Winston launches safe travel campaign

Your beloved Minister of Foreign Affairs - Winston Peters - has launched a safe travel campaign for when NZers travel overseas. This is because some fools don’t get travel insurance, go to dangerous areas and don’t like the risk, and expect the government to fix their problems.

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Well you DID vote for nanny state after all. I don’t know how I’ve survived leaving New Zealand the dozens of times I have done so.
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However, it IS slightly funny thinking how applicable this is to Winston. I once sat beside Winston on a plane, it was in business class, he was going from Wellington to Christchurch (I was connecting on international flight on to Europe) – so here is Winston’s REAL guide to safe overseas travel:
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1. Ensure local embassy/high commission of country you are visiting knows that the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs is arriving, and full honours are required. This includes accommodation at palace, castle, White House, Blue House, chateau, mansion of the relevant King, Queen, President, Prince, Prime Minister. Don’t want to arrive in a country without somewhere to stay.
2. Check Michael (Cullen) has placed enough money in relevant overseas bank account to pay expenses, shopping while away. Can’t be skint!
3. Make sure only fly safest airlines in safest part of the plane – the only safe airlines are Singapore Airlines, and Emirates, as they are from very low terror risk countries, have new planes and carry less people on the flights (and are the only ones still flying to NZ with a decent first class cabin). Don't ask Helen for her plane, it isn't her plane remember? You've asked before and you can't have it.

4. Make sure enough accompanying officials travel with you, or bodyguards, to shield you from the groupies wanting to ask questions at airports. Officials can also block out seats near you on the plane.

5. Take condoms. There will always be groupies that help to ease the stress of travel. Bill Clinton made the most of this. French cabinet Ministers need this in order to retain any semblance of credibility.
6. Ensure embassy/high commission abroad has limo for safe pickup from airport. Can’t trust local public transport, taxis in such dangerous cities as Tehran, Beijing, London or Canberra. Ensure limo is also available for local trips – high likelihood of being mugged otherwise.
7. Take enough suits and shirts plus one spare for every night of travel. It is dangerous to look beneath your station.
8. Ensure accompanying officials get duty free liquor order very clear. Dangerous for them to have bought the wrong booze and you'll go blind if they buy it at Kiev Airport.
9. Take portfolio of papers to ensure credibility while travelling. Important to sit on plane or in palace looking like you are doing work, when you are actually watching a movie or listening to ipod. Can’t afford to risk media taking photos of Minister not working.
10. Don’t play croquet.
11. Always take interpreters. Foreigners don’t speak properly so it is important to have someone with you who understands it. It’s not their fault NZ is first and it could be dangerous if you don’t understand them.

ARC socialism in action

So the ARC wants to seize control of Auckland’s water off of Watercare Services Ltd. Well, if you ever needed any evidence of the ARC’s slithering slope to socialist Auckland, there is it. Not content with whacking up rates to subsidise expensive train services that are putting commercially viable bus routes out of business, not content with controlling land use, and some lunatic faith that people in the suburbs ought to live in high density housing near railway stations – rather than the affordable family houses they want – and putting up the price of housing as a result. ARC now wants to take Auckland’s water supply out of the hands of an efficient local authority owned company.
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Rodney Hide is opposing this quite rightly, and so should you. Part of the problem is that the Labour/Alliance/Green backed Local Government Act 2002 gave local authorities the power of general competence. This means ARC can now embark on whatever endeavour it wishes, as long as it consults “the community”. Since you, and most ratepayers haven’t the time to commit responding to ARC’s consultation, it inevitably gets hijacked by lunatic interest groups out to get more money off of everyone else, and the legions of unemployable ex. bureaucrats, engineers and other nutters. The other part is that YOU lot voted in a bunch of socialists.
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Watercare services should be privatised. It’s shares could be distributed among all Auckland ratepayers, and then it would be truly publicly owned.

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So what can you do? Start making submissions. Tell ARC you don't want it to grow, you don't want it to take control of Watercare Services. Instead you'd like the ARC to see how it could do less!

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This page is the ARC consultation website.

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ARC's socialism through transport also exists through its agency ARTA. ARTA wants $420 million of your money to spend on public transport, cycling and walking facilities. By no stretch of the imagination will this realise ARTA's goals of less congestion, but the mammoth spend up on new roads by the government will help. It never worked overseas, it wont work here.

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So if you don't want the ARC through ARTA to pour hundreds of millions of dollars of your money into loss making public transport, then click here and make a submission.

BBC - biggest blowers of cash

The BBC, fresh from signing a new contract with talkshow and radio presenter Jonathan Ross for reportedly 18 million pounds for three years ( note this was because Ross is SO popular, there was a "risk" he would defect to commercial TV networks - so he would hardly be lost to the British TV viewing public), now it is revealed in the Sunday Times that the BBC has sent three times the number of people than ITV to cover the World Cup soccer. Three times!! Now the audience for the games isn't "higher" with the BBC - but hey the BBC just wants more money year after year - by force through the TV licence (which is an exhorbitant 131.50 pounds) because it is SO important to public broadcasting.

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Bollocks.

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The BBC is the dominant UK broadcaster because it acts like commercial broadcasters. When it starts wasting licence fee extortion on competing with commercial broadcasters (who get money by broadcasting what viewers want), and pay TV (likewise!) for salaries of stars - people who will always be on TV and radio in the UK because of their popularity, it is no public broadcaster. Can you imagine other state broadcasters, like ABC Australia, CBC Canada and PBS in the US fighting to pay celebrity salaries? Of course not. Can you imagine them providing treble the staff to do what is essentially a commercially viable broadcasting job? No.

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The BBC is out of control. I once suggested on a BBC talk show that with digital TV, licence fee payments could be voluntary. People could have the BBC on subscription, and the insulted response was "how ridiculous, we couldn't do public broadcasting". Yes you could - Jonathan Ross, the World Cup, Chris Moyles on Radio 1, Radio 1 Xtra and local radio has nothing to do with filling a "gap in the market", but about eliminating it and not being accountable for it.

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The BBC needs putting on a leash. The licence fee should be voluntary and tied to converting all digital BBC channels to a pay only service. It should sell Radio 1 and 1Xtra (both are essentially duplicates of commercial networks), and sell Radio 2 and all of the regional breakout stations. I'd probably subscribe to the BBC, I like some of what it broadcasts, but it is erratic. Sometimes it is innovative and creative, sometimes it produces the same sort of mass commercial programming indistinguisable from ITV, Channel 4 or 5 channels.

Bouquet for Greens on medicinal cannabis

Metiria Turei's Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Private Members’ Bill has been drawn from the ballot. It...

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"would allow registered medical practitioners to prescribe cannabis to those with specific serious medical conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, glaucoma and those suffering from nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy. Those who are deemed suitable for medicinal cannabis would have to be registered and would be issued with an identity card. At present it is possible for the Health Minister to approve medicinal cannabis use for some patients, but the process is extremely onerous. This Bill will take that responsibility out of the hands of politicians and place it with those best qualified to make those decisions - doctors. "

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You can keep the identity card, but then it is probably to stop the Police hassling someone using it unde prescription. You may as well keep a copy of your prescription to prove it.

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I hope this Bill gets to Select Committee, and gets the support of at least ACT and the Maori Party (United Future and NZ First are too conservative to allow this). It would be nice to see Labour and National supporting it - it hardly damages the war on drugs, and would be an out for those who do use cannabis to relieve pain. After all, what the hell do any politicians have the right to tell you or your doctor what shouldn't be prescribed, when you and your doctor are happy that it works?

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I'm not optimistic though. Labour is scared this will be seen as being weak on family values, and National is too gutless to be open minded on this - I hope I'm wrong.

Robson's xenophobic rant

Remember Matt Robson? Supporter of Cuba, Jim Anderton's former colleague who lost his seat in Parliament as part of the decline of Jim Anderton's Progressive Party. Well he's in Scoop claiming foreign owned media set the public agenda in New Zealand. What bollocks.

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He goes back to the late 1980s claiming "At the time, Labour was under pressure from a resurgent National promising big tax cuts and a big spend-up to boot. The foreign-owned media, as always, gave National a free ride by providing no analysis into how National could possibly deliver both tax cuts for the rich and a big spend-up on everything from transport to defence, police to National Super."

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Hold on Matt - the economy was stagnant, unemployment was high, and GST had been increased to cover Labour's second term big social spending to avoid the deficit going out of control. That had something to do with Labour losing. The foreign owned media did NOT include television, which was TVNZ and TV3, TV3 being 85% NZ owned at this point and with a tiny audience - the government owned TVNZ, and Radio NZ which was the dominant radio broadcaster, owning two national commercial radio networks, plus National Radio. So apparently, foreign owned newspapers sway the electorate more than electronic media hmmmm.

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Funnily enough the didn't give analysis into how MMP wouldn't deliver the answers people want and didn't report on how MMP was a largely leftwing project driven by people aligned to the Alliance - although it would have been in the "foreign media''s" interests to do so by your theory.

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He's saying that now "And just like then, we have foreign-owned media outlets day after day proclaiming in feature articles, editorials and front-page new stories that the "surplus" should be used for large tax cuts that would mainly benefit those on higher incomes without children." While state TV and radio do the opposite - get over it Matt, you might actually find around 40% of New Zealanders voted for tax cuts - because they WANT them. Unlike in Cuba where people can't vote.

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Let's get it clear - the leftwing corporate media conspiracy is nonsense because:

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- The most influential media of all - television- is dominated by state owned broadcaster TVNZ, followed by Canwest owned TV3/C4 (TV3 news is rarely less leftwing than TVNZ) and then Sky (which has virtually no local news programmes);

- Radio NZ is state owned, and has about 20% of the radio market, another 5% comes from Maori broadcasters and the rest on commercial music and talkback stations. These are owned by a mixture of foreign and local shareholders, and are driven by seeking audiences - rather hard to push an agenda the audience doesn't want to hear;

- Newspaper editors are driven by two things - circulation and advertising. Circulation requires newspapers to sell stories people want to read, and advertising flows on from getting an audience. Papers that don't reflect what people want don't succeed, and several newspapers have failed and started in history as a result;

- Anyone is free to establish a TV station, radio station, newspaper or website to counter views they don't like. It is called freedom, it allows competitiveness of ideas and libertarians find it a lot harder to get media attention than hardened leftists;

- Magazines and the internet are important alternative media outlets, and there is an enormous range of choice with both.

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If the corporate media conspiracy existed, then ACT would have done very very well indeed - ACT would always have got good press, and the Don Brash Brethren connection would have been swept under the carpet. People on both sides of the political spectrum think the media is biased against them - I think the media is largely statist - because rarely do editors or reporters advocate a position of the government NOT intervening in something. Also, why does it have to be foreign? What's wrong with foreigners? Why is the left so damned xenophobic?