Funding snub for Karori Wildlife Sanctuary

Ha ha ha ha... according to the Dominion Post local Labour MPs and the centreleft Mark Blumsky (well he's always advocating new state spending as far as I can see) are upset you are not being forced to pay through central government (not so lucky Wellington city ratepayers) to build a new visitor and education centre at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.

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Good.

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If you support the Sanctuary, support it - with your own money. Sponsor it, go visit it and pay for entry, give a donation. If Marian Hobbs and Mark Blumsky each contributed $30,000 (and let's face it, neither are short of a bob or two) it would be 1% of the funding for it. If 10,000 Wellingtonians contributed $60 each - the funding would be there.

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Too hard? Well tough luck. You see the people whose money it is had to do something to get it, they had to convince someone to give it to them (setting aside politicians of course).

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It's called fundraising - it's how a lot of community used assets were built, and it means convincing individuals to spend their money, not Cabinet to spend yours.

Annette Presley - fascist

I notice my friend Not PC has received legal threats from the self styled consumer champion, Annette Presley. That is because he called her a thief - for advocating the state control of Telecom's property rights so she could use it - it's actually conversion, like when you use someone else's car without their permission, but don't hold possession of it continuously. His point, albeit extreme - is correct. She advocates state use of force to take property in order to benefit herself. Looks like a duck...

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and this is the woman who defames Telecom constantly, for providing services to consumers that she doesn't - or that customers don't choose to buy from here - or for not providing her access to its property on HER terms. She doesn't like Telecom because it is big and successful. She is small and successful, and only wants to help consumers out - or rather increase the profitability of her company. She has the same motive as Telecom - except she wants to use Telecom's property to do it - and now has the Government, the Greens and DPF supporting her. My comments on her are here, as she is the entrepreneurial second hander that Ayn Rand talked about. The Whig has also commented on her, so has Latitude 45 south.

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Now, unaccustomed as I am to be abusive and insulting – I thought I’d use a song to simply say……..

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Well... Annette's a bitch, she's a big fat bitch, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world, she's a stupid bitch if there ever was a bitch, she's a bitch to all the boys and girls.

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Monday she's a bitch, on Tuesday she's a bitch, and Wednesday to Saturday she's a bitch, then on Sunday just to be different she's a super King Kamehameha be-atch.

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Have you ever met Annette Presley, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world, she's a mean old bitch and she has stupid hair, she's a bitch bitch bitch

bitch bitch bitch bitch, bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch cause-a she's a stupid bitch,

Annete's a bitch and she's just a dirty bitch, Annette is a bitch-ah.

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I wouldn't use Slingshot if it were free (if I were local) - I urge anyone who thinks that a wealthy secondhand entrepreneur like Annette Presley shouldn't sue rather than responding with arguments and debate, to donate to Not PC's legal fund.

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oh and why is Annette Presley a fascist? She advocates state control of private property - which is a form of fascism.

I wish she was a punk rocker...

Sandi Thom - is number 2 in the British charts with a song called "I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair". Now she can sing, and it's quite catchy. It's designed to be nostalgic, a sort of teen angst that there was a better time that she never lived through. But oh dear oh dear... how damned stupid the lyrics are:

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"Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

In '77 and '69 revolution was in the air

I was born too late into a world that doesn't care

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Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

When the head of state didn't play guitar

Not everybody drove a car

When music really mattered and when radio was king

When accountants didn't have control

And the media couldn't buy your soul

And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything[chorus]

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When pop stars still remained a myth

And ignorance could still be bliss

And when God saved the Queen she turned a whiter shade of pale

My mom and dad were in their teens

And anarchy was still a dream

And the only way to stay in touch was a letter in the mail[chorus]

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When record shops were still on top

And vinyl was all that they stocked

And the super info highway was still drifting out in space

Kids were wearing hand me downs

And playing games meant kick arounds

And footballers still had long hair and dirt across their face[chorus]

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I was born too late into a world that doesn't care

Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair "

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For starters, remember any punks that wore flowers in their hair? What stops her dressing punk and wearing flowers in her hair anyway? .

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She proclaims “revolution was in the air” in 1977 and 1969. That was a good thing was it? Well 1969 is a bit odd, as I presume she means the Paris 1968 protests. The ones when students caused riots, when workers tried to take over their places of employment and demand higher wages and to overthrow the democratically elected government. A general strike occurred supported by the French Communist Party, those nice people who also supported the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring that same year. Yeah, good one Sandi - so you want a revolution backed by people who ran the dullest most oppressive regimes in Europe?

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1977? Does she mean the Sex Pistols? Hardly a focus for revolution, rather a carefully marketed trend. Does she mean the terrorist attacks and the umpteen hijackings that year? Does she mean Anwar Sadat visiting Jerusalem? Does she mean the murders carried out by the German Red Army faction? Who knows- I bet it was just a nice rhyme.

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The real revolution in the UK started in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher starting taking Britain back from unions, bureaucrats and featherbedded protected businesses and rescued the country from the economic stagnation now besetting France and Italy - but Sandy wouldn’t think that was cool and interesting. She’d rather celebrate the drug fuelled banality of Sid Vicious.

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So what else is annoying about this song?
“When accountants didn't have control, And the media couldn't buy your soul, And computers were still scary and we didn't know everything”
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Well Sandi, you go on spending all the money you have and borrow and don’t save any – that’s right little girl. Go to Cuba and North Korea, they don’t have control there. The media of very few radio stations, and TV channels with far less choice – as opposed to today with many of both, and the internet, when it is cheaper than ever before to publish on paper, electronically or broadcast. Yes that’s right, the media in the days when BBC Radio 1 wouldn’t play the Sex Pistols – or before then, when only the state could broadcast unless you sailed in a ship off the coast. How about how carefully constructed some bands were then? The age of artificial bands predates your conception Sandi. Better to not know everything, but then who does Sandi? You certainly don’t know a lot.

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“And anarchy was still a dream” Oh so let's abolish the state then - can I then steal your song and give it away to people Sandi? Take your royalties? Or was the cry for anarchy just a nihilistic catchphrase used by drug-dazed halfwits indulging in the latest trend and whatever sensory stimulation they could find without any care?
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Well am I just a grumpy old bastard? No - there are some quaint things about the past, the lesser obsession with image, the greater politeness and courtesy and records were more works of art than MP3s. Sandi's signoff line in the song is "I was born too late to a world that doesn't care".
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Well Sandi, your chance of getting a recording contract in the late 1960s would have been lower than today, you'd have done no podcasts and would have found it tough to get Radio 1 to play your song because it didn't exist. Also Sandi, if you think the world is more heartless now than the 1960s and 1970s, then ask people in eastern Europe - they wont get thrown in jail for listening to your song now.
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Young people today - romantic about socialism...

Away

Sorry all, I have been in the US and then Yorkshire and working a bit too hard to blog - that has now been amended. So much to say as well...

I'm in the USA but that budget...

I've noticed the NZ budget... see you didn't get any of your money back, except the contracting industry which is having an ol' fashioned pork barrel building boom on roads. The state sector continues to grow, and organisations like NaZis on Air get more money to propagate their.. well propaganda. Read this unadulterated vomit from the Acting CEO of NZ On Air:

"Acting Chief Executive Bernard Duncan said seeing and hearing our own stories on television and radio and in our music was especially important to New Zealanders because of our size and geographic location.

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What the hell are "our own stories"? Do your stories get put onto the radio or TV? Maybe you ring talkback and you can share your story? That doesn't get funding from the taxpayer. Apparently because NZ has a small population, or is it the land area of the UK, that means it is especially important to subsidise and prop up a bunch of self-obsessed wankers producing TV to make themselves feel better? Apparently construction workers, shopkeepers, farmers, restaurant workers all need to help pay those tossers to "share their fucking stories". It's not my fucking story Mr Duncan!

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Then he says “Local content that tells our stories helps us to connect as a society, and to know who we are as a nation. It allows us to celebrate our culture and consider the things that set us apart from other countries,”

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Connect as a society? You mean we all sit at home playing with ourselves and don't interact without having Mr Duncan take his cut of the loot Dr Cullen takes from our regular earnings to put some actors on TV? So New Zealand didn't connect as a society before TV came along in the 1960s??? Mr Duncan, New Zealanders meet each other socially in real life, they "connect" as you call it, without you propping up the careers and businesses of people doing something they "love". New Zealanders use bars, sport, clubs, churches, workplaces, families, the internet to connect - TV is the least connecting medium of all, it is passive and keeps people at home. The thing that sets New Zealand apart from other countries is not you funding TV programmes, New Zealanders overseas don't identify (or even remember) NZ made TV programmes most of the time - it is something else - and the state doesn't replicate or represent it.

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Now I've vented my spleen on NaZis on Air, the roads...

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Fortunately, most of the projects in the road spendup are quite good - though Labour's list of projects includes umpteen that are already underway and already funded, like the long delayed and much needed Mt Roskill Extension of SH20 in Auckland. Unfortunately, some are poor quality and the huge increase in spending in a short time has fueled massive inflation in the road building sector. At least you can no longer say your petrol tax isn't being spent on roads, now it is - although not guaranteed for more than 5 years.

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So now if you want even more roads, you'll have to pay tolls, more tax or not build the inefficient ones. Don't expect to hear Labour or National talk about roads that are being built that probably shouldn't be... you see flab in the roading sector is growing year on year. Maybe NZ could take a leaf out of the Bush Administration, which has a Democrat Transport Secretary Norman Mineta saying that some highways can be privatised:

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"we will encourage more states to find ways to open up their transportation infrastructure to private investment opportunities. State budgets are stretched thin, while gasoline taxes are becoming increasingly untenable as long-term sources of funding.At the same time, major financial institutions and their clients are expressing increasing willingness to invest billions of dollars in roads and airports."