The rail network is worth what?

Stuff reports that the Crown Accounts now show the rail network as being worth a ridiculous $10.6 billion, as this would be the replacement cost if tomorrow there was no rail network and you wanted to start from scratch. Imagine if Telecom's "value" was the replacement cost of its network?
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Of course, nobody would pay $10.6 billion for it, the government paid $81 million for the Auckland network and $1 for the rest, and the total value of TranzRail/New Zealand Rail was never close to a billion dollars when it held the lot.
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Cullen doesn’t even believe it is realistic. You couldn't charge track access charges to recover a bank deposit rate of return on an asset valuation like that, minus maintenance costs.
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The appropriate value should be the market value – what would the government get if it sold it off, which would be, in many cases, the scrap value of the track and the sliver of land the network is on. You could make a bit out of the rail corridors in Auckland and parts of Wellington, but most of it would be a marginal addition to farm land. The value of the asset as a railway is only reflected by how much rail companies would pay to use it, and it is unlikely to be very much (with little left behind after you cover the cost of maintaining the track, signals etc).

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The value of the rail network is as a sunk asset in most cases. Nobody seriously would build a brand new line from Napier to Gisborne for example.
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So how much of the Crown’s net worth is this sort of snake oil?

Are you banned in China?

China, the great capitalist powerhouse of Asia is also the great censorship powerhouse. The freedom loving guys at Pacific Empire have an excellent post on this, including the link to the Great Firewall of China website - where you can check to see if your website or blog is banned in the People's Republic of China. Pacific Empire is, this blog is not as of ... right now.

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However if you go to my blog through the firewall and THEN connect to Pacific Empire there doesn't seem to be a problem. Technological barriers to censorship are, by their very nature, subject to many many holes.

Steve Jobs on TV and education

Julian Pistorius has an excellent post on Steve Job's views on TV and how public education has contributed to it... his basic points are:

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Most TV is of poor quality because most people want to switch off their brains.

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Educationists want technology to fix their problems, when the problem is people, incentives and unions and administrators that don't want to confront poor performance.

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He said "The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy".

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The full post Julian quoted from is here. As long as teacher unions continue to think that teachers cannot be paid and evaluated based on performance, they will continue to be defenders of mediocrity - and who in their right mind thinks all their teachers were equally worthy.

Charles not fit to be King

Prince Charles’s environmental fetish is well known, but I believe his latest outburst proves how completely unfit he is to be King. He wants McDonalds banned.
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According to the Daily Telegraph, when visiting the United Arab Emirates he said “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key”.
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Fascist! So you want a dictatorial kingdom of old Charles? Well frankly you are not fit to be King – how can anyone trust you to legitimately be the sovereign and accept the advice of your democratically elected government when you’re just a rather loopy leftwing nutter? You’ve never had to work a day in your life, the work you have done is by choice – you are one of the most privileged people in the world, you have not the slightest idea of what it is like to risk your own money on a business franchise (and risk bankruptcy), or to have to get a basic job. Your children don’t either.
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How you express such an explicitly political point of view, condemning a legal business operating in the UK?
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Set aside your own prejudices about McDonalds. The bottom line is that it gives a lot of people pleasure, and a lot of people jobs. Many of you have gone there, and those who don’t are fine – you don’t have to eat at fast food restaurants. If you want to get it banned, then fine, be a fascist – be honest about it. Charles is meant to be apolitical – but he is not, and as such he is not fit to be the constitutional monarch of the UK or indeed New Zealand.

Local government - fascist and wasteful

Recent reports of the latest Auckland City Council junket are not surprising. Sister City status is nothing more than a way for councils in both cities to justify expensive holidays in each others’ cities for nothing more than a junket. The trip by three to Hamburg to discuss an “economic alliance” is bullshit – absolute bullshit. For starters, what does Auckland sell that Hamburgers (yes yes) want to buy? Is Auckland City going to Hamburg to demand that Germans lobby for the EU to open up its agricultural market? Does Hamburg have so much in common with Auckland that Auckland can learn? Hardly. If Auckland wants expert advice on anything it ought to turn to its own advisors, who get paid for the job and for consultants on a case by case basis. Would they hire three consultants from Hamburg to fly over and advise Auckland on… whatever? No. It is what it is – a junket – a junket that Auckland property owners pay for compulsorily because Auckland voters chose that council and the Labour led government gave carte blanche for councils to do what they want.
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Of course Daily Telegraph reports the UK faces the same, petty fascist councils wanting to interfere almost endlessly. Prosecuting people for not recycling a piece of cardboard, or putting an envelope in the street rubbish bin that a person carried from home, charging exhorbitant parking fees because you have the wrong car.
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The thing is almost nobody standing for local government wants councils to do less and spend less. Seriously, even the non explicitly leftwing candidates are, almost to a T, big government oriented.
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New Zealand adopted the UK model for local body powers – so watch and learn. Local government in the UK is responsible for far more than in NZ (education and police for example), but its standards are lower than what I’ve seen in some NZ councils.
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Rodney Hide had a Bill that would’ve been a useful first step to dealing with this, but we see what happened to that. Maybe this year you’ll all vote for councils that want to do less and do what they are meant to do, better and more efficiently. I’m not holding my breath.