The story of NZ First

Winston Peters has built a political career on scandal so much that it would be ironic if the latest one led to his downfall.

From the late 1980s as a National Party backbencher Peters tried muckraking while Labour was in power engaging in the reform process, with the alleged grounding of a Cook Strait Ferry one of his odd (and failed) attempts at getting attention. However, he didn't have to wait too long to get a new one.

Winston first fronted National Party policy as a reaction to Labour's Maori policy. Winston was railing against the Treaty settlement process with concern about how the benefits of it wouldn't reach grassroots Maori. However, the 1990 election gave more, much more.

National was elected partly on the promise to abolish the hated Superannuation Surtax - that element of Rogernomics that wasn't about liberalisation but about penalising the retired who had made provision for themselves. A throwback to socialism to cover a budget deficit. You see National promised to abolish it, but didn't - sending hundreds of thousands of outraged pensioners into the arms of?

Winston.

You see around about this time Winston was developing a reputation as a maverick, after he got ejected from Cabinet, the likes of Winston, Michael Laws and more asinine individuals like Gilbert Myles and Peter McIntyre were moaning about the policies of the 1990-1993 National government, most of which were, to be fair, in National's manifesto. However, the betrayal over the Super Surtax hurt National bad. Core supporters looked for somewhere new to go, so in 1992 Winston Peters launched his own political vehicle with - NZ First. NZ First would be the party for pensioners, the party for those outraged by "special treatment for Maori", the party against "big business", the party against "crime". However it had another tinge, which you could see in the name - NZ First. It was nationalism.

Winston Peters railed against foreign investment (yes ironic given recent events), but most insipidly against immigration. He campaigned on the fears of white and Maori lesser educated New Zealanders that Asians migrants were "stealing their jobs" "bringing foreign culture" and "creating separate communities". Winston played his race card, and the votes came in. In 1993, Tau Henare joined him. From then, sensing Maori voters wanted an alternative to Labour, he stopped playing the "anti-Treaty of Waitangi" card and played anti-Asian, anti-foreign, pandering to the greedy grey grizzler vote, Maori voters and the talkback proletariat. He also went on endlessly about the "wine box" of evidence about allegedly dodgy financial arrangements to avoid tax in New Zealand - painting the picture of Winston against the big powerful corporates. Him the little man (apt when you actually encounter him in real life).

He did so well in 1996 saying "to get National out vote NZ First" in his campaign, he was able to play National and Labour like a tune, wandering back and forth between Clark and Bolger like a sleazy businessmen, wondering which prostitute he could negotiate the best price out of. Clark came with Anderton, which was less appealing, and Bolger offered him Treasurer, selling out his own Finance Minister Bill Birch (somewhat), so Winston went with Jim.

The result for Winston devastated his supporters. The Maori voters thought he'd keep Labour honest, and felt betrayed that he kept National in power. The greedy grey grizzler brigade who had a choice of Winston or the Alliance (offering Pam Corkery) aiming for the idiot "government can fix anything vote" also felt betrayed, because National was the great evil party of the "rich". Old people who genuinely felt betrayed by National on the super surtax (and rightfully so) were doubly betrayed by Winston, who went into bed with National.

They ignored that Winston actually ensured the Surtax was repealed in that government- it didn't matter, Winston's voters aren't smart enough to care about policies. He was tainted, and the antics of Tuku Morgan, along with many of his other MPs (remember Deborah Morris, Robin McDonald and the "Tight Five", all thought of as being wasteful and unproductive) hurt NZ First so much Winston nearly lost his seat in 1999 (63 votes between him and oblivion), and his party dropped below 5%.

However, while Labour won back the Maori seats, Winston in 2002 went back to bashing the Treaty of Waitangi, and back to immigrant bashing and crime. National did so badly in convincing voters that it COULD win, that Winston once again took protest votes with over 10%, but in 2005 faced the decline of the protest vote, as Winston offered nothing new. National sucked back half of his support, took his seat of Tauranga back from him, but Winston was wanted by someone.

Labour.

Labour just made it in 2005, after rallying the Pacific Island vote in South Auckland to vote, but it also found that its partner on confidence and supply - United Future, had been hit rather badly by the election, with a halving or so of its caucus. So while Peter Dunne was a reliable partner, he wasn't enough. So Clark had three options:
- Maori Party. That would've meant surrendering on the Foreshore and Seabed - too much bad blood and too much fear for Labour that it would be unelectable the following election.
- Greens. Undoubtedly workable had the Greens not wanted anything more on GE, or increasing welfare payments or the like. Certainly the Greens may have compromised to get into power.
- NZ First. Well, give away some tricks for pensioners, promise a wider harbour bridge with no tolls and give Winston a serious Ministerial portfolio, and he's happy. NZ First is largely inert.

So you see, Helen Clark tied her government to a man who during his career has sold opposition to the Treaty of Waitangi, opposition to Asian immigration and a barely shielded racism against Asians, opposition to free trade and foreign investment, and an overwhelming emphasis on populism and the politics of envy. A politician who always talked frequently about the dodgy dealings of the wealthy, the likes of Fay Richwhite, the Business Roundtable and other demons he liked to stir for the sake of the great kiwi tall poppy syndrome.

Now Winston has been shown to be the sort of person he himself would have finger pointed at and muckraked. With his Maori constituency as good as evaporated, his semi-literate pensioner supporters dying off, and anti-Labour talkback brigade evacuating to National, what is left for Winston Peters? Nobody every writes him off, he may still struggle through with barely 5% again or the voters of Tauranga may have a rush of blood to anything but their heads again.

However whatever happens to Winston surely will have ramifications for the party who relies on him to remain in government. Labour is continuing to sit with Winston. A position that will surely cost it, unless, of course, Clark is willing to jettison him closer to the election for maximum effect.

Something rather vile about this "purity"

For some time in the US, there has been a strong campaign by the Christian right to promote sexual abstinence among young people. Naturally, each to their own, and certainly abstinence is an option and choice.

However this report in Time has some rather disturbing overtones, overtones that at best smack of a pre-modern patriarchal ownership of daughter's bodies by their fathers, at worst a suppressed form of incestual slavery.

The Father-Daughter Purity Ball has girls as young as 4 engaging in dinner, dancing and testimony about the "pure life". 4??? What sort of psychological abuse is this that a little girl has to promise to her daddy to be a good girl?

The story of Kylie Miraldi, now 18, tells much of what this is all about:

"When Kylie was 13, her parents took her on a hike in Lake Tahoe, Calif. "We discussed what it means to be a teenager in today's world," she says. They gave her a charm for her bracelet--a lock in the shape of a heart. Her father has the key. "On my wedding day, he'll give it to my husband," she explains. "It's a symbol of my father giving up the covering of my heart, protecting me, since it means my husband is now the protector. He becomes like the shield to my heart, to love me as I'm supposed to be loved.""

So her heart is protected by her father (not mother no, and she can't be trusted herself can she?) until he decides it is ok to give it to her husband. Feminism anywhere? No. Like a piece of property this girl passes from father to husband.

Now I'm never going to decry the importance of fathers for daughters, or mothers for sons and vice versa. That is something sometimes ignored. However, for fathers to promise "before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity,"raises many questions:

What if your daughter prefers girls?
What do you do if she disobeys?
Where does she go if dad disobeys?

Yes it is one thing for girls to grow up safe, secure, confident and happy, but another to do so only in the shadow of a parent who implicitly owns their body until authorising it to be offered to another man.

Freedom of speech defended in Australia

The Federal Court of Australia has shown the worth of a written constitution by throwing out a law passed by the NSW Parliament as "unconstitutional". That law was specifically designed to criminalise "annoyance and inconvenience" to those attending World Youth Day hosted by the Roman Catholic Church.

Appallingly, the NSW state Parliament passed the law to minimise protests during the Pope's visit. NSW is not a theocracy. It is utterly absurd to try to limit protest against an organisation against which there are so many reasons to protest. Germaine Greer in the Observer is supporting the Court.

Greer rightfully said: "Freedom of speech cannot be maintained in a society where nobody ever says anything subversive or inflammatory. Academic freedom is only real if academic institutions exercise it. Freedom of the press cannot exist if newspapers censor themselves. In order to keep freedom of speech alive, the citizens must keep saying things that offend people, often deeply. Agitated though we might feel by some of the things people say, we have got to go on defending their right to say them. If we don't, our freedoms gradually shrink."

Indeed.

"Every few weeks, the British get into a bate about what it means to be British and how we might teach the foreigners who keep on turning up in our midst 'British values'. The most important legacy the British left the old Empire, now the disappearing and despised Commonwealth, is the package of British liberties, of which most important is probably habeas corpus, by which no one is to be imprisoned without trial. The Australian Federal Court justified its action in striking down the NSW law against annoying pilgrims by reference to the 'common law', the most precious inheritance any Briton can claim."

What is more disturbing is that not a single MP in the NSW Parliament could even start to defend this. Labour, Liberal, National, Democrat? Useless, every single one of them.

Winston wants to waste your money

Oh dear, he's running out of tricks from his hat, so now Winston wants to force you to pay to buy back businesses you don't want to buy (after all, you'd have bought them by now wouldn't you?).

The Dominion Post reports that NZ First would create something called "the New Zealand Fund" instead of giving you tax cuts, to make you invest in businesses that are politically (the word strategic is used, but that is code for political) important.

Oh he also wants to be softer on inflation, use more of your money to give subsidies away to politically and bureaucratically selected "winners" (see the great results Jim Anderton has had in doing that?), oh and he's bashing immigrants again, blaming them for "gangs".

Are the foreigner bashing, talkback calling, shallow minded worshippers of this short man who peddles xenophobia every three years still around in enough numbers to make him matter anymore?

After all - a vote for Winston in 2005 got you Helen Clark and Labour (he'll ensure his supporters quietly forget he's Minister of Foreign Affairs and NZ First grants Labour confidence and supply to govern). Why would anyone who wants a change do that ever again?

Mugabe sells Zimbabwe to new colonialists

Following on from the disgraceful vetoing of a draft UN Security Council resolution by the energy rich kleptocratic quasi-fascist Russia, with quiet approval by the amoral People's Republic of China, comes a report from the Daily Telegraph that Robert Mugabe now has a £4.5 million mansion courtesy of Beijing.

Why?

Because this self proclaimed defender of Zimbabwe's sovereignty against "British colonialism" has happily signed over the mineral rights of the country he keeps under his jackboot to the People's Republic of China. Colonialism surely? EU Referendum blog tells more, you see policy on sanctions is actually not up to the UK government, but the EU as a whole.

So, Mandela has his birthday and calls for more to be done about poverty - whilst South Africa's neighbour Zimbabwe suffers under a brutal thieving fascist dictatorship that sells out its wealth to another dictatorship. The UN Security Council remains totally impotent while it at the behest of Russia and China, both murderous enemies of freedom. Africa does next to nothing. Mugabe enjoys his last years with unimaginable wealth.

Stories from the Sunday papers

The UK Sunday papers are always full of interesting articles. Here are some I found particularly worthy of note:

Ahmad Batebi flees into exile: The Sunday Times profiles Iranian dissident Ahmad Batebi, who has been granted refuge in the USA, after fleeing Iran with the help of a Kurdish underground group. Batebi "had been beaten with metal cables, suspended by his arms from the ceiling and taunted with mock execution and had had his head dunked in excrement until he was suffocating". He had been given a death sentence since his image appeared on the front of the Economist during protests in 1999 against the Islamist regime.

Slave children forced to perform lethal acts in Indian circuses: The Sunday Times reports on how hundreds of children are sold into slavery in India with circuses, and how charities are trying to rescue them.

The 1000 ways the state can break into your home: The Sunday Times reports on the laws that allow central or local government officials the right to enter your home, business or car without warrant. Although to be fair, it only lists five and alludes to three more.

NHS spurns gift of free cancer drug: The Sunday Times reports on how the beloved National Health Socialists (NHS) refuses to administer a drug, which is safe and approved, because the pharmaceutical company producing it is offering it free. This is because it is against policy.

ETA bombs Spanish beach resorts: The Sunday Telegraph reports on a series of small bombs detonating on the northern Spanish coast, as the Basque terrorist organisation ETA continues to operate. There were no injuries.

Iranian adulterers to be stoned: The Sunday Telegraph reports on how eight women and one man are to be stoned to death for "adultery" in the Islamic Republic of Iran. "A man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies."

However, I don't expect feminists and peace campaigners to protest about that of course.

The devil riders of Darfur: The Sunday Times publishes an extract from Halima Bashir's book "Tears of the Desert: One Woman’s Story of Surviving the Horrors of Darfur". You'll read about the atrocities of Sudan's Janjaweed militia, a situation aided and abetted and funded by Arab governments and the People's Republic of China.

Teenage soft drug use - so bad?

In this age of fear and incessant orders in the media about how to behave, the article from India Knight in the Sunday Times today challenges one taboo that no mainstream politician dare touch.

Drug use and teenagers.

The mainstream media today is confused about teenagers. On the one hand they are to be cosseted and protected from the evils of alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, gentle fragile beings they are, on the other hand they need discipline, they need to learn what's"right from wrong", and they need to learn the consequences of their actions. Coincidentally the media loves them, for being where the fashion industry seeks when it wishes to portray beauty, where the music industry finds image and style to throw onto the soporific soma it calls music. As it so wishes, the media treats teenagers as a group (not individuals) who we need protection from and who need protection, who are reviled and feared, but also (secretly) desired and worshipped.

India Knight's article taps into your desire to protect them, by telling her own story about drugs as a teenager.

Before you type your outraged comment about "not understanding the devastation drugs can cause" etc etc, let me make it clear. Despite my position that drugs should be legalised for adults (but only along with some radical changes to tort law/ACC, state health provision and clarification of private property and contractual rights), I do not believe they should be legal for children, and that supply to minors should remain an offence.

So what does Knight say? Well you should read for yourself. However here are some choice quotes to get you thinking:

"I know we’re all supposed to tremble in our boots at the evil of recreational drug-taking but experimenting with drugs just seems to me normal – banal, really. Teenage binge-drinking is another story, because soft drugs don’t cause you to get cirrhosis when you’re still in your early twenties, or render you so out of it that you get raped, or leave the streets of Britain awash with vomit"

"By the time I went to university I had grown bored with the druggy scene and had evolved enough to get over the sense that drugs were exciting and naughty"

"All of which makes me think that a bit of teenage soft drug-taking is, for the vast majority, simply a rite of passage. Just as having underage sex doesn’t turn you into a nymphomaniac, so underage drug-taking tends, in the vast majority of cases, not to turn you into a tragic junkie"

"A clean-living friend recently spent a weekend partying (without artificial help) in Ibiza and couldn’t help noting that although every person he came across was on ecstasy, they were all smiling, kind, polite, courteous and friendly.

Compare and contrast, he said, with trying to walk through central London on a Friday night, when every other person is loud, obscene, aggressive and trying to start a fight and there’s always some poor sod on the night bus with a bleeding face, to say nothing of crumpled girls who are either crying or comatose with drink. “I know which I prefer,” he said, and so do I."

Now I know some die from drug use, and I know some have permanent damage from drug use, which of course is the same for alcohol, and the same for driving, adventure sports, diving and other activities. However, has prohibition made dying from drug use more or less likely? Is it more or less likely that drugs obtained in a criminal environment will be tainted or diluted by poisionous third substances? Is it more or less likely than teenagers will confess to parents about drug use if it is criminal? Is it more of less likely than teenagers will approach Police or go to hospitals if they fear being arrested rather than looked after if drug use goes wrong?

People will take drugs. Drugs if used too much, too regularly or inappropriately (e.g. with alcohol, other medication) are dangerous. People with dire lives due to inadequate, negligent or downright abusive parenting will be prone to drugs, alcohol, crime and reckless hedonism generally. Turning your back against drugs isn't going to make them go away. Those who call for zero-tolerance rarely mean what they say - they wouldn't have the Police raid every teenage party they could sniff out, and then use the means of intelligence and surveillance available to hunt down those who might use, so they could then execute search warrants on teenagers' bedrooms. Carefree liberalism also ignores the truth that drugs can be very dangerous.

That's why there needs to be a dialogue about change, part of that change is taking this out of the criminal justice system, but it is also about not treating all drug use as devastatingly destructive. Many young people use drugs, as they use sex, responsibly and without serious long term consequences. It is called experimentation and learning about life - but the lines between abstinence, responsible experimentation and reckless hedonism scare parents, understandably so. That fear is the reason to talk about it.

OH and while you're at it, read Barbara Ellen's column in the Observer "A little bit of sex education never hurt anyone". Her quote to stir up the middle classes must be:

"There is a point in your child's life when trying to stop them 'knowing stuff' is a bit like trying to put out a bush fire with a water pistol. And, short of dressing your kids in Amish gear, educating them in an underground cell at home, perhaps strangling them when they hit 13 or, indeed, guarding them like Cerberus at the mouth of Hades, there's not an awful lot one can do about it."

Liberal Democrats call for tax cuts

After years of being to the left of Labour, in calling for higher taxes and being the party worshipping the religion of ecologism, the Liberal Democrats have made another swing now - closer to the "Liberal" roots of this unusual third party in British politics (which once had a proud tradition of being more classical Liberal/less government, but which merged with a centre-left faction of Labour disenchanted when Labour went Marxist/Trotskyist in the early 80s).

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (nicknamed "Cleggover" after telling tales about the number of sexual conquests in his life) announced on Thursday that if elected, the Lib Dems would cut government spending by £20 billion to fund wide ranging tax cuts for low to middle income earners. Although he'd raise tax on high income earners, and assuming I'm bizarrely in this category, then there is no way in hell I'll vote Lib Dem. However, still announcing less state spending is at least new among the big UK parties, although the ways to do it are unconvincing. I doubt £20 billion will be saved by scrapping ID cards, cutting the number of MPs and not expanding nuclear power.

Sadly this rebranding is still dripping with the envy of the left, and full of green taxes which wouldn't be so bad if there was any substance to the call for less state spending. The truth is to cut state spending the Lib Dems have to be tough on the whole state sector, that means slashing subsidies for all sectors of the economy, tightening welfare and encouraging people to make their own choices for health and education, not the current statist behemoths. The Liberal Democrats in the past decade have become the party that many of old Labour have gone too, and it is full of busybodies whose views are given free range in The Independent, as the paper of the ecological finger pointer. Unless the Lib Dems can show a consistent vision of less state and less government in peoples' lives it wont be anything more than a younger version of new Labour. Meanwhile, nowadays it just looks like the 3rd playing political whore, ever looking for a market that the two dominant parties isn't looking after - but straddling the far left against the war in Iraq and the liberal right for lower taxes isn't going to cut it.

Taxpayer can bear no more!

So says no less than UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling!

In an interview with The Times he has said that UK taxpayers are at the limit of what they are prepared to pay for "public services". Well, that's not going to stop him taking more money from my pay packet assuming I get another pay increase this year and a bonus. Nope, can't see my taxes being capped.

Of course what this is about is that the UK Treasury is in a rather dire state. On the one hand, the British government continues to be profligate with its state sector, the most recent profligacy being the nationalisation of Northern Rock, a building society that had clearly loaned too much to too many who couldn't pay them back. It also is running a substantial budget deficit, £24.4 billion in the three months to June alone. National debt (government debt) threatens to rise above 40% of GDP and there is now talk of borrowing to pay for current spending, not just capital investment in hospitals, schools, defence and transport. On top of that tax receipts are down, as the economy slows down.

In short, the newLabour reputation for fiscal prudence is looking badly damaged. The solution it chooses? Borrow more.

During the good times, the UK government didn't run budget surpluses - which it could have to lower debt and build a buffer of financial capacity to borrow during bad times. No, it continued to pour money down the enormous fiscal black holes of social spending, subsidising more housing, little used (and extraordinarily well used) railway services and the every hungry NHS.

So, whilst the Keynesians out there aren't worried - they always advocated borrow, spend and hope, the truth is that more borrowing is going to hurt.

Borrowing more means the UK government is competing with others for credit - given how tight credit has become for businesses and homeowners, this will only exacerbate the problem. In short the state sector will be competing with the private sector for credit. This only makes sense if you think the state sector can spend money better than the private sector, which is dubious at best. So expect interest rates to rise, further hurting businesses and mortgage holders (and so further dampening down house prices).

Secondly, borrowing more, particularly from offshore, will be inflationary, as it pumps more money into the economy.

There is, of course, the demographic timebomb contained within the UK national debt. The £640.5 billion of national debt consists of 44.2% of GDP, and this is at a time when the population is progressively aging, putting a higher strain on an already undercapitalised "national insurance" fund (which is no more a fund than any other Pay As You GO tax funded system) for pensions and the NHS.

So with credit tight, housing prices (and much of the private sector savings) heading downwards in most of the country, fuel and good prices soaring, the trade union movement is also starting to be restless. Calling for state sector wage increases well above inflation, naturally not giving a damn about the rest of us who would be forced to pay for them.

The Daily Telegraph editorial on Saturday does suggest a different approach, which is simply to do what householders and businesses are doing in a recession. Look for efficiencies in government spending. When the government spends money it is taken from elsewhere, taken from consumers and businesses. So when it is spent on wasteful activities that generate little return it is destructive to the economy.

For far too long the answer to problems in the UK has been to ask the government for money, and the new Labour administration has obliged. It is time for the Conservative Party to out the waste of government, and to wage war against it. Some simple questions could be asked of all government spending by those in control of it:
1. Will the spending genuinely generate more money for taxpayers than was taken away?
2. Would taxpayers voluntarily cough up funds for this spending if given the choice?
3. What harm would happen if this money wasn't spent at all?

Those are questions politicians of the British Labour Party seem unable to ask, it's about time they were.

Free trade could ease global recession

In a couple of weeks time the Doha round will stagger on. If the governments of the EU, USA, Japan and poorer countries were rational actors they would treat this as an opportunity, a huge one - to inject some growth into the world economy. The Daily Telegraph tells how important this is.

It would be a chance for the price of food to be relieved by multilateral agreement to abolish agricultural export subsidies, to end non-tariff barriers on agricultural trade, and move towards decreasing tariffs and domestic subsidies. That requires the EU, Japan and the US - whilst Barack Obama seems distinctly unenthused.

It would be a chance for developing countries to respond in kind by reducing their tariffs and non-tariff barriers to manufactured goods and services. That requires India, Brazil and African states.

However there isn't much chance for optimism. In the US, the Democrat led Congress is in protectionist mode, and in the EU Nicolas Sarkozy as EU President is really not interested at all. Meanwhile, the Observer reports how Oxfam and ActionAid are showing their socialist colours, with little interest in the Doha round. It also presents Haiti as an example of how liberalising agricultural trade can go wrong - which of course, ignores the truth that without EU, the USA and Japan liberalising as well, and without the rest of the economy opening up, then Haiti was only going to be half successful.

EU bureaurats strangle consultation

When the EU engages in "stakeholder consultation on the Commission's smoke-free initiative" you might think it would at least allow a smokers' lobby group to participate.

No. According to the Daily Telegraph's Simon Clark the European Commission has no interest in the views of smokers. Liberal? I think not.

"World's worst building" getting minor upgrade

Not PC described it as such, as has the Daily Telegraph and Esquire magazine.

It's the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, which is itself an empty shell. It is a concrete monstrosity, it has no utilities or rooms. Construction started in 1987 as a showpiece against South Korea, the host of the 1988 Olympics (which the USSR and China, North Korea's then allies, refused to boycott), construction stalled in 1992 after US$750 million had been spent on it, and the aid flows from the USSR (and the USSR itself) had disappeared.

According to the Daily Telegraph, a handful of top floors are to be refurbished at considerable cost. I wonder how this will happen, given it has no elevators and rumour has it that it was so badly designed and built (by North Korean state "companies") that the elevator shafts are not plumb (so elevators are out of the question using those.

The reports of "refurbishment" are most likely to be the use of the structure for telecommunications according to the Daily Telegraph report. This is surely the building that would be one of the first to get demolished when this enslaved country is finally freed.

How nasty can someone on the left be?

"Poisonous, spiteful, and bitter" is how Idiot Savant described Dr Michael Bassett. I think he ought to look in the mirror.

He has posted on how Margaret Thatched is to get a state funeral when she passes away, and he's gotten nasty about it.

He described Margaret Thatcher as "Britain's most hated woman", but the link he places that comment on gives NO evidence for this. Even though it is the Guardian, the most leftwing mainstream paper. Controversial yes, but most hated? How does a NZ blogger make that call?

Then he says "On the plus side, it will at least give her victims a final chance to throw excrement and rotten fruit at her as she goes past". Yep, poisonous, spiteful and bitter for sure. Nice stuff really. David Lange led reforms as radical as Thatcher, but he didn't say that about him did he? However executing Saddam Hussein is "barbaric revenge" which even he didn't deserve. Apparently being filthy and disgusting at someone's funeral is ok.

Now I accept he'll have a Marxist position on her saying "She deliberately drove millions into poverty and destroyed British society in pursuit of a demented dream of unfettered capitalism. Her economic "successes" (if you can call them that) were won over the bodies of the poor. And that makes her a criminal, not a hero". Although there is NO evidence she "deliberately drove" millions into poverty, although there is mountains of evidence that decades of postwar socialism stagnated Britain into decline and locked generations into low income low education based jobs like mining. By no means is the UK close to unfettered capitalism, and the economic success is patently obvious with low unemployment, inflation and economic growth that much of Europe has envied. The "bodies of the poor" were kept there by decades of leftwing patronising and pretending that government could protect them from the economic reality that the British economy had to move on to be cleverer and more productive. Frankly Britain has only gone part way down that process, with mountains of whinges and moaning in much of the country about why the "guv'mint don't do nout for them".

Yes she mistakenly supported Pinochet, but her political opponents wanted unilateral nuclear disarmament (UK disarms, kicks the US out of the UK, but the USSR can remain a nuclear power), to remove itself from NATO (so basically being neutral between the free West and the totalitarian Soviet bloc) and remove itself from the EEC (so economic autarchy, ala Eastern Europe).

I for one am glad she defeated tired old unionist Labour in 1979 to turn the bankrupt British economy around, defeated the blatantly Marxist indifferent-to-the-USSR Labour in 1983, and the clothcap moaning reborn old Labour in 1988.

I can appreciate people not supporting her policies, but to say people should throw excrement and rotten fruit at her funeral is simply vile - but I guess the left is allowed to do that, much like some on the left turn a blind eye when picketers initiate violence against workers who don't want to strike, and their families. This is not a time to give a eulogy to Lady Thatcher, but for the handful of errors she made (Pinochet, Poll Tax and social conservatism) she did much more to save Britain than any other Prime Minister since Churchill in WW2. Indeed, the telling legacy is that no major UK political party even approaches destroying the bulk of her policies. That is worth far more than the venom of a leftwing New Zealand blogger.

Why is Wellington doing so well?

I thought Lindsay Mitchell's post showing that average weekly income in Wellington has soared ahead of the rest of the country is telling.

What does Wellington do more of than anywhere else? Where does the money from this come from?

Bob Geldof and Bono don't harangue this lot

Africa's kleptocratic leaders.

When Bob Geldof and Bono bleat on to the Western world about how it is "neglecting Africa" you might ask why they don't ask Equatorial Guineas's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema why his son needs a US$35 million Malibu mansion, or why Gabon's President Omar Bongo has a 19 million Euro property in Paris.

According to the Daily Telegraph "the French fraud body OCRGDF, an anti-corruption campaign group has accused a string of African politicians of plundering vast sums from the often struggling economies of their countries."

The story tells of the obscene theft by some leaders of the revenues their governments take from oil and mining operations "for the country".

Don't go too fast John

Now I know that libertarians get a little flack for being hard on John Key, but tell me this. When he reneges on past National Party policy that was implemented when it was in government - and completely repealed by Labour, is it any wonder? I'd like, at least, for National to hold similar policy positions today that it held in 1999, because after all, what has changed to cause National to want to shift its policy closer to Labour? More importantly, has Labour moved towards National's policies? Hardly.

So when the NZ Herald reports that John Key says National will "investigate" opening the ACC Work Account to competition, you have to wonder why it is so insecure about a policy that it implemented, whilst a minority government, in 1999. A policy Labour gleefully repealed, with legislations overriding commercially negotiated contracts and effectively banning the private sector from providing ACC services that it had offered. Why isn't it even mentioning the ACC Motor Vehicle Account, which at the time was in the "investigate opening to competition mode"? I mean seriously, why is providing competition to a government monopoly something that so frightens John Key?

Come on John - announce competition for the Work Account, investigate competition for the Motor Vehicle Account AND the account for all other compensation. It's the least you can do!

Fair Trade still isn't

Increasingly UK newspapers have taken to producing their own TV clips, which unsurprisingly are often smarter and more interesting than the BBC and commercial TV.

Today I present to you a piece from the Daily Telegraph as part of a series it calls "Holy Cows". It is presented by Sameh el-Shahat from Egypt, and it tackles just a couple of the myths of so called Fairtrade. For example, looking at how much of a margin is taken for fair trade and how much actually gets to the farmers, and secondly how fair trade is a distraction from the real trade agenda of free trade. Paying farmers a bit more for the raw commodity whilst maintaining high trade barriers that prevent them from selling the commodity processed is cheating them. I've said before there are many arguments against this well intentioned distracting fraud here, here and here. Oh and to some more liberal critics, yes this isn't a non-initiation of force, but it is fraud, and it assuages consciences while distracting people away from the real issue - trade protectionism. This of course, is deliberate, as much of the environmentalist/leftist end of the political spectrum actually supports that (OxFam notably doesn't).

The article is here

The video here

Greens smoking the railway whacky baccy

According to the NZ Herald Keith Locke wants to make you pay to reinstate the long gone Auckland-Whangarei passenger rail service. Why?

He says "With the price of oil rising, people are looking more and more at alternatives to car travel. Sure, there are buses, but a lot of people, including myself, like train travel - it's smoother and more sociable, plus rail travels a different route to the highway."

So he likes trains, and it's for meeting people and it's a different route. Yeah man all good reasons to take more money from taxpayers. Sheesh.

He says the line needs fixing to be up to passenger standard, well it would be. However let's forget cost for a moment. There is a very simple reason why there hasn't been any passenger rail service on this line for over 30 years.

Travel time by bus - Auckland-Whangarei: 2hrs 20-40mins
Travel time by car - Auckland-Whangarei: 2hrs 20mins (if you're really really good)
Travel time by air - Auckland-Whangarei: 35min plus assume 30min check in and 1-1.5hr time to/from airports
Travel time by train (when last operating, diesel railcar)- Auckland-Whangarei; 4hrs 10min

Want to waste near 2 hours socialising and enjoying a circuitous route by train?

NZ assembled locomotives? no don't, really!

The desperate cry of the economic nationalist wanting jobs for his electorate.

New Zealand hasn't assembled a mainline locomotive in decades, and there is a good reason for that. It is the same reason New Zealand doesn't assemble cars or planes - it is far too high tech to be done in a country that has a relatively high cost of labour and hardly enough demand to justify the capital needed to do it.

It harks back to the nonsense of asking Sony, JVC and the like to disassemble TVs manufactured in Indonesia or China, so that kiwi drones could screw them back together again. China does it from scratch because the labour is cheap and demand is high - New Zealand has neither of those.

So when Trevor Mallard, keen to spend your money says "It's probably a very logical thing to do from a currency perspective, from a value for money perspective.". Well Trevor it wasn't in the 1980s when locomotives were imported complete from the UK for the main trunk electrification, it wasn't in the 1970s when locomotives were imported complete from Canada and the USA.

Locomotives have been re-engined in New Zealand, but let's face it, your local mechanic can put in a new engine in your car - but you wouldn't trust him to have get all the parts from Toyota and put it together would you?

The last locomotives assembled in New Zealand were a handful of shunters in the mid 1980s.

Now the workshops have manufactured freight wagons successfully and economically, and successfully refurbished most of the passenger rolling stock on the network. However, the new electric units Wellington will be getting in a couple of years aren't being assembled in NZ for a good reason. Rob Muldoon and the North Korean style economics of "self reliance bugger the cost" are long gone!

Veitch and real issues

Tony Veitch would not be an issue for the government per se, if the state didn't own TVNZ. Then it would be the matter of a violent man and his victim, and whether or not charges were or weren't brought, and whether she sued for exemplary damages or not. It's interesting to people because he was such a public figure, and frankly what he had to say never interested me one moment.

However, whilst the media circle this issue like piranhas (nothing so feral as the media turning on its own), it remains painfully incapable of offering any educated debate on major political issues that have an impact upon the whole country. Like whether or not education should remain a state monopoly, like whether the state should continue to own the dominant free to air broadcasting channels, like whether the welfare state and the system of pay and neglect is causing more harm than good in low income parts of New Zealand.

Why do people read blogs after all? Yes some bait you to the left and the right, and you know in advance what their views are, but others also give some intelligent insights.

and these are the unpaid blogs, the blogs that aren't run by the newspaper websites. For example, simply because it is my profession, I have yet to see a single New Zealand mainstream media outlet give consistently well researched coverage of transport or censorship issues. The tendency is to quote whatever lobby group or mainstream political reactions there are and take it from there.