Nanny's ever creeping hand.... while she allows scum to party at our expense

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The oppression of adult smokers continues with Julian Pistorius blogging about a proposal in New South Wales to ban smoking in cars!! Your own private property, your own space – well, given so many acquiesce to it being banned in businesses you own, its only natural that the anti-liberty brigade would choose cars next. Not exactly rocket science to figure out what is next. The idea, you see, is to protect children. Now this is easy to understand by motive – see I have asthma and both my parents smoked at home until my late teens – something they both regret now. It would be preferable if parents didn’t smoke around their children. It would be preferable if parents did lots of things and didn't do others - the things is there are laws to prohibit parents neglecting, physically and sexually abusing their children. They do little to stop it happening, but it does mean they are brought to account.

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Now you know my opinion on smoking, I hate it personally, but believe it is up to adults to decide what they put into their own bodies, and whether or not they allow smoking on their property. That was explained in my post on the forthcoming ban in England.

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This call for banning smoking in cars - to protect children - is far more insidious. The road to hell is paved with good intentions - and the means to this end are terrifying indeed. How is this going to be enforced? Are you going to be fined and stopped by cops for smoking in your own car? Remember the odds are that if your car is stolen it will get next to no police attention, but ohhhhh smoke in it - then you're in trouble, breaking Nanny State's Parenting Laws.

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This can't be the end though - you see, if parents are to be controlled according to what is harmful to their children, what next will it be? After all, the harm caused by exposure to tobacco smoke in cars would be minor. Banning smoking everywhere must be next. Then limits on alcohol storage and consumption by parents? Regulations on storing poisons and knives? Regulations to prohibit male parents being alone with their children (sex abuse). How about a daily diet ration for children so parents don’t feed them too little, too much or the wrong food? How about banning books that are suitable only for adults in parents' houses? After all - it is for children - what's more important than protecting children from negligent or harmful parents?
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Oh I forgot to say, the Bill to ban smoking in cars covers ALL cars, whether you're a parent or not - after all, can't be TOO careful when we are protecting people from themselves?

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So who wants to do this? Political correct socialists? No. The Reverend Fred Niles, well known NSW evangelist MP who leads the Christian Democrats and hates homosexuals and wants to ban Muslim clothing. Fred clearly thinks that the state should regulate parenting.

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Of course we know the Maori Party would condone this – being the fascist bullies who want to ban smoking. Lindsay Mitchell and ZealandWhinge both blogged on this. The Maori Party wants to "protect children" by taking away the rights of adults - seeing the state as parents of Maori who it does not think can make their own minds up themselves.

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So think, if you're a non-smoker - what does banning smoking in cars mean? What does it mean that there are people wanting to expand the justice system's role into prosecuting smokers - when at the same time, a woman can kill a baby girl and get four years of prison she describes as "It's not as hard as people make out". The Sunday Star Times reports how she enjoyed drugs, porn and partied in prison - if the Maori Party can't get viscerally outraged by the entity that killed Lillybing like it gets outraged by smoking, then it can't even pretend to have any interest in the issues that truly hurt Maori people.

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and you might think about where state priorities should be.... smoking, or child killers?

Gee the market is working - people consuming less sugar

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The Daily Telegraph reports that, surprise surprise, demand for sugar filled soft drinks in the UK is declining! Sale of chocolate, potato chips and other snacks are also down as people watch what they eat. People are preferring water and juice to sugar based soft drinks, and apparently the UK is one of the few countries where artificially sweetened soft drinks outsell conventional ones.

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As the head of Pepsico in the UK is quoted as saying:

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"The calorie intake of Britain has been falling over the last few decades, according to the Government's own figures... There's a massive demand for a stage villain and the food industry has stumbled into the role."

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Exactly - personal responsibility is the key issue, and it is clear more and more people are thinking about what they eat and drink - because it is in their interests to do so. The slobbering big statists like the Greens, want to boss you about and take more of your money to make you be good, because you can't figure it out for yourself - you idiot!! Sue Kedgley can run your life and spend your money better than you can. A government campaign or a tax or regulations wont work, they'll just be seen as big nanny "telling you off for being naughty" as pathetic little petty-fascists rub their hands with glee in bossing others about.

Death of Harry Browne - former US Libertarian Party Presidential candidate

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Harry Browne was the US Libertarian Party's Presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, and he died on 1 March 2006, aged 72, after suffering for some months from Lou Gehrig's disease. In 1996 he got around 485 000 votes (0.5%) for President, doing only slightly worse in 2000 with 0.4%, coming 5th both times (after the 2 main party candidates, Ralph Nader and in 1996 Ross Perot and in 2000 Pat Buchanan).

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Browne's greatest successes was arguably his books "Why Government Doesn't Work", and How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. he would appear on radio and TV shows across the states, though typically on smaller independent stations, as the major networks have little interest in minor party candidates until they get around 20% poll support - and to some extent that is "chicken and egg" with media coverage being necessary to get it. However, Harry didn't want the government to make people give him publicity - he believed unequivocably in freedom. He was controversial though - opposing the war in Iraq, and believing very much in the US taking a more isolationist foreign policy. He was also involved in a scandal involving a Libertarian Party worker assisting him with his primary campaign before he was selected as the 1996 presidential candidate, as this was seen as a conflict of interest that caused much infighting with the US Libertarian Party.

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He was an articulate and interesting speaker, who came across very well on television when given the chance - one of the best advocates for liberty the US has had in recent history. I saw him on C-SPAN debates in the 1996 campaign, and he could have battled with the big two candidates any day. James Babb has a great letter from Harry Browne to his daughter on his blog- for Christmas, which says a great deal about his philosophy. He also had an article of his published in The Free Radical.

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Egocentricity has republished one of his articles. One of the better quotes is:

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"You don't control government. It's easy to think of the perfect law that will stop the bad guys while leaving the good guys unhindered. But no law will be written the way you have in mind, it won't be administered the way you have in mind, and it won't be adjudicated the way you have in mind."

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Several sites are commemorating Harry's life including Downsize DC blog from the Downsize DC organisation he helped follow, Hammer of Truth and the US Libertarian Party website. Others include:
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Kolehardfacts
Third Party Watch
Chrislib
Atavist
Spelunking through the chaos
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So RIP Harry Browne - you will be missed.

The entrepreneurial second-hander

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Annette Presley likes the limelight, a bit like Sir Richard Branson. However, unlike Branson she doesn't always produce products or services with her own property, she also likes using the property of others - sometimes for nothing.

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You see her protest for her ISP, Slingshot, besides being a clever marketing stunt, is part of her one woman campaign to appear to be on behalf of the consumer - when she is as interested in making a profit as Telecom is. "What's wrong with that" I hear you say, well she has a record of wanting to use Telecom's network to compete with it, and complaining to the government about when Telecom wont give her what she wants on her terms.

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The page on Slingshot's website "The Battle to Unbundlle" (sic!) has a lot of links about her complaining about the regulatory environment. She calls for a "level playing field" which, of course, largely exists - just she isn't prepared to put her own money into a local access network (far better to make your competitor do it, at prices that are forced upon it). To her credit she has been at the forefront of a company cutting call charges, despite how "unfair" the system is. Unlike Telstra Clear, Slingshot does compete.

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However, Annette is no friend of the free market, check out this comment from her letter to the Minister of Communications, David Cun liffe:

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"Telecom does represent 20% of the New Zealand share market and as Telecom is 75% overseas owned these profits go offshore. 􀂃 Since the government sale of Telecom, more than $8 billion has been remitted overseas to their foreign share holders, and they still have an unrealized capital gain of more than $5 billion. 􀂃 One would question why is the government propping up a foreign owned monopoly and supporting its control of the NZ market."

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Of course, unlike Telstra Clear which is 99% non-NZ owned. More importantly, who cares if the owners of a company have gained dividends on their investment? Annette doesn't live the lifestyle of the poor. Telecom is also NOT a monopoly (after all Slingshot competes with it in the national call, international call and ISP markets), it is not propped up by government (its customers pay for it) and the extent of its control of the NZ market is due to others not setting up in competition, and it having customers that continue to use it. (Besides that, the letter is plagued with grammatical errors!).

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Annette is pleading socialism - a private company can't pay dividends to its shareholders and can't operate in a free and open market, because SHE wants to be propped up by the government granting HER property rights over another company.

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Remember a few years ago she bleated on about her free ISP - i4free - which has disappeared since Telecom renegotiated the interconnection agreement that was funding the company. i4free boasted about giving free dialup internet access - of course it wasn't really free, Telecom was paying for it. You see i4free would get a Clear local line, and Clear would get paid, per minute, the interconnection fee Telecom would have to paid for calls from a Telecom local line to a Clear line. Now those interconnection rates were meant to cover voice calls, but the internet meant that many people would spend hours online and so Telecom was paying well over the cost for Clear to terminate the calls - so Clear would use the money to share with i4free, to basically pay for the free internet access. Telecom couldn't charge this to the user because of the KiwiShare, so there was a dispute as Telecom introduced the 0870 numbering scheme to bypass the interconnection agreement.

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Annette screamed on and on about how unfair it was that Telecom was changing its numbers for ISPs and it was jeoparding free Internet when, in fact, TELECOM was paying for her company to operate - almost all i4free revenue would have come from interconnection fees, because, despite her bleatings, i4free free internet disappeared once the interconnection agreement had been renegotiated. She claimed:

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"i4free will earn its keep from what she describes as a "next-generation" consumer marketing and shopping network model that has been successful overseas. Advertising will play a small part."

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Yeah right!

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Annette Presley runs a good ISP with a national/international call service that is competitive - she built up a business based on reselling the services of other operators, which is fine if she negotiated such resale agreements on a voluntary basis - but she needs to learn that it is immoral in business to force people to do business with you, to use the government to grant you property rights in the business of others. She should get on with doing business, with those who choose to do business with her, and tell the government to leave it alone - unfortunately, she has a record of doing the exact opposite. Being an entrepreneur means producing or selling something you made or bought freely on the market - not selling something someone was forced to sell you.

Pope assassination attempt was Soviet plot

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Associated Press is reporting that an Italian parliamentary commission has concluded that the USSR was behind the 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II given his role in supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland - which, naturally, was seen as a challenge to communist rule and Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe. The report details the draft report from the commission into the involvement of the KGB in Italy during the Cold War.
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Has Keith Locke apologised to the people of eastern Europe for supporting the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s?