Women are special according to AA

American Airlines thought it was clever targeting women with a special website dedicated to female travellers. According to the New York Times, many women are far from happy about being patronised by the airline, and treated like they have "special needs".

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It talks about women connected to each other, because after all, an airline that is not sex specific clearly baffles women, and they feel alienated to those big phallic things called planes! No wonder women (ha!) need a special website, which when you look at it, has exactly the same information that I'd expect it to have for men - except it's a women's page (all breath "aaaaaaah") so you can't feel oppressed by the testosterone of aviation (which let's face it, is about planes and jets and speed, damned manly stuff right?).

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However, it does have slightly different advice for safe travel. Points like "If you need directions, ask other women or couples". Yes, don't trust those men, they are just out to lure you back to his dungeon for a good ol' bondage and discipline session. Couples, after all, are always safe, none of them are twisted and perverted.

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One comment on this attempt is:

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"As a female frequent traveler for both business and leisure, I’m quite indignant that AA thinks this kind of silly fluff is going to appeal to me. I want a clean plane, a comfortable seat, and good service at a fair price (not cheap, just reasonable). That’s what my husband wants. That’s what my colleagues of both genders want.”

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Yes American Airlines is a private company (mollycoddled by US protectionism that reserves the domestic airline industry to US owned airlines, and the subsidies thrown at it), and can do what it likes, but there remains an absolutely yawning gap between the standards of virtually all US airlines and the likes of BA, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and even Qantas and Air NZ.

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This is because US consumers don't demand better, and because the US airline industry lobbies for less competition.

Congratulations Tesco

How sad it is to see and hear the evil envy dripping rhetoric from the BBC (which every TV owner is forced to pay for), about Tesco (which nobody is forced to pay for).
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Tesco has made a record profit of £2.6 billion. I would like to say simply – well done! This is a 20.3% increase in profit on last year, with a 10.9% increase in sales. Why has this happened? Two reasons:
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1. Tesco is selling what people want to buy at a price they are willing to pay;
2. Tesco runs an efficient tightly managed operation that keeps costs down low (and as a result avoids waste).
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Tesco has not got a statutory monopoly, or a de facto monopoly (there are plenty of shops selling the different merchandise Tesco sells), nor is it subsidised (unlike many of its suppliers, such as European farmers who whinge and moan about their buyers wanting a good price – which effectively means they want consumers to pay more).
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Britain is the only country I know of that considers a market with four major retailers, all competing vigorously on quality and price, and umpteen smaller retailers, a “monopoly problem”. What is DOES have is an envy problem, arising from middle class Guardian reading, Radio 4 listening wankers who decry that Britain doesn’t always have the smattering of small, high priced, low variety shops that add so much quaintness to the shopping experience – while at the same time they sneak off to Waitrose to get their organic mungbean surprise (or whatever).
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Tesco succeeds for the most democratic of reasons – people choose to shop there. Despite all of the media bashing by the envy classes (who look down their nose at the average family who simply want cheap good quality groceries, instead of locally grown or fair-trade organic, hand made, in season chelseaberries), shoppers have voted with their pounds and pence. It is a more honest expression that any vote at any election.
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You don’t see people traipsing into Tesco begrudgingly wishing that everything wasn’t so expensive, or the selection were better or that the queues were shorter, like they do with the state owned Post Office here in the UK. They go out of choice. Within 15 minutes walk of my place I can choose Tesco, Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury’s or Budgens, and a smattering of smaller retailers each of whom sells some of the things those shops sell, usually at a higher price, and sometimes at better quality. I go to Tesco when it offers the best deal for what I want.

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According to the BBC Fiends of the Earth claim that "The supermarket giant's market dominance is bad news as it allows it to dictate conditions to suppliers and to drive High Street stores out of existence". Well tough shit frankly. Suppliers are in business, they don't exist as charities, and British farmers in particular are already protected and mollycoddled by Brussels, unlike Tesco. Perhaps when they face the full force of competition from efficient and more environmentally friendly suppliers they can talk, and then maybe they might start embarking on more efficient production techniques and respond like businesses, rather than like spoilt children. After all, Tesco's suppliers would love to be monopolies screwing Tesco and consumers for all they can. The High Street stores go out of business because people don't want to shop there, because they can't buy what they want at a better price. What do Fiends of the Earth expect?
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Tesco is a highly successful British company embarking on a worldwide expansion. The sort of expansion that should make it and its shareholders proud. The global presence usually seen in large firms from the USA, Japan, continental Europe and the like – you know the flipside of those who bemoan how the British car sector has largely disappeared. They forget that Britain’s recent economic success has been on the back of the service sector. Long may it grow.

Green fascism

Russel Norman telling you how to live you life:
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“In a world of poverty and starvation, to spend $109,000 on a gas guzzler is downright wrong in my opinion. If you’ve got that much money spare, donate it to Oxfam and get a normal car.”
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Why stop there? Why should you own a boat, or indeed a holiday home, or a second car, or how about designer clothing, or how about a house that has more bedrooms than the number of inhabitants, or how about that overseas holiday?
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It is comments like this that simply want me to tell the likes of Russel Norman to fuck off.
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Besides how leftwing and deluded Oxfam is on many things, what right does he have to tell anyone how to spend their own money?
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If I want a luxury car, then so be it – I am likely to get something called pleasure from it – happiness, and I’m willing to pay for the petrol. I am not making Russel pay for ANYTHING, it is my money. Besides the lump of taxes the state gets from this exercise (which Russel will happily want to decide on where that is spent), it employs people producing and maintaining the car, but most of all – it is MY life.
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Russel may think he knows best how to run other people’s live, to dictate how they spend their money, to give people guilt trips about spending money on what he thinks is “wrong” vs what others like. I think fairtrade goods are a complete scam, hiking up the price of products so that everyone along the way can cream an “over market” premium, whilst encouraging poor people in developing countries to produce goods that are in overproduction. However, Russel probably buys them. I think it is a waste of money to buy anything produced by Michael Moore – a socialist fatcat who flies first class and enjoys the high life while bleating on about poverty that he never actually experiences. I also think it is downright wrong that ultrarich “celebrities” vomit forth platitudes about “saving the planet” and making average citizens feel guilty, while they consume goods and services without that guilt.
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The problem is Russel has the strange Green religious obsession about being “anti-car”.

Want to be forced to fund political parties?

I don't want to say too much on this.
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Whatever way you cut it, this is compulsory funding of political parties.
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Nobody spinning this one way or another can escape that it is making you pay for the activities of a voluntary association that you may or may not have ever chosen to join or support financially.
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You might ask why everyone isn’t forced to pay for all other voluntary associations?
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You should. You’ll be told “that would be ridiculous and unaffordable”, and that would be correct.
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You next question should then be – why should I be forced to pay for YOUR voluntary association? Why is YOUR one more important than mine?
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You may ask why the proposal is NOT that all political parties should get the same amount of money, after all, the advocates of this often go on about equality, and how unfair it is that some have more than others. They spit out their own jealous venom at those who are richer than others. However no, the biggest recipients will be the two encumbents
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You may ask what the proposal means for you wanting to fund a campaign by your own money – remember it “your” money. Money you haven’t stolen, defrauded or cheated from anyone else, but money you have property rights over (something politicians don’t often understand).

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Think about what it will do to that, your choices will be restricted.
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In North Korea, Ceaucescu’s Romania, and indeed under any totalitarian government, the one think people could never escape was politics. In a free society it is something people take for granted. You need not vote, you need not be a member of any political party, in fact you can enjoy getting on with your own life peacefully.
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Those of us in politics sometimes think that those who are completely outside it and do nothing about it are stupid, naïve or even lesser people as a result. In fact, some of those outside politics simply think there is something more interesting than choosing or supporting people who, by and large, want to tell others what to do. Unfortunately those outside politics make the biggest mistake by thinking it will all be ok, until they find some politician has actually interfered with something that matters to them.
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I have voluntarily supported several political parties in my life, including one very small one. One reason I never joined a trade union was because I refused to support the Labour Party by proxy (another was because I didn’t think it offered me anything).
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Political parties have come and gone in New Zealand’s history, and maybe one day Labour and National will go too. The spectre of this has haunted both parties quite recently, but survival is a fairly strong incentive to change.
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I don’t care which part of the political spectrum you come from – it is absolutely immoral to force private citizens to pay for political parties – organisations that are not publicly elected, and are not accountable to anyone for their activities.

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People elect political parties based upon the individuals put on the party lists and a desire for those people to govern – but they do pay taxes to fund government NOT the parties. It is the job of MPs to represent the views of their electors and to govern or to oppose. That is what they are paid to do. We do not pay political parties directly through taxes because it opens the door to corrupt, biased funding that nobody can be clearly accountable for.
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Quite simply, if a political party cannot convince people that it is worth funding by their own choice, then by what twisted logic is it moral to force them to do so?
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The argument that “the Labour Party exists for your own good” does not wash – in fact it is eerily reminiscent of the attitude taken in one party states. Now "the two main parties are good for you, and the smaller ones a bit less good for you, and the smallest not at all".
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And no, the fact that some other countries do it is not a rebuttal. In fact is the argument of a person without an argument – it is like the child who tells his parents “but Johnny’s parents let Him do it?”.
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So that is it – do you want to be forced to pay for political parties? And if so, why aren’t you paying for them now? Why can’t you and your supporters convince people to choose to pay for political parties?

French Presidential elections - Sarkozy please...

France’s Presidential elections are important for the world and for New Zealand. France is the 7th biggest economy in the world (on a PPP basis), and it is one of Europe’s dominant powers, a nuclear power (both militarily and in electricity generation, with over 70% of its needs met by nuclear power), and without doubt the most important roadblock to achieving substantial liberalisation in agricultural trade, with perhaps the important exception of Japan.
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France inspires romance, and has an arrogance than in many ways can be understood. It is little coincidence that the term “joie de vivre” seems to mean more in French than its English translation. Examples of French prowess continue to impress, such as its recent achievement in rail engineering (who can fail to be impressed by a rail speed record of 575 kph– albeit at a cost the French media tends to ignore. France’s relative wealth has been static for some time, it simply has a state and an economy that is not conducive to new business, tends to ossify large state owned infrastructure companies, shielding them from competition. This economic stagnation is not yet fully reflected in its social services. Healthcare continues to be the envy of many in Europe, but growth last year was the 2nd lowest of any EU member state.
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France’s malaise can be seen in how it has slipped in per capita GDP (PPP basis) to between 17th and 23rd depending on measurement, leaving it rivalling Italy for being bottom of all western European states besides Spain and Portugal. 25 years ago France was 7th, a parallel somewhat akin to the slide New Zealand suffered from being 1st or 2nd in the 1950s to being 22nd by the 1980s.
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Unemployment remains high at 9%, exacerbated by labour laws that make it difficult to fire, that keep the working week at an underproductive 35 hours by law, while the fiscal situation has bled red ink for some time. Public debt at 66% of GDP is costing more and more of the high tax take. The rejection of the EU constitution was the delivery of two messages, one was the curious hard left anti-globalisation message that rings strong in France and which is about hanging onto what France has. The other was a rejection of the status quo, fed up with the Chirac years of saying much but doing little.
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So for many in France this time the Presidential elections are about the decisive question about what happens about the French economy. The 2002 election saw the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin fail to oust racist old fool Jean Marie Le Pen from the runoff, so that the runoff election was a case of Chirac being the lesser of two evils. This time Le Pen is still promoting his filth. However there are three other serious candidates.
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The poll leader is Nicolas Sarkozy, who is touted as the Thatcher of France, but frankly if he proves to be as liberal as Blair it will be a surprise. He plans to liberalise labour laws, lower taxes, cut public debt and give universities more autonomy. He clearly is the only candidate interested in serious reform, and the fact he remains ahead in the polls indicates a substantial French acceptance of the need. He wants a new slimmer EU constitution, which is clearly welcome.
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Closely behind is Segolene Royal, the socialist candidate who has consistently been behind. She, by and large, represents the past, including increasing the minimum wage, pensions, abolishing flexible employment contracts for small firms and create half a million subsidised jobs. She wants a big socialist EU, though her weirdest comment has been “Chinese courts are more efficient than French ones”. Her plans are expensive, she wants new public housing, a big spend up on education, on other words she is promising much with no way to pay for it.
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The possible dark horse is Francois Bayrou, a centrist candidate who embraces some modest reform, he wants fiscal prudence, mild tax cut, but would also renationalise gas and electricity utilities, and is a huge fan of agricultural subsidies. He polls closely behind Ms Royal.
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So next weekend the question will be, who will be in the runoff. Most likely it is Sarkozy vs Royal, in which case Sarkozy will probably win. If it is Sarkozy vs Bayrou, Bayrou may win.
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However, from a libertarian point of view there is little to be cheerful for, but to hope that for the sake of the French economy, the EU and international trade, that Sarkozy wins. As the man least enamoured about subsidies and a big EU, he is likely to be most conducive towards moving on trade in agricultural commodities in coming years, and to reject the big bureaucratic centralised EU that is the dream of many European socialists, keen to snuff out diversity across the 27 member states.

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Sarkozy is far from perfect, he still embraces microeconomic meddling, he engages in negative rhetoric about immigrants and is far too hostile to Turkish membership of the EU - which while problematic, should not be rejected outright.

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So my greatest hope is at least that Sarkozy gets through to the second round (the French Presidential elections demand a runoff between the two top polling candidates if none gets 50% in the first round), and that Le Pen does not. The former is necessary to save France from those who look backward, and the latter is necessary to save France's reputation.