Given that the current Labour government in Britain is morally bankrupt as it:
- Calls for MORE big government to try to get elected;
- Lies about the need for spending cuts, then admits they are needed after no one believes it.
and is third in the polls, you might hope the Conservative Party would be worth looking forward to.
Well the party conference is a chance to present itself as a government in waiting, so what have we seen so far?
- Boris Johnson demanding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, even if every other country ratifies it. I'll believe it when I see it, as William Hague has said the CURRENT policy is a referendum. Frankly, all that matters to me is that the UK relationship to Brussels is renegotiated;
- Promises that every town will have a school for tradespeople. Oh dear.
- Boris Johnson noting that he has freezed the Greater London Assembly portion of Council tax for another year, and will again next year, and wants the forthcoming 50p tax rate abolished;
- National Insurance (a tax) to be abolished for new companies for the first two years;
- Waffle about cutting "NHS red tape" to save money;
- People on incapacity benefits to face tough tests to check if they are capable of working.
Yawn.
Janet Daley in the Sunday Telegraph made a great point when she demanded the Tories put forward the moral case for spending cuts.
"The Conservatives must stake their claim to be the party that has a positive account, a morally attractive case, for saying that public spending – which is to say, the power of the state – can and should be reduced permanently. Sounds like heresy? Only if you buy into the lexicon of the Labour-Guardian-"equality" lobby – which is, of course, precisely what Mr Brown wants you to do."
"David Cameron's Tories can present themselves as sole custodians of the future in which a smaller state will mean a stronger society."
I'm not holding my breath. This is, after all, the party that still believes in stopping a private company expanding its airport.
06 October 2009
Change you can believe in: Tibet
Barack Obama on Tibet and the Dalai Lama before being President.
Barack Obama on how President Bush should have boycotted the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in protest for human rights abuses in China, including Tibet
President Barack Obama cancels meeting with Dalai Lama, because US foreign policy interests are more important -which means getting Chinese support for action on Iran and North Korea.
Yep, awfully easily to play the moral high ground when you're not President isn't it?
Barack Obama on how President Bush should have boycotted the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in protest for human rights abuses in China, including Tibet
President Barack Obama cancels meeting with Dalai Lama, because US foreign policy interests are more important -which means getting Chinese support for action on Iran and North Korea.
Yep, awfully easily to play the moral high ground when you're not President isn't it?
Who really wants to be car free?
The Duke of Wellington famously loathed railways because he said it would "only encourage the common people to move about needlessly". Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes the comment by Prince Charles, himself the owner of six vehicles, on a similar vein. He believed one should be "elevating the pedestrian above the car". I like underpasses too, but he didn't mean that. He certainly didn't mean it for himself.
What is always missing from the anti-car language of the environmentalist movement (and a more peculiar "public transport religion") is the value people attach to having a car. It is so often portrayed as "car addiction" or "car dependent", but the counterfactual put forward, a fanciful notion that everyone was "better off" without cars doesn't bear close examination.
Put it this way. If you live in a modern new world city, consider the locations of jobs you can access with public transport conveniently, and those you can drive to within a reasonable time. The liberating influence of the car is dismissed by the doomsayers, as is the trend of those in China and India seeking to buy cars - as if it is some whim of the ephemeral.
"Living car-free may be fine for many people during some phases of their lives, and it may be fine for some people for all of their lives, but it’s no way for most of us to live — regardless of what Prince Charles and his fellow aristocrats may think" says Sam, and he's right.
Put it this way. If you live in a modern new world city, consider the locations of jobs you can access with public transport conveniently, and those you can drive to within a reasonable time. The liberating influence of the car is dismissed by the doomsayers, as is the trend of those in China and India seeking to buy cars - as if it is some whim of the ephemeral.
"Living car-free may be fine for many people during some phases of their lives, and it may be fine for some people for all of their lives, but it’s no way for most of us to live — regardless of what Prince Charles and his fellow aristocrats may think" says Sam, and he's right.
Intensification for Auckland
One of the core philosophies of the Auckland Regional Council's planning approach for the region is intensification. It believes it is good to encourage people to live in higher density housing, close to "nodes", which happen to be railway stations. Indeed it is one of the key reasons why the ARC has embraced rail transport instead of bus transport. You see at one point, the then ARA advocated converting most of the rail lines into busways, busways would mean buses could travel around the central city hop on a busway, then exit to reach your home in the suburbs. However that wouldn't meet the intensification objective, as it would mean you'd STILL live on your quarter-acre section in the suburbs, when you SHOULD live in an apartment or semi-detached townhouse close to others. That is one key reason why taxpayers are being forced to pay for rail instead of bus.
So the theory is simple, people live closer together near a railway station, means they walk to the train to go to work, less people drive, all sounds good right?
No.
For starters it assumes that putting more people together means less driving, but it appears not to be the case. For if the development works, and there is retail and more reasons to go to the "transit oriented development" location, people drive there from further afield. It attracts people who go by car as well.
Secondly it assumes that because the railway is there, your job is on another station on the line. Wrong. Most jobs are not located within walking distance of the line people live on, and even if it was originally, as jobs change you may be less likely to find another job located also on that line.
Don't believe me? The LA Times did an investigative report into some such developments there, and the conclusions were rather clear. They did nothing.
This is one conclusion of the LA Times:
"In Los Angeles alone, billions of public and private dollars have been lavished on transit-oriented projects such as Hollywood & Vine, with more than 20,000 residential units approved within a quarter mile of transit stations between 2001 and 2005.
But there is little research to back up the rosy predictions. Among the few academic studies of the subject, one that looked at buildings in the Los Angeles area showed that transit-based development successfully weaned relatively few residents from their cars. It also found that, over time, no more people in the buildings studied were taking transit 10 years after a project opened than when it was first built."
Now it went on to claim Portland is working, but is it? Cascade Policy Institute, based in Oregon, says there is precious little evidence of this. It gave evidence to Portland City Council using official stats to demonstrate:
1. Despite high spending on public transport, the share of public transport for commutes into downtown Portland declined between 2001 and 2008 from 46 to 43%. It was static across Portland at 15% between 1998 and 2008. The goal of 60% share for downtown commutes by 2010 looks unattainable.
2. Portland's light rail system achieves ever growing ridership, although this isn't attracted from car users. However the proportion of operating costs paid for by users is less than 3%.
3. Dense housing advocated by Portland costs around 100% more than lower density housing, per person.
The question to advocates of the great Auckland experiment is this.
Where is the evidence that intensification and rail electrification will be any different for Auckland? Who should pay if it fails?
So the theory is simple, people live closer together near a railway station, means they walk to the train to go to work, less people drive, all sounds good right?
No.
For starters it assumes that putting more people together means less driving, but it appears not to be the case. For if the development works, and there is retail and more reasons to go to the "transit oriented development" location, people drive there from further afield. It attracts people who go by car as well.
Secondly it assumes that because the railway is there, your job is on another station on the line. Wrong. Most jobs are not located within walking distance of the line people live on, and even if it was originally, as jobs change you may be less likely to find another job located also on that line.
Don't believe me? The LA Times did an investigative report into some such developments there, and the conclusions were rather clear. They did nothing.
This is one conclusion of the LA Times:
"In Los Angeles alone, billions of public and private dollars have been lavished on transit-oriented projects such as Hollywood & Vine, with more than 20,000 residential units approved within a quarter mile of transit stations between 2001 and 2005.
But there is little research to back up the rosy predictions. Among the few academic studies of the subject, one that looked at buildings in the Los Angeles area showed that transit-based development successfully weaned relatively few residents from their cars. It also found that, over time, no more people in the buildings studied were taking transit 10 years after a project opened than when it was first built."
Now it went on to claim Portland is working, but is it? Cascade Policy Institute, based in Oregon, says there is precious little evidence of this. It gave evidence to Portland City Council using official stats to demonstrate:
1. Despite high spending on public transport, the share of public transport for commutes into downtown Portland declined between 2001 and 2008 from 46 to 43%. It was static across Portland at 15% between 1998 and 2008. The goal of 60% share for downtown commutes by 2010 looks unattainable.
2. Portland's light rail system achieves ever growing ridership, although this isn't attracted from car users. However the proportion of operating costs paid for by users is less than 3%.
3. Dense housing advocated by Portland costs around 100% more than lower density housing, per person.
The question to advocates of the great Auckland experiment is this.
Where is the evidence that intensification and rail electrification will be any different for Auckland? Who should pay if it fails?
04 October 2009
London's free Evening Standard
When I first arrived in London, the Evening Standard was the only evening paper. It started in 1827, It was owned by Associated Newspapers, owners of the Daily Mail, and I noticed it mainly because it loathed Mayor Ken Livingstone (not without some just cause, and the feeling was mutual). Of course, it didn't stop Ken getting re-elected. The Times notes it sold 450,000 copies a day on average five years ago. However, it soon faced intense competition.
From September 2006, TheLondonPaper was launched by NewsCorp, the difference was it was free. Associated Newspapers launched London Lite, to pre-empt it, another free evening paper, which was primarily focused on entertainment news and lifestyle items. London Lite was aimed at young female readers (unlikely to buy a newspaper).
The London Paper distributed over 470,000 copies, London Lite around 401,000 copies, but the Evening Standard had plummeted to 236,000, according to a June 2009 survey reported by the Guardian. In short, free papers had cannibalised the evening market.
The Evening Standard has been losing money for some years, so much so that Associated Newspapers sold 75.1% of it to Russian businessman, Alexander Lebedev for £1 in January 2009.
A couple of weeks ago, NewsCorp announced the end of TheLondonPaper, largely because of the collapse of advertising due to the recession. So now, the Evening Standard is to be relaunched at the end of next week. Free. With 650,000 copies to be circulated. Presumably, London Lite will disappear at the same time.
What remains, of course, are paid for national papers in the morning, but when London can't sustain an evening paid-for newspaper then it says a lot about trends in that industry.
The Evening Standard expects that by commanding the evening advertising market, it can be profitable, and it may well be. I found value in having a good paper on local issues, but admittedly I bought it less than once a week on average. I never pick up London Lite, but did use to read TheLondonPaper from time to time. In the mornings I read City AM, a financial news freesheet, as there is no newsagent between home and central London on my commute route.
Oh, and if you want to get some order of magnitude of the Evening Standard, if the Evening Standard is a giveaway of 650,000 copies, the NZ Herald SELLS around 171,000 and the Dominion Post around 90,000. Bear in mind also that greater London has a population of around 8 million.
From September 2006, TheLondonPaper was launched by NewsCorp, the difference was it was free. Associated Newspapers launched London Lite, to pre-empt it, another free evening paper, which was primarily focused on entertainment news and lifestyle items. London Lite was aimed at young female readers (unlikely to buy a newspaper).
The London Paper distributed over 470,000 copies, London Lite around 401,000 copies, but the Evening Standard had plummeted to 236,000, according to a June 2009 survey reported by the Guardian. In short, free papers had cannibalised the evening market.
The Evening Standard has been losing money for some years, so much so that Associated Newspapers sold 75.1% of it to Russian businessman, Alexander Lebedev for £1 in January 2009.
A couple of weeks ago, NewsCorp announced the end of TheLondonPaper, largely because of the collapse of advertising due to the recession. So now, the Evening Standard is to be relaunched at the end of next week. Free. With 650,000 copies to be circulated. Presumably, London Lite will disappear at the same time.
What remains, of course, are paid for national papers in the morning, but when London can't sustain an evening paid-for newspaper then it says a lot about trends in that industry.
The Evening Standard expects that by commanding the evening advertising market, it can be profitable, and it may well be. I found value in having a good paper on local issues, but admittedly I bought it less than once a week on average. I never pick up London Lite, but did use to read TheLondonPaper from time to time. In the mornings I read City AM, a financial news freesheet, as there is no newsagent between home and central London on my commute route.
Oh, and if you want to get some order of magnitude of the Evening Standard, if the Evening Standard is a giveaway of 650,000 copies, the NZ Herald SELLS around 171,000 and the Dominion Post around 90,000. Bear in mind also that greater London has a population of around 8 million.
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