Another domestic airline?

An old joke about how you create a millionaire - find a billionaire to invest in an airline.
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Well, some entrepreneurs are going to pour money down a blackhole in the hope they can make a buck out of flying from Auckland to Wellington and Queenstown at least. Fares to be as low as $12 Auckland-Queenstown, $2 Auckland-Wellington, with a start up sale of 10,000 seats at 2c each. (Of course you’ll have security levies etc to pay on top of that).
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The website is here, it is called FirstJet.com and it intends to fly before the end of the year using a Boeing 737. It says it can do it cheap by using planes as billboards (though most of the time these billboards are out of sight) inside and out. I think it will try to be a Ryanair, without the volumes of traffic.
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Hmmmm, interesting. A trial website, without even using the domain name, sounds like bollocks to me. On the one hand, routes like Auckland-Wellington make Air NZ a bucket, so there may be room for a third player, but on the other hand the money is mostly made from business travellers, filling up planes, many paying fully refundable fares with corporate discounts. Those travellers want:
- Frequent flights;
- Connections to other destinations;
- Koru Club.
Tourists get the leftover seats, particularly at off peak times, but without that core business traffic, the airline business is dead unless you can maintain consistent high volumes of traffic.
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Remember, Qantas doesn’t make money on NZ domestic routes, Origin Pacific is barely breaking even. However, good on them for having a go, without taxpayer money – if it succeeds, thousands will be better off, if not, then the market was not there to make it pay. Nevertheless, I doubt that this will be off the ground - it looks like the professionalism of teenagers.

EU is the bad guy in world trade

Latest OECD data on agricultural subsidies shows that by far the greatest culprit is Europe. In 2005, the European Union spent nearly US$134 billion on propping up its agricultural sector. These subsidies generated around one-third of the average farm’s income. Don’t forget most of these are sucked up by large farms, including ones owned by the British Royal Family and others who can hardly start to argue they deserve to money taken from others.
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The United States, typically pointed out to be the bad boy spends LESS THAN ONE-THIRD what the European Union spends, at just short of US$43 billion. This is 44% of the EU’s budget. Although the US is the third biggest agricultural subsidiser, after Japan which spends US$47.4 billion on securing votes for the Liberal Democratic Party by propping up inefficient rice farmers. Fourth is South Korea, spending US$23.3 million on pretty much the same as Japan. Interestingly the only OECD country to significantly increase subsidies since 1988 has been Turkey, which has seen the proportion of farmer’s income supported by subsidies increase from 15% to 25%
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So why doesn’t Oxfam storm Brussels? It does call for reform, but it is muted compared to its call for aid. Why isn’t Bob Geldof and Bono damning France, the primary culprit in this? The Bush Administration is very keen on cutting subsidies as long as it is done multilaterally, and France in the EU says it has “done enough”. No it hasn’t, not by a very long shot.

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It is time for all those give a damn about reducing poverty in developing countries to tell the EU and France in particular to move – to abolish export subsidies, cut subsidies for the “old” EU states by 70%, to the same level now offered the new EU accession countries (Hungary, Poland etc) immediately and abolish non-tariff barriers to agricultural imports. Do that, it would challenge the US to do the same and it would almost certainly wake up the developing world to open up its markets in manufactured goods.

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and yes, New Zealand does have the moral highground on this, as subsidies in New Zealand are comparatively non-existent.

London at 32 degrees celsius

I have the following observations:

1. British media are weather obsessed;
2. Transport is designed for winter, the tube is hot and stinky, Victoria and Bakerloo lines are by far the worst as they are the deep level lines with the worst ventilation and oldest rolling stock. The best thing is, a lot of people know this and are using it less.
3. Women go to work wearing essentially weekend clothes (tanktops dresses and jandals), men wear suits not lava lavas. No shorts, socks and sandals.

4. Combine 2 and 3 and some women get on the tube wearing little – like the 8 inch high shorts, that means from top of the waist to the leg, NOT leg length. Why does this never happen in New Zealand?

5. Homeless people sleep in parks out in the open.

6. The sun comes up between 4 and 4.30 and down at 9pm - bliss!

Blog searches and the World Cup

Weirdest google/blogger search terms finding this blog:

masturbating using toothpaste (someone in India)
French samoan race pictures
Sexy blow yobs
Dirt on rob fyfe
Penis size images (someone in Sioux falls, South Dakota is interested)

OK so now with Germany knocked out, go France...

Celebrate the United States

For me, the 4th of July is a chance to celebrate the founding of the United States. Why? Because it was, in modern history, the most profoundly radical leap forward in human civilisation.
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For today I will ignore the naysayers and those who will point out, many with good reason, the failings of the USA in terms of liberty, the mistakes of the past and those who tarnished the American dream. Today, because this is a chance to celebrate what is great about the United States, and to note why Americans, far more than the British, New Zealanders or Australians, feel pride in the USA. That pride is not a form of tribal knuckle dragging nationalism, of the kind that has left the Balkans dripping with blood, but a pride in a migrant nation of people who fled tyranny, judgment of religion and inherited privilege - to forge something new. 300 years ago many would have laughed at the idea that the migrant colonies in the New World would eventually come to be the greatest military and economic power on the planet. The Cold War saw the USA and its allies demonstrate, profoundly, the difference in both material wealth and personal happiness between capitalism (albeit tarnished) and cold, heartless, authoritarian bullying of the state.

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The US Declaration of Independence was the beginning of this - the unshackling of people from monarchy and feudalism, and changing the nature of government - from something done to people by those who knew better than the people, to something to serve people, to protect their rights from the infringement by each other, and by outsiders. It would form the basis for the US Constitution, and the words "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Life being the foundation of all that is humanity, liberty being the oxygen by which humanity lives, grows, learns, invents, discovers and builds and the pursuit of happiness - the purpose of life. This compares to the naysayers, who saw life as being owned by the King, or God, or the tribe - with rulers deciding that men should sacrifice and be sacrificed for some good "greater than they".

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No. America is built on the pursuit of happiness - what could be more glorious than that?

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So today, have a drink and toast "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - and for a moment think of the thousands who have died for this, and the millions who can not even speak of it.