The rise and fall of Jade Goody

To find out why this is the biggest news in the UK in one easy read, try Bryony Gordon's column in the Daily Telegraph, she summarises it beautifully.
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You see, UK Celebrity Big Brother was doing badly in the ratings until the past few days. It had even more of a B and C list range of celebrities, with the only people in the Big Brother household with international celebrity status being Leo Sayer, Jermaine Jackson and (in South Asia) Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, also Dirk Benedict from the “A Team” and well known film director Ken Russell. The highlight until recently was Leo Sayer breaking his way out of the Big Brother house and being stopped by security guards, because he was sick of dirty laundry. Ken Russell left on his own accord as he was sick of it, and punk musician Donny Tourette hopped over the wall because he refused to take the role of servant to Jade and her family saying ""I'm not waiting hand on foot on some fucking moron and her family" - you'll soon find out why he would say that.
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Anyway, the key person in there now is clearly Jade Goody, who became famous for being a brainless chav in a Big Brother in 2002. She made a fortune out of being on TV since then, being stupid (Cambridge is in “East Angular” according to her, which she thought was overseas), with the BBC website listing a whole range of her insights, as does Digital Spy.
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She was popular because she is very WYSIWYG – which is basically not very bright, foul mouthed and gobby (eek I’m picking up the vernacular). She talks a lot, about anything and doesn’t know much about it – which a lot of people in Britain appreciate probably because they all know people like that. She has had an “autobiography” written for her, and “writes” a column (rather gets someone else to write the thoughts she gobs out). A workout video was made of her, describing how she lost lots of weight - except she actually had liposuction. Yes I know she had a hard life when young, father left, mother is a nutter - but i know a few people who have had it hard too - they're not making millions of out talking shit.
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So she is famous not because of talent, skills, having produced nothing besides laughter from people taking the piss out of her for talking like an adolescent with less intelligence.
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Now she is the centre of a row having lost the plot by engaging in a prolonged abusive tirade against Shilpa Shetty a major Bollywood star. Her rant went on and on almost without interruption, largely just abuse, calling Shilpa a “princess” and how she’s “just like everyone else” – in other words the truth about how Jade is a nobody who was lucky to make a fortune out of it, vs others who actually are more than a mouth, hurts Jade. With Jo O’Meara and “glamour model” (in the UK it is glamorous to show your tits for a tabloid paper) WAG Danielle Lloyd cheering Jade on (with comments like “Shilpa should f*** off home. She can't even speak English”, she speaks English and much more than you, ignorant tart) it has caused an international row.
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There is an element of racism, but moreso an element of rather common working class young women being bitchy with a more dignified and polite young women from another culture. However nothing beats Jade’s abusive tirade, calling Shilpa a liar and fake, and much more that you can read on wiki, or watch it under Jade and Shilpa fight over stock cubes.
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The culture that celebrates and rewards talentless foul mouthed stupidity needs to be crushed. Goody’s truly insane persistent rant shows her up for what she really is - a stupid little envy ridden bitch who would rather bring down people who have some dignity, class and talent than listen and be civilised. Shilpa stood there and heard this little toilet mouthed nobody spew out her chivvy abuse, Jermaine Jackson tried to intervene but Jade thinks she is special because “Big Brother” is her environment. I hope this is her downfall – sponsors and producers should steer far away from this.
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Jade – you’ve made your money from being brainless and talking like an adolescent – now get some advice, invest it and spend your life watching TV, reading gossip mags, eating ready meals and fly Ryanair to Spain ever year to get your tan and get trollied with people like you. You can take your equally stupid boyfriend with you. You are a side show freak and you’ve been shown up to be a bundle of anger and brainlessness with NO sense of when to stop and think about your actions. The age of fame and fortune without brains, talent or beauty should be over and it is about time you were given the same attention you got five years ago – nothing. Jo O’Meara and Danielle Lloyd will also need to repent, although they have some talent (singing and tits/pretty face respectively). Essentially they are the stereotype of three bitchy bullying schoolgirls sniping and egging each other on, maybe they should get real jobs and learn to get on with people? Shilpa’s comment to Jade ““You know what? Your claim to fame is this. So, good for you.” is so true
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Channel 4 is thrilled because the ratings are now way up, and newspapers in the UK and India, and TV news is dominated by what has been going on in this show. Gordon Brown has had to respond to it during his visit to India.
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See coverage in The Times, Guardian, it is THE front page in the Independent. The Daily Star calls it World War 3, The Sun calls it a national disgrace.
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This Friday Jade goes head to head with Shilpa for the vote as to who should be removed from the Big Brother household. I suspect Jade will be gone, the only question is whether the fanciful career of this nobody will have been poisoned for good. Her abuse reflects only on herself.
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By the way, Channel 4 is state owned – you might wonder why the state has a stake in this?

British newspapers

To the uninitiated, the main national British dailies seem like a cornucopiae of choice for the reader, there being no less than 11 options available every day (excluding Sundays), and more if you include regional papers. For the average Kiwi putting up with a single paper of one of the two main chains (Fairfax represented online by Stuff and APN dominated by the NZ Herald) excluding the Otago Daily Times which remains as the leading daily independent paper.

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The character Jim Hacker on the UK comedy series Yes Prime Minister famously quipped the following about the UK papers:

"The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;

The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;

The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;

the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;

the Financial Times is read by people who own the country;

the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and the The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is"

followed by Bernard Woolley saying "Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits"

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Now this is not that far from the truth, except that the Times is not read by those who run the country as much as the Independent is (which post dates Yes Prime Minister). So here is my quick and dirty summary of the papers:

There are three daily papers that are definitive of British political news...

Daily Telegraph: Almost always pro-Tory, but generally more socially liberal than the Tory party tends to be (except lately). Almost always tends to be anti-Labour, but has moved to the centre over time. Certainly one of the best written dailies and the one closest to my point of view. The definitive paper for the market and social liberal. Most reliable for conservative commentary. In NZ it would be most comfortably read by ACT voters.

The Times: Best described as aligned between Blair and the Tories, probably comfortable with David Cameron. Has supported Thatcher and Blair in the past. My second choice, but regularly out does the Telegraph for analysis. Has smudges of conservatism, but generally a moderately socially liberal, pro-economic liberal paper. In NZ it would be most comfortably read by voters in the centre or National voters.

The Guardian: The paper of the Labour left. Easily pro-Labour, but this has been challenged by the war in Iraq. About as reliably pro-Labour at election time as the Telegraph is pro-Tory, but despite its strong leftwing credentials does contain some first class analysis and journalists on its books. Backs leftwing causes on poverty, aid, affirmative action, welfarism, Europe, environment, as much as it also tends to be socially liberal. While I may largely disagree with it, it regularly defends it position with some degree of intellectual rigour. In NZ it would be most comfortably read by Labour, Maori Party or Green voters.

While it sometimes has something worthwhile to say, the Independent no longer really is, as it is essentially the paper of the Liberal Democrats - which themselves promiscuously spread themselves over the political spectrum. The Independent is the leftwing young looking neo-tabloid, scaremongering about the environment, inviting Bono to be editor for a day - so it is constantly attention seeking. As a result its analysis is more once over lightly. In NZ it would be most comfortably read by Green voters.

There is also the Financial Times not just the paper of the City of London and business, but a far more serious analysis of news that is particularly relevant to the economy and business. A heavy read for most, but most comprehensive for hard hitting analysis.

Moving down the market is the Daily Express also referred to as the "Daily Diana" because of its obsession with a well known deceased member of the Windsor household, reflected in it publishing a picture of her on the front page on the anniversary of the July tube bombings last year. It has an English nationalist outlook, tends to have a tinge of bigotry flowing through it and often publishes scandals about government bureaucracy, "political correctness gone mad" (is it ever not mad?) and lots of pictures of tarty young women. It rarely has genuinely interesting gossip that its serious tabloid competitors have, it pretends to not be a T & A rag and can't be seen to be a NEWSpaper by anyone other than BNP voters. In NZ it would be read by NZ First voters.

Further down market is the Daily Mail. The Mail is similar to the express in being crassly conservative and nationalistic, jumps on the "bloody bureaucrats interfering with your lives" bandwagon whilst simultaneously demanding the government "do something" about many other things. The Mail is a paper for the average talkback caller. It has a dark history being pro-Nazi until 1939 (when threatened with closure if it didn't change!), with its then owners supporting the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. It supports the monarchy, is anti-immigrant, supports being mercilessly tough on criminals, is anti-EU. More than perhaps any other paper, a reader of the Daily Mail risks being stereotyped as a racist old fashioned bigot who hates "bloody foreigners" and blames the government for everything. In NZ it would be read by NZ First voters.

The Daily Star is more of a true gossip tabloid. It focuses on the proletariat's obsession with celebrities, sport and gossip about stars. It tends to be somewhat nationalistic as well, but likes T & A so is far less serious and insipid than the Mail and Express. It is for entertainment more than news.

The Sun is the quintessential British tabloid. It has the page 3 girl to attract the bumcrack showing class of workers for their morning wank. It has the highest circulation of any of the papers, with over 3.1 million per day (don't link that to the previous sentence). It has backed both Thatcher and Blair, but tends to be socially liberal and somewhat skeptical about government - so would appeal to young male ACT voters in NZ. It has exposed the BNP for being nasty, so while centre-right does not tend to pander to the anti-immigrant nationalism of the Express and Mail. This excludes slagging off the French (for being French) and the Germans (don't forget the war).

The Daily Mirror is the leftwing equivalent of the Sun, originally launched as a paper for women in 1903! It supported anti-Iraq war protests and is abusively critical of G.W.Bush. It has been overshadowed in recent years by the Sun and the Daily Mail in popularity.

The Daily Sport, takes the Sun and goes further "downmarket", by essentially being a rag on celebrities and stories of ordinary people doing naughty things. It publishes a lot more T & A than any other, so could be seen to be on the boundary between "newspaper" and softcore lads mag.

Finally there is the Morning Star - the communist newspaper of the UK, published daily. I'm serious, it is Marxist through and through. It has been pro IRA, supports Labour candidates that aren't "New Labour", used to be uncritical of the USSR. You might wonder why the Morning Star is the only paper which requires a subscription to see today's "news" online, while all of the "capitalist" ones are free.

Wellington's Inner City Bypass Part One

I drove on the northbound section of this very modest inner city one way road the day after it opened, and I should hope that for Wellingtonians the phrase “much ado about nothing” should come to the for. Sue Kedgley always referred to it as a motorway extension - because it is more dramatic than calling it a one-way system - it is only a motorway extension in that it moves the motorway south one block, from Ghuznee St/Vivian St to Vivian St/new road.

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The Greens make statements such as "“The Wellington City bypass is a controversial and expensive plan to extend the motorway through downtown Wellington by just over a kilometre saving motorists only a few seconds off their journey times, at the cost of tens of millions dollars as well as the loss of heritage buildings and a once thriving community.” It isn't a motorway extension, it isn't downtown Wellington (that is the golden mile, Abel Smith Street is downtown Wellington like Khyber Pass Rd is downtown Auckland), the new road itself is 700 metres long, it saves between 10 minutes and 90 seconds depending on the time of day and the community is hardly lost.

It continues "In Te Aro, heritage buildings are being demolished - including both listed buildings and those not listed for political reasons”. In fact NO listed buildings were demolished at all, and to imply the Historic Places Trust is politically driven in this is close to defamatory, as it implies it operates outside the law. In addition, what is an unlisted "heritage building"?

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The Green alternative was to “Halt or modify the route of the Wellington inner-city 'bypass' to reduce its social and environmental impact, and address child safety and air pollution issues” which means diverting traffic along Abel Smith Street - which was rejected early on as making things worse for traffic and the local environment (there is little property access off the new route).

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So if you go to Cuba Street now, notice how little of it has been lost by the bypass built so far, although you wont notice the slashing of traffic on Ghuznee Street until the project is finished - but judge for yourself whether a community has been destroyed and whether this is a motorway extension.
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I wont write a lot about the history behind the project, Transit has a short summary, it essentially followed on from the decision that a motorway across the foothills of Wellington would provide the best route for distributing and collecting traffic from the Hutt/Porirua and northern suburbs to the city, southern and eastern suburbs. It would have originally seen two Terrace Tunnels (the current one was meant to be northbound only) and two Mt Victoria Tunnels (2 lanes each way) with a four lane motorway stretching across Te Aro. However, the Muldoon government cut road funding in the mid 70s and it was cut back to Willis Street. The project remained in the background for years, until the other end of the motorway was connected to Ngauranga Gorge (it originally only served traffic to/from the Hutt) doubling the traffic at the city end. The politically driven funding processes of the 80s saw it have a relatively low priority, and in the early 1990s Ruth Richardson slashed road spending as part of the overall effort to balance the budget. As a result there was no way in hell that even the scaled down motorway extension (keeping one tunnel each end) would be funded for some years.
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At the same time, local authority pressure on urban design changed how road projects were viewed. Originally a 4-lane motorway type road with over and underpasses between the Terrace and Mt Victoria Tunnels, there was much pressure to put it all below ground level and ultimately it became the “covered trench” motorway. This would see a cut and cover tunnel built from Vivian St to the Basin Reserve, so that Te Aro would have no visible motorway – parks and some building could be placed on top, and with one third of traffic removed from Te Aro streets (and the Wellington waterfront) it could have helped regenerate both Te Aro and the waterfront by dramatically cutting traffic. Unfortunately that design priced it out of the funding available at the time, and Transit General Manager Robin Dunlop announced that a more modest option would need to be developed for the interim. The interim was to last till 2005!
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The City Council and Transit agreed on an option, which is the one now nearly completed, but then the fun began. All of the land was held by Transit and the Council as both had bought up properties as they became available over a 25 year period. After extensive hearings, the route was confirmed under an RMA designation in 1996, but this was appealed to the Environment Court by the ecologist group Campaign for a Better City in 1999, which lost comprehensively. CBC was thoroughly fisked by those who come from a not dissimilar perspective, but believe in evidence rather than anger based analysis. Transit was awarded partial costs for this, but CBC has refused to pay this. You see it thinks that it has a right to take court cases that fail paid for by you, the motorist. Sore losers are the ecologists. You’ll notice that their still active website does not include the decision – not that interested in competing arguments either.
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The Green campaign against the bypass got new impetus with the change in government. The official Transit website summarises how it got Historic Places Trust approval (phew) to dig up the site because of the “artefacts” (my old flat was older than them) and the CBC appealed it to the High Court but that was dismissed also.
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Following this, Transfund granted the project full construction funding….
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However, something else went on behind the scenes. With the change of government, and the Greens granting the Labour/Alliance coalition confidence and supply, they wanted to stop the project. Labour bent over backwards to do what it could to appease the Greens, but all of its best analysis, and more importantly the law – meant that the bypass was worthy to fund.

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In this process the Greens would distort lie and ignore everything put in their way, even though every Wellington city and regional council elected in the 20 or so years has supported the bypass or its predecessor. You see they are not that interested in democracy when it doesn't suit their point of view. However every chance was given to review the project. This included:

- Wellington Regional Councils and Wellington City Councils elected in 1992, 1995, 1998, 2001;

- Wellington Regional Land Transport Committees over that period;

- Transit New Zealand boards over that period;

- Transfund New Zealand boards considering investigation, design and construction funding;

- Hearings Committee on the designation;

- Environment Court;

- Historic Places Trust;

- High Court;

- Parliaments elected in 1993, 1996, 1999 and 2002 (in refusing to propose or consider legislation to stop this particular project);

- Independent Peer Review of the evaluation of the project;

- Major Projects Review of major road projects in advance of entry into force of the Land Transport Management Act.

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When does someone wake up and realise that the argument is lost?

Red Ken must go

Day and Nightmare/mayor of London, Ken Livingstone was reported by the Daily Mail (one of the most scurrilous rags in the UK press) to be supporting the funding of 50th anniversary celebrations of the Cuba communist revolution. This has been rebutted as being untrue by his office, in that Cuba is simply being invited, like other Olympic countries to stage events before or after the Olympics in London. Nothing more.

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Which is an enormous relief, except when you see the fawning rubbish put out by Ken in support of the Cuban dictatorship. He claims "'Life expectancy and infant mortality are at levels comparable to far more economically advanced countries." We actually have no idea, because under a communist dictatorship you can't know - the stats are no more reliable than they were in the eastern bloc or North Korea today. He talks of " Fidel Castro is one of the most popular leaders around the world". Funny how Fidel has staunchly refused to put this to the test by allowing the Cuban people to vote for him or alternative candidates in a free and fair election.

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"There is no reason why Cuba should be singled out for controversy except for people coming at international issues from a very right wing perspective." Nor Chile under Pinochet Ken, except for those coming to things from a very left wing perspective - or perhaps both from people who believe in freedom of speech and individual liberty, you envy ridden Marxist bully.

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Cuba is not a land where you can criticise the government, in fact it means you go to prison or worse. That is what is wrong Ken - no free speech, free press or freedom of assembly or association.

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On top of that I received an invitation to this conference which is about challenging the notion that there is a clash of civilisations - part of Ken's warming up to Islamic radicals.

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Why can't the Tories find an intelligent candidate to run against him? Or has that candidate already been chased away by New New Labour leader David Cameron.

Telecom raises local line rentals

Having clapped with glee about the government’s decimation of much of Telecom’s property rights, there is now noise (from only two sources) that Telecom is increasing local residential line rentals of between $1 and $1.84 a month. Nevertheless, even though local fixed line phones are not compulsory, people will moan about it. A few will live in Wellington and Christchurch where they DO have a choice, but where the majority still use Telecom. What does that tell you?
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Telecom can’t just increase local line rentals willy nilly though, it is only allowed to do so under the Kiwi Share held by the government. Now from my point of view this is not an infringement on Telecom’s property rights because this was negotiated as part of the privatisation, but it does mean that every year Telecom hikes up the fixed line rental because it can quote the Kiwi Share as justification. Whether it would do it more often and more without the Kiwi Share is debatable.
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You see, unlike most countries, the government requires Telecom (through the Kiwi Share) to provide a flat rate unlimited free call option for local calls. In Australia you pay per call, in the UK you pay per minute per call, in the US it varies, so in NZ if you are a heavy user of the phone for local calls it is a pretty good deal, a particularly good deal if you use the internet for dialup access (which is perhaps one reason why New Zealand had quick takeup of dialup internet, but not so quick for broadband).
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New Zealand fixed telephone line customers don’t think twice about making very long calls on local lines, including dialing up their ISP. Those who use the phone occasionally effectively cross subsidise the rest. However there is more. The Kiwi Share also requires Telecom to charge rural customers no more than urban customers. This is where things really become interesting. The cost of providing a rural telephone line is many times in excess of the local line rental. I recall a government study undertaken in the late 1990s which indicated that the average cost of providing a phone to a rural property was around ten times that of the line rental. Don’t forget that these rural properties are always considered residential, when they are almost always farms – these would be businesses in the city, but because the farmers LIVE on the properties Telecom is required to charge them the same as if you lived in an apartment in downtown Auckland, where it costs less to provide. Remember business lines are completely outside the Kiwi Share’s ambit.
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Paul Budde, who has long made a career out of commenting on telecommunications for the media (and reprocessing and publishing publicly available information for a fee – notice the companies that he has NOT done CONSULTANCY work for) has criticised Telecom because “Prices in technology are dropping and dropping and dropping, and so it's very difficult to argue that these prices should go up”, ignoring that the provision of the line is not just about the capital cost of the line. It is also about the power, the labour costs of maintenance of the lines, power and poles. Budde is right that the marginal costs of making phone calls is tiny, but Telecom is not allowed to recover that cost from residential customers – it has to recover the average cost of providing the fixed line infrastructure nationwide and the marginal costs of local calls from all customers. It is worth noting that I have never ever heard Budde being quoted as an authoritative source from anyone in the industry or government circles, but that the press always trots him out because he is so desperate for attention that they can easily find him willing to comment on these matters. I would trust David Cunliffe on telecommunications more than Paul Budde (and that is saying something!).
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Clearly Telecom charges enough of a margin in main centres that it was economic for the then Telstra-Saturn to lay out a competing residential line network in Wellington (including the Hutt/Kapiti) and Christchurch. Maybe it would have done the same in Auckland had the government not been so willing to give it access to Telecom’s own lines, and local authorities not been so anally retentive about it laying cables in the streets using the RMA to stop it. We wont know under the current environment.
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So what options do you have?

1. Pay the extra and recognise that you are a consumer buying a service from a supplier, and nobody has forced you to buy that service. If you are in a major city you may ask your council what its policy is on new operator laying their own cables to provide a competing network. If you are in the rural hinterland, be grateful you’re probably paying a tenth of the cost of providing you with a phone line and that farms aren’t treated as businesses.

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2. If you are in Christchurch and much of greater Wellington, you can choose Telstra Clear. This is the network it owns, it can charge what it likes.

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3. Abandon your fixed phone line and use a mobile phone.

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4. Use one of the resellers that Telecom is forced to offer its lines to at a government regulated price for local phone access (Ihug and Telstra Clear offer this virtually nationwide).

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5. Set up your own network. Try raising the capital with all the others who complain what a ripoff it is and compete – after all, why waste time at your current job if you’re such a good market analyst? You'll complain Telecom will cut prices to compete with you, well Telstra Clear has managed over 50% market share in Kapiti and between 20 and 30% in Wellington and Christchurch, so work on the basis of doing about that well. Go on, you'll have thousands on your side wanting to stop the "monopoly gouging".

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So what will it be?