Greens and violence

Given the belief by many Greens supporters that their party is one of peace and non-violence, I thought I would post every time the Green’s put out a press release advocating the use of state violence against people who are not initiating force against others or their property. Remember that initiating force means everything from incarceration, to fines, taxes, assault, theft and trespass. It does not mean upsetting or offending you, or terminating a contract. Every time I find a clear example of the Greens supporting the state initiating violence, I will list it – other times I may list the odd occasion the Greens aren’t clear about what they would do.

Today I will start with Nandor Tanczos concern about the imminent closure of the Anchor milk factory at Hornby and the Meadow Fresh yoghurt factory in Christchurch. He asks Graeme Hart to reconsider this – which is fine, in itself. You can ask anyone to do anything. However, would the Greens stand back and let the closures happen if they were in government? Either they would force the owner of a business to operate parts of the business which were not worth operating (after all it IS his business) and pay for that himself, or force others to pay for it? Both involve fascism.

See Mr Hart wants to continue the viability of his whole business, which delivers wealth to him and other shareholders, people who have risked their own property in a competitive business. It also employs other people not in those factories and it provides products for willing consumers – out of choice. Tanczos says running a successful business is about more than profits. Is it? Is being an employee about more than making a wage? Is trading about more than receiving more value than you give? Mr Hart could run his businesses as a social service, meaning than he and other shareholders get less money for their investment, and spend less on other investments, or other goods and services – all of which also involve employing people – but isn’t that waste and aren’t the Greens against waste?

Would the Greens in government leave Mr Hart alone, or would they use the power of the state to force him to do their bidding? It isn’t clear – but if I were him I wouldn’t want to find out.

Infratil and Stagecoach

Stagecoach UK has sold its New Zealand bus operations to Infratil – the local utilities investment company. Nothing exciting there, except that Stagecoach was an exceptional owner of companies that local authorities had let run down over many years. There is little doubt that both Auckland and Wellington now have far more modern bus fleets, and better bus systems than they had when the ARC and Wellington City Council ran services as ratepayer funded monopolies.

Stagecoach NZ never paid a dividend to Stagecoach UK (despite what the NZ Herald report says Ross Martin claimed), although it did go for a good premium over the original purchase price – and rightfully so – Stagecoach poured a lot of money into new buses, albeit with some help from local and central government subsidies - around half of the services in Auckland were commercial - getting no subsidies at all. Certainly Stagecoach Auckland and Wellington are a far cry from the union run, antiquated Yellow Bus and Big Red bus fleets they took over from local authorities in both cities.

The government is reviewing the regulatory regime for public transport – this is in response to calls by some in local government to get rid of the right of bus companies to run commercial services. Some want bus companies to be regulated, and subsidised so that local authorities can control them. I suspect Stagecoach was fleeing a regulatory regime it saw as having potentially a limited life – which is a shame.

Infratil is a good owner though, and no doubt will do its best - but lest we forget what Stagecoach did for urban buses in Auckland and Wellington - it actually wanted to run them as businesses for customers.

Treasury to review Transmission Gully vs. the coastal highway costs

The Dominion Post reports that Treasury will undertaken an independent study into the relative costs of the two routes. This is unprecedented open interference into the affairs of Transit and Greater Wellington Regional Council – but it is about spending Crown money. I don’t doubt Treasury will have a good go at this.

Hopefully that should sort it out – since the proponents of the Gully think Transit would rather not build a big 27km motorway instead of a handful of smaller projects (unlikely) and that the Greater Wellington Regional Council – which previously strongly supported the Gully route – is biased against it!

Poor Treasury. If it comes out in favour of the Gully, it will be in favour of a half built option that needs to be completed at some point to be really worthwhile. If it supports the coastal route, it will get the mountains of abuse from the pro-Gully lobbyists – including Porirua City which keeps coming out with some nutty ideas.

However, Treasury can hardly be seen as having a vested interest, and is not as hated as Transit is on this issue – yet!

Have the Gully proponents noticed that the congestion at Paremata is gone?

Hey Jim - Matt's gone!

Jim Anderton’s personal – I mean Progressive – Party website still lists Matt Robson as an MP.

Given, like most small parties, the Jim Anderton party lost votes and is down to one seat, Jim needs to wake up - it's just you Jim - ask Peter Dunne what it felt like.

However, NZ First's link on its website to the confidence and supply agreement with Labour wasn't working when I checked it either. To its credit, United Future has its whole agreement posted.

Fundamentalist religion – the ugliest cancer on the planet?

I hate religion, I really do – people can get whatever comfort or whatever they want from whatever ghosts they believe in, build churches and change their lives for their ghosts, and even try to convince people to believe in their ghosts, but that is where it should end. Believe in whatever you want, but don't infringe on the rights of others justifying it through your faith.

I am sick of hearing how humane and loving Islam is – frankly about as sick as I am hearing about how Christianity is the same. Those who say this confuse the religion with those claiming to follow it. Now I couldn’t give a flying fuck about whether the true Islam is Osama Bin Laden’s or not, much like whether Christiantiy is led by the bigoted Pope, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, Brian Tamaki or Benny Hinn (now THAT’s an evil little fucker!) – but I do care about the evil pricks who use religion to justify slavery, torture and rape.

The Daily Telegraph today in this story that a village council in Pakistan has decreed that five women ranging from 15 to 22 should be abducted, raped or killed because they refused to honour marriages forced on them when they were.. wait for it … aged 6 through 13. To their credit, the girls’ fathers are supporting them, and as a result have the death penalty imposed upon them.

See it all started when a father of one of the girls shot dead a member of another family, following some dispute where there were shots from both sides. The village council said appropriate compensation for the family was to make the girls of the family (both the man who killed the other, and his brother) marry male members of the other family – in other words, children were chattels to be given over. Of course it was a mullah in the village council who imposed this sentence.

Evil barbaric scum. The same scum who supported the Taliban banning girls from school - treating women as illiterate little slaves.

The Pakistani government recently prohibited this practice, but its fair and unbiased police seem to be doing little to enforce this law.

Oh, but all cultures are the same, don’t judge other cultures say the postmodernist cultural relativist vermin.

Duncan Bayne gives a good summary of why he regards all religion as fundamentally irrational here.

On top of this, The Times in London reports how a film in the Netherlands made by a Somali refugee (and now Dutch MP) about Muslim oppression of homosexuals carries no credits, to avoid murderous Islamic nutters making those who helped produce the film into targets for their peaceful religion. The report shows how some Muslims, who chose to move to the Netherlands, a highly liberal country, are basically out to shut down criticism and dissent. The semi-libertarian gay MP Pym Fortyn was shot by an ecoterrorist – a Green nutter who did it for the Muslims and hated Fortyn railing against environmentalists forcing railway lines to be built under cow pasture, because they hated any disruption to nature.

The true murderous life hating philosophy of these lowlives is obvious – they have no place in a liberal tolerant society which would allow their views to be expressed, but would not allow their violence to be.

Islam, at the very least, needs to go through a period called the Enlightenment. It happened to Christianity, and the worst excesses were buffed off, mainly by separating church and state – then it needs to go through a steady level of secular decline, as it has in western Europe.

Religion does nothing for me, at best it is historically quaint and gives some people quiet comfort and support – but I would rather it fade away.

That means all of the evangelical nutters as well - the proponents of "intelligent design" (such rot!) and the life hating, sex hating, freedom hating mullahs of Christianity. They would turn the world into a fundamentalist state little different in effect from the Taliban.

May they all rot.