Muslim religious teachers abusing children in the UK

With a story that harks back to the many cases of Catholic child abuse, the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain is claiming that thousands of Muslim children in the UK are being physically and sexually abused by their religious teachers. It wants a national register of Madrasses (Islamic schools) and greater transparency and accountability for what goes on in Madrasses. It claims some parents are preferring home tuition for fear of what will happen to their children in some schools. The Muslim Parliament, by the way, is a non-governmental forum, and it is indeed courageous, but only right that it speaks out about this - shaming and hopefully encouraging an end to such practices. According to The Independent, around 100,000 children attend Madrasses in the UK - for their sake, those who commit abuse should be swiftly removed from the schools, and parents and children told that they don't need to tolerate this barbarity.

Diesel tax evasion in the UK

The UK has the highest rate of diesel tax in Europe, ostensibly to help pay for roads, but in reality most of the revenue goes to government for general spending. One thing New Zealand truck, bus and diesel car owners should be grateful for is road user charges. All revenue from road user charges is dedicated by law to the National Land Transport Fund. Most of that revenue goes on roads, with the remainder going to help subsidise public transport, pay for Police enforcement of traffic laws and those road safety ads you see. Because road user charges vary according to vehicle weight and configuration, and are charged by distance, they are an effective form of user pays that means trucks pay their way in terms of wear and tear on state highways (and half in terms of local roads, as councils pay the rest from rates). You can argue about what the money is spent on, but the money is dedicated to transport (unlike all of the petrol tax).

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However in Europe, the vastly differing levels of diesel tax means there is a black market in smuggling diesel across borders. Trucks with extra large fuel tanks enter the UK and siphon diesel to buyers at vastly reduced cost. In addition, other trucks legally enter the UK and drive on British roads without paying any British tax, effectively using them for free, competing unfairly with British truck operators.

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The UK tax is 47p per litre, that's NZ$1.32 a litre of tax alone!! That is 70% of the cost of the fuel. The EU average is 22p per litre (around NZ$0.62). There are different rates for industrial and residential use compared to road use. Smugglers are selling diesel to British truck operators at around 50p a litre compared to up to 1.04p a litre at the pump.

The solution? Well the Blair government had one - it was going to replace much of the diesel tax (the EU has legal MINIMUM levels of fuel tax that Britain couldn't go below) with a road user charge system for trucks. The trucks would pay by distance and weight, as they do in New Zealand and, in exchange, get fuel tax and licence fee (road tax) refunds. It got held up in bureaucratic red tape, and another move to harmonise fuel tax in the EU at one, lower level was opposed by the House of Lords because it would cost £2 billion in revenue and it thought it wouldn't be good for the environment.

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What rot. The diesel tax smugglers are legitimately bypassing a punitive tax which is stealing from the British road transport industry to fund anything BUT roads in Britain. The UK road transport industry supports tolls because it would mean foreign truck operators would pay the same as they do - but Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are into tax and spend, and the British public likes paying for an unproductive bureaucracy.

French socialists punish ipod and itunes for success

Having managed to achieve unemployment rates of 10%, forecast GDP growth of 1.9%, GDP per capita (on PPP basis) not far above Spain and New Zealand – the anti-success Nazis in France want to punish Apple for the success of the iPod.
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Apple, after years of being ranked as the poor cousin of the IT sector, has had stunning success with the iPod, because it offered people a convenient, easy to use way of storing and listening to vast quantities of music. In association with that is iTunes, Apple’s online music store providing a legal way to buy songs to play on your iPod. However, the French Parliament says this is “anti-competitive” – as if the French Parliament ever produced a single thing that made people’s lives better without stealing it from someone in the first place.
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CNN and the NZ Herald reports The French Parliament has passed a law forcing Apple to effectively open up its anti-copying technology so that iTunes songs can be played on players other than iPods, the same would apply to Sony and its Walkmans and music store.
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Thieving Vichy-like bullies. France has produced much that is good in the world, and has food and wine that is immeasurably better than much of the salty sugary fat laden slop in Britain. They have healthier attitudes to alcohol, sex and aesthetics - I understand why the French can be arrogant about what is French. The language is far more beautiful than most and the passionate "joie de vivre" of the French is an example to the world, compared to the inert mind numbing nihilism of Anglo-Saxons, unless they are drunk and become either obnoxious or perverted. The French don't have page 3 girls in grotty tabloids, because it is no big deal for a woman to show her breasts off on the beach - it is just a fact of life, neither repressed nor obsessed.

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Unfortunately, a great attitude to life is not matched by a lauding of commercial success. Yes innovation is lauded, the French were one-half of the team that made Concorde, the TGV high speed train, its commitment to nuclear power and the Millau Viaduct.

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but IT? Sorry. You see IT innovators that aren't focused on major infrastructure or defence don’t reside in France much, as the tax and regulatory regime punishes success – why should Apple have bothered when the parasitical little busybodies in the French Parliament think those who DIDN’T invent the idea, didn’t make it successful ought to profit from it at Apple’s expense. .

Do you really think there would be iPods, Walkmen, compact discs, cassettes, DVDs, video cassettes or LPs if you let politicians decide? No. They would spend umpteen years arguing about whether it would be too expensive for the poor, whether not enough local content would be available for people to listen to – or whether the machines should have local songs already on them before they are sold blah blah blah.
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France wants the Eurosocialist Union to support such a law – given France’s less than enthusiastic adoption of most European liberalisation measures (ever wondered why France has virtually no low cost airlines?) – the EU should tell France to bugger off and consider liberté as least as much as fraternité and equalité.

Abortion

PC has posted some thoughts recently about this, but I have one.....

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Being libertarian I am naturally inclined to believe that up to a certain point - abortion on demand, but not publicly funded, should be allowed. That certain point is when the foetus can either be viable outside the womb or when a conscious faculty exists.

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So... abortion on demand - it is ok to abort a foetus because it is female or male.

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Comfortable with that? I'm not - but I'm not prepared to use the law to stop it. I think many doctors would refuse to do it, but it makes you think.

Auckland's socialist transport czars

Mike Lee and Dick Hubbard both want you to pay for electrifying Auckland's rail network, whether or not you'll ever use it, you might be in Wellington, Wanganui, Whakatane or Winton, and regardless of whether there are net economic benefits in doing it.

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Both are under the delusion that somehow, a network that the Prime Minister once described as being so good that "most Aucklanders don't live within coee of a railway station", will relieve Auckland traffic congestion. No proper peer-reviewed modelling has been carried out that demonstrates this beyond a tiny margin of error.

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Dr Cullen has said the government (you) will pay the full cost of double tracking the Western rail line and other track improvements that are essential if the system is going to run at any reasonable frequency - while Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) will have to pay for station and train upgrades itself. Fare paying passengers can't even pay for the cost of running the trains (around 20%) so don't even think anyone wants them to pay for the upgrade. Clearly the private sector doesn't think it could attract many motorists or bus passengers so it wont invest. So the question is why should you?

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Well you Aucklanders elected Regional Council Chairman Mike Lee and Mayor Dick Hubbard - they want your income taxes and GST to pay for a big electric railway. They think Wellington is getting a better deal, when in fact it is only getting $65 million of taxpayers money for its rail system (the rest comes from a fare increase, rates and is approved funding from Land Transport NZ from petrol tax). Somehow electrified railways reduce urban sprawl - which is apparently bad -far better to have people live on tower blocks near railway stations (although few MPs or Aucklanders want to do that).

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Lee and Hubbard should butt out - Auckland's congestion is hampered by them both managing most of Auckland's road network not as a business, but as a political toy. If they want to see how public transport can work, they might look at the bus stations partly funded by North Shore City Council along the Northern Motorway. The car parks are filling up every morning as bus services, run by private companies (albeit some subsidised) get patronised - and that is before completion of the busway that will speed them past the traffic congestion approaching the bridge.

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If Hubbard and Lee stopped thinking about flash shiny sexy trains and thought about simple measures to improve the efficiency of the existing roading network, they could make quite a difference to Auckland traffic. If they supported replacing petrol tax with variable user charges it would make an enormous difference. The ARC will hold up the Avondale extension of SH20 because it supports a route that is 33% more expensive with little difference in traffic effect - Auckland City Council opposed the Victoria Park Viaduct duplication project, until Transit changed plans to make it a tunnel, effectively doubling that cost - and you think these bodies are good custodians of your money?

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but they wont support user pays - they are socialists - bent on making you pay for what they want other people to use.

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Nowhere has a new world (North American/Australasian) city invested in new rail and reduced traffic congestion, and spending a fortune on a railway to take people to where only 12% of Auckland jobs are certainly wont do it.