Mile high

Ridge and Loos try it on on Air NZ flying from London to LA.

The NZ Herald reports that:
“Passenger Rachel Bernam, told London newspaper The News of the World: "It was pretty obvious what was going on." She added: "They started snogging and then she disappeared under the blanket. I was shocked - it was then the steward told them to knock it off." An Air NZ spokeswoman said the airline was "not at liberty" to discuss individual passengers. "However, we can confirm there were complaints in the premium cabin on NZ1 on February 2 that required cabin crew to ask a couple of passengers to modify their behaviour"

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However the Brisbane Courier Mail tells more:
“Ridge was busted receiving oral sex from girlfriend Rebecca Loos on an Air New Zealand flight from London to Los Angeles last week. Crew had to interrupt the pair after passengers complained. "It was pretty obvious what was going on. She was giving him oral sex . . . and he was loving it," said passenger Rachel Bernam, seated behind the former league star.”

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Now there are planes and seats better suited to this than the Air NZ business class pods. For starters, the bathrooms at the back of a 747 are many and not well monitored, especially at night. The rear of the front cabin (nose) on a 747 tends to be quite discreet and private, the back rows especially. The upper deck isn’t as good as it seems, because the galley is at the back and the crew rest areas and cockpit at the front. There is another crew rest area which most passengers are unaware of, but unless the crew want to share you, you’ll get no chances there. Some Airbus A340s have downstairs toilets or galleys (Thai, Cathay, LAN, Aerolineas Argentinas all fly these to NZ).

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So some basic rules of thumb:
1. The bigger the plane the better your chances. Boeing 747s and Airbus A340s are the biggest in the air now, the A380 may offer even more chances.
2. The more exclusive the cabin the better your chances. This is mainly because some airlines make the first or business class toilets bigger, and there are more of them per passenger. It also reflects bigger more private seating, but that is all.
3. Do it in the dark. Wait till after dinner on an overnight flight and then slink off when the lights are dimmed. By then the crew are doing little, most people have their earplugs and eye masks on.
4. Find banks of toilets that are not monitored. Rear ends of planes that don’t have galleys are best (747s) though this goes against rule of thumb 2.

Rail crash

The only point I want to make of this is how wonderful technology is that this train has survived crashing at 145 km/h with only one fatality. None of the windows broke, none – the Italian made tilting trains (Pendolinos) that Virgin uses are clearly a winner! The carriages are by and large intact, which is a far cry from previous rail disasters. The nay sayers who regard rail privatisation as the source of all ills may look at Virgin Trains having leased trains that have three times the crash resistance of the required safety standard. It helps that the competitive pressure through the franchising system incentives private rail operators to operate trains and services that maximise revenue (and Virgin Trains has done quite well in winning passengers from other modes).
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Yes there are issues around the track at this particular location on this occasion, and Network Rail may well be culpable. However, rail accidents are going to occur from time to time. What this train has proven is that it is possible to protect people from death and serious injury at high speeds with good design. Imagine taking any road vehicle and sending it off the road at 145 km/h.
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It gives me added comfort as I catch these trains nearly every week!

Should incest be legal?

This will stir people up.

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Patrick Stübing and Susan Stübing are taking a case to Germany’s constitutional court to get a law overturned. Patrick Stübing is 29 years old and his sister Susan is 24, he was given a sentence of 2.5 years for incest. They are adults and in love. He was adopted in east germany at the age of 4, and was not allowed to find his biological family until he was 18. The details are in this story in The Independent, but in short they fell in love and had four children, all but one is in care and two have “mental damage” from inbreeding. Patrick has been in jail twice, his sister in the care of social services. Patrick has since chosen to be sterilised, but his relationship with his sister remains criminal. You might think they are probably stupid or ugly or something else, you know the sort of things that lesbians get accused of as to why they don't want sex with men. I don't know if they are or not, and frankly it doesn't matter. The concern in Germany is that the law against incest has its origins in the Nazi era - which makes sense if it is all about reproduction. In NZ and the UK it has religious origins, even though it is impossible for the bible to make sense without incest (who did Adam and Eve's kids breed with?).
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Now the first reaction of most to this is rather quick judgment. Starting with “eww yuck”, which frankly is irrelevant. I can think “ew yuck” if I think about sex with most people I know, or meet. What you think of a particular relationship is per se, neither here nor there. Secondly, remove any questions of abuse or violence, as there is none. Presumably the sexual relationship started once his sister was of legal age, as prosecution for that would have followed as well. Besides, today they are both adults. Thirdly, the issue that most raise is “what about inbreeding”, in which case I would ask, what is your eugenics policy?
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It is not illegal in Germany (or New Zealand) for people with hereditary diseases from having children even when there is a very high chance the disease will be passed on. Two of the four children the couple had were “mentally damaged”, but the other two were not. It is not a good idea for siblings to reproduce, but should it be criminal?
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Furthermore, given the couple can no longer reproduce, why is it anyone else’s business whether an adult brother and sister live together as a couple and have sexual relations? Ask yourself if your revulsion is no more different than the revulsion 20-30 years ago for same-sex relations, and whether that revulsion justifies a criminal record. Who are these people harming? Is the “yuck” factor enough to put someone in prison? Seriously!
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Finally, the word incest automatically brings to most people images of abusive relationships, and these do exist and the law exists to rightfully prosecute the offenders. However, some brothers and sisters (and sisters and sisters etc etc) do engage in sexual play in their youth. Would it be more appropriate to treat incest as a factor to consider in sentencing in cases of abuse, rather than for it to be a crime in itself?

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By the way, about twice a year a similar case arises in New Zealand between adult siblings, and typically the man gets convicted. I wonder why?

Eco-labelling - our saviour or our undoing.

According to the Daily Telegraph, UK Environment Minister David Milliband is to announce today that he is considering eco-labelling for food that will outline the amount of greenhouse gases used in production and transport of food. This will be greeted with cheers from European farmers, even keen to suckle the Brussels tit and ever keen to block out food imported from more efficient food producers. However, as has already been explained it should not be a matter of simple reporting “food miles” – one of the greatest green crocks of our time, but the total cost of production.
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Now I oppose compulsory labelling. If the producer doesn’t want you to know something about the food then you have the choice of buying it or not. However, New Zealand should agree to provide input into this analysis, which will surely be impossible for all food imports, but also provides an opportunity to do two things:

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First, is to transparently and objectively determine the entire carbon impact, which in many cases benefits New Zealand farmers. However this wont happen without a fight. British farmers will baulk when NZ cheese appears in supermarket coolers with a lower greenhouse rating. However, lest Britain be hauled up in front of the WTO, it must not be a barrier to free trade.
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Secondly, how about identifying food by subsidy levels, e.g. 25% of the cost of producing this block of cheese was paid for by EU subsidies, or US subsidies etc etc. Now that wont happen, but the first could be pushed for. We can’t sit back and let this be defined by those with the loudest voices, as the “Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will work with producers and retailers” according to the Daily Telegraph. This doesn’t mean our producers or importers. Stop sitting back New Zealand, bloody well do something!

Brian Rudman is intellectually vacuous on transport

Brian Rudman has been the Herald's leftwing pinup columnist for some years now. In that time he has rallied for several causes, one is his tired old conservative leftwing view on transport. It's a view that few transport officials take seriously, unless of course, you sit on the left hand side of the Auckland Regional Council. Given his prominent column, he is an opinion maker in Auckland - there ought to be a corresponding opinion piece given by someone at least armed with facts. Rudman's view is rather simple - Auckland bureaucrats get it right, Wellington bureaucrats get it wrong - in fact both get it wrong and right at times, but hey simplicity is easy isn't it?

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According to Rudman, Auckland's transport problem would be fixed if only an absolute fortune was poured into rail, including a large underground electrified rail loop in the central city. The cost of this is in the multiple billions, but never mind he thinks government (that means you) can pay for it. Never mind that 88% of Auckland's employment is not located in the wider central business district, so that 4 out of 5 commuters (let's be generous and assume 8% could catch trains between locations outside the CBD) would find no use for this. Never mind that the ARC's own CS First Boston report indicates that the full rail business plan would improve average traffic speeds on the parallel motorways by less than 0.5 km/h. Never mind that the Ministry of Transport/Treasury's own analysis said that Auckland's congestion could not be fixed by spending up large on public transport.

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Now he is bleeting on about buses, the much ignored mode of transport in Auckland. The mode that saw ever decreasing patronage over thirty five years under local authority ownership and control, retrieved from decline after privatisation in the late 1990s. In his latest doggerell, Rudman calls the current model for bus regulation and funding as the "disastrous" Thatcherite model, but fails to note the appalling standards of service, chronic underinvestment and ever growing subsidies (and declining patronage) of the old system. This system that has "dogged" Auckland for 15 years has only been operating fully for 9 years (check the legislation Brian) and for most of those years has seen increases in patronage, a reduction in the average age of buses operating, the first air conditioned buses and most of this without substantial increases in subsidies. This doesn't suit Brian's socialist unprofessional viewpoint.

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He unashamedly takes ARTA's view on bus regulation, not challenging any of the notions like how "That most civilised cities used the simple contracting model they were proposing". Well actually they don't Brian, most provide the services themselves and see ever declining patronage, look to the US for such examples - where union dominated operators run by councils run adequated fleets with ever growing subsidies and ongoing declining patronage. The "extremely unattractive" model run in Auckland actually has saved ratepayers a fortune and seen patronage increases. However, you'll need to look elsewhere for a columnist who might hold ARTA to account. He did note that 26% of Auckland bus services are unsubsidised, and these carry 46% of all bus trips - so nearly half of all trips don't need a dollar of taxpayer money? Extremely unattractive only to those who are bent on control. He twisted stats to say "Is it pure coincidence that in the 15 years the current model has been in place, bus patronage growth in Auckland has been the worst in Australasia - down 34 per cent relative to population?". No Brian, the current model has been in operation since 1998, and it is NOT the worst in Australasia, in fact there have been declines in the last two years largely attributed to the collapse of the Asian language student industry in Auckland (where large numbers rode on buses on corridors in the isthmus) and the replacement of some services with his much loved trains. He fails to note the reason why Stagecoach pulled out of commercially running some services is because of competition with highly subsidised rail. He claims reforms will make the trains run on time, even though they are all currently subject to a contract with ARTA that ARTA specifies.

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A couple of weeks or so ago he took the Winston Peters approach to congestion charging, a populist no - even though it has proven to work in Singapore, London and Stockholm. He misconstrued the results of the study on Auckland road pricing as negative, when in fact it said that congestion could be considerably reduced if Auckland adopted congestion pricing. He claims "For years this region has received less than its proportionate share of national road and transport funding." without identifying what a "proportionate share" means. If he means by population, then Auckland can claim that for just about everything involving government - but I doubt he'll go tripping around the South Island, Northland, East Cape and Wairarapa demanding "Auckland's fair share". If he means according to where money is best invested, he'll find funding has generally followed where it can best deliver bang for the buck - but I didn't think Brian cared much about efficiency. Besides, it is not the point - when demand exceeds supply for someone that is essentially free, the price should go up to ration it. You see Brian can't figure out that having roads priced the same regardless of time of day or location (socialist pricing) is the problem, and that road pricing COULD be introduced to replace fuel taxes and ratepayer funding of roads - but he doesn't understand that. Nowhere in the world has congestion been solved without pricing, unless you count banning cars.

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Before that he moaned about Wellington Regional Council short listing suppliers for new electric trains while "Despite what seem like 101 reports in support of Auckland's passenger train network going electric, they who know best in Wellington keep asking for yet another report". Mainly because no report has actually said there are net quantifiable benefits in electrifying Auckland rail.

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He criticised the Ministerial Advisor Group report on roading costs because it criticised the exhorbitant cost of the Victoria Park Tunnel proposal (which is about increasing the lanes on State Highway 1 from spaghetti junction to the southern approach to Auckland Harbour Bridge from 4 to 6 lanes by putting 3 lanes in a tunnel, while converting the viaduct to 4 lanes southbound), which in a highly overengineered solution when a duplicate bridge could do the job for a fraction of the cost. However he doesn't say where the extra money should come from to support his green-plating.

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Other things Rudman knows little about include:

- Motorway ramp metering (it works well in the USA, reduces the likelihood people use expensive motorways for short trips). He could argue for far more information on electronic roadside signs to divert motorists from incidents instead;

- For Auckland transport the "obvious answer is everything to be publicly owned" by the same entity, in other words the model Auckland had for decades. In other words, no pressure to innovate, be efficient and full capture of subsidies. So obvious that no officials recommended it.

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Rudman is clearly an intelligent man, but his columns are as partisan and one-sided as you can get. You'd hope one of the Herald's leading columnists might argue the alternative point of view as having some merits, but he doesn't. He is vacuous on transport, he is mostly wrong and almost anything ARTA says he will swallow.