Nanny State UK - stop wasting food!

Never content with letting people make their own choices, waste food and money if circumstances allow it, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is calling for supermarkets to cease " 2 for 1 " deals that it says encourage people to buy more food than they need.

At what point do people in the UK tell these vile little finger pointers to royally fuck off and mind their own business?

Apparently it costs the average household £420 a year in food that it throws out. To which I say, so bloody what? How many households buy clothes they rarely wear? How many people buy a book they never read? In other words, who the hell made the state the guardian of waste like some sort of lemon sucking protestant ascetic during the war?

The Times reports "Households throw away 4.1 million tonnes of food each year that could have been eaten if it had been managed better, according to Wrap, the Government’s waste watchdog". Waste watchdog? Hardly, Wrap IS a waste - it is a waste of something people DON'T choose to spend money on and throw away, their own money.

Furthermore, the state continues to treat people as idiots and they respond in kind "Defra and the Food Standards Agency are also preparing new guidance to reduce confusion about date labels on food. Wrap research found that millions of people did not know the difference between “sell-by” and “use-by” dates". So bloody what? So there are people who are either illiterate or stupid. It's THEIR problem, it isn't everyone else's.

Fortunately, the retail sector has some courage and will resist the moves:

"The British Retail Consortium said it would resist attempts to restrict bogofs. “Retailers know their customers better and should be allowed to decide what’s the best policy,” a spokesman said. People who took home more than they could eat should give it to family and friends, he added."

You might hope that a Tory government would reverse the endless screed of "do what we say" parenting by the bloated state here in the UK - but with Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne already saying there will "have to be tax increases" to cover the budget deficit, I hold precious little hope. The party of Margaret Thatcher is long gone.

2 degrees wants more government help

Remember I posted that 2 degrees started with an advantage over Telecom and Vodafone? Well it’s becoming more clear that 2 degrees isn’t interested in competing on a level playing field. No. It wants the government to make life easier for it by forcing its competitors to charge less than they are willing to access their networks. According to NZPA it has a "Drop the Rate, Mate" campaign, which isn't as friendly as it sounds - it wants the government to use force to help its business out.

It wants mobile termination rates (which Vodafone never had regulated in the 17 years it has competed with Telecom) to be regulated because it thinks the cost is too high. Not that it would know since it isn’t interested in building much of a parallel network to the two major players, it never has been. 2 degrees, like Vodafone (when it was owned by BellSouth in the beginning) has few customers, so as a result it pays other mobile phone operators more than it receives in kind.

In fact I recall not long after BellSouth entered the New Zealand market, the CEO of Bellsouth (USA) visited New Zealand, and demanded from the then Minister of Communications (Maurice Williamson) that he regulate Telecom so BellSouth could get a fair share of the market. Williamson told him politely that New Zealand is not the United States, you can’t get politicians to do your bidding in New Zealand as easily as he thought, that BellSouth knew the regulatory environment when it invested and so should actually get out there and compete on its merits. Within a couple of years BellSouth, having underinvested in the network, and done little to attract new customers sold the business to Vodafone, which has been a roaring success.

However, after nearly 9 years of Labour intervening and regulating in the telecommunications sector, 2 degrees isn’t interested in competing on merit, but using the state to give it a hand up – again.

It has former blogger and centre-left (well he is now) journalist Matthew Hooton to do its PR. Moreso it has an interesting ragtag mob of supporters. Consumer New Zealand has always supported regulating producers, so no surprise there. TUANZ is pretty much the same, always using never producing. NZUSA has long been a platform for socialism and the Federation of Maori Authorities has a corporate interest, as it owns the frequencies (thanks to the last Labour government) that 2 degrees uses. However, Federated Farmers is an odd one. I am sure in the interests of fairness, Federated Farmers might agree to the prices of all of its commodities to be reduced so that consumers can pay less for food and woollen items.

Steven Joyce should tell them the same as Maurice Williamson. Go away and compete. 2 degrees already has an advantage in that it didn’t pay a market price for its frequencies, it already doesn’t need to build the infrastructure of Vodafone and Telecom because it is reselling their capacity (by voluntary agreement). Grow up and move on. The last Labour government agreed, it should be a swift dismissal by Joyce.

"Mr Hooton said the new minister would face "ferocious corporate lobbying"." with apparently a large campaign, which wont be cheap, spent on lobbying - money presumably that could be used to build more of a network so less termination charges could be paid.

So, it is pretty clear 2 degrees is NOT a normal private enterprise, but one that seeks to make money through government favours. It would rather waste money engaging in currying favour with government than to build a network so it would need to pay less to its competitors (or indeed to negotiate with its competitors for better rates).

It's a company that believes in using force to get its own way, a company that I don't believe is moral to support.

Helen Clark and UNDP sycophancy

If there is one thing that keeps me in the UK and which frustrates and angers me the most about the idea of returning to New Zealand (or even to Australia), it is how journalism almost does not exist in the mainstream media. At least with the Times, the Observer, the Telegraph, FT or even (cough) the Guardian, there are journalists – people not afraid to research a topic and ask hard questions, to be a devil’s advocate for the opposing point of view. Sadly, it appears that metaphorically sticking your tongue up the arse of your subject is de rigueur among New Zealand reporters

The most recent example is the sycophancy dressed as journalism being trotted out by Tracy Watkins in the Dominion Post, who has written two articles profiling how Helen Clark is getting on leading the UN Development Programme. Watkins could just as well have been working for the Labour Party to produce such inane twaddle. The first article would be better seen in the NZ Woman's Weekly or the like. I do love how the talk of scandals was brushed to one side though, "disgruntled staff" you see. Because, presumably, you only listen to disgruntled staff when they work for the private sector, not the altruistic people loving United Nations.

You can of course read the latest instalment here, which goes on about five crisis that have ravaged the world in the past year (food, financial, fuel, swine flu and climate change), though you might ask some hard questions about how many of these are real and how many still exist (food and fuel disappeared as financial came).

Watkins could have asked what have been the achievements of the UNDP, how many countries it has weaned off of aid since it was formed in 1965? The answer of course is none.

Watkins could have talked to critics of aid, especially UN based aid operations. Funnily enough she didn’t.

Watkins could have asked how much of the NZ$5 billion budget of the UNDP goes on administration, how much the average UNDP employee receives in income (tax free) and the UNDP’s travel budget? In other words she could have discussed why UN employees are some of the best paid (and least hard working) “public sector” workers in the world.

So the article is essentially an interview with Clark. Nice for Watkins to get her jaunt to New York of course, but that could have been done over the phone. Watkins could instead have used her trip to meet with different groups who have differing views of the UNDP or the UN, but that might have upset Clark – and you can’t do that can you?

She finishes with a so-called “factbox”, which says precious little.

It talks about New Zealand’s aid, ignoring aid raised through private charities and distributed through such charities, like World Vision (who I do NOT endorse). For example, talk about the aid given by the US ignores that around 80% again is given and distributed privately. In short, aid doesn’t have to involve force.

So what could Watkins have done? Well maybe she could have looked at the long list of scandals involving the UNDP and asked Clark what she’d be doing about it on her NZ$500,000 tax free salary. Scandals? You mean the New Zealand MSM hasn’t been doing its job to find out what the UNDP is about? You betcha! Watch this space.

Daily Telegraph odds and ends

Greek woman sets fire to British sexual assaulter: After resisting his advances, after pouring Sambuca on him to cool him down, the guy wouldn’t stop. So the woman set fire to the man, to the cheer of onlookers – gave herself to the Police claiming self defence. The young man’s dad said “He's not the kind of lad that gets himself in trouble – he's a kind-hearted, generous boy”. He now has second degree burns for being a drunken fool.

HIV genome decoded: Scientists at the University of North Carolina claim to have decoded the entire HIV genome, raising hopes of new treatments to neutralise the virus. Given that drug therapy in recent years has significantly extended the life expectancy of HIV carriers, this may well be the next chance for a breakthrough.

Beetroot juice increases stamina: The University of Exeter's School of Sport and Health Sciences has found that a glass a day of beetroot juice can help men work out for 16% longer.

Woman who drink two glasses of red wine a day have better sex lives: You might expect the University of Florence to undertake THIS study. Overall, women who drank two glasses a day scored an average of 27.3 points (sexual arousal points), compared to 25.9 for those who drank one glass and 24.4 for the non-drinkers. Whether this continues to rise with each glass is a moot point, but it no doubt makes the drink feel like it is better! No doubt it also improves the sex lives of the men (and even women) they meet too.

BBC move to cost over £800 million: Whilst businesses sometimes shift from London to the regions to save money, the BBC’s move of the sports department and Radio 5 to Manchester is going to cost money. Proving once again, how unaccountable government organizations can be when the money they have to spent was taken by force by people who may not want its services anyway.

Iran executes 24 drug traffickers in mass execution: The second biggest (known) executor of prisoners continues form (I say known, because there are more than one or two governments that do this rather informally and privately). 219 people are known to have been executed in Iran since the start of the year. The total last year was 246. Of course many don't sympathise with drug traffickers, assuming of course the said individuals had a fair trial, that they were violent and forcing drugs on people or supplying children, hmmm. Oh and Iran has a horrendous drug addiction problem, demonstrating how effective a deterrent this is!

Sonia Sotomayer confirmed as latest US Supreme Court judge: True to those who value what is skindeep over character, most of the publicity about this is that she is a Hispanic woman. That is a first for the US Supreme Court. However, this is also a woman who once said "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life”. Objective is she? The Cato Institute thinks she wouldn’t be in the running if she were not Hispanic.

Gather thee all at the altar of the train

Idiot Savant once again swallows hook line and sinker the totem of railways always good in supporting the unaffordably ambitious plan to build a bespoke high speed railway network in the UK. The existing network of lines that sustain speeds of 200 km/h not being truly high speed in the European context.

Let's see where he makes mistakes and avoids facts:

1. No high speed rail network could eliminate short haul flights in the UK. All plans are largely to connect London with one corridor going to Birmingham, Manchester and Scotland. I wont be pinning hopes on people flying between Aberdeen and Norwich, Inverness and London or Southampton to Manchester getting trains. Many who use domestic flights connect at Heathrow for long haul flights, which is less convenient if done by rail then air. Indeed, whilst many air routes have competition, rail services curiously don't - but funnily enough when it involves trains, those on the left don't seem to care about competition.

2. He blames the lack of high speed rail on privatisation. How odd. Privatisation of rail in the UK started in 1994. The first TGV line in France opened in 1981. The first Spanish AVE line in 1992. The first German ICE trains in 1991. The first Italian high speed line in 1977. So get the picture? What stopped it happening in the UK when it was state owned? The nationalised British Rail was a bastion of disastrous investment decisions, like the high speed APT train, that was abandoned with the technology sold onto Fiat, which has since made a commercial success of it (so that it made the trains now used for the UK's West Coast Main Line between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow). Indeed, getting new rail lines built in the UK is partly a problem of a planning process that is glacial due to prolific NIMBYism. The truth is that British Rail took passengers for granted, and subsidies, and just let its market share of domestic travel erode over decades. Funny how rail patronage since privatisation is now at its highest level since 1956.

3. He claims this will tackle climate change, but this buys into the myth that a subsidised railway with half empty trains most of the day is better for the environment that privately owned commercially operated flights. Airports are privately run and commercially operated. Airlines equally so. A high speed railway in the UK would be government funded, commercially run and carry considerable subsidies. Its major users would be business people, those willing to pay for fast travel. Why should their movements be subsidised? Is it not better that all users of transport pay for whatever the market charges, regardless of how high it is?

4. To top it off he says "its something we should start thinking about now" . By we he means the New Zealand Government, he wont be setting up a private company, seeking investors and borrowing money to do it (how absurd!), he wants to force you to pay some consultants to start thinking about it. A high speed railway in New Zealand, where most lines are already unprofitable and unviable, and where the highest speeds achievable at the moment are 105 km/h on short segments(whereas the UK reaches 200 km/h on it's NON-high speed lines), and with a topography that is obviously unsuited to long straight and flat pieces of infrastructure, is utter nonsense.

However, when you drink from the religion of the railway, then all spending is an "investment", all new lines are "great ideas", and everyone should be made to pay, whether they use it or not! The cost of this idea for the UK is conservatively put at £30 billion, but is likely to be far higher. The government's own Eddington Report criticised the idea of building high speed railways as poor value. He said:

"Given that domestic aviation accounts for 1.2 per cent of the UK’s carbon
emissions, it is unlikely that building a high-cost, energy-intensive very
high-speed train network is going to be a sensible way to reduce UK
emissions." and

"However, new high-speed rail networks in the UK would not significantly change the level of economic connectivity between most parts of the UK, given existing aviation and rail links. Even if a transformation in connectivity could be achieved, the evidence is very quiet on the scale of resulting economic benefit, and in France business use of the high speed train network is low."

You see the faster the train, the higher the carbon footprint, and building very long new strips of bespoke infrastructure in itself is a very carbon intensive activity. However, my argument is more simple. If the private sector wont invest in it, why should taxpayers be forced to?

At a time when the Labour government has squandered hundreds of billions of future taxpayers' money on growing the state and unnecessarily nationalising banks that should have been left to fail, this is just more wishful thinking by a government keen to bribe voters with the taxes of others - before it gets consigned to history in the 2010 election.

Meanwhile, the economically and environmentally illiterate rail junkies will cheer on pillaging other people's pockets to pay for their pet projects, not letting facts get in the way of their excitement. Much like what has already been happening on rail in Auckland.

UPDATE: It seems all three main UK political parties are ignoring quality advice and choosing to support this cargo cult of high speed rail. One consultant has already noted that 49% of UK domestic flights are to other islands or to destinations like Aberdeen and Inverness which couldn't conceivably have a high speed rail link. The Conservatives are stupidly claiming that cutting this small number of flights will remove the need for a third runway at Heathrow. Another case of flaky Labour lite?

An aviation lobby group fisks the idea further, and points out the hypocrisy of a Liberal Democrat MP flying instead of going by rail, because of speed. The Lib Dems are like the Green-lite party of the UK.

Even rail expert and enthusiast Christian Wolmar is sceptical, and this is in the traditionally socialist (and pro-Labour) Guardian. So is this the Transmission Gully of the UK? A massively expensive project that politicians get overly excited about, make wild claims about the benefits it will bring, but the truth is that it is largely an illusion?

Don't hit girls but...

All sounds good that. Apparently a national strategy on domestic violence includes teaching primary school kids that hitting girls or women is wrong, according to this Daily Telegraph report. Of course it's wrong, initiating force IS wrong.

However there are two rather important issues with this.

1. Why just girls? Isn’t a message that you shouldn’t hit girls going to imply you should hit boys? Or is the quite right agenda against domestic violence, led by a feminist blindness to boys or men being victims of violence? Young men are the most likely victims of assault. Why not simply say it is wrong to first hit anyone?

2. What of self-defence? In some cases it IS appropriate to hit, that is if someone ignore the rule in the first place. Flight or fight are legitimate approaches, but children need to know that if they are hit, they should be able to retaliate appropriately.

So wouldn’t it preferably just to say kids that using force to get your own way with someone else is wrong? Get them to find examples of when that is done. In fact, get them to find cases where people want to use force to get their own way, or get others to use force for them. Most political parties do, for example.

So what happened in North Korea?

Bill Clinton knows, but he's not talking. The Korean Central News Agency is claiming, understandably, that he apologised:

Clinton expressed words of sincere apology to Kim Jong Il for the hostile acts committed by the two American journalists against the DPRK after illegally intruding into it. Clinton courteously conveyed to Kim Jong Il an earnest request of the U.S. government to leniently pardon them and send them back home from a humanitarian point of view.

However, this has been denied by an official. Obama has also said progress will only be made in relations if North Korea no longer develops nuclear weapons and stops engaging in provocative behaviour. Perhaps Kim Jong Il wanted to make peace before he passes on, what bigger coup would be than for a sitting US President to shake his hand - the great imperialist aggressor recognising it had met its match in the General Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party.

Former US Ambassador the UN, John Bolton, expressed concern that Clinton's visit showed how the US could be blackmailed through its concern for its citizens caught up abroad. The Daily Telegraph fearing that this shows North Korea being rewarded for its ill behaviour - something Bill Clinon ably did as President.

You see, the DPRK-USA "Agreed Framework" under Bill Clinton was that North Korea would be supplied with energy and technology in exchange for giving up nuclear enrichment. A total of US$1.5 billion (contributed by USA, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and others) was spent on light water nuclear reactors and heavy fuel oil so that North Korea could have a nuclear power industry that did NOT produce material able to be used in nuclear weapons.

However, North Korea had its cake and ate it too. It continued uranium reprocessing, continued developing nuclear weapons AND took the technology and oil. Why did the deal happen? The Clinton Administration foolishly thought the North Korean regime would collapse after Kim Il Sung died in 1994, though the evidence for this was fairly slender. Maybe the assumption is the same now, that Kim Jong Il's death will see major change for the regime. That, at least, has more credibility.

You see Kim Il Sung had ruled North Korea with an iron fist since the country was founded in 1948, Kim Jong Il entered the public eye in 1973 and was anointed successor in 1980. Plenty of time to ensure enemies are dispatched before his father died in 1994. It hasn't quite be long enough since then for Kim Jong Un.

So, will we find out what was said between Kim and Bill? Whilst the two women have been fortunate, does this episode provide a chance to break down barriers with this antagonistic brutal regime, or does it bolster it?

Clinton gives Kim Jong Il some propaganda

After arresting two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, at the border with China, North Korea has been keen to extract booty from the US for their return. It now seems it has extracted a great propaganda coup, by getting Bill Clinton to meet Kim Jong Il.

The two women were arrested amid the following claims expressed by the Korean Central News Agency, which holds a monopoly on legal reporting from within North Korea:

“The investigation proved that the intruders crossed the border and committed the crime for the purpose of making animation files to be used for an anti-DPRK smear campaign over its human rights issue.”

“At the trial the accused admitted that what they did were criminal acts committed, prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it” or so says the Korean Central News Agency.

The TV channel the women worked for is owned by Al Gore (it’s an internet TV channel) and Al Gore had offered to go visit, but the North Koreans refused, wanting a big hitter. So Billy has come to Pyongyang. Not the first ex. President (Jimmy Carter has been more than once), but certainly it will have a significant impact, especially now CNN is publishing images showing Clinton with Kim Jong Il.

You can already see it by the headlining of the article on the Korean Central News Agency website – which tells not of why he is visiting.

The poor women arrested and languishing in a North Korean prison of course face a grim future if not released. Their “crime” of course was to enter North Korea illegally, to report on the scandal of women trafficked to China for money.

Obviously some good will come of the visit if the women are released (without a bribe) and if anything useful can be gained from meeting Kim Jong Il (to get some sense of how well the chap is). However, Kim Jong Il will see it as more important, as Clinton is the highest profile American to visit North Korea in years.

However, one small group of sympathizers of tyranny will be upset. The Facebook group supporting the arrest of the women is here. A vile little North American retard who is either too stupid to read Orwell or too evil to embrace individual rights joins a small coterie of fools who are no better than modern day holocaust deniers.

So once Bill Clinton returns, presumably with the women he sought to recover (he can't fail, can he?) then some questions need to be asked:

1. Were the women be released at no cost to the US taxpayer? (presumably excluding the likelihood that they are already paying to fly Clinton there).
2. Did Bill Clinton ask that North Korea take major steps to reduce its oppression of its own people, in particular cease imprisoning children as political prisoners (from infants)?
3. Will the move have helped to reduce the tension on the Korean peninsula, including the risk of an aggressive war by North Korea?
4. Will Clinton's visit be likely to reinforced the current regime or help encourage liberalisation and reform?

My guess is the answers are no, no, no and reinforce the current regime.

Pacific aid a waste of money?

The NZ Herald reports that Foreign Minister Murray McCully says that aid to Pacific Island countries is achieving little, despite millions of dollars being poured into the "Pacific Islands Forum" (formerly South Pacific Forum).

Quite right. The Forum has long been a typical intergovernmental organisation, filled with less than busy hardworking bureaucrats, more keen on earning high salaries that achieving much at all. In fact it demonstrates quite clearly what the approach to aid in the Pacific should be.

Firstly, if there is to continue to be aid, it should go to private charities and organisations that are motivated to achieve charitable good in the region.

Secondly, state aid should be phased out. New Zealanders who want to help Pacific Island states should donate their own money themselves (as they should for all states). Government aid creates appalling incentives of dependency, little interest in the recipient weaning itself off aid, and strong incentives to engage in rent seeking along the way. Rent seeking by bureaucrats, by aid distributors, by suppliers to aid agencies and ultimately recipients.

In other words, offering something for nothing will do precious little to generate a sense of independence, or to perform well. Remember. Africa has received increasing aid over 50 years, and much of it remains a basket case. By contrast, the likes of Chile and South Korea have adopted different national policies - of being oriented towards entrepreneurship, investment, governments that allow enforcement of contracts, and respect property rights (as well as having, now, vigorous open liberal democracies and independent judiciaries).

So when Murray McCully wants to "encourage Governments to adopt good fiscal practice, undertake some economic reform to become more globally competitive and encourage trade, and ensure aid is not squandered". He might want to tie aid to such reform, before phasing it out. After all, if you want the Pacific Island states to grow up, it might be about time to show them how and let them be.

Hamas kids TV praises suicide bombing mother

CNN reports that al Aqsa TV (run by Hamas) has broadcast a children's show (Tomorrow's Pioneers) where it glorifies that a mother blowing herself up in a suicide bombing is doing more for her children than anything else. It is designed to convince children that if their mother gets ready for such a "mission" then it is for their good. In other words, Hamas is promoting a death cult to children.

None of this is new. Al Aqsa TV has used this childrens' programme variously to promote "wiping out the Jews" and promoting martyrdom as a good thing for children.

Want a summary of the episodes? Try this Wiki article, and see for yourself how to have childrens' programming that worships death, murder and suicide. Think how much this puts back any efforts at peace with Israel, and why so many Israelis think so little of Palestinians when some of them elect these sorts of people to government.

Prepared to treat Israel and Hamas as morally equivalent still?

The nonsense of relative poverty

Socialists have long argued that measurements of poverty should not be on the basis of actual subsistence - those who do not have the basics for survival of food, shelter, clothing etc. - but on relative wealth compared to rest of the country within which someone lives.

This of course means that the poverty level for those in your average developed modern Western country would be abundant luxury for someone in Bangladesh, Chad or Paraguay. Relative poverty is a combination of socialism and nationalism (why, for example, is the comparison only with people in the same country? Wealth is not distributed by governments, well not good ones).

The BBC has on its website a graphic comparison of what relative poverty means. It comes from a report which states that pensioners in the UK are poorer, relatively speaking, than pensioners in Romania. That seems intuitively nonsensical, but it is what relative poverty does.

Move the interactive graphic on that website to see what happens when you change the median income. If incomes rise rapidly, so does the poverty threshold. The wealthiest country has a poverty threshold that would be above average income in many countries, but if wealth was destroyed systematically (the Khmer Rouge and Zanu-PF being recent examples), the numbers in poverty could arguably decrease- because the poverty measure drops dramatically.

In other words, relative poverty damns successful economies by the implicit demand that "something be done" to ensure everyone gets their incomes uplifted by prosperity, whether they contributed to it or not. It rewards failed economies, because if people are roughly on average destitute, it's "ok" - at least there aren't too many people wealthy compared to those seriously destitute.

Of course this sort of analysis of "relative poverty" fuels the likes of Help the Aged in the UK, and the Child Poverty (in)Action Group in New Zealand, who simply demand more money be thieved from taxpayers in the middle and upper incomes, to give people at the bottom more - regardless of whether they did anything for it. It encourages dependency and wants to reward poverty, regardless of whether poverty actually means not being homeless compared to not being able to afford Sky TV, or fill up the petrol tank.

After all, two of the groups people appear most concerned about for poverty are the elderly and children. The elderly could see poverty relieved if they saved for their retirement and weren't taxed on their retirement savings or income. Old age is rather predictable. The poverty of children is the fault of their parents, who are (or should be) primarily responsible for paying for them. Breeding isn't compulsory, but too many think it is a right that demands others to pay for it. Both could be addressed in part by personal responsibility, with those who are poor through misfortune able to be helped by charities. You don't notice the Child Poverty (in)Action Group ever raising funds to feed some children do you? No - it just lobbies for the state to put its hand in your pocket to pay more welfare.

Poverty will, of course, always exist, if the relative poverty measure is retained. There will always be people who through incompetence or misfortune earn less than 20% of the median income. If you think that is a problem, then instead of expecting the government - such a quick response and competent authority as it is - to do something, why don't you?

That, of course, isn't really the answer anyone on the left likes to promote.

2 degrees isn't competing on a level playing field

Now there has been much publicity about the new mobile phone network "2 degrees" with many TV ads.

What 2 degrees isn't telling you is a little about its history.

How did 2 degrees get its radio spectrum? Telecom and Vodafone both bought their spectrum in open competitive auctions. 2 degrees didn't get it that way.

You see, it was part of a deal that the last Labour government did to shut down Maori claims for the radio spectrum (which of course was often used before 1840!). The Waitangi Tribunal at the time believed that radio spectrum is a taonga and so shouldn't be sold, Labour allocated one of the 3G mobile phone spectrum networks to the "Maori Spectrum Trust" at a discount price, with some taxpayers' money to "develop it". Neither Telecom nor Vodafone ever used taxpayers' money to develop its cellphone networks. That Trust teamed up with a Zimbabwean company (Econet), which has since sold its shareholdings on. 2 degrees has had various private sector backers along with the Trust.

So, in effect, 2 degrees has radio spectrum at a discount rate, and has been subsidised to develop it.

It also isn't developing its own network to cover the country, no, it is using Vodafone's, at commercially negotiated rates, but always with the threat of the state regulating them, and with the threat that if Vodafone or Telecom told it to "go build your own" network, the government may regulate for access - like it already has to Telecom's network.

Greens think parental choice is a myth

Yes, I am sufficiently annoyed by the Soviet style brainlessness of the Greens again to post.

Catherine Delahunty, who has long demonstrated a belief in mysticism and passionate embrace of the violent state, has made a rather banal post in Frogblog about educational choice. If anything it should simply harden attitudes against the likes of her and her friends holding their hands at the windpipe of the education sector.

She sees parental choice as a “myth”. Apparently if it is not important to Catherine, it shouldn’t be to other parents. Parents making choices means they are outside her control, and they may make choices she doesn’t approve of. Maybe sending children to Montessori school, or Catholic school. I doubt she would embrace either. She describes vouchers as a failed idea. It’s not my favourite idea, but in Sweden it has been a roaring success – it has seen umpteen private schools open – commercially run ones too (yes, the horror) AND there remains universal education, as every child gets an education voucher.

It is such a failure that the only political party in Sweden to still oppose it is the Left Party, formerly the Communists, who once supported the Soviet crackdown in Hungary in 1956. Take from that as you wish.

Delahunty quotes another person with similar intellectual rigour as herself, Liz Gordon (who famously said “there is only so much freedom to go around”), who apparently has critiqued ACT policy (although this does not appear anywhere online). The concern appears to be that the real agenda is to commercialise schools, which of course can only be bad.

Then she goes off on one of her typical non-sequiturs, because she talks about a school she likes, which is state owned. Fine. However, whilst examples of good state schools and teachers exist, there are also poor ones. Does she give a way to deliver good ones? No.

She says “quality public education” should be available everywhere, not just where there are “well resourced” parents. Which of course is a subtle use of language that tells you where she is coming from.

First, it should be public education. Why? She wont say. It’s as ideological as my commitment to getting the state out of education, but it’s something she doesn’t want to go on about.

Second, “well resourced parents”. Who resources them? Oh, maybe they got their own resources themselves, through their own efforts. Ah, but that upsets Catherine’s ideology that the world is a big bad capitalist place where fat cat men “allocate resources” unfairly, instead of to those who she loves. Not rather that people get resources through their own efforts, intelligence and convincing people that what they do is worthwhile.

So in conclusion she wants to “demand more for all children”, demand from whom Catherine? Oh, the parents who you don’t think need choice. Taxpayers without children, who are imposing the lowest “environmental footprint” as a result. Yes, take more from them to pay for those who do breed.

The mindlessness of it all tragically encapsulates the empty headed vacuous nature of the Green Party. Private education is “bad” because it just is, “commercialisation” of education is “bad” because it is (even though there is no indication ACT believes in this). Public education is “good” because it just is. School vouchers have “failed” without a shred of evidence, and parental choice is a “myth”, even though tens of thousands of parents choose now with their own money, also paying taxes to educate their children. As long as private schools exist there will be choice, but it is denied parents who cannot afford to pay twice for their kids’ education.

The Greens want everyone to have “quality public education”. Who defines quality? Well they do, since they want the state to provide it, and parents to have no choice. So what does this mean? The embracing of an education model that is little different from that seen in the former communist bloc. State education for all, providing the same “quality” (defined by politicians, bureaucrats and the monopoly suppliers of labour – teachers’ unions), meaning all children get the same start.

Oh and those parents wanting choice? Just fuck off you selfish “well resourced” commercialising “freedom” junkies. You just want to take from poor children, and not have to pay for the education of other kids. You want schools to be run as businesses where kids are brainwashed with your ideology, instead of our ideology. You don’t care do you? (time to cry).

I'll conclude with a statement from a former Swedish Minister of Education, Per Unckel “Education is so important that you can’t just leave it to one producer,”. Indeed you might even go to the biggest provider of private education in Sweden and see what you think.

After all, how long do you continue with the system you have before deciding how badly it performs?

Regular service WILL follow shortly

Apologies for those who usually read this blog, I've been very slack, for a long list of reasons that I wont bore you all with. One of which has been extraordinarily long commutes for the past month which have taken up effectively 5.5 hours of each day, as well as some time off over the northern summer.

Between that, work, sleep and time with the missus, I really couldn't be arsed feeding my daily wisdom (or angry doggerel) to you all. I've enjoyed not giving a damn about the blog ratings as well - there is life outside the laptop!

However, regular service will return shortly. I've long thought I should blog quite separately on matters that I get into Aspergers' Syndrome like detail about - like transport policy and air travel experiences. So I will be doing that, and linking to it from here if it has national political implications.

Most of you couldn't give a rat's behind when horror of horrors, British Airways drops food except breakfast on flights less than 2.5 hours for people sitting in cattle class. Similarly, the intricacies of how the government structures the transport sector or the new Auckland megacity does it, are a minority interest.

However, I will continue to blog both on NZ and the UK as my main spheres of interest.

Starting again next week!

Labour and Greens hit (in the UK)

The Norwich North by-election occurred because former MP Ian Gibson (Labour) had been pilloried as part of the Parliamentary expenses scandal. He resigned in protest, after allegations that he had let his daughter live in his taxpayer funded flat rent free (taxpayer funding the mortgage), and then sold it to her at half market price - in essence, the taxpayer subsidised a gift to his daughter. So quite rightly he resigned.

Gibson won the seat at the last election with 44.9% of the vote, against Conservative candidate James Turnbridge with 33.2% of the vote. A healthy majority, given he had held the seat since 1997.

However, this time Labour has been hammered into second place. The Times reports Chloe Smith, 27 year old Conservative candidate has won with 39.5% of the vote, against Labour's Chris Ostrowski getting only 18.2% of the vote. The Conservatives picked up votes nicely, but Labour has lost more than a quarter of the total vote in Norwich North.

Now Labour will be slightly relieved by this, as there had been expectation it may be battered into third or fourth place, like the earlier European elections had done, but no. Labour has held onto second. The Liberal Democrats will be very disappointed that their share of the vote has dropped also from 16.2% in 2005 to just under 14% this time. Hardly a ringing endorsement for a party that sees this part of the country as ripe for the picking.

The bigger surprise was UKIP, which did stunningly well to come fourth with 11.8% of the vote, clearly picking up much of the former Labour vote. This has to disappoint the Greens which came fifth with only 9.7% of the vote. While the Greens will say this is a great result, up from 2.7%, the truth is that the Greens hoped this would be their breakthrough to rival the big three parties. The Greens are second on Norwich City Council with more seats than the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats combined. Many Norwich residents trust the Greens with their rubbish, roads and council housing, but not in the House of Commons. For UKIP to pip them in this by-election (as happened at the European elections), demonstrates the limited appeal of the brand.

Of course a wit would notice there was a UK Libertarian Party candidate who did far far worse, but given that party has existed for two years and put up an unknown but keen 18yo as the candidate, it isn't surprising.

NZPA stuffs up again

Yes, someone once again shows how all too many New Zealand “journalists” are not up to the mark.

You see much of this report is quotes from Helen Clark, but the imbecile who reported it (remember journalism isn’t about quoting verbatim what someone said, but actually interpreting it) starts the article with “Former prime minister Helen Clark has called for world leaders who promised aid to developed nations at the turn of the millennium to deliver on their promises”

Aid to “developed nations”? What, to EU member states, Japan, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? Who promised that? The word is developing. What fool wrote developed? What moron can’t proof read to save himself?

Now the material issue here is whether aid is a good thing. I’ve just finished reading the rather dated book “Lords of Poverty” by Graham Hancock, which despite having a centre-left tint to it, comes clearly to the conclusion that aid is harmful and destructive. That despite billions of dollars going to developing countries since the 1950s, it has not made a material difference. State aid primarily goes to wealthy people in poor countries and wealthy people in rich countries (who go there to “help out”), and private aid is an industry in ripping people off.

Aid is a salve for consciences, as the biggest sources of developing country poverty are quietly ignored:
- Corrupt, thieving governments that don’t protect individual rights, property rights or have judicial systems to manage disputes over these (such as contracts). This is generally the rule in Africa;
- European, Asian and US protectionism against developing country goods, particularly primary produce;
- Intellectually and morally bankrupt socialist economic philosophies that damage wealth creation in favour of grandiose “national” plans and ideas.

Helen Clark feeding the patronising dependency attitude that has kept many a politician and bureaucrat well fed (especially the likes of those now working for her) is counterproductive. The adage trade not aid is right

However, you can’t expect New Zealand journalists to engage in any critical investigation or reporting on the UNDP when some don’t know the difference between developed and developing countries!

Ireland facing massive spending cuts

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph writes a depressing forewarning to those in countries engaging in massive debt funded state “stimulus” activities. He does so by pointing at Ireland, where the news is truly bleak. Given Ireland has a similar population to New Zealand, it is worth those who preach “borrow spend and hope” to give pause for thought.

Ireland, you see, has gone down the stimulus line. It bailed out its banks, guaranteeing all deposits. The result is a debt trap imposed upon the state. The interest is now crippling the Irish government. The Irish government is currently borrowing 300 million euro a week to cover this, at penalty interest rates for fear it will default. You see Ireland has external debt of 811% of GDP, albeit this includes substantial private debt held by financial institutions, but it also includes government guarantees of bank debt and the nationalisation of banks.

A report commissioned by the government aims to abolish the budget deficit by 2011, and recommends drastic cuts:
- 17,300 public sector jobs to go;
- 6,900 teacher jobs to go, with commensurate closure of many schools;
- Public sector pay cuts
- Welfare benefit cuts of 5%
- Child benefits to be strictly targeted
- Hospital A&E fees to be increased.

Without such drastic measures, Ireland risks defaulting on its debt, making future borrowing near impossible, forcing Ireland to cut even more drastically. The article expresses fear that other Western countries, such as the UK and the US, face similar risks. UK national debt is now over 90% of GDP, France is approaching that level, Italy is at 120%.

You see, Japan has been engaging in fiscal stimulus for well over a decade now, to no avail. Public debt is estimated to be 240% of GDP by 2015. Hasn’t quite worked has it?

The truth is that Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and Kevin Rudd have all embarked on a gamble with your childrens' taxes - fiscal stimulus is being undertaken because the short term political gain is to soften the recession - and because none of them have a political instinct for less government - and none of them are willing to take a gamble on "do nothing you can't fix it".

After all, do you think people in the British Labour Party, US Democratic Party and Australian Labor Party sit around thinking how they ought to get out of the way of people?

Oh and if you want to read the report on cutting Ireland's public spending go here, and here. You'll see it isn't half as dramatic as many are making out.

Goff lost the fiscal plot

Seriously!

Phil Goff. The man who brought student fees to universities, arguing for a massive expansion of the welfare state? Labour has lost the plot.

To call for the partners of those who are employed to be eligible for welfare benefits is impractical, unaffordable, immoral and destructive. Consider quite simply how many hundreds of thousands of people would then be welfare beneficiaries, consider what disincentive it creates for work, consider how much more tax on the employed partner would be needed to pay for this.
John Key says there are no pixies printing cash (he's not quite right there), but this harks back to when the Labour Party regarded fiscal prudence as some plot by the bourgeoisie.

Consider how parasitical this would make so much of the population. Husbands shouldn’t pay for their wives, or vice versa, no. The state should, and hubby can run off with ALL of his earnings (more highly taxed) and wife can just bugger off and enjoy her benefit. If the notion of the welfare state as a safety net is widely accepted by the majority of the population (doesn’t make it right), what does the Labour view of the welfare state tell you? That half of the population should be supported by the other half – with a leviathan state to enforce, violently if necessary, the leech like demands on the productive, to pay for everyone else.

Think more how many people would be grateful for this kindness, how many would vote Labour to keep it, and what a travesty of modern liberal capitalist society such state enforced dependency would represent. Not a society of free individuals pursuing their interests, desires and being what they want to be, but a society where half work hard to sustain themselves and their families, and another family at the same time, and the other half take their “entitlement” from the loving state – knowing they don’t ever have to really be accountable for it.

It’s what the Greens have always really believed in, and what Labour now espouses. So imagine a teacher asking a classroom of kids. How many want be paid for working, and pay half of what they earn to the government? How many want to be paid for not working, getting all of it from the government?

Not your's to spend Phil!

Phil Twyford, who is being touted by Brian Rudman as Labour’s big leftwing challenge in Auckland, is damning Rodney Hide’s local government policy for Auckland, with a “Not Yours to Sell” campaign regarding Auckland local government “assets”.

The campaign is to stop the government allowing the new Auckland council to sell whatever it wishes on the same basis that it currently can buy whatever it wishes. In other words, it levels the playing field ideologically between more and less government, as far as you can do. The “people’s assets” of course are anything but, since if they ever generate a financial return, the money is typically spent for local government to do more, not to reduce the burden of rates. Similarly, whenever they are a liability, few on the left are keen to let them go.

Rodney Hide’s call for a cap on rates which basically means that rates can’t increase beyond inflation, is barely a cap at all. Rates have long gone up as property values increased beyond inflation, as has the roles and activities councils have sought to pursue.

I have a simple message to Phil Twyford. Ratepayers' money is not your's to spend, or councillors. It's not your damned money! Twyford says Labour believes in "trong communities" which is code for "strong councils". Sorry Phil, communities don't exist because councils make them so, people fund raise, establish businesses and help each other out without some mediocre left wing loud mouth like Richard Northey having his hand in their wallets.

However, Twyford is of the school of thinking that government exists for the good of everyone, and if it decides to spend your money, you should gladly surrender it for the greater good (and the likes of Twyford to get a living while he spends your money).

In an age when people are scrimping and saving, and the private sector cutting back, it’s time for local government to do so as well. Rodney Hide's proposals wont decimate local government, at best they'll just stop things getting worse. What is needed at the very least is for councils to be told what they can do - and be given the next two years to get out of everything else they do.

That's the way it is, farewell Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite was the first real TV newsreading personality, reading CBS news from 1962 to 1981. His passing brings memories of the sort of newsreader he was, as he was the man who saw Americans get their news from television, for better or for worse.

CBS has much on its website about its greatest newsreader (the successor, Dan Rather was shockingly biased and fell on his sword as a result of it), who is remembered for coverage of the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing (forty years almost to the day) and the Vietnam War.

Curiously, the age of the high profile national news anchor in the US has faded away, as the generation AFTER Cronkite (Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw) resigned, died and retired respectively.

Cronkite had his own views, which came out most clearly AFTER he retired from reading news, but he was always the dignified face of US network news. Perhaps only David Brinkley of his era came close to his status.

It is no longer an age where network news is the dominant source of news for Americans. CNN, MSNBC and Fox News all provide national 24 hour news reports, and the internet has eaten away further at audiences. So there wont be another Cronkite, as television news struggles to gain audiences by pandering more and more to being folksy, and covering stories of ephemeral meaninglessness like celebrity happenings. So farewell - he set a standard as perhaps the world's first globally known television newsreader.