Why cheer Clark?

David Garrett is a dickhead, as many of his comments have shown he is closer to the "mob justice" view of the world, and has a mixed view of individual rights at best. However, in refusing to participate in the nauseating standing ovation for Helen Clark he deserves credit for having some principle.

Seriously. He may not have a clue on some things, but he is a man who believes in certain things - he didn't enter politics to be cheering Helen Clark.

If you belong to ACT or National you belong to political movements that essentially are opposed to the socialist Nanny State view of the world exemplified by the Clark led Labour Party. Clark is an intelligent, cold power hungry politician, who has spent her whole life working to have the power she centralised around herself, Heather Simpson and strictly controlling government communications led by now MP Brendan Burns. She increased government regulation and theft of people's incomes and property, with only a handful of exceptions, she declared "the state is sovereign" showing her utter contempt for there being any fundamental individual rights.

Clark broke the law and had it repealed so she wouldn't face the consequences, as Labour used government administrative funding to pay for electioneering. She ran a tight ship, a Cabinet comprised of people she largely regarded as far less competent than herself (which is true), and subverted Ministerial authority by having Cabinet papers vetoed by H2 before they got presented to Cabinet. She promoted racially driven policies with "Closing the Gaps", before hypocritically turning her back on them when Don Brash got traction with "One law for all". She warmly embraced giving local government far more extensive powers to spend your money and interfere with what you do. She retained a tight grip on the anti-competitive and centrally controlled state education and health monopolies that all are forced to pay for, whether they deliver what users want or not.

She's off to lead a featherbedded lazy UN organisation, and live off the back of global taxpayers' money (mostly from wealthy Western countries) travelling to many countries, like the Queen of aid and development.

Yes it is bad politics to have sour grapes and not cheer her on. However, it is hypocrisy to pretend you thin she deserves a cheer - I'd have preferred if she spent her life as an academic, and didn't try to run other people's lives. The New Zealand economy, the health and education of New Zealanders, New Zealanders' property rights and their individual freedoms have all suffered because of this woman.

A better approach would be for those politicians who have consistently opposed her politics (and to be fair plenty of National MPs have not), to simply excuse themselves from the House. Let Labour, the Greens, Jim Anderton and Peter Dunne have their love in.

Will National support racist local government?

Now once John Key signed a confidence and supply agreement with the Maori Party we all knew the Maori seats in Parliament wouldn't be going anywhere. Not a particularly big deal, after all they already exist.

However, race based seats for local government ARE new, and National opposed them vehemently whilst in Opposition.

The NZ Herald is reporting that the government is considering Maori based seats as part of a mega Auckland council. John Key was non-committal about it, but Pita Sharples expressed support for the concept in principle, although he had issue with the detail.

Do you want local government representation to be based on your race, or just your political views? Is it appropriate in the 21st century for psychologically based identities (for ethnicity is in the mind, not a matter of fact) to be legally entrenched in political representation, or for it to be based on one person one vote, and for representatives to be based on political views not the legend of ethnicity?

It would be nice if the Minister of Local Government - Rodney Hide - made it abundantly clear that race based local government representation will not be allowed under this government.

Paul Goldsmith, Auckland City Councillor, agrees.

Electricity review might deliver useful answers

I tend to be sceptical of reviews, but the report in the NZ Herald of the government's announcement of a Ministerial review into the electricity sector is likely to look at how this state dominated generation and retail sector needs to be unshackled to allow competition to operate more freely.

Gerry Brownlee has indicated one issue is duplication of sector governance, which basically means too much bureaucracy. Energy security is important as Labour interfered considerably to try to guarantee supply (at high cost), and pricing given the government is the key market player is worth observing. The question being whether Labour milked the SOEs for dividends compared to investment in capacity.

The panel appointed includes some useful heavyweights. Brent Layton and Lewis Evans are excellent infrastructure sector economists who understand markets, Stephen Franks should add a reasonably sound legal perspective, and David Russell while on the left, becomes the consumer representative. Toby Stevenson knows the electricity sector intimately, and Miriam Dean is a competition lawyer.

Not a unionist, token ethnic representative or gender balance in sight, a review made up of intelligent, talented people.

However, will it be allowed to recommend privatisation of the sector? There is little sign that it will support the crazy Green agenda of recreating a single state owned monolith electricity generator.

So I am cautiously optimistic that it will unshackle the sector, and support more private sector investment (after all minority private investment wouldn't be full privatisation would it?).

More importantly, will a similar heavyweight team review the telecommunications sector?

Police let protestors smash RBS branch

Nice, so the Police forces in London have done relatively nothing to stop the graffiti, window smashing, raiding and robbery of a Royal Bank of Scotland Branch in the City of London.

The BBC is reporting that people are moving freely in and out of the Branch, and riot Police are not moving in yet - presumably because they don't have the number ready yet. I am seeing windows being smashed live on camera still, some 15 minutes after it started.

RBS is 70% state owned, but it is slightly chilling that the Police are unable to respond directly to such wanton vandalism and theft.

One of the protestors said it is because "our money goes into their pockets", which of course is the fault of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party who took it out of "their pockets" in the first place!

G20 - what good it could do

While the UK media fawns over the arrival of Barack Obama, and several thousand solutionless people who are statists or anarchists, the G20 summit COULD achieve good if only two things happened.

1. The G20 came out, unanimously, against trade protectionism, in favour of renewing the Doha round, and a new emphasis on lowering barriers to trade in primary products, manufactured goods and services. THIS could do more to encourage global recovery than any other government measure because, it basically, is about removing government measures.

2. The less free G20 members (China, Russia in particular) might notice that an economy in trouble can have public political protests largely kept under control.

However, this is unlikely. Far more likely are platitudes, a few moans from poorer countries that it isn't their fault (but showing how dependent they are on wealthy country demand), and a demonstration that everyone is in agreement that the recession should end.

On the other side, I've noticed in the protests some Soviet flags (because the USSR was known to accept public protests as a matter of course), and the hard left "Stop the War Coalition" is calling for US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, an end to aid for Israel and unilateral nuclear disarmament. In other words, surrender to Islamists and leave nuclear weapons in the hands of dictatorial governments. Charming lot.