Celebrity Big Brother continues

George "I miss the Soviet Union" Galloway is my top pick for the next eviction - he has tried too long to be the fatherly figure of the Celebrity Big Brother household, and nauseatingly wears a Cuba tracksuit jacket while he works out -because Cuba is such a great role model for Britain or the world.

I used to listen to Radio Havana Cuba on shortwave in English some years ago, as the signal could be received well in New Zealand on a Sunday morning and I was studying international relations at the time. It sounded all friendly and nice, and Cuba loved how all of its health and education statistics were better than those in the US. As if anyone can verify them!

Galloway is evil and I will be (horrors) text voting him out tonight.

The other two, Dennis Rodman (who is far more sensible and level headed than I had ever thought) and Chantelle Essex (well don't know her surname and she isn't famous for anything other than being on this show) don't deserve to go - yet.

Michael Barrymore on the other hand, seems to have lost it, flaring up at opportunities to get upset at what really is nothing.

The real disappointment is no real scandal - nobody has snogged anyone, and the most likely paring (Chantelle and Preston) wont happen because Preston has a girlfriend on the "outside" and Chantelle is too nice a girl to do anything while she is reminded of that (and Preston is too). However, they are both clearly gagging for it and avoiding being too close most of the time.

However, for me, the star remains Pete Burns. An individual through and through, who can be nasty and critical, but also encouraging and thought provoking. He has had to put up with the fur police barging into the Big Brother household and confiscating his "monkey coat" secretly to check if it was legal. Apparently it is made of an endangered monkey, but could be so old that it doesn't matter - nevertheless, the "cuddly animal lobby" apparently clamoured for something to be done about it and about him. Yes, there is a law against it, but what good is done by prosecution over the possession of a coat that exists? Endangered species protection is best done by other means, but that is another issue.

What is most shocking of all is how my girlfriend and I are addicted to this damned show!

Homeless, welfare and labour laws

One of the less desirable facts of living in Europe are the homeless people. Despite protestations about how socially inclusive and fair Helen Clark’s model societies are, there are more homeless people or beggars (who knows who is homeless and who isn’t) per kilometre in London, Paris, Zurich and other major cities in Europe than there are in New Zealand cities. So why is that?

One reason could be the population is huge – therefore more poor people. Well, maybe so, but that doesn’t explain why they congregate in central London and Chelsea (where I am usually at). What explains that is something very simple – the homeless aren’t entirely stupid. They target commuters because with the million plus people entering central London every morning, even if you get 1% of all those walking past you giving you some change, you wont be too badly off. Secondly, sitting on Kings Road in Chelsea means that you can target the guilty wealthy who live there and tourists who are shopping. You don’t find the homeless hanging out so frequently in High Barnet or Wimbledon. Let’s not forget that if you were homeless and seeking somewhere affordable to live, the LAST part of London you’d be in would be Chelsea – see a one bedroom flat there costs between £300-£450 easily a WEEK. The £300 one would be noisy, small and unbearable, whereas £450 would be pleasant. If you were homeless and serious about finding somewhere to live, you’d go to Hounslow, Brixton or somewhere else where not so many wanted to live.

However, you say, they probably don’t have a job. That is where the government is partly responsible – for pricing jobs out of the market.

One thing that is sadly lacking in the UK compared to New Zealand is service. You don’t know how lucky you are to go to a supermarket and find that someone on NZ$10 an hour (or less) is filling your shopping bag with your groceries as everything is being passed over the barcode reader and scales. These are jobs that anyone without serious physical or mental handicaps can perform – but they don’t in many supermarkets in the UK. You do it, unless you specifically ask for it to be done – which the entire British population should do because it would bring the absurdity of packing your own groceries to an end, and give a nearly unemployable person a job.

However, there is, no doubt, minimum wage laws and other socialist inspired restrictions that stop this. So there are people begging on the streets instead of being “exploited”. I am sure that the supermarkets would happily pay someone £5 an hour to fill shopping bags, partly because customers hate having to do it, but it also slows things up immensely – as the checkout person (not chicks – but then it could be that Chelsea teens wouldn’t be seen DEAD working in a supermarket) has to wait for you to finish packing before serving the next customer.

The same thing happens in other sectors. Furniture removalists work on Saturdays grudgingly with a massive surcharge. Why? Well, you see, this is considered overtime – when flexible labour laws should mean that Gary Upminster can work Wednesday to Sunday, and his employer doesn’t need to pay him more to work weekends, because HIS weekend is Monday and Tuesday. I’d LOVE to not work Mondays and Tuesdays, when the shops are open but quiet. Supermarkets are not open beyond 5pm on Sundays.

Now I could be wrong – maybe people in London don’t want the level of service that people in New Zealand expect. Somehow I doubt it. More liberal labour laws and abolition of the minimum wage may give homeless people a chance to get jobs. The left may say this people would be exploited earning low wages - but I don't see too many of THEM giving money to the homeless. I'd rather work 4-8 hours a day for low wages that sit in the cold begging for money - there is at least a chance I could do better if I was working. More inexplicable is the huge amount of local authority housing that remains in Britain, yet there are homeless people.

Overall the homeless are rather sad – but when I see the tax and national insurance confiscated from my pay packet, that really pisses me off. I don’t owe the homeless anything and it is preying on consciences (and frightening to some) to sit in a blanket in Chelsea beside an ATM and ask people for money. If I didn’t have so much of my income confiscated by central and local government, much of it dedicated to helping those “less well off” (because being well off is a matter of luck to most of us, not hard work), then I might feel more inclined to give some change to people begging.

People selling the Big Issue, on the other hand, are doing something useful. Albeit the only ones I consider are those who are friendly and making an effort, the drone like man staring into space mumbling “big issue” isn’t going to get my attention, when there is a guy on the Strand who is full of life and greets everyone with a smile and thanks them whether or not they buy a copy.

Yes, there are similar people in Paris – in fact I saw a boy of around 15 begging outside a bakery in Paris. Homelessness is seen throughout Western Europe, and although I have not done research into it, I suspect that much can be done in changing labour laws and other restrictions on business that would give such people a chance. However, for too many of them, they have psychologically given up - and the welfare state does nothing for them.

Victim of sex offender witchhunt

Lloyd Walsh, a Dunedin bus driver is a single father of two kids, he is 50. He is a convicted sex offender.
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As a result, he has lost his licence, because the law denies sex offenders the right to drive buses.
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Quite right too, I hear many of you say. The National Party, ACT and even Labour all support a tough stance on sex offenders. Many even believe a public register with his name on it, so everyone knows that he committed a "sex offence" (whatever that may be, they're all dirty perverts!) and when he moves the local community should be warned. I bet some even wonder whether he should be allowed to have custody of his children – a man, alone with two children, who knows what he might do! Terrifying really. After all, once a man commits a sexual offence, he is a danger to children and women everywhere.
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Particularly when the offence was to have sexual intercourse with a girl under 16. That’s it, he’s a pedophile, a pervert, hang him high by his testicles. There is nothing lower than a sex offender is there? I can see the MPs nodding their heads and tut tutting, Lloyd Walsh needs ostracising and nobody need forget what he has done.
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Really?

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Well it was his first and only offence, he was 16 at the time and his girlfriend was 15, in fact two days away from her 16th birthday. You might still think – who cares!! It’s wrong. Well tell that to him and his kids. He is out of a job now, because so many supported Nanny State used an elephant to crack a nut. He committed a victimless crime, there was no rape, there was no exploitation - he is no pedophile, but the witchhunt about sex crimes now has its latest victims - Lloyd and his children.
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Labour had legislation to amend the Crimes Act to remove such an offence, it would have meant that a 16yo with a 14yo was legal, and would have seen a two year exemption from the age of consent, largely because there was some recognition that young people of similar age experimenting sexually and consensually. More importantly, the criminal law is there to protect them from rapists and predators, not from their peers engaging in consensual activity. It is not the business of the law to criminalise consensual teenage sexual experimentation.

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However, it didn’t matter, the Victorian era outcry and caterwauling from the interfering do-gooders was that this was perverted and would encourage teenagers to have sex, despite the evidence to the contrary. Tony Ryall, in a vile display of scaremongering claimed that keeping the law as he claimed "the law should protect children from sexual pressure and support families in their efforts to provide boundaries for their young people" As if a teenage couple think about the law before they get intimate, as if hormone ridden teenagers get encouragement from a law change? Ryall wasn't thinking about policy - he was thinking about scaring parents away from voting Labour and voting National. It is not Ryall's business whether or not a teenage couple get intimate. Well Lloyd Walsh's children don't have a father with a job anymore, that's Ryall's family values as he pandered to the Christian Heritage/Destiny NZ voter.

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So when you next think about cracking down on sex offenders – decide what you mean. Do you mean rapists? Do you mean adults that molest children, not teenagers fooling around together? And ask, why don’t you care about violent offenders? The ones who beat up children, stab adults, attack old ladies – why does it matter whether or not it is sexual?
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And ask yourself, did you really mean that Lloyd Walsh can’t be a bus driver because he had sex with his similar age girlfriend when he was 16?

Privately owned river?

In New Zealand - there is one, at least according to government highways agency Transit New Zealand which states on its site:
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"The Arahura River is unique as it is the only privately owned river in New Zealand"

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In case you didn't know, the Arahura river is on the South Island's West Coast. Transit's only interest is that it is responsible for the single lane State Highway 6 bridge over the river, which it shares with OnTrack - as the branch railway line between Greymouth and Hokitika shares the bridge with the road, causing a few headaches for motorists when they have to give way to trains. Transit has some of your petrol tax money to investigate options for replacing the bridge, but that is not my issue and there is no claim that the fact the river is privately owned is causing any difficulties with this project.

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What IS important is that, if true, the Arahura River is an example of what can be done with other rivers. The world has not fallen in, Grey District Council has not foretold disaster and nobody seems to notice. A bit of research uncovered that Mawhera Incorporation owns the river according to Trade and Enterprise NZ. In essence, a company owned by a local Runaka (subset of Ngai Tahu). Nothing wrong with that. I would presume the Maori Party would support this being maintained, as does the Libertarianz, as should ACT.

It is one response to concern about libertarians privatising what is seen as "the commons". Would anyone notice if all the rivers were privately owned? Who would want to nationalise it?

How to deal with yob culture?

Social misfits, like the young cretin I saw the other day, who threw away his McDonalds thickshake across the footpath on Kings Road the other day, to impress the girls he was with to some extent, are repulsive. I wish I could have dumped rubbish on his bed and made him clean up the street.

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Britain has more than its fair share of them. Essentially there is a lack of respect, of others and their property, and a lauding of a culture of looking and acting tough and threatening, and not caring how obnoxious you are. It is about attention seeking and rebellion, and its vile. It scares older people, and sometimes involves intimidating people for a laugh or vandalism. It comes from regarding all around you as demanding your attention, and you not needing to take responsibility for you or your actions.
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Tony Blair is declaring war on it. Having already introduced ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Orders) which can be taken out on anyone down to the age of 10 for consistent behaviour that can be considered a nuisance or comprises low level criminality such as vandalism, tagging and the sort. It is effectively a fast track prosecution, without actually being one – it prohibits people from being out at certain times or being in certain locations. Unfortunately, they are often broken.
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Blair’s concern is understandable. The Guardian reported him saying:
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"In practice, the person who spits at an old lady on her way to the shops is not prosecuted because to do so takes many police hours, much resource and if all that is overcome, the outcome is a fine. The result is the police do not think it is worth it; and so it doesn't happen."
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Unfortunately his response is a mixed bag. Some have value, such as increasing some fines, lowering the threshold for seizure of proceeds of crime, providing an option for requiring offenders to undertake unpaid work to make good damage (such as cleaning tagging off of properties), a national non-emergency police contact number and orders that be sought against parents for serious misbehaviour by children.
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Others are either silly or disturbing. Silly, like paying teenage parents to attend parenting classes – disturbing such as the suggestion that the burden of proof be reversed in some cases. That is a dangerous precedent, that could lead to false accusations by those who are the problem – what if an obnoxious 14yo told the Police you spat on her and made a lewd comment and you had to prove your innocence? Trust the Police isn’t good enough.
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So what IS the answer? Longer term, it is about cultural change, about decrying the nihilistic, do what you want, have no responsibility, blame everyone else for your problems culture that has grown in the last few decades. It is about celebrating excellence, and not snarling at it, and about genuine benevolence for those in need, not as a right, but because people care about people who genuinely show effort and desire to look after themselves. This means not glorifying the stupid, vapid, obnoxious, tough and unproductive. It means a culture where entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, surgeons, shopkeepers and others who create are what people aspire to – rather than aspire to be rich, rude and otherwise useless, as the glorification of fame for the sake of it, rather than due to talent, continues to grow.
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Shorter term, it is about giving those who CAN deal with obnoxious people the means to act, and about not subsidising the obnoxious at all.
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This means:
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1. Abolishing victimless crimes, so the Police can concentrate on offences of the person and property. Leaving peaceful people alone so that those who are not can be targeted, and then the Police themselves may be respected more, and have a greater presence in public places as a deterrent;
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2. Asserting the right of people to defend themselves and their property. This means not banning pepper sprays, allowing peaceful people to own firearms and making it clear that you have the right to use reasonable force to respond to any attack;
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3. Defending private property rights – which means ensuring landlords can evict tenants who damage property and harass other people, and shopkeepers can ban people from their shops and impose whatever restrictions they wish upon who enters or not. Private property is not a public place – people may learn than entering malls, shops, railway stations is not a right;
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4. Stop subsidising failure. At the very least, convicted criminals (offences against the body or property) should be prohibited from receiving any state welfare or state/council housing. As long as welfare remains, parents who do not control their children’s behaviour should have their benefits cut off after a warning, and face eviction from state provided housing. The public should not be forced to subsidise the lives of those who damage the lives of others. This should be the first step towards abolishing compulsory social welfare.
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Blair has a point that many Brits will agree on, but it needs people to act and for parents to be held accountable. There are many reasons why a segment of young people spit, vandalism and disturb people – the change in families, erosion of fear of parental authority for starters, but it needs a concerted effort to turn back over time.

Changing the burden of proof for any criminal offences removes a fundamental freedom, that will be exploited by a segment of the public and the police - and should be resisted.