Sunday Star Times asks idiot about transport

Well if you read this article by Esther Howard in New Zealand's leading leftwing rag - the Sunday Star Times, you wouldn't be that enlightened about Auckland transport. She talked to three leading international gurus and an Auckland expert, none of whom actually presented differing views from each other.

Paul Mees is a radical advocate of endless subsidies to public transport, and is rabidly against private transport. He does not present evidence for his claims, and is not widely acknowledged as being of great standing in urban transport circles in Australia and New Zealand. He wants an end to road building, and to pour money into public transport, putting high density Zurich on a par with Auckland. He gives no evidence whatsoever for his claim that this would reduce congestion.

Paul Bedford is another public transport enthusiast, wanting trams galore and also anti-roads. Again, someone who gives no evidence that spending a fortune on public transport will ease congestion.

Professor George Hazel is a bit more sensible. Another supporter of public transport, but more intelligently also promotes integrated ticketing and payment systems. He suggests people get credits for using public transport off peak.

Stuart Donovan from Auckland is even more sensible, as he promotes ending requirements for developers to provide parking (but then advocates taxes on parking). He supports replacing fuel taxes with tolls, at least this would ease congestion.

So you see, high standards of journalism again in New Zealand newspapers. No one who believes in efficient management of roads and free market transport was asked. The answer, you see, is to run all transport commercially - roads and public transport.

Nick Smith the Green Party's Cabinet Minister in drag

What a f'ing surprise! Nick Smith - the man John Key should have relegated to the back benches, and who I called on Nelson voters to reject in favour of Maryan Street, is calling for a new bizarre tax - this time on plastic bags according to the Dominion Post.

Hello??!! Nick, if you want to be in the Green Party, join it.

A 5c tax on every plastic bag is allegedly based on the "polluter pays" principle. Paying for what though? This is when the advocates shut up.

Smith says "We are a country of just four-million people, we use over a billion bags a year, and to me that's excessive". Oh sorry Dear Leader Nick, we are using them too much, like bad little children wanting to carry our shopping in multiple bags, then using them for rubbish disposal. We ARE naughty, go on tell us off.

The proposed tax would raise revenue to go back to supermarkets. Odd indeed. Especially since some shops already charge for bags, like Pak n Save in the North Island. So there IS choice. Nick doesn't like that though, as any good Green MP he believes in using force - force is good.

The supermarket sector prefers a voluntary approach, but is gutlessly supporting the proposal if the government mandates it (presuming glad the government wants to impose a tax to give money to supermarkets).

The same report says they comprise only 0.2% of waste but don't biodegrade. The appropriate response is "so what", largely because as long as people pay for landfill use (which many do not because councils subsidise them), then it is irrelevant. You see, that is the only issue.

So my solution is far more direct. Landfills should be privatised. All councils should be required to put landfills into profit-oriented Council Controlled Organisations, and to privatise them. That would mean everyone has to pay for rubbish collection and disposal, at market prices. Then, polluters would be paying, because as long as you pay for what you throw away, and it goes somewhere that does not leach onto neighbouring land, then who cares?

Unless, of course, you worship the ideology that throwing away anything is bad.

Support government programmes by choice

The Standard is bleeting on that you wont be forced to pay for so many state programmes it thinks are just dandy.

So my question is this - what is stopping those who agree with them paying for them by choice? Yes there is this incredible concept, astonishing in its equity and fairness, called choice.

If you want to support advertising that encourages kids to eat healthy, YOU pay for it. Why not? You go try to convince others to donate too. It's what charities and businesses do all the time.

If you want to subsidise the coastal shipping industry, then YOU pay for it. After all, if you think it's so good for others, why be a selfish prick and not try to keep it going?

If you want to subsidise the provision of water supplies to rural districts, then YOU pay for it. After all, just because banal councils couldn't run infrastructure efficiently, nor are ratepayers willing to pay for clean water, why should taxpayers do so?

Not the lazy "get the state to make everyone pay" violent collectivist nonsense that the left gleefully portrays as "caring" when it is nothing of the sort.

So go on - those on the left, spend your taxcuts on the things the government isn't spending money on that you want. If you spend them on anything else, you're a hypocrite. If you wont spend money on the government, why the hell should everyone else be forced to?

Why is Slovakia not financially bereft?

Simple.

Slovak's borrowed more prudently. Slovak banks lended more prudently.

Was it due to regulation?

No. Slovakia has a fairly deregulated economy, with flat income and company tax.

So says Slovak university students in Bratislava, who largely support the free market and are worried that the rural majority will want to go back to centrally planned socialism. This is from the BBC!

Its main challenge is the collapse in car exports, since it had a booming car assembly industry thanks to lower wages and hard working employees. So it is far from immune, and has seen economic growth plummet - but its financial sector is sound. No talk of bank bailouts at all.

The BBC on Ayn Rand

This time it was Newsnight on Friday night, the culture segment chose to review Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The episode is here, which probably cannot be watched outside the UK, but give it a go (get past the Vince Cable nonsense first and the Rand bit finishes at about 12 minutes). Why is it mentioned? Because sales have taken off.

Now I criticise the book in only two points. Firstly, it IS too long. It makes the same point repeatedly, which to me (given I already was an objectivist when I read it) was unnecessary. Secondly, it became increasingly predictable what would happen . As such I much prefer The Fountainhead, although Atlas Shrugged is a great tale, it was one which had an outcome I expected. Many better written books exist, but still it makes an important point.

What would happen if the inventors and producers DID go on strike?

It starts with Yaron Brook from the Ayn Rand Institute explaining the point of Atlas Shrugged and does so well. However, then Kirsty Wark is generally annoying, but to get Ayn Rand mentioned on the BBC is an achievement in itself. However, it was Rosie Boycott, who was once editor of the Express (barely a step beyond a tabloid rag) who missed the point of the book, and so described it as "full of Aryan heroes" which was disturbing.

The BBC showed it was completely incapable of getting a panel on its show of people with differing points of view - NOBODY who supported Rand was presented.

More disturbing is Boycott didn't bother to investigate Rand's own history as a refugee from totalitarianism, a Jew and a despiser of all forms of fascism. Boycott, who has edited the Independent and the Express (neither known for either being that independent or clever), is a Liberal Democrat, and, and it was "dehuman". "Nobody in the book is vulnerable and human. Every transaction is financial", which of course is total nonsense as well.

The swarmy Andrew Roberts, a historian, said "you simply can't abolish income tax and sack government employees" which is nonsense. The narrowness of this view is astonishing. He calls her a strange if not mad woman, who was chucked out of every political organisation she tried to join.

Sarfraz Manzoor (A Guardian writer) criticises it as lacking humanity and any doubt. all heroes are individuals, but in the real world most things are done as teams. He sees it is too easy to blame government intervention, when it should be the lack of intervention that is the issue.

So there you have it - the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation bringing on three people who largely agree with each other who think radical free market capitalism can't be defended, and that Rand was mad and dehumanising.

Looking forward to the debate the BBC has on whether people who disagree with it should be forced to pay for it - nope, wont be hearing that one soon.