Turkey tries to improve relations with Armenia , sort of

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Turkish President Abdullah Gul has visited Armenia. The first ever visit by a Turkish leader to independent Armenia, which given the history between the two nations is important. However, sadly, Turkey seems still unwilling to accept its past.

President Gul said of Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian "He did not mention... the so-called genocide claims"

According to Wikipedia:

"The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace."

Between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenians died during this period. However arguing over numbers is beside the point. It is also beside the point to consider that many Turks also died in the ensuing conflict. There is little evidence that there was a deliberate effort to wipe out Turks by Armenians.

Modern day Turks have little to fear from admitting that the Ottoman Empire discriminated against Armenians, that Armenians sought independence, and the corrupt brutal Ottoman regime co-opted many Turks to expel and execute Armenians. Germans have had to face their role in the most well known genocide of all. Turkey needs to engage internally about this dark period of history, resist nationalist pride, and acknowledge the evil of the past. Precious few alive today are likely to have had any responsibility for it, and it would be a fitting first step before seriously considering secular Turkey's membership in the European Union.

UN says eat less meat to save the planet

The Observer reports that Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has called for people to have one meat free day a week (something I do regularly if you regard meat excluding fish), because of "the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems - including habitat destruction - associated with rearing cattle and other animals".

Now setting aside the harm this causes economies with a high proportion of meat rearing agriculture, setting aside that the UN produces nothing other than exhorbitantly highly paid and underworked bureaucrats, this call blunders in so many ways. It doesn't distinguish between efficient producers and inefficient producers. How much good would be done environmentally and economically if subsidies and protectionism for meat production was ended worldwide? Oh and at the same time, do it for all other food production, so that other foods are over or underpriced? Sadly British restauranteur John Torode makes the common mistake in thinking that buy local would do it, when NZ lamb has a far lower carbon footprint than British lamb, even after transporting it.

I've noticed how little success the Green Party in NZ has had in fighting the foodmiles myth in the UK - or perhaps how little effort it has taken.

There are reasons to moderate meat intact, mainly health ones. The evidence that a high meat diet may be strongly linked to heart disease and cancers of the digestive tract is quite overwhelming. However, there are also countervailing factors, such as high fibre consumption, fish oil consumption and red wine!

Joanna Blythman in the Observer reflects:

"Try telling the Masai tribesmen who have reared livestock for millennia that they should plough up scrubby Kenyan savannah and plant millet"

and points out the value of cattle grazing in some parts of Britain:

"Heather left untamed grows out of control - stringy and lanky - and strangles the growth of other plant species. Without sheep and cattle to graze on them, heather landscapes would eventually become barren and would start to pose fire risks."

As usual, the central planner has a simple solution that does not have universal application (and may be highly damaging).

For all that, it's still some highly paid bureaucrat telling people of all nationalities, what to do, whilst living an affluent lifestyle paid for compulsorily by them. If he talked about agricultural trade liberalisation as well, I might listen, because you see that offers enormous benefits for the world economics and environment.

Polly Toynbee was wrong about Gordon Brown

but she wont admit it. Her latest column in the Guardian calls for Gordon Brown, who she once saw as being the true Labour leader (she went off Blair), to be replaced.

However, pass on the article. It's the usual bunch of leftwing Keynesian tripe about increased taxes and spending more money on those who haven't earned it. Go to the comments section. There is true magic there. My favourite is this from "Cloutman":

Another great article Polly. Marvelous to see such an eloquent demonstration of the old saw - 'the convert is the greatest zealot'. You're really starting to hit the nail on the head - your ex-hero Gordon Brown is indeed as much use as a third buttock. As you have now come to recognise, you absolutely were 100% wrong with all that guff you used to write about how wonderful he was.

And I'll let you into a secret. You know all that other stuff you write about poverty and inequality? That's all bloody tripe as well.

David Cameron outdoes John Key

In the first year or so of David Cameron’s leadership of the UK Conservative Party I was critical of how much he was willing to step back from the proud tradition of Thatcher in rolling back the state. He was embracing the anti-rationalist philosophy of environmentalism, and inefficient producer interest shackled state institutions like the NHS. He didn't seem to stand for anything that different.

It seems Mr. Cameron has moved forward. With the gap between the Tories and Labour growing ever wider, he has become more confident. He now calls for the state to be wound back, if slowly.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph he makes it clear that the state must shrink to give the British public some of their money back. He is calling for tax reductions that are affordable. However more important he wants the proportion of GDP going to the state to shrink.

He opposes state intervention to rebolster the mortgage market, preferring to cut the punitive stamp duty - a tax on property sales.

He advocates the type of school choice ACT is promoting - the Swedish voucher system whereby the private sector gets funding per pupil as parents send their kids to the school of their choice.

However in New Zealand, after National had a wide gap with Labour, it became even more limp wristed and gutless! Bill English says that the growth in state spending should be less than under Labour. He doesn’t want the state to shrink, he just wants it to grow less. National rejected Rodney Hide’s suggestion that state spending grow no faster than population and inflation – which over time would be less than GDP growth. This modest proposal by ACT should be core National policy, on the basis that the state should be getting more efficient and if successful should progressively disengage itself from people’s lives.

Labour believes the opposite. Have no bones about it, Labour would increase the size of the state given the chance, as it has been. Working for Families is a part of that, free GP visits, student loan handouts, more state housing, state subsidised rural telecommunications, a grandiose underground railway for Auckland, greenplating a motorway so it costs $2 billion in a tunnel instead of a quarter that above ground. It is a vision of taking from everyone to giving to everyone, just in different proportions.

National is apparently incapable of fighting this, incapable of really articulating a vision that in a growing economy the state can easily and appropriately take a proportionately lesser role.

John Key is calling for tax cuts, but there is plenty of poor government spending that should be highlighted and cut. Come on John, if David Cameron can do it after 11 years of relatively centre-right New Labour, you can do it after 9 years of centre-left Clarkistani policy.

Kim Jong Il close to croaking?

Well Sky News says so and so does the International Herald Tribune citing a South Korean newspaper. This is on the basis that he hasn't been seen in public for three weeks (which isn't actually that much of a big deal in North Korea). The South Korean National Intelligence Service says he has heart disease and diabetes, which means he wont outlast his father (and let's face it Kim Jong Il since his teens has had a rich lifestyle, with little need to undertake any work), and apparently several Chinese doctors entered the country and remain there (though this could mean anything).

The Korean Central News Agency (which has an absolute monopoly on news from North Korea) of course says nothing of General Secretary Kim Jong Il. In fact its news reports are worth reading for tragic/humour value. Take this:

"Art performance "Really Good Country" of kindergarteners from across the country was given at the Pyongyang Schoolchildren's Palace on Sept. 4 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the DPRK...The numbers included small chorus "The General Goes along the Endless Road to the Front" and instrumental ensemble "Bean-based Milk Van Dashes Forward" which make one keenly feel the noble traits of General Secretary Kim Jong Il."

Well yes "Bean-based milk van dashes forward" certainly inspire feelings about Kim Jong Il, especially if stands in front of it. If there wasn't so much vile tragedy, murder, brainwashing and psychological abuse in this nightmare necrocracy (as Christopher Hitchens points out, the 14 year dead Kim Il Sung is still President), it would be really funny.

Meanwhile North Korea stopped disabling its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, after blackmailing the world to keep propping its vile regime up, and continues to enslave and torture children of political prisoners in gulags.

Meanwhile the Green Party says nothing about either.

UPDATE: Now, according to the Daily Telegraph, a Japanese professor claims Kim Jong Il has been dead since 2003, and doubles have been used ever since for speeches and public appearances. He has written a book called "The True Character of Kim Jong Il". I'm not convinced, but such a hermetically sealed state will create such speculation. It is also known that several dictators had doubles, including Saddam Hussein, and Albania's Enver Hoxha - the latter of which inspired the novel/story by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones called "Biografi", which is definitely a good read.

Swaziland's corrupt dictatorial misogynistic king

The highest rate of HIV per head of population in the world (41%).
70% of its inhabitants live on under NZ$0.61 a day.

So King Mswati, the absolute ruler of Swaziland, with 13 wives, who goes on multi-million pound shopping sprees with them, who suppresses political dissent, who owns helicopters, limousines and palaces, looks pretty vile.

Swazis actually like him, in spite of it all says The Times, or they are too busy to fight, dying or fearful of being arrested.

In 2000 he called for everyone with HIV to be branded and sterilised, which didn't happen. Then he called for a five year ban on sex, which he didn't respect, naturally.

Life expectancy is around 30 years.

You'll notice Bob Geldof, Bono, Madonna, Oxfam and other great advocates for Africa doing their bit to demand this vile corrupt kleptocracy be overthrown and for part of the King's wealth to be used to fund the infrastructure needed to provide some health care, instead of blaming the West.

Fortunately the UK supplies no official bilateral aid to Swaziland. That's a small relief at least.

What the hell is wrong with school choice?

If you're a parent, and your local state school doesn't deliver the education you want, and of course, you're a taxpayer, why is it unreasonable to expect that you should be able to send your child to another school - and for your taxes to follow where you send your child?

Now I'd argue that the parent should get the money back and pay the fees. Many would say "what if it isn't enough", which becomes another argument. I would say that YOU should help that family if you are so concerned, but also that private schools elsewhere often provide scholarships for kids from poorer backgrounds to attend. In the UK some private schools have up to 20% of pupils attending with fees part paid by such scholarships - and that is without anyone getting their taxes back. Imagine if parents had their taxes back, could choose the schools and those who could not afford would be helped by those schools, charities and their families. Yes, that's where Libertarianz aim for things to be.

Far too much for the Nats to contemplate, which is understandable - it couldn't convince people that most are quit generous.

However, there are steps along that path. ACT advocates school choice through vouchers, similar to what Sweden has implemented. The vouchers aren't actual pieces of paper, but each child has taxpayer funding that follows him or her, and the school receives that money, whether the school be state or private. The private schools can even be profit making (I know, and they don't even use the children for slave labour or their organs!).

It would be a simple step forward, schools would need to be attractive to parents - which is predicated on parents knowing what's best for their kids. Schools that succeeded would be funded on a per student basis, those that didn't would need to change or fail or face takeover.

National once had this policy, in 1987. Ancient history now. Parents choosing, schools accountable? Not any more.

A very modest step forward would be bulk funding. Schools funded on a per student basis, but only state schools. At least some accountability for performance. No. National can't even argue that schools should get money per student.

It's going to "plan talks on zoning", you know the law that means schools can only target students from local areas, with some exceptions. According to The Press, Education spokeswoman Anne Tolley said that "zoning "certainly won't go altogether" under National, but "I think there is some tweaking we can do"." So glad your political career is ambitious Anne.

PPTA President Robin Duff, (the PPTA being defenders of the right of teachers to get unified pay increases without any measure of performance or accountability), said "If you juggle things around with zoning, there are winner and loser schools". There already are.

The PPTA has long fought the right of funding to follow pupils, it has long fought teachers being paid according to performance, it fought vouchers and bulk funding. Nothing substantive will change in education until this bastion of old fashioned union monopoly dominance is smashed.

It is time for education to be about what parents want, not what teachers think is good for them.

National's ambitions for education are woeful. It is depressing that it can't even argue for funding for students to go to the school parents choose. Centrally planned education funded Soviet style is the status quo - and that's the education system you will keep getting under National.

Unless you are wealthy and can afford to opt out - which is perhaps why plenty of Nats don't care, why should they give a damn about children from middle class homes?

Teachers can use force to protect other kids

According to the Dominion Post, Police Inspector Chris Graveson says teachers are too cautious about using force to protect children in classrooms even though they are entitled to do so.

Apparently the issue is adolescents, some of whom are being sexually aggressive and violent towards other kids. Teachers, understandably terrified of being accused of being abusers themselves, fear touching kids even to defend others. It's dead wrong.

Inspector Graveson has made it clear that teachers should intervene, which is common sense of course. He points out that if some children are restrained, there is a risk they may bruise, particularly if they remain violent. The choice is simple though - a teacher is morally obliged to protect children from their peers if violence is witnessed.

Of course with a headline "Teachers can use force on kids", the "journalist" Lane Nichols is being deliberately provocative. It is not initiating force, it is using force to defend one child from another.

Teachers, particularly male ones, have been inflicted with a feminist led hysteria against any physical contect between themselves and their pupils, on the implication that it "could" be sexual and abusive. Few deny the seriousness of teachers sexually abusing their pupils, but teachers are well aware of the risks of any such allegations. Children are long taught to report "bad touching". However it has paralysed teachers providing comfort to upset children. I recall being hugged and held by a teacher when I was 10 because I was upset as my grandfather had died. I am grateful for that, I was crying and needed that comfort - it is natural, and this is what has been lost, to a feminist hysteria that has literally thrown out the baby with the bathwater.

Teachers must do the same to protect other pupils.

Of course the reaction of the eminently useless Office of the Children's Commissioner was to say "would be very surprised if it was official police policy to encourage teachers to use a level of force that would leave bruises on primary school children".

That is NOT what it was said. It is NOT encouraged, but accepted that it may be necessary if a child is resisting restraint and it is to protect other adults and children.

You see children are not always innocent.

8 years for fraud, 6 years for rape

Now I'm not privy to all the details of both cases, but if you wanted examples of how the criminal justice systems looks unfair to your average punter then check these two cases out:

- A welfare benefit fraudster is getting 8 years in prison. According to Stuff he defrauded taxpayers of NZ$3.48 million over 3 years, using 123 separate identities (yes he was determined)! An incredible amount. His flat alone contained NZ$868,000 in cash and NZ$355,000 in gold ingots, which of course is now state property (don't expect your share back though). Wayne Thomas Patterson appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. 8 years is a hefty sentence, but much of that is deterrent.

- The Waikato Times reports that Joshua Ruatekaumatahi Baker has been sentenced 6 years in prison for repeatedly raping a girl under 16. It was a four to five hour ordeal inflicted upon the victim. He warned her to tell no one, returned two weeks later to her bedroom undoubtedly to repeat his crime when she "alerted family members". We wont know if this lowlife is a family member, but we do know this girl is traumatised and it will last longer than 6 years. We also know that Baker lacked remorse, although he wrote a letter of remorse one wonders if this was following legal advice.

6 years for rape, with an individual who is probably going to pose a threat again. 8 years for benefit fraud. Should the sentences be reversed? Should the rapist be getting the 14 years maximum for sex with someone underage? What happens to both men when they are released?

My view is that criminals should have a points system. The crime you commit earns you "points" which when they go beyond 100 puts you in long term preventative detention. Property offences would earn no more than 20, violent offences could earn up to 100. The lesson would be simple. Criminal justice gives everyone one chance to rehabilitate, if there is genuine remorse and perhaps undiagosed mental illness. Depending on the severity of the crime there may be more chances or no more.

However first and foremost, sentencing should be relative according to the crime and impact on the victim. The taxpayer is less hurt by the thieving actions of a fraudster than a girl is by a rapist.

More girls kissing

Because it is Friday...

Why the Family Party is just so wrong

From a press release:

"Family Party Candidate for Northland, Melanie Taylor, is concerned over The Edge FM competition being held nationwide at 4.30pm today.

The station is encouraging girls to publicly kiss for about 20 seconds, with one girl/girl couple winning a trip to Melbourne to see Katy Perry, singer of the hit song "I kissed a girl and I liked it."

This follows this report in the Press about the contest.

Shouldn't the Family Party care about actions where people really get hurt?

No it shows itself to be oppressed, shame filled and judgmental.

Some simple points:

1. It is not a crime for two girls to kiss in New Zealand, never had been. It is not sex. It is not dirty, it is an expression of affection and love.

2. Most men (especially when you exclude gay men) and quite a few women like it. If you don't, then look away.

3. Why do you think it is acceptable for young children to be smacked in public but not for young women to kiss in public?

4. Many families believe that kissing is acceptable and positive, just because you teach that it is shameful and that children should grow up feeling shame about their bodies, doesn't mean the rest of us should buy into this abusive philosophy.

Leave peaceful people alone, let women snog in public and get concerned about something that hurts people you busybody ayatallohs!

Nats do little to ease ETS burden

So the Nats, according to the NZ Herald, will introduce a "forestry offset scheme to reduce the costs of changing land use from forestry to other purposes". So this effective attack on private property rights is barely changed at all.

The Nats will "put the fishing industry on the same level as other trade-exposed industries, and "grandparent" it for 90 per cent of 2005 emissions" except it wont be on the same level as the competitors in other countries.

The Nats will "allow small and medium-sized businesses to get involved in the scheme. Lower, or potentially remove, the 50,000 tonne threshold an emitter must meet in order to be eligible" which does beg the question as to the extent that such businesses could benefit from this, at all.

The Nats will "write a 50 per cent reduction of 1990 emissions by 2050 into the legislation as an objective". To what end? How will this benefit anyone in New Zealand?

Nick Smith has long been one of the most statist, anti-freedom National MPs. He is one of the key reasons the Nats wont seriously confront the RMA. It's about time he joined the Green Party and stopped infecting the Nats with his worship of the climate change religion. The bottom line is NZ does not need to damage its economy over this.

Daniel Radcliffe and the older woman

Well really, it's good publicity and good for him, it is reported in Details magazine. He chose someone older (saying it might freak some people out, so surely at least mid 20s) to lose his virginity to, not one of the UK's hundreds of thousands of easy young strumpets.

EFA has chilling effect on election campaign

According to the NZ Herald, Dr. Helena Catt, head of the Electoral Commission, has said in a speech that the Electoral Finance Act "has had a chilling effect on the extent and type of participation in political and campaign activity." This is due to the uncertainty surrounding the regime, and the difficulty in interpreting the legislation.

None of that is a surprise.

As we approach the final two months before the general election it should send chills down the spines of all New Zealanders, except those who want Labour to win no matter what. It should also tell National that it should repeal the Act in full. It is time for elections to be events of volunteers choosing to fund political parties and campaigns as they see fit, and the unabashed envy of the left (and its derogatory attitude that its supporters can have their votes bought by advertising, when it buys their votes with future taxes) should be consigned to history.

At the end of the election, it is up to an individual to choose to vote - and nobody cares less that so much of the mainstream media is biased towards statism.

Nats want government spending to increase

The story in the Press is that the Nats slam the 8% p.a. spending increases by government under Labour. This, of course, begs the question as to how much government spending can be cut without commensurate reductions in the services taxpayers consume.

Imagine if National had stayed in power in 1999 and remained in 2002 and 2005, continuing the same policies it had then. Government spending would be substantially lower than today. However National clearly believes it got it wrong in 1999, and Bill English now says:

"It will be a big challenge if we are the government to slow the rate of growth. You can't actually pull back the absolute amount of government spending"

Why Bill? Ruth Richardson did. Is everything the state does right? If so, why are you not a member of the Labour Party, since you're willing to accept its programme?

Bill English is saying is there would be "restraint" but no cap on government expenditure.

That's right. No cap. National is willing for spending to grow faster than inflation, for the state to grow except, I may surmise, it might be a 7% increase not 8%.

Great win that would be right?

National is truly being Labour lite. A watered down vision of a growing state, a state which grows faster than GDP, faster than inflation. Why would anyone on the side of smaller government be supporting this?

Another small hint to the Nats

So you're making everyone pay for school leavers to go to tertiary institutions to get high school qualifications. So you're saying that they wont be able to get a benefit unless they take up training.

hmmmm

Why should anyone under 18 get a benefit at all?

A cop wants a ban

Wonder if Sue Kedgley would be interested? A paid journalist has reported how a single cop in Southland has called for absinthe to be banned. (One man is a "call" for something you see not much news in Southland obviously?) Why? Because some fool teenager over indulged.

He was underage, so he presumably got access to alcohol illegally anyway. Nevermind that, Sergeant John Harris wants to take away the fun from others who KNOW how to consume absinthe. I can understand his desire to protect the ignorant, but cars kill people every day, people do stupid things every day - banning those things which gives others great positive utility in order to protect the foolish IS the definition of Nanny State. Sergeant Harris has good intentions, but he'd be better off focusing on young teens who wander the streets at night drunk and vulnerable, rather than using Sue Kedgley's favourite word.

The world of the Green Party - an investment

You have to love the evasion of the Greens. ETS creates a "billion dollar fund" like some magical money tree that you've planted, and you don't even have to think about what those who earned the money might have spent it on - you can spend it in whatever way you wish. Good that.

This fund is to subsidise the installation of insulation in all of the homes of people who OWN their properties (hardly the poor) who couldn't be bothered paying for it themselves.

So it is a tax on everyone, to transfer to those who are moderate to high incomes, to reward them for their own unwillingness to spend money on their properties.

Great!! You can see the Green Party incentives at work there, force other people to pay for something we think everyone should have, rewarding those who are least interested in getting what we want, and who are also undoubtedly able to do it if they so choose to do so.

Furthermore it's an "investment". Yes. You, in your insulated house, being forced to pay for someone else to get his house insulated returns $5 in benefits for every dollar spent. This evades who is paying and who gets the benefits. The person paying gets none of the benefits, the person receiving the benefits is getting a high ratio of benefits to cost because everyone else has been forced to pay for them.

It's like "investing in public transport", which is really about making people who never use it and wont benefit from it (except at the margins) to pay for something that others (who don't even pay half the costs of using it) will benefit from.

So the Greens are selling snake oil. Pay $1 and give someone else $5 worth of benefits.

The worst possible reaction to housing prices

Centre-left governments are funny with their contradictions. When property prices are rising beyond inflation, and people's family homes (and investment properties) are enjoying comfortable capital gains, governments are happy for people to enjoy the fruits of this. Indeed in New Zealand with property rates funding most local government activities, local government enjoys not only the fruits of property revaluations to increase rates, but they increase rates ANYWAY, so that local government revenues grow significantly faster than inflation.

Of course whilst property prices appreciate, there is concern about those unable to afford to buy a home. This is a public policy concern sufficiently that governments intervene in different ways including:
- Providing special schemes taking taxpayers' money to subsidise deposits for first home buyers;
- Using taxpayers' money to subsidise large scale new housing developments and new "eco towns";
- Using taxpayers' money to further inflate the cost of new housing, by building new subsidised rental housing (state/council housing).

Now there is an understandable concern about people being able to have housing, but by taking taxes off of everyone, subsidising people to enter the property market further inflates that market, producing a rather vicious cycle.

So what has the UK government done more recently. Property prices on average across the UK have fallen by around 10% in the last year. This creates problems for those who have 100% mortgages in areas of low forecast growth, so many thousands now have "negative equity" where their mortgages are worth more than their properties. These are part of the credit problem, whereby financial institutions lent money to those who were barely able to sustain buying property, and are now unable to shoulder the capital loss in the short to medium term.

This is painted as a disaster, which it is for those with negative equity, and isn't positive for those relying on property capital gains as an investment. However there is another side to this story.

Those not currently in the market can see an opportunity. With significant price drops, the catchment of people able to buy homes increases - though this is partly relative to the availability of mortgage finance. However, in effect the situation is self correcting. It SHOULD lead to less government involvement in the housing market as it has become affordable.

No. The UK Labour government couldn't let that one go, so what has it done? It is now letting local authorities buy up properties under mortgagee sales, it is also allowing councils to underwrite bad mortgages - in effect is propping up the market using taxpayers' money. The same taxpayers of whom some are suffering from decreasing property values and others who are seeking to buy - they are indirectly subsidising the market. A market where only part of the population benefits from this and many others lose.

It is a massive taxpayer subsidy to property owners, and it is vile and counterproductive for the UK as a whole.

Ross Clark in the Times damns the Brown government's moves saying "why should you want your taxes used to bail out feckless homeowners who borrowed too much during the boom and, worse still, the greedy banks that lent it to them?".

He points out that mortgage lending in the UK has dropped by two-thirds in one year, from £17.2 billion in July 2007 to £4.3 billion in July 2008. So while the market corrects itself, Gordon Brown wants to prop up those with an interest in part of the equation, because he figures the swing voters are in that category. The poor feckless lower income people vote Labour anyway, so screw them.

As Clark concludes:

"To force taxpayers to rebuild a stock of council homes now in a falling market is not just perverse; it would also rank alongside Gordon Brown's sale of gold reserves at the bottom of the gold market in 1999 as one of the most crass cases of public investment ever.

There are few problems so bad that a government cannot make them ten times worse by intervening. The housing market is no exception. Much as it will cause pain to those who bought too late into the dream of home ownership, the only sensible policy is to stand back and let the market find its own level."

The Times editorial today also sums it up:

the most fundamental objection to the housing package is that government has no legitimate function in targeting asset prices. The most direct way to assist first-time buyers is to allow an overvalued market to find its own equilibrium. There is no reason for the Government to seek political salvation by populist appeals to the economic interest of existing homeowners.

Indeed, and in the meantime some may be looking to snap up some good buys!

Labour does good on trade

A free trade agreement with ASEAN is a good step forward, opening up access to relatively close and fast growing markets in South East Asia, and so congrats to Phil Goff for this. Indeed, the pursuit of a liberal open trade agenda is one of the few areas I'll give Labour credit for continuing, as it is a fairly bipartisan activity politically.

Now the Nats can build on this and take it further, as Labour has tended to ignore areas like audio-visual services and the like. I expect only the Greens, NZ First and perhaps the Maori Party will question it, because they share xenophobia about foreign made goods, and the Greens in particular find the idea of consumers and producers interacting voluntarily to be some breach of people's sovereignty!