Better stuck in the 90s than the 30s

Idiot Savant thinks that the Nats are stuck in the 90s supporting the re-privatisation of the railways if Labour re-nationalises it.

Which decade was nationalisation about again?

Then again, he does think "The rail network is vital infrastructure, and it will only increase in importance in the coming years as oil prices rise and climate change policy force changes in transport modes." Which begs the question, if it will become more competitive and the government will "force" freight onto it - why he doesn't buy it?

Who would've thought

Dover Samuels could make more sense than the rest of the Labour caucus put together. As David Farrar points out, one of Samuels' best points was:

"The Treaty of Waitangi seems to be the antidote for everything from tagging to wagging school and colonisation which is absolute cultural bullshit."

He continues:

"You've got these culturally correct loony tunes who think everything's offensive come on, it's time to wake up.

"Even if the sun shone 24-hours a day there are some people some are in Parliament who will find the dark and find some sort of grievance. They want to take us back in history and blame somebody.

"Look at the Maori Party. Just on the surface of it, the branding is attractive people think `hey, I'm a Maori, I'll vote for the Maori Party'. There's a lot of people who think that way. But what have they got to deliver? I have seen the rantings and the ravings and other people's scripts being given in Parliament, but what are they going to deliver?"

Of course National will be willing to do a deal with that party, wouldn't it?

the standard of The Standard

Well this post says it all. It is about as factually correct as the Korean Central News Agency.

Take this:

“Toll has been a classic asset-stripper: buy a key piece of infrastructure that should never have been sold, take as much profit as possible with minimal investment, and force the Government to buy the infrastructure back to prevent further economic damage.”

For starters, Toll never bought the track, which this implies. In fact Dr Cullen and the Labour government did a cozy little deal with Toll to bid for Tranz Rail. The Beehive press release here makes it clear that Toll and Dr Cullen were acting hand in glove. The government was "never forced", Toll never bought the infrastructure. Utter lies.

.

Secondly, this “as much profit as possible” is rather hilarious. $34.7 million net profit after tax in 2007 is hardly raking it in on assets of $791 million. No wonder Toll wants out. The asset stripping is also a fascinating claim. How? What has been stripped? Maybe Steve Pierson knows better, or maybe he is interviewing Microsoft Word with his own manufactured delusions.

Thirdly, it claims that "lines have been closed". What? By the state? Only one line has been closed since Toll took over, the tiny Castlecliff branch in Wanganui (and it hasn't been removed). Even since privatisation the lines mothballed consists of Rotorua, Taneatua and Whakatane. Far more lines closed under government ownership in the 1980s (Kurow, Otago Central, Okaihau, Thames, Seddonville, Makareao). Not that this was wrong, but the implication is that services were dropped from those who used them - when in fact lines like Kurow had just two freight trains a week - hardly a reason to get excited.

So if the Standard has this standard of research and writing, you might ask what else it does well?

Muldoonism all round

Several blogs have commented, quite rightly, about Dr Michael Bassett's excellent column about the posturing on foreign investment by Labour. Bassett, as on of the more honourable Ministers of the fourth Labour government, clearly is non-plussed about his former colleagues being upset. Statements such as "the “whatever it takes” mentality that the Labour Party uses these days when they campaign for re-election" say a great deal.

Labour, having lost the votes of most businesspeople, much of provincial New Zealand, many Maori and most of those on middle to higher incomes, is now pandering to the Winston Peters crowd for votes. That's what Auckland airport is about, and the railways - the old Muldoonist crowd that is wary of foreign investment, the working class semi-literates who are easily fired up with xenophobic rhetoric.

Winston's Muldoonism isn't new. Back when he visited North Korea he was quoted as saying there is a lot for New Zealand to learn from North Korea. Funny how Labour chooses a man who is anti-foreign investment to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs isn't it?

Whatever it takes - Labour has spent the surplus up, to make tax cuts harder, but can also claim any spending cuts will "hurt health and education", forgetting that the increases have done little to improve either. Labour will scaremonger that National will hurt the poor and damage the fragile economic growth, that has been in decline in the last few years.

Stop worshipping the cruel NHS

The NHS is Britain's great fraud. You are forced to pay something called "National Insurance" which if it were an insurance scheme, would have been put out of business for fraud. The NHS is a politically driven bureaucracy that cares nothing for service and responding to consumers, but acts like an old fashioned eastern European Marxist-Leninist bureaucracy.

You see that in the latest news, when it denies one of its former staff eye surgery to stop her going blind. This is the sort of story you expect from those gloating how awful health care is in the USA - but no, it is socialist medicine in the UK. She is instead paying twice - paying privately £800 a shot for treatment.

So if it were suggested that under "National Insurance" you could stop paying it premiums and pay premiums for a service that works for you, the left would cry "privatisation" and "unfair" - meanwhile the system would let a former nurse go blind.

oh and the Tories wont do anything about it, because no one wants to confront the truth about the NHS - it performs abysmally. Hardly surprising, as it is the third biggest employer in the world. How can anything that big and state owned possibly be responsive?