Are we being fleeced by petrol tax?

Following on from Auckland mayors calling for the law to be changed to allow tolling on existing roads – in effect, road pricing, one argument against this is “we are already paying enough, this would be a new tax”.
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The AA has consistently argued against congestion pricing, believing that tolling should only exist where there is an untolled alternative route and that priority should be to complete Auckland’s motorway network before considering pricing existing roads.
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The AA simply fears that road pricing would be an additional tax, given the amount of money motorists already pay in petrol tax – but it ignores two very important points. The first point is that petrol tax is a very poor way of charging roads to manage the network – unlike pricing, it is a very blunt mechanism. At times of peak demand, when pricing should be high to ensure the level of service of the road (speed of traffic flow) is maintained, the road congests – Soviet style. Like queuing for bread, because everyone pays the same, it takes too long – and then people complain that there aren’t enough roads. The AA secretly knows congestion pricing works, London, Singapore and now Stockholm are examples of it working – it just fears that motorists will be fleeced more. However, are they being fleeced?

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Setting aside GST (which is placed on top of everything else, so if you fixed petrol tax, GST would fix itself), the ACC component of petrol tax (which should be replaced by being able to choose your accident insurance provider) and a couple of tiny other taxes (which come to around 1c/l), it is petrol excise that is the bulk of the tax on petrol. I mean petrol, not diesel, not LPG.

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If you are in a diesel or LPG vehicle all the money collected from your road user charges and LPG tax goes to the National Land Transport Fund, of which 85% or so goes on roads (the rest almost entirely on public transport). There is no tax on diesel, besides GST and a tiny local authority tax of 0.33c/l. So, except for GST, you’re not contributing towards other state spending from your road use. So buy a diesel or LPG vehicle if you want to deny Dr Cullen some tax.
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Of the current petrol tax, 22.5c/l goes into the National Land Transport Fund, and another 18.7c/l (rounded to the nearest 0.1c) goes into the Crown Account. However – this is where it gets complicated.
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Dr Cullen has pledged a good deal of that money for roads and public transport in Auckland, Bay of Plenty and Wellington. $900 million for Auckland, $885 for Wellington (assuming it can sort out the Transmission Gully vs. coastal highway argument) and $150 million for the Bay of Plenty. In addition, Dr Cullen has pumped another $800 million of Crown money into road spending nationwide at the last budget, $300 million over three years and the remainder over a longer period. This was surplus money that he didn’t want lying over for a tax cut or to be soaked up by wasteful spending down the black hole of health. In all, $2.735 billion of Crown funding for land transport, and most of it is likely to go on roads (Land Transport NZ ultimately decides).
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These figures are spread over a period of 12 years, (some is already spent) so you get $228 million per annum approximately in Crown funding for (mostly) roads. 1c/l petrol tax produces about $33 million p.a. in revenue. Now ignoring that a good third of that money comes in a five year blip in the middle (assuming that can be smoothed out over 12 years), you can assume that around 7c/l of petrol tax revenue that goes to the Crown is now being reinvested in land transport. So that means around 30c/l of your petrol tax is being spent mostly on roads and about 11c/l is not.
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You are still paying more in petrol tax than gets reinvested in roads, but it is a lot less than it has been for 25 years. A feather in the cap for Dr Cullen on that one, but that still means 11c/l is not going on roads. The AA is right, but it is clear that this Labour government is the biggest road building government New Zealand has seen since the early 1970s – so much so, that Dr Cullen has been voting extra money for roads time and time again in the last couple of years, beyond the growth in petrol tax revenue.
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In short, you are being fleeced at the petrol pump, but about a third less than you were under previous governments - although the 22.5c/l dedicated to land transport is going to increase annually according to the Consumer Price Index. It isn't as transparent as it would be if Dr Cullen simply changed the rate at which petrol tax went to the National Land Transport Fund, but it is still better than it was in the 80s and 90s.

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It is too much to hope that Dr Cullen will spend the other 11c/l on land transport, I don't think the budget would cope!

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?