Freedom of speech may have caused the Holocaust

Who said that?

A member of the House of Lords. A member of the British Labour Party.

Baroness Uddin said this on BBC Radio 4, when interviewed on the 5pm news on 16 October 2009. You can hear her say this at 38 minutes into the one hour programme, (perhaps only if you are located in the UK), until Friday 23 October (when week old programmes get removed).

What did she say?

"I think when we say that freedom of speech is important and I will support to the death the freedom to speak but we have to remember that maybe what gave rise to the mass genocide of the Jews in Germany was freedom to speak”

Baroness Uddin was lauded for being the first Muslim woman member of the House of Lords. She has already faced scandals of claiming for a second home in Kent, that she doesn't live in, while she lives in London, in a "housing association" home - in other words, public housing which exists for the poor, with rents a fraction of the private sector market rates. Prima facie there is evidence of her pilfering the public purse for her own benefit.

She is a new Labour pinup, her list of achievements are:
- Diploma of Social Work;
- Labour councillor in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets;
- failed to gain candidate selection to stand for Parliament for the 1997 election.

So New Labour put her in Parliament anyway, in the House of Lords.

A woman who thinks freedom of speech is equated with Nazism.

Why is she not being pilloried by the British media, unless this wasn't picked up? (Notice the BBC didn't challenge her on this outrageous claim).

I'm gobsmacked.

(Hat Tip: Old Holborn who is righteously furious about this and far from speechless)

Manipulation of language

This post is NOT about the merits of deregulating and privatising ACC - you can take it for granted, I'd fully support full competition for all ACC coverage and privatising ACC itself. It is a debate about language used in politics, to manipulate public opinion. It is not a manipulation confined to those I am accusing in this post either.

In the debate about ACC, those on the left consistently refer to the policy of opening ACC up to competition as "privatisation".

Yet these are two very different things. A government owned entity can remain state owned and face private sector competition without it being privatised.

How? Let's take some of the major deregulations in recent years.

- Until 1982, trucks were banned from hauling freight further than 150km (with some exceptions), with rail having a monopoly. Was opening up long haul freight to competition the privatisation of New Zealand Railways?

- Until 1983, Air New Zealand had a statutory monopoly on domestic airline routes, in that competitors were only allowed by and large if Air New Zealand granted permission. Was the removal of this monopoly the privatisation of Air New Zealand?

- Until 1989, TVNZ had a monopoly on television broadcasting, and in 1991 the television market was fully opened to anyone who wished to purchase frequencies, satellite capacity or lay cable. Was this the privatisation of TVNZ?

- Until 1998, it was illegal for anyone other than NZ Post to deliver mail for less than 80c. Was opening up the postal market the privatisation of New Zealand Post?

So why talk about opening up the ACC market to competition as privatisation?

It's simple - it is the manipulation of language for political effect.

You see most people would not disagree with allowing competition. Prohibiting competition seems to be a bad thing, as it means a monopoly can take advantage of you, can underperform, and you have no choice. It doesn't even have to expect the threat of potential competition.

The left cannot attack ACC reform based on the word "competition", because most people will go "So what? I like competition, I don't like monopolies."

Privatisation is a bogey word. It brings up images of an "asset" being sold for less than it "might be worth", of control transferring to those horned devils called "foreigners" (spit) and it not "being our's anymore", even though people complained about it when it was.

So that is why they lie, explicitly, about the proposal. To have people think it is about selling ACC - which, sadly, would not happen in this term of the government, rather than opening it up to competition, which might.

So it should be challenged, repeatedly. NZ Post has NOT been privatised, neither has TVNZ, just because both are fully exposed to competition. Why should ACC be described as privatised if it is also subject to competition?

UPDATE: Both Frog Blog and the Standard repeat the lie, blatantly.

UPDATE 2: The Standard doesn't like being challenged. Take this nasty little remark about "learning my lesson".

Tennessee ouch

(WARNING - CONTENT BELOW AND THE LINK MAY SERIOUSLY OFFEND)

This article is already popular.

However it does beg some curious questions...

In Tennessee, bestiality was apparently legal until recently, the crime committed being trespass (quite right to prosecute for that), but this just makes me go "ow":

Tait was also identified in court papers four years ago as being part of a horse sex 'party' in Washington state that led to the death of a man from internal injuries

I don't think the horse was quite the victim, given this statement "there wasn't enough evidence to suggest animals had been injured".

BNP kiwis so what about communists?

The NZ Herald has used the leaked list of BNP members to call on New Zealanders belonging to the party to "explain themselves".

The BNP is odious, but quite why people should be contacted and harangued by a journalist is questionable. Any cursory look at white supremacist forums will find New Zealanders posting on them, and the same with communist forums, or indeed most political persuasions.

However, would the New Zealand Herald do the same if it found New Zealand members of the far-left RESPECT Coalition, led by the odious George Galloway (who misses the Soviet Union and has publicly approved of both Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad)?

Would it seek to find out if there are New Zealand members of the pro North Korean Revolutionary Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist?)

How about New Zealand's own Communist Workers' Party?

If not, why not? Isn't it the same issue Not PC pointed out here?

Do the Greens care what the public want?

No. The Greens want to use force.

Russel Norman is complaining that Foodstuffs will restore free plastic bags in the South Island because of "customer feedback".

Russel. Are you saying if people want a plastic bag, and a private company is prepared to pay to supply them, they shouldn't get it?

The only part of the issue regarding plastic bags is rubbish disposal. Privatise that, ensure people pay for rubbish collection and then that cost is internalised. Let's face it, New Zealand does not lack landfill space, but if recycling can be profitable then so be it.

However, the Greens want less plastic bags, and they'll make you pay the government (not the provider) for them, and the money will be used to....

Because, you see, you shouldn't want plastic bags - you're a bad person for wanting them - so you should be punished for doing so.

By contrast, in the UK, some supermarkets charges for them, some don't. Many people bring their own bags because they support less use of plastic bags.

How was this achieved?

Persuasion.

It would be nice if Russel Norman and the Green Party believed a little more in convincing people of the merits of their arguments, and accepting, that when some people disagree, it doesn't give a good reason to use force.

Any investigative journalists in New Zealand?

David Farrar raises an issue which only state radio has yet confronted, but which has not been picked up by newspapers or television.

The Leninist way Helen Clark is controlling media access to UNDP.

It sounds scandalous. No press conferences involving Clark as head of UNDP since she arrived. Absolutely no progress at all or reports or responses to a number of scandals, which were bubbling when she arrived. It doesn't help that the UNDP does not have transparent audited accounts.

I wrote on how the NZ media treated Helen Clark at the UNDP like a Womens' Weekly story, with no scrutiny at all of the serious issues surrounding the organisation. It is like Helen is "one of us" "doing good overseas" and "we should all be proud", and have no interest at all in the issues she confronts and, more importantly whether or how she confronts them.

There are major issues regarding nepotism and the UNDP's North Korean operations, which are being renewed, that aren't being answered.

This isn't an issue about the Labour Party, or the New Zealand government, but the reputation of New Zealand in putting forward Clark for this high profile role. If she hides from the media, if she wont openly declare her position on issues, if she wont confront them, it will be a damning indictment on New Zealand, and its chances to gain ANY traction at transparency and accountability at international organisations.

If Helen Clark is no better than any other UN bureaucrat, spending large amounts of money with accountability that is better suited to Malabo than New York, then she is an embarrassment.

An embarrassment the Key Government can only bear its fair share of blame for, in supporting her candidacy.

However, perhaps equally so, is the almost universal braindead silence of the sycophantic New Zealand media. With the notable exception of Radio New Zealand, none of the rest have shown any interest in serious issues surrounding Helen Clark's appointment as head of the UNDP.

Is it not time that some actually went to New York to find out why the former Prime Minister wont answer questions about the organisation she leads on a salary, paid by global taxpayers, of US$500,000 per annum, tax free?

UPDATE: David Cohen at the NBR essentially repeats what David Farrar and Radio NZ said, adding his small comment about his experience with Clark. Gee, newspapers in New Zealand are really at the cutting edge of journalism aren't they? Well done Mr. Cohen, given your "cutting criticism" of the blogosphere, you're really showing us up.

Obama Administration does something small but good

CNN reports that the US Justice Department has told federal prosecutors to pursue drug traffickers but NOT patients and caregivers in the 14 states that have legalised medical marijuana.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana," said Attorney General Eric Holder.

Furthermore

The Justice Department guidance said it would not be a wise use of federal resources to go after "individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law."

Of course, indeed it is the only humane approach.

Besides recognising the competency of states in deciding this sort of thing, it is a slight lessening of the rabid war on drugs that every previous administration, for decades has fought unsuccessfully.

The states where medical marijuana use is legal are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

Let's be clear this is not legalisation, or decriminalisation, and drug users in those states wont be immune from Federal criminal action, but it does mean attention is withdrawn from a segment that simply comprises sick people using marijuana for relief. By what measure does the Federal Government have any right to interfere with this?

So dare I say it, a step for freedom from the Obama Administration.

Royal Mail's needs to be on a level playing field

Dr Madsen Pirie writes in the Daily Telegraph that the best way to handle the Royal Mail strike and poor performance is competition, except this is limited by the Royal Mail being VAT exempt.

Its competitors are not, so must face a 15% surcharge on their prices, making provision of anything other than high volume bulk mail difficult.

The answer is simple - extend the VAT exemption to all mail.

I wont hold my breath for the Tories to say this though.

EU Wankers

While Britain has a burgeoning budget deficit, it is borrowing from future taxpayers to prop up part of the biggest group of welfare recipients in Europe.

According to the Daily Mail, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel asked the ministers to approve an emergency grant of about £250 million in next year's EU budget to prop up the dairy sector.

The appropriate response is to tell her to where to stick the request.

However, do you see anger in the streets at these failed businesspeople, who have lived off of the back of taxpayers for years now, compared to bankers?

Fortunately the British government is not completely rolling over, but Britain should claw back cutbacks in spending to the EU - it should force the EU to slash its budget.

I remember the suffering and pain that New Zealand farmers went through when economic reality hit them in the 1990s, it's about time that European farmers, who have adequate warning of change, were given a small number of years to see subsidies eliminated.

Taxpayer and TV rights

The NZ Herald says "The cost to the taxpayer of the bid for Rugby World Cup broadcasting rights will be "considerably" less than the $5 million speculated, Prime Minister John Key says."

So give one good reason why it shouldn't be nil?

This is a very popular event that many will want to watch, it presumably has some commercial viability for a broadcaster, New Zealand has four different free to air nationwide TV network operators that could do so (TVNZ, TV3, Prime and MTS), so for what conceivable reason should taxpayers be forced to pay to buy the rights to a sports event to be broadcast?

Oh, and doesn't this make the claim that National is about less government interference in your life rather vacuous?

Go on, look at your TV listings and find the long list of sports events and other events on free to air television that DIDN'T have you being forced to pay for it.

This whole issue has been a complete debacle, a waste of time and your money. The government should have had no more to do with this than it has had with other sports broadcasting rights over many years.

Yet the majority of you trust this lot to buy your healthcare, your kids' education and a retirement.

Why?

Scab = person who wants job more than you

Idiot Savant is upset that the Royal Mail is hiring additional temporary staff to cover for the unionised labour that is going on strike in coming months. He says it is because of privatisation. He's wrong, the word is never mentioned. He puts modernisation in quotation marks, as if it isn't real. Yet it is - the Royal Mail is a dinosaur of the postal world, using automatic sorting less than its equivalents in France and Germany. NZ Post by contrast is seen as an example of best practice. Idiot Savant would always side with a militant union though, it's a tribal thing.

The left calls such people scabs - a vile term that helps justify doing violence to them and threatening their families, a not unknown tactic in some industrial disputes.

The truth is such people are workers, people who want to do the job the unionised workforce is less interested in doing. Let's be clear here, postal workers do not exactly have jobs involving deep levels of training or skills. It is easily substitutable. The choice is between those who want to work, and those who don't. Why should people who want jobs have any "solidarity" with those who have them but don't want to change to save their employer from ongoing losses of money and business?

Idiot Savant thinks because the temporary workers are being hired with full support of the Labour government it shows how "out of touch" Labour is. He's wrong. In fact it shows how desperate Labour is for Britain not to be brought to its knees at Christmas by a greedy union in the midst of a recession unwilling to let the Royal Mail being seriously restructured from practices that date back to the 1970s.

As the Royal Mail loses business to competitors (no doubt Idiot Savant hates the idea that other people might be employed in competing companies to deliver mail - a sacred duty of the state), this union action cripples it more, threatening more jobs, whilst Billy Hayes, the head of the Communication Workers' Union is on a six figure salary.

Nice to be supporting the proletariat isn't it?

Protect certain ghost worshippers from insult

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent says:

"Muslims, Asians and Black people are human, too – experiencing the pain of gratuitous invective piled on us, day after day, by toffs like Martin Amis and Wilder and racists like the BNP. Words do violence to humans, more sometimes than sticks and stones. They can disable you to the point of insanity"

Of course she's right about racism and the BNP. However, Martin Amis and Wilder have not expressed racist views, as far as I am aware. Race is not something one can choose, and racism is demonstrably irrational and abominable.

However, Amis and Wilder have both condemned Islam. Islam is a choice, or rather it should be (the "crime" of apostasy makes it anything but a choice in some countries), so criticising it should be like criticising Christianity, or Hinduism, or Shintoism or indeed any non-religious based philosophy. Objectivists and supporters of capitalism know this too well, but indeed so do socialists, conservatives or environmentalists. When you decide a particular philosophy is for you, you will inevitably encounter criticism from some, and derision from others. It is part of being in a free society.

Now I don't believe in gratuitously seeking to insult people for the sake of it, but I do believe that people should take direct criticism about their chosen philosophy. If you want to do violence to those who criticise it, it demonstrates your own lack of self control and your own inability to justify your position through persuasion.

However while Alibhai-Brown decries the condemnation of Islam, she also says "Only libertarian fools and fanatics would give set-piece answers" to issues of free speech. Whether she refers to all libertarians as fools or just the ones who are fools is unclear, but it certainly looks offensive to me.

So is she saying if I am an atheist believer in a small state she can call me a fool, but if I believe in a ghost and the words of a long dead prophet who had sex with a preteen child, I should be protected from insult?

No she is a fool. She doesn't understand that free speech means the state getting out of the way, and allowing people to express themselves as they see fit, as long as it does not interfere with the right of others to do the same, or result in infringement of private property rights (including the rights of crime victims and the right to one's reputation).

Indeed, she cannot even accurately describe the events around the Wilders visit saying "I was proud Muslims responded with good sense". Not all, surely?

New Zealand is a backwater

I mean seriously.

This headline says it all.

Nazi murders vs communist murderers

Given the all too appropriate anger at this story, can anyone explain why similar worshipping of a hammer and sickle, or image of Marx, Lenin, or Stalin, or Che Guevara, or Castro would not cause any outrage at all?

How many brainless gits do you see every day walking around with pictures of Che Guevara on their chests, or Marx or the like?

Oh and you might get the standard Marxist reply "oh that wasn't really Marxism", because the USSR got it wrong. However, it wasn't just the USSR was it? It was also:

- Mongolia
- China
- Afghanistan
- Cuba
- Albania
- Yugoslavia
- Romania
- Bulgaria
- Czechoslovakia
- Poland
- East Germany
- Vietnam
- Laos
- Cambodia
- North Korea
- Angola
- Benin
- Congo (Brazzaville)
- Ethiopia
- Hungary
- Grenada
- Mozambique
- Somalia
- Yemen
- Burma

Imagine if a school had a communism party? Would the media bother saying this is an outrage to everyone who suffered under such tyranny?

You might think the 60 or so million Mao killed directly or by starvation using insane economic policies, and the 30 million Stalin killed directly or through war or starvation, might give as much reason to be offended.

It should be a crime!

Take this ridiculous statement reported by the BBC today:

Kathryn Szrodecki, who campaigns on behalf of overweight people, said that in the UK fat people were stared at, pointed at, talked about and attacked.... "This is a very common event - someone being beaten up should be a crime."

Oh it isn't? Woo hoo, let's go out and drat some brathchny tonight droogs, tolchock his yarbles and it will be a horrorshow raz.

Campaigners in the UK want a new law to ban discrimination on the basis of weight, so that people cannot be refused employment, housing or even be told by their doctor to lose weight, like a law in San Francisco.

So on the one hand, the state spends money telling people how to eat and to exercise, and wants to restrict advertising of unhealthy food, and use various tools of coercion to change eating and lifestyle habits, on the other hand there are people wanting the state to make it a crime to refuse services to people if they are overweight.

The report continues "Another campaigner, Marsha Coupe, said: "I have been punched, I have had beer thrown in my face, I have had people attack me on the train."

All of which are criminal offences. People who aren't fat face being attacked too, why is it more severe because of your weight (or indeed anything else)? Is Marsha simply not reporting the offences to the Police?

Yes it is true that people who are overweight do suffer cruel jokes, and the like. That is simply rude, and I am not endorsing such childish behaviour. However, is this a reason to pass a law against it? What next? No discrimination on the grounds of hair colour because blondes find it harder to be taken seriously and redheads are refused work because people fear they'll lose their temper?

Enough.

You do not have a right to not be offended. People will judge others for numerous reasons, from hair colour to eye colour to facial hair to weight, body shape, height and clothing. If overweight people want to campaign or boycott companies for being rude to them, then let them be - but this is not a matter for the law.

Fun Police: #2 Don't let them eat cake

Olivia Morris turned 9. Her great grandma baked her a cake to take to school. It was put on display at morning assembly, and everyone sang "Happy Birthday", then she blew out the candles.

Then the cake was left to be.

Why?

Because it doesn't comply with the school's new healthy eating rules.

Her school is Rockingham Junior and Infant School in Rotherham, England. It is well known, if only because it is the school Jamie Oliver launched his campaign for healthier eating at schools.

Head Teacher Heather Green said it would be a "mixed message" if cakes were brought in whilst the school promotes healthy eating. Joyless bint.

The story is in the Daily Telegraph.

Of course this silly little do-gooder forgets that denying children ANY "unhealthy" food simply raises the desire to have it, it makes it forbidden, which of course makes anything far more attractive and interesting. Kids are more likely to secretly covet such food, binge on it, and then show themselves as healthy openly.

Olivia and her friends didn't miss out though. You see AFTER school she took the cake, and celebrated her birthday with her friends outside school, where they shared cake - away from the tentacles of Heather Green and zee Rockingham Junior Re-Edukation Kamp. Just to show how distant education gets from the needs of parents when it is bureaucrats and schools doing what they see is best, not those who pay for it.

Olivia doesn't YET live in a world where such puritanical nonsense is compulsory everywhere.

Zimbabwe's government becoming unstuck

The Times reports that Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has announced that the MDF will "disengage" from the unity government of Zimbabwe citing Zanu-PF as being dishonest and unreliable.

This of course is like discovering that the sun appears every morning, but give Tsvangirai his due, he tried. Whilst South Africa should have facilitated the overthrow, trial and impeachment of Mugabe and his Zanu-PF mafia, it co-ordinated a shameful compromise, which has largely failed.

The issue is Roy Bennett, a MDF MP who has been arrested after his farm was confiscated by Mugabe's goons. Zanu-PF itself is not concerned.

In essence, the issue has not gone away. The only sane solution for Zimbabwe appears to involve force - to overthrow Zanu-PF's power base, arrest Mugabe and take this sad country back from the criminal gang that has run it for so long.

Sadly, the lesson of Africa is that collectively, only a minority of African leaders have any conscience for the suffering of Africans, they are more often that not, gangsters themselves running their countries like feudal lords, granting favours, profiting exhorbitantly, and not showing the slightest interest in being accountable.

Venezuela inches further towards dictatorship

Nobody is surprised that the latest pinup of the far left - Hugo Chavez - is continuing to prove himself to be a thieving mobster. Anyone with delusions that he is some benevolent strongman helping the poor does need to reconsider this view.

Now he is seizing golf courses, because golf is a bourgeoisie sport.

Only a week ago he seized the Hilton Hotel on Margarita Island because of "the need to boost tourism", although Hilton had a concession to use it, it did not own the hotel.

It's becoming clear Venezuela is not a place where foreigners owning land can feel safe from theft. Previous nationalisations have been at taxpayer expense, spending a set price to buy the telecommunications and electricity sectors. Last year he took over the cement and steel sectors as well.

The inevitable outcome will be more poverty, and the ever creeping control over the media, as Chavez refuses to tolerate debate or dissension.

Fun Police: #1 BOGOF

You might not know what BOGOF means - it is Buy One Get One Free in the UK.

Great, you may say. Effectively half price for two items, particularly welcome for families or for goods that can be frozen or readily stored. I have used BOGOF many times, for everything from yoghurt to chips to chocolate to fresh fruit.

Oh no, say the food police, it encourages you to buy more than you otherwise would, making you fat and unhealthy, and that costs taxpayers. So the wagging finger of the "do as we say" crowd want it to end. I can just imagine Sue Kedgley jumping on this in a moment, insisting that for "unhealthy food" 2 for 1 is just morally wrong. Others say it encourages "food waste" as people buy 2 for 1 and don't use 2, so throw it away. Oh the outrage, maybe there are kids in Africa who'd love what is being thrown away?

Sarah Vine in the Times takes on such people saying:

One of the great follies of our age is that there are a lot of people who abhor the idea of affordable food. They think that poor people are fat because the food that they eat is too cheap and too plentiful. If everyone paid a bit more and ate a bit less, they reason, we’d all be a lot healther and happier.

They are the people who prefer to go to shops which harp on about the quality of their products, and who think local shops (you know the ones that are overpriced with a poor range, until a supermarket comes near) are just a glorious example of what is great. The most successful supermarkets are most loathed, as she says

Of the supe(r)markets, Tesco is the one most commonly despised by the hug-your-cow-before-you-put-a- bullet-through-its-head snobs. Quite why this should be is not clear, as Tesco sells exactly the same produce as its rivals.

Sadly Tesco is succumbing to the Stasi like attitude so many have of giving a damn about what other people buy or eat.

If you don't like a BOGOF deal then don't buy it. Some people love it, some people don't, it is a way of managing inventory through price and gives consumers a great deal if they need more than one. If people waste food, it is their money, the food biodegrades, it isn't your business.

It's just sad this culture of control is now so ingrained with government than the private sector succumbs to lobbying by people who want to control what people buy, because they think they know better than others.

I'd just tell them to BOGOF, sanctimonious little petty fascists as they are.

Miners' Strike repeat?

You probably haven't heard of Billy Hayes. He heads the Communication Workers Union which is in charge of the rolling strike action at Royal Mail. He's digging his heels in saying "I'm stronger than Arthur Scargill" according to an interview in The Times.

He says this is because he does have a balloted mandate for the strike (unlike Scargill who opposed secret ballots so standover tactics could be used to intimidate miners who wanted to work), and while coal can be stockpiled and sourced elsewhere, mail delivery is more difficult to replicate.

However, it is not impossible. Royal Mail is financially on its knees, partly due to the recession, but mostly because it remains in the dark ages with technology and work practices, and competition in the postal market has seen the private sector take a good chunk of the business mail market. Meanwhile, online communications eats into the private individual market for letters.

My own experience of the Royal Mail has rarely been inspiring. The postman who wouldn't bother to ring the bell to deliver a parcel, but rather place a card in the box so you have to go to the central delivery office to pick it up - presumably because he was too lazy to carry parcels. How about the one who wouldn't enter the premises to go upstairs because "he wasn't insured" to climb stairs. Funnily enough neither am I, and there is a lift, but he was having none of it.

This sort of communist-bloc attitude to service is helping kill it off.

A union led by a man on a salary that is anything but working class.

The response, I suspect, is that Royal Mail's competitors will have even more of a bumper time. The main gap in the market is the more difficult service for the general public, not helped by the unnecessary layers of regulation for the "deregulated" postal market.

Anyone should simply be able to collect mail, establish post boxes and deliver as they see fit. Removing as many barriers as possible to this sort of competition would help drive a thriving postal sector, bring benefits to entrepreneurs, prospective employees and consumers, and give more reason to privatise the Royal Mail.

However, the likelihood this moribund Labour Government could offer any inspiration to take on the CWU is little beyond zero.