Returned from the land of censorship

Well I hadn't disappeared, more I was unable to blog whilst behind the firewall of an authoritarian state. Now I'm in central Europe and "free" again.

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Mainland China is invigorating, it is absolutely astounding - and is so incredibly different from Hong Kong. Setting aside the choking pollution (at times), the selective censorship (which frankly is subtle enough to not be apparent to those who wouldn't think different) and the usual handful of those wanting to cheat you, it is full of life, people who throng the streets at 7am on a Sunday! The spectrum of humanity from the friendly and ever helpful, to the grumpy, lying and remarkably poor, the cheerful families with cute kids, the helpful policeman (yes really!), the annoying salespeople, the joking taxi drivers - well and the driving.

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Take a taxi in Beijing, in fact take dozens - you will learn to develop a fearlessness that will put you in good stead for life - you'll see that the way to cope with traffic jams is to cut in, to pull across, to push in, to overtake, and everyone does it. In fact, walk around. If you walk you'll learn you get nowhere obeying the signals, in fact it could kill you to rely on them - just look out and walk, walk fast, be prepared to stop fast, and you'll be fine.

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I'll say more about China, how there is much reason to be optimistic about it - and how difficult it is to understand. If the capital has very few who know English outside shops in the main shopping street, then figure out how easily they understand the world.

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China's Communist Party Congress will, secretly, be debating across the political spectrum about reforms either to have more socialism and state control on the one hand, or to separate state and party, have the party accountable to the law and party discipline not equivalent to criminal law. Meanwhile, those in the centre are increasingly aware of the corruption that their own "free market" capitalism engenders without an independent judiciary, guaranteed individual freedoms and property rights.

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It's worth understanding China, to see confucianism, Marxism-Leninism and entrepreneurialism co-exist - and because by the end of the decade its economy will be second is size only to the United States.

Propaganda victory

So a South Korean President visits Kim Jong Il for the second time. Kim Jong Il is clearly too scared to make the return trip as what was originally intended. Significant?

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No, not really. You see President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea is seeking re-election in December (something Kim Jong Il no doubt thinks is awfully quaint), and trying for a peace treaty in advance is meant to gain him popular support. He almost certainly wont raise the plight of the tens of thousands of men, women and children providing slave labour in the gulags. His policy of engagement is not about making North Korea lose face - and the North Korean media monopoly is making a huge deal out of the visit (although frankly the news item about the frogs making "good drug stuff" is funnier).

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Kim Jong Il wants to split South Korea's loyalty from the USA - the only country seriously deterring a North Korean invasion, and he wants money, in one form or another, to keep propping up his slave state. There has been peace on the Korean peninsula since 1953, and the relative prosperity and freedom of South Korea (with a GDP 12 times the north when it was once about two thirds the size of the north) speaks volumes about the difference between capitalism and anti-capitalism.

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As i said before, any compromise between good and evil can only benefit evil - North Korea can not be trusted to reduce military tension - it is too well armed and secretive to be honest, and is addicted to lying (given it does so profusely to its own people). All you can trust North Korea to do is oppress its citizens and seek to undermine defence of South Korea.
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South Korea should simply engage on fairly simple terms. Normalisation of relations when:
- North Korea verifiably destroys its nuclear programme;
- End to imprisonment of children, end to imprisonment of political prisoners by both sides, Red Cross monitoring of operation of all remaining prisons;
- A framework to allow divided families to be reunited by free choice in both directions, and return to their relative sides if they so wish.
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of course North Korea wont allow any of this, remember North Korea and Burma get on very well too.

So why should good compromise?

Most supporters of the United Nations see it as a way of sorting out peaceful disputes between countries, to avoid war, and to promote dialogue rather than violence. On the surface, and in a vast range of cases that is a good thing. However, the United Nations was created as part of a idealistic view that it is better for countries to bicker within an international organisation than to use arms - it was specifically designed to oppose traditional initiation of war - that is one country invading another.

As much of a despicable action as that is, it doesn't take much thought to consider how much less bloodthirsty the 1930s and 1940s would have been had Hitler NOT been expansionist, or indeed had Japan not been expansionist beyond Korea (which the rest of the world effectively handed to Japan in 1910). German Jewry would still have been wiped out, Stalin would have continued to slaughter his own people, and Japan continued to treat Koreans as slaves and useful for chemical and biological weapons experiments.

The UN's supporters present it as an arbiter of morality. However any organisation is only a function of its members, and its members are the very worst members of the international community. You see the UN sends an envoy into Burma to seek peace and a compromise -a compromise between those with guns and bullets and their victims shot in the back and left to die. It mirrors the view of China, which seeks restraint from BOTH sides - imagine calling for restraint from Jews in Hitler's Germany in 1940, or those sent to Year Zero by the Khmer Rouge, or the Kurds gassed by Saddam Hussein.

What the Burmese deserve is uncompromising support to overthrow their murderous regime. If the Burmese government did what it does in any Western country its perpetrators would be locked up. Of course if someone could arm the monks...

Boris not Ken

It was announced in the past hour that Boris Johnson, Conservative MP for Henley, former editor of The Spectator and basically a witty toff who is best being a TV presenter, sometimes brilliant, sometimes a cringeworthy clown, has been selected to be the Conservative candidate for the Mayoralty of London.

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Unlike in NZ, the Mayor of London has wide ranging powers, these include setting the budget for the Greater London Authority (GLA) , the Metropolitan Police, Fire Brigade, Transport for London, London Development Agency. These roles are being extended to include planning powers, strategic policy on waste, culture and sport (!), climate change and board appointments for GLA bodies. In other words, a helluva lot.

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Ken Livingstone is a Marxist who does deals with foreign wanna dictators, eagerly wastes Londoners money and essentially despises the productive and well off, treating the GLA as a vehicle to apply socialism to London as best he can. He sees himself as knowing what's best for Londoners in housing, business and transport - he hates the private car, but has little interest in dealing with the chronic overcrowding on public transport, he hates traffic congestion but runs the congestion charge more as a penalty system than traffic management - he wants more housing, but wants to specify and dictate what he wants - he wants less crime, but doesn't want to confront the public housing ghettos that both breed crime and destroy property values.

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In short, he should go, and sadly Boris is the best alternative. Boris's thoughts so far are somewhat encouraging. He wants to be tougher on crime, closer to a New York model to be intolerant of small offences that add to fear of crime and insecurity. He wants to change the way buses are funded so that companies who run them are incentivised to give good service and generate fares, not just operate a route. Beyond that he is seeking ideas, and wants to spend the money collected for the GLA more efficiently. So I have a few ideas:

1. Pay the Police based on how local residents perceive safety for themselves and their property, which means tackling all crime that matters to people - assault, vandalism and theft. A zero tolerance approach may take a lot of courage, but it could change much of London.

2. Get out of the way of housing, and don't encourage more public housing ghettos. Much valuable land is taken up by appalling council housing operations that have essentially abandoned families in environments of squalor, it is time to seriously confront this and consider options for selling or demolishing them, and opening up more land for construction.

3. Be courageous on transport. The buses can run at a profit if you get rid of politically correct concessions and charge people more to use them at peak times. The tube could have significant investment in it if it cost significantly more to use at peak times (pricing the tourists onto off peaks). Make operating and maintaining London streets a separate corporate activity and demand a comprehensive study into best practice maintenance and traffic management, which by the way probably wont reside in anything done by UK local authorities including TfL - Ken virtually ignores street management. Open up investment into new roads in London to the private sector, you might be amazed at how and where some new toll highways might make a huge difference to traffic in London - if Crossrail can be a multi-billion pound tunnel, you can do the same to complete ring routes.

4. Treat waste management on an objective cost/benefit basis. Encourage recycling to be a privatised activity and waste collection to be on a competitive cost recovery basis.

5. Don't do anything on culture and sport, cheerlead the Olympics, but people don't need politicians to help them to play, just stay out of their way.

Local government - choosing your local petty fascists

It's a good sign that I am paying next to no attention to the NZ local government elections (a good sign that I have better things to think about in the UK). Last time I was IN NZ and I could vote.

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What is remarkable is the contrast between how enthused some people are for local government and what almost everyone else thinks about it. Even postal voting has made little difference, and what I find even more remarkable is how so many in local government DON'T understand.

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The point is simple - for most people the best they can say about local government is that it is unobtrusive and boring - you don't give a damn about what happens with most things councils do as long as the roads aren't potholed, the rubbish is collected, the water/sewers work and there isn't flooding due to incompetent management of waterways/floodbanks. Choosing people to be what are effectively board members for utility administration is uninspiring.

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Unfortunately, the worst that can be said about local government is what I see in almost all candidates for these roles. Yes, most who stand for councils are well-meaning, but they tend to hold one of two sets of political philosophies:

- Ambitious, change the world (and you) leftwing ideologues who think they can make things better (from their perspective) by force using your money, telling you what to do with your land, your business, and generally being busybodies; or

- Philosophy-less benevolent do-gooders who have a few views of how to make things better, but basically just want to "make a difference". Blank slates who don't care how big or small council is, just that it can do some good.

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In other words, hopeless. Local government is loved by the left - Labour, the Greens and the Alliance passed the current legislation governing local government, which removed almost all of the restrictions on councils that had built up over the years - you see Sandra Lee, as local government Minister, had great visions of councils enabling the welfare of communities - this was strongly supported by the Labour left, including Judith Tizard (a former petty fascist herself) and the PM. You see to the left, local government is just another level of the state - it gives a chance to develop strategies, redistribute (steal and spend) money from ratepayers, and regulate and control people at the local level. It is also a chance (when the inevitable change in central government occurs) for local government to pursue leftwing policies to counter what central government does. Plenty of those in central government cut their teeth at local government, they just about wet themselves with enthusiasm to push people about.

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You see, why would most people enter into local government if they didn't want to push people around? It pays poorly, it is interminably bureaucratic, is proscribed by government to perform a range of far reaching and intrusive activities (RMA for example), and has very little prestige outside the big city mayoralties (no this doesn't include Waitakere or Hamilton).

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So I have some advice for the local body elections where you are. Since you get a little voting guide this should help you a lot, but here are some very important points:

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1. The Mayor matters less than the media or the candidates claim. Mayors have no power beyond chairing the council, and having a casting vote in councils when they are hung. They have little budget, do not decide what roads are upgraded. Figurehead and promoter, but that is about it.

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2. Most candidates use catchphrases to attract voters. Most of these are code for "I want to tell you what to do, use more ratepayers' money, ban activities, compel activities and tinker with activities that people don't actually want to pay for". Here they are:

- Sustainability (in other words, make you pay for uneconomic recycling, projects that look environmentally friendly but have had no objective appraisal, road transport is bad, public transport is good, protect trees, tell you what to do with your land, your house, your business, all because if you don't you're contributing to armageddon, by implication);

- Communities (in other words, thinks collectively. Doesn't respect private property rights, listens to busybody groups of activists, prepared to believe in groups above individuals, tribalist. Community making decisions about your business, home, how you play, travel - great!);

- Renewable, climate change, peak oil (Green party supporter, believes in armageddon and taxing/regulating subsidising anything that environmentalists think is good for the world - regardless of the evidence, in fact resists cost/benefit analysis)

- Free (you'll be forced to pay for it, rather than pay for it if you want to use it. Anyone suggesting anything that someone has to pay for must be free, is an advocate of socialism);

- Partnership (council will get together with other councils, central government or a corrupt symbiotic relationship with businesses that want favours to disadvantage you. You are excluded from any partnerships by definition);

- Accessibility (you'll be forced to pay to make it easier for people to work with the council or move about);

- Foreign (nobody standing for local government likes foreigners or money from overseas - anyone raising this is another isolationist luddite who thinks you can keep your head in the sand and make you pay for it. Should like North Korea);

- Public ownership (you bear the costs of poor decisions through rates, the councillors who make the decisions bear none of them.).

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In essence, avoid anyone saying these things - they're after your money. When was the last time you saw a council candidate who said that if elected LESS would be done?

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Simply - Bernard Darnton for Wellington Regional Council. If elected two things would be sure, he'd oppose rates increases and any growth in council activity, and he'd be mighty pissed off that he has to do it. What could be better than someone in council who is suspicious of councils, who wishes they would disappear and wants them to do less? Remember, HE was the one who took Labour to court over spending YOUR money on the pledge card campaign out of government funds for administration.

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Besides Bernard, see if anyone else challenges the size of councils to be smaller - if so, a vote might be earned - as far as the rest? Ignore them, and think about what parties NEXT year want for local government. I wouldn't be enthused about the Nats though, Mark Blumsky is giving up, he doesn't know WHAT he could be doing - in which case we'd all be happier if he went back to shoes.