The shine comes off Cameron the unprincipled

After a honeymoon run, and on the verge of the beginning of the Brown premiership, it is becoming clear that the David Cameron remaking of the Conservative Party is no longer looking that attractive to voters.

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David Cameron, as you may recall, has been rebranding the Tories towards the centre, his top priorities being the NHS (as if that model isn't fundamentally flawed) and the environment - advocating taxes on aviation for example. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown increased tax on aviation, but also reduced the middle rate of income tax by 2% in his latest budget. Cameron has been unable to commit to tax cuts at all, terrified that he can't defend it on principle (how can you defend something when principles seem so easy to sell out) .

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None of this was helped by the grammar school debacle, with the party having two different policies in concert!

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Now Tory MP Quentin Davies has defected to Labour. I hardly approve of course, given his constituents voted for a Conservative MP - had they wanted Labour they would have voted Labour. Nevertheless, according to the BBC Davies made some very good points about Cameron:

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"Under your leadership the Conservative Party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything.... It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda....Although you have many positive qualities you have three, superficiality, unreliability and an apparent lack of any clear convictions, which in my view ought to exclude you from the position of national leadership to which you aspire and which it is the presumed purpose of the Conservative Party to achieve"

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Indeed, although why Davies thinks Labour is any better is unclear. All I can say is that more points of principle seem to come from Blair and Brown than from Cameron anyday, which shows you how much of a vapid marketing exercise politics now is.

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Brown is perceived, quite rightly, as being strong. He might seem like a grumpy old sod, but he also speaks when he has something reasonably intelligent to say.

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Don't get me wrong, I'm no friend of the Brown administration, it has failed miserably in its core goal of law and order, with overcrowded prisons and moves to defer prison sentences and encourage some early releases. This is when there is someone under 18 stabbed to death every week in Britain. Money has been poured into public spending, often with derisory return and local authorities continue to be the new generation of fascist enterprises, keen to regulating and prosecute to ensure people follow the religion of recycling. Meanwhile, Labour signs up to a new EU treaty, which increases the role of Brussels in British affairs and continues to expand the bureaucracy of what should simply be a glorified free trade agreement. There is nothing much to celebrate from Labour, at best it has slowly taken some of Thatcher's reforms further, and in some instances backwards. It is distinctively uninterested in personal freedom, and uninterested in challenging the cultural wasteland of underclass worshipping Brits.

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The point is, the Tories are probably a slight improvement - but how can you trust political prostitutes who will sell everything they once stood for, for power. This is what happens when you're ashamed about freedom and capitalism, and don't know why they are both practical and moral.

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David Cameron has done a bit of good for the Tories, taking it out of the gentrified grey haired old bigoted white men brigade, ready to pass judgment on non Anglo-Saxon immigrants, gay couples and people of other religions (or none, good god!). However, he hasn't stood up for anything that couldn't also be seen in Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

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I wonder what other political party, and especially leader does that? and I wonder how long that honeymoon will last?

Video on demand entertainment on Air NZ Trans Tasman/Pacific flights

Well about time really. Thankfully the government is a passive shareholder in Air NZ, otherwise it might regard the $50 million investment in installing individual on-demand entertainment TV screens for all classes on the Boeing 767s and Airbus A320s as a waste of money.

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The 767s fly all services to Cairns, Honolulu, Perth, and Tahiti, and some from Auckland to Apia, Nandi, Rarotonga, Nuku'alofa, Brisbane, Adelaide and Sydney, and extensions of flights from Apia, Nandi and Rarotonga to/from Los Angeles (the long slow way from Auckland to LA).

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The A320s fly all services from Wellington and Christchurch to Australia and the Pacific, and from Auckland to Noumea and Port Vila, and some from Auckland to Adelaide, Apia, Brisbane, Melbourne, Nandi, Norfolk Island, Nuku'alofa, Rarotonga and Sydney.

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Finally NZ can compete a bit better with the likes of Emirates across the Tasman, only the odd international 737 flight (usually to Niue and Norfolk Island, but occasionally elsewhere) will be without any decent entertainment. What the report doesn't note is that this means new seats on the 767s in both classes.

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On top of that, shortly you'll be allowed to use Air NZ Airpoints to upgrade on flights by other Star Alliance carriers that have joined the Star Alliance upgrade scheme. They are:

- ANA (Japan);

- Asiana (South Korea);

- Austrian Airlines;

- LOT (Poland);

- Lufthansa;

- Singapore Airlines;

- Swiss;

- Thai;

- TAP (Portugal); and

- United.

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I'll wait and see how many airpoints dollars I need to upgrade to first class on Singapore Airlines!

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UPDATE: It appears the Boeing 767s will be losing business class in favour of premium economy class - hmmm.

Rushdie knighthood provokes murderous talk

Salman Rushdie gets a knighthood, and the self appointed spokesmen (it's always men) of the Muslim world demand "justice" because they have been offended "If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified" said Pakistan's Religious Affairs Minister (even having one of those is ridiculous and tells you how much freedom of religion and religious impartiality Pakistan has).

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Funny how a man writing a novel creates talk of murder, but this, this, this, and this don't. You figure out what values that culture has that puts being offended ahead of the systematic abuse and subjugation of women.

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Salman Rushdie has had to put up with many years of have a death threat hanging over him, which some Muslims condemned, but few did anything to confront those who threatened him. He is a symbol of free speech, enlightenment values and secularism, against the bloody minded caveman like murderers who would kill him and all of us who refuse to submit to their chosen religion. Britain has nothing to apologise for granting him a knighthood. Lord Ahmed who condemned the knighthood could have at least respected Rushdie's right to free speech and his bravery against those offended by his literature. As is all too often the case, others are expected to censor themselves to not offend Islam, but they are not.

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Many Muslims need to go through the enlightenment and separation of church and state, instead of continually showing that they are stuck in a medieval era.

Nanny State UK on breasts

According to the BBC soon in England it could be legal to breastfeed in public. Fine, no problem with that in public spaces like parks or on the street. However, it is also proposed that it be allowed on public transport, in shops and in cafes!! So Gordon Ramsay will have to put up with breast feeding in Claridges perhaps?

Why?

This is because some mothers fear being stopped, so they don't do it and this is a "public health" problem. Well I'm sorry, it is not a reason to pass a law that takes away property rights from shopowners, cafe owners and public transport operators?

Why doesn't a cafe owner have the right to stop a lactating mother from feeding her child? Whose bloody business is it in the first place?

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What's next? Should it be that if I feel like a wank I can whip it out, get some relief (presumably ensuring I don't make a mess) and put it back in again? After all, it is only natural (and please religious conservatives, don't tell me it isn't, because if I don't have a sexual partner by body will do most of this on its own anyway).

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What sort of peculiar law makes it compulsory to allow someone to carry out bodily functions on private property? Ask the Labour government, and ask the Tories why they wont stand up against this nonsense.

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It's simple, because for too many in Britain the answer to a problem is make it compulsory or ban it - kind of like the Green Party in NZ.

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Of course to be complete, I should point out I don't care if women breast feed in front of me or not, it doesn't bother me. It bothers me that if I own a shop, I couldn't set rules that say you can't do it.

Bill English provides hope?

With Bill reported by RNZ as saying that large numbers of taxpayers should only pay a top rate of 20%, there may be hope yet that the 39 and 33% rates are either cut or the thresholds raised sky high. Of course I'd go one step further and say 20% should be the top rate.

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Yes there are the usual groans from the left that either part of the "punish the successful" brigade (because people earning more than $38,000 p.a. are rich and they do so by milking the blood of children), or that it would be damaging. You see, they believe the state, which produces nothing itself (it does own producers, but it has to keep its sticky hands off them for them to be successful), is efficient and when it takes your money (takes it, remember that, it was never asked. If it stuffs up the best you can expect is a chance every three years to tick a couple of boxes in the hope that you out of over 2.5 million people can fire those responsible, but they never get to compensate you for the stuff up), it has that "right".

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Imagine if a company required you to pay for everything it sold, by force, and the most you could do is vote at a shareholders' meeting where you and everyone else had one vote to vote in or out one person out of the 120 or so that decide how the company is run. If the company's services were inadequate, didn't meet your needs, or the company paid for goods and services you were ethically opposed to, the company spent money on telling you what to do, and absolutely none of those 120 or so directors could ever be imprisoned or fined for misspending funds, breaking fiduciary responsibilities to the shareholders (promises), or destroying the value of the company, or being negligent.

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It's called government. Where people are voted by you to take your money and spend it on what they think is best for you. Where after taking a fair proportion of your earnings, when it doesn't provide the healthcare you want, doesn't provide the education you want for your children, is not responsive to you as a victim of crime, and spends large sums for people to breed, make music videos and tell others what to do, the response basically is "it's a democracy, it's what you pay for civilisation".

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Only politicians, public servants and the starry eyed state worshippers of the left could defend a system that makes them as unaccountable as possible for spending other people's money and failing to provide what people expect.