seek to portray Western secular societies as corrupt and cruel - yet it also may well have saved lives. Do the ends justify the means?

Video shows the complete fraud of Zimbabwe's election

Shepherd Yuda has fled Zimbabwe with his family, but not before he secretly filmed the most recent election. Yuda was a prison officer who decided to film what he could covertly, with assistance from The Guardian.

The story is here, with the video. It graphically shows how the ballot was anything but secret, but was cast in front of one of the so-called war heroes - you know a bit like Japanese war heroes in Korea and China during and before WW2 - thugs. In other words, they know who you voted for and you are told that MDC will never win.

The UN Security Council is debating a resolution to freeze the financial assets of Mugabe and other top members of the regime and impose a travel ban. The International Herald Tribune says Russia and China are unenthused, but considering whether or not to veto, and South Africa is thinking about it.

Russia I expect little from, murdering kleptocrats as they are. China, ditto given how they treat dissidents. South Africa? Morality can't piss on this regime of capitulating sycophants to tyranny. Seriously, who else has had enough of the South African government, that acts the high mighty and moral, but feeds, powers and shakes the blood dripping hands of their murderous friend and comrade. After all, would you shake hands with someone protecting and friends with their murdering rapist neighbour?

4th of July

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Beautiful words, thank you USA. For all the flaws, and the criticisms, you still are the repositary of the idea that government is the extension of the rights of the governed, not governing subjects.

Now to think simply this, can all the powers of government ever be legitimately more than the rights that the citizens have themselves? (self defence) and if so, why? How can government by the people, for the people have rights that the people themselves cannot delegate?

Without the Declaration of Independence, this question may not have been answered for some time - and that is why it is worthwhile to celebrate the 4th of July.

The UN Human Rights Council can go to hell

David Farrar has posted about how New Zealand is trying to join this club of the good, bad and despicable. The UN is meant to Human Rights Council, which is meant to be a forum to address human rights violations,replacing the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). The USA opposed the set up of the Council because it didn't have enough safeguards to stop abusing regimes from the organisation. New Zealand of course supported it because it didn't care enough and didn't want to seem to be associating with the USA and Israel. The UNCHR has had many serious human rights abusers elected to it, like Sudan during the start of the Darfur killings.

However, New Zealand wants to join in. So let's look at some of the other members likely to be around at the same time:

- Cameroon, which imprisons men suspected of homosexual activity and forcibly engages in anal examinations of them to seek evidence.
- Djibouti, which tends to arrest and imprison journalists who criticise the government in isolation wards;
- Nigeria, whose Police boast of 795 extrajudicial killings in 3 months, with politicians leading gangs of thugs who terrorise with murder, rape and arson against opponents or supporters of opponents;
- South Africa, which treats Zimbabwean refugees as purely economic migrants and facilitates the ongoing oppression in Zimbabwe;
- Bangladesh, which engages in arbitrary arrests, frequent torture in custody, extrajudicial killings, journalists accused of defaming the government or military get arrested and sometimes tortured;
- China, which arrests, tortures and executes political opponents;
- Indonesia, which imprisons people for blasphemy against Islam, arrests political activists in West Papua;
- Jordan, which strictly punishes criticism of the King and civil servants, detains women to protect them from domestic violence;
- Egypt, which arrests political opponents without trial, tortures and engages in extrajudicial killings, imprisons editors of critical newspapers, requires government approval of NGOs;
- Qatar, which requires all NGOs to be registered and are monitored and bans political protests, or membership of any organisation critical of Arab governments;
- Saudi Arabia, which arrests without charge, puts critics in solitary confinement, sentences those convicted of sodomy to up to 7000 lashes, grants the death sentence by decapitation to those as young as 13, enforces strict limits on criticism of the government and Islam, denies women the right to work, travel, study, marry, receive health care, and access government agencies, including when they seek protection or redress as victims of domestic violence, unless authorised by a father or husband, flogs rape victims for illegally associating with the opposite sex;
- Azerbaijan, which regularly tortures those arrested, arrests and shuts down opposition media and journalists;
- Russia, which engages in extrajudicial and politically motivated executions, tortures and kills young soldiers in its own army as part of hazing, NGOs are required to register and the government shuts down and threatens opposition media;
- Cuba, which suppresses all forms of political dissent, prohibits gatherings of groups, arrests and imprisons political opponents including classifying some as mental patients.

Yep, they'll all ensure the world is safe for political freedom, individual rights and open societies wont they?

Pravda remains loose with the truth

Earth begins to kill people for changing its climate says Pravda.

Before it killed people without sentient purpose, what with the earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes and the like. Nice to know it has a brain.

Of course when you read the report it's hard not to make a few points:

"At least 2.5 million people have been killed in natural disasters over the recent 48 years" Well the Khmer Rouge managed just about that in four years, Mao manage well over ten times that in 15 years, etc etc. The UN did nothing then of course, even though it was obvious what killed people.

"It was also said that the death toll in developing states exceeds the number of casualties in developed states 20-30 times" Well the population of developing states is over 6 times that of developed states, and when you're developing the value of life isn't as high to your governments. I mean look at Burma and North Korean responses to their disasters - shutting out aid unless it goes through the dictatorships.

"the frequency of catastrophes could be linked with the global climate change." Yes, or sunspots, or tectonic plate movements, or solar flares, or the capability of international news services to identify and report on catastrophes regardless of the domestic political environment (which is generally more open now in most countries than it was before).

Yep, brilliant analysis alright.

(Hat tip Tim Blair)

Oh and petrol tax and motor vehicle registration fees as well

Yes tis the season for higher charges for motorists.

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Gonzo Freakpower Brains Trust (Will de Cleene) has pointed out this report from the NZ Herald:

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ACC, the compulsory statutory monopoly for road use personal accident insurance is increasing levies to you all - and being a monopoly, it wont differentiate on the basis of risk, or past performance, so the dangerous driving accident prone lunatic will pay the same as the safe suburban driver with a clean record. What does it all mean?

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The ACC levy on petrol goes up 2.01c/litre (and the 12.5% GST on top of that). The argument being those drive more are more exposed to risk.

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The ACC levy component for petrol car motor vehicle registration and licensing goes up from $183.22 to $211.48 (GST inclusive). ACC is already most of the cost of registration and licensing.

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For non-petrol driven vehicles the ACC levy component of motor vehicle registration and licensing goes up from $281.46 to $336.69 (GST inclusive). You see as there is no diesel tax and no ACC RUC charge, the cost is higher.

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Of course you could ask this. What would happen if there were other companies you could pay your motor vehicle ACC levy to, ones that charged based on your generalised risk, such as age, driving record and location? You would be more incentivised to drive more safely, and wouldn't be cross subsidising the reckless. Labour opposes this. National had talked about it before it lost the 1999 election.

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So when you pay a higher registration/licensing fee next time, fill up the tank and see it has gone up over 2c/l more, ask yourself "did I have an accident or two last year and so i should pay this additional risk" or "did I have a clean driving record so I'm paying for someone else's mistakes"?

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Labour says we all have to pay for the recklessness, negligence and mistakes of a few - that's why you're paying more.

Random question

Would it be that the dedication of all petrol tax to the National Land Transport Fund is hiding a reduction in revenue from petrol tax, due to people responding to the high price of fuel?

If that is the case, is there a looming crisis in land transport funding as a result because the less people drive the less money there is?

For RUC it isn't quite the same, but again the less people drive the less RUC there is - although for trucks it should moderate maintenance costs.

It would be interesting to find out.

Why vote National?

NZ Herald reports "National attacked the Government yesterday over increased road-user charges and a law passed last night allowing regional fuel taxes to fund large capital projects - but won't say it would undo them"

Gee, surprise me. You could say the same about the 39c income tax rate etc etc.

Nothing like moaning about something you wouldn't reverse anyway is there? So remind me again, why does voting National do anything more than at very best stop things getting worse? Why should people opposed to the way the country had been governed since 1999 set their sights so low?

Greens so wrong on trucks

Well why should I be surprised? The Green party response to the truckers protesting against a government that lied to them is to say "It is time to stop subsidising the trucking industry". I've fisked this nonsense before, but if you dare... read on.

You really do have to wonder how these people can say on one side of their face don't subsidise one industry, but go ahead, subsidise the competing one to the hilt!

The Greens cheer lead the renationalisation of the entire railway sector, cheer lead taxpayers subsidising rail maintenance costs, cheer lead taxpayers fully funding new railway lines which only a handful of rail freight customers will benefit from and generally slobber with excitement at the prospect of taxpayers' being pillaged to prop up their totems of twin ribbons of steel on concrete. Subsidising trains is good. Remember subsidising coastal shipping is good too, so is subsidising buses - in the Church of the Uninformed Transport Environmentalist (not quite a rude acronym) these are the holy words, not to be sullied by evidence or analysis, but full of nonsensical scaremongering.

Then they say "don't subsidise trucks".

Are trucks subsidised? Well as usual the simpleton kneejerk headline grabbing approach of the Greens obfuscates, confuses, distorts and frankly gets it very wrong.

Jeanette Fitzsimons says "At the moment, truck drivers only pay 56 percent of their costs to the economy, compared to rail freight users who pay on average 82 percent and ordinary motorists who pay 64 percent, according to the Ministry of Transport's Surface Transport Costs and Charges study from 2005"

OK let's pull that one apart:

1. "At the moment" is wrong, the study was a snapshot of 2001/2002 statistics. Before the government bought back the track or the entire railway, before it started subsidising the maintenance of the railway track and before it increased Road User Charges on heavy trucks twice. Rail freight users are undoubtedly paying less than the putative 82% and truck "drivers" (well the owners) will be paying more than they are now. That's if we accept those figures, and I don't. After all I've read the report, many times.

2. If you break down the costs, which are total costs, then we go from costs that are real and actual, to ones that are putative and notional. This is when it gets complicated.

The "56%" recovery of truck costs includes such things as return on capital of recoverable assets. Now since rail isn't expected to make a return on capital on the track and right of way, we can remove those from trucks too. Suddenly this 56% figure goes up to 72%. However that includes externalities mainly for pollution. The air pollution figure is telling, as it is back in the days when diesel was dirty with 1500ppm of sulphur (which is the dominant contributor to PM10 - particulate matter, which is by far the most damaging pollutant). Diesel now has 3% of the sulphur that it had in 2001/2002, easily stripping out the majority of the air pollution "cost". Then there is noise, which is valued at $87m. Now noise tends to be factored into property values, so arguably can be stripped out as well.

So now this 56% cost recovery figure is 91%. Remember heavy RUC has now been increased twice since then, although maintenance costs have increased as well, so let's be generous and say RUC has gone up to cover that.

We know that half of the cost of local authority roads is recovered from rates. This is deliberate and could easily be addressed by another increase in RUC (but councils better be required to cut rates in compensation). Simply recovering this additional cost from trucks would more than overcompensate for the 9% "subsidy".

Still following me? Thought not.

So the 56% is rather illusory, especially when you ask trucks to be treated the way rail is now treated, when you take into account the dramatic reduction in pollution simply through now having far cleaner fuel, and you eradicate the rather esoteric monetisation of noise. The gap is simply the cost of maintaining local roads which comes from rates - and local roads do not compete with rail.

So this subsidy is not only hypocritical, but at worst a rather insignificant contribution that is about local roads - which you could also argue is about property owners paying for access to their properties.

Funnily enough doing the same rejig for cars puts cars on the same figure of about 91%.

3. Jeanette says "It is important to remember that Road User Charges for trucks have been increased only once since 1989". This is nonsense. RUC for trucks over 6 tonnes has increased twice now as of 1 July. RUC for smaller trucks has been increased several times since 1989 (trucks 4-6 tonnes) so she is wrong. However there is a reason why RUC for heavy trucks has only gone up twice. The maintenance costs for roads have not gone up at the same rate as kms driven because of the efficiencies since 1989 of contracting out maintenance to the private sector on a competitive basis, instead of having the Ministry of Works and councils doing it. Something, no doubt, the Greens probably would have opposed as "privatisation". So revenue from heavy trucks has, pretty much, increased faster than road maintenance costs until recently, when the cost of oil has meant bitumen prices have risen considerably. So the point is, so bloody what Jeanette? Why should they go up faster than costs?

4. Jeanette says "If we want to see more of our heavy freight on rail instead of big trucks on the road, we need fair Road User Charges." Fair? You mean recovering more than the financial costs they impose? How about recovering all of rail costs? Oh yes forgot that, it's ok to subsidise the church of rail - but not roads.

Now there is no point reiterating the OTHER finding of the STCC study the Greens love quoting. You see the figures Jeanette talks of are total costs, but this doesn't tell you how much extra cost shifting a tonne of freight by rail or road imposes relative to those costs. Those are marginal costs (asleep yet?). As I have said before, the marginal environmental costs of hauling freight on a tonne km basis sometimes are higher by rail than by road (between Auckland and Wellington), sometimes similar (between Napier and Gisborne), sometimes lower (between Kinleith and Tauranga).

So you see, whether or not freight is greener by rail or road depends very much on the circumstances. However the followers of the rail religion don't want to hear that - it destroys the mythology they have around transport, which quite frankly is truly bizarre.

Will Zimbabwe run out of banknotes?

One can hope, now that according to the Daily Telegraph the German supplier of paper has cancelled its contract effectively as a political statement against the regime.

"The highest value banknote is worth Z$50 billion - which is presently enough to buy one can of baked beans."

If paper can't be sourced (which seems unlikely) then it may well bring things to a head - unless the regime effectively uses foreign currency amongst itself while impoverishing the public with its worthless "money".

Should liberal democrats take up rights of smokers?

Mark Littlewood in the Daily Telegraph argues that the Liberal Democrats ought to be more consistently liberal, and argue against the smoking ban in pubs.

Now I think the point should be more direct - this is about private property rights. The right of a pub owner (or any business) to decide what legal activities should be carried out on that property. Sadly most of those fighting for "smokers rights" don't argue that point, but think they have a "right" to smoke wherever they want - they don't. That right can only exist in public places and on private property is up to the person in legal control of the property.

However there is a wider point here. The Liberal Democrats are by and large not liberal. They argue for taxes for environmental reasons, state subsidies and intervention in others, the Liberal Democrats are the new leftwing party of the UK, wanting more government, more state spending and being opposed to privatisation. It's about time the party either went back to liberal principles or admitted the change and became the Socialist Democrats.

Truck protest

The symbolism of the truck protest is so very important - it's important because it demonstrates three things.

1. A sector that has been much maligned by this government (after all the buyback of rail is about heavily subsidising that mode to take business off of the trucking industry, with subsidies for coastal shipping about doing the same - REGARDLESS of the evidence that the government's own study demonstrates), has had enough. Labour is no friend of road freight, truck operators know this, and there are more of them than there are unionised railway workers or waterfront workers. Labour is not interested in a level playing field between road and rail, it wants to save rail because of a belief, not because of evidence. Trucking is a highly competitive industry with small margins, Labour has reduced those again without appearing to give a damn.

2. Labour broke a promise. Not one that can be obfuscated or ignored. Annette King said one thing and did another. So not only has it acted in a way that would be unpopular anyway, it has treated the road freight sector as if it doesn't even deserve the respect of openness. I have met Tony Friedlander a few times, he is a very upfront guy who likes to be informed and aware of what is going on, to avoid this sort of thing. It was always made clear that dialogue and frankness would result in at least a sense of mutual respect - Annette King has squandered this and paid the price.

3. The constant increases in transport spending have finally hit the level of tolerance. You see most of you lot swallow fuel tax increases and do nothing about it - you voted for the government to be re-elected twice. You swallow increases in rates for public transport too. Truckies make a living out of this sector. The increase in RUC has been justified because it would keep the parity between petrol tax and RUC for different types of vehicles - so because YOU accept fuel tax increases, RUC goes up as well.

So while you may cheer the truckies for putting the boot into government, ask yourself this...

Do you support a major upgrade in Auckland's rail system?
Do you support a major upgrade in Wellington's rail system?
Do you support finishing Auckland's Western ring route through Waterview with an underground tunnel?
Do you support building Transmission Gully?
Do you support building new southern and northern motorways approaching Christchurch?
Do you support putting Victoria Park viaduct in two tunnels rather than just widening it?

Just a sample, but you see the longer that list is, the more money is needed - and while you're willing to pay more fuel tax for this - the truckies aren't. So are you surprised?

So if these lines closed...

According to Stuff Dr Cullen has released a list of railway lines that were "threatened with closure" if the government didn't make you pay to buy the trains that ran on them.

Let's remember the government bought the track back a few years ago, so the lines themselves wouldn't close - someone else could have operated on them. Let's also remember that even before Labour was elected, the government owned the LAND under the track, so could always have let someone else re-lay track if the railway was going to be a good idea. So in truth nothing much would have been lost. However, let's look at the list:

- the Overlander. Not a line, but a passenger train service. Now given that Toll reinstated this train without subsidy recently, either it isn't going well, or it's a bluff. Either way it's hardly that important, just nostalgia that should say the government keeps it going.

- the North Island Main Trunk line between Te Kuiti and Palmerston North: Now that sounds like a bluff. If you close that, you essentially have dismembered the key north-south container route. If the electrified main trunk line isn't worth it then there is a serious issue about the viability of long haul rail freight in NZ. I personally doubt that would have been closed, but if the figures show it isn't worth keeping open then claims about its fuel efficiency and everything else seem specious.

- Northland: Assuming that means all lines north of Helensville (where passenger service ends or is about to), I'm hardly surprised. The trains are relatively short, lightly loaded, the infrastructure is very old, and the routes circuitous and long been height/weight limited. The scope to do more in Northland is low, which is why the proposed Marsden Point branch line doesn't have Northland Port lining up to pay for it.

- Taranaki: Assuming that means all lines from Marton (and Okahutuna) through all of the Naki. Well that means milk trains from Hawera aren't viable, nor is the container traffic. Now the line from the north to Taranaki is very expensive and hardly a surprise, but from the south is. I would expect Hawera south to be marginally viable, but the rest may well be questionable.

- Napier-Gisborne: No brainer really, a couple of trains a day is not a viable rail link. It would be missed for sentimental reasons, the logs in Gisborne leave through the Port of Gisborne, and the rest are trucked the short distance to Napier.

- Hawke's Bay line: Assuming this is all south of Napier, this isn't much of a surprise. It is at least marginal, although milk south of Dannevirke would seem to be marginally profitable.

- north of Wairarapa: Again hardly a surprise, main use is as a diversion from incidents on the Wellington-Palmerston North line. Nothing much to serve here.

- Greymouth to Hokitika: Expensive to maintain old line, a bit of dairy traffic but nothing that couldn't be trucked to Greymouth. The money on the coast comes from the coal traffic, which seems secure.

- Invercargill to Bluff and Wairio: Port at Bluff is served really by Southland which means distances too short for rail and for locations where no railway exists. Wairio is about coal and is a very old line. If the coal isn't worth moving then this line has no future.

Remaining then is Auckland commuter, Auckland-Hamilton-Te Kuiti, all of the Bay of Plenty log/timber oriented lines, Wellington-Palmerston North, Wellington commuter, Picton-Christchurch-Dunedin-Invercargill and West Coast-Lyttelton for coal.

If you leave out the main trunk (which I doubt would close), then there is a lot of rail left which appears to be profitable. So why the panic? Especially since the government owned the track anyway and could allow anyone else to use it (if they were so inclined).

UPDATE: So if you read another Stuff report it also says the Picton-Christchurch line is threatened, but then only talks about "lines in Northland, Taranaki, Hawke's Bay, Wairarapa and Invercargill." Not all then. Come on, can't the same news outfit get the same story consistent? Sheesh.

Labour legislates to allow more fuel tax

Yep according to Stuff, regional councils will be able to levy up to 5c a litre to pay for big road projects (you know the ones that the users of the road wont pay for) and another 5c to pay for transport other people use, like public transport, walking and cycling.

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Labour is making it seem soft by requiring it only be 2c a litre in the first year, but you can be sure that local government will take full advantage of tax powers that it can't be fully accountable for.

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This is an appalling way to raise funds for transport. It includes an excise tax on diesel, for the first time in many years, and will mean that again all motorists will pay for projects that only a few benefit from. It will also create an appalling boundary effect between regions. You can be sure service stations at the edges of Auckland and Wellington, which will be keen taxing regional councils will lose out, whereas those on the edges of Manawatu-Wanganui, Waikato and Northland will gain from having lower fuel tax. Fill up in Eketahuna not Masterton, or Levin not Otaki.

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This tax is unnecessary, current spending on roads and public transport is at a record high. There needs to be a serious review of the quality of that spending, and the ambitious plans of ARC to build a huge electric railway system that will need enormous subsidies need some cold-hearted hard analysis. Similarly WRC's love affair with Transmission Gully needs the same. Motorists are paying record fuel prices already, and to hit many of them for the benefit of a few, for particularly poor value projects, is not good public policy.

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National's first transport policy priority if the wins the election is to do a serious review of the economic efficiency of the projects likely to be funded by this measure, and the other major projects underway, both road and rail. Labour has poured a fortune into building roads and subsidising public transport, much of it long overdue, but I suspect it has gone too far, too fast and in the wrong ways. Of course this is what happens when other people's money starts being reallocated on the basis of politically determined strategies.