Who is the thief?

Let's say the mafia strongarms money out of you and your business regularly, say it does so to "protect" you, but is not very good at it.

Let's say your much bigger neighbour finds ways to evade the mafia strongarming so much money out of his business, quite successfully.

Then is the fact the mafia got less money from your neighbour, because your neighbour hid its money in clever ways, means your neighbour has effectively stolen from you (because the mafia might have taken less had it had what it thought it should have got from your neighbour)?

Just a way of looking at this.

In rebuttal to this.

No service means no subsidy

Again, rare for me to agree with Idiot Savant, but whilst NZ Bus services are suspended due to strike action, it shouldn't be getting subsidies for services not being provided.

Funny how the ARC Chair Mike Lee is pointing this out, but admitting that ARTA, which is a branch of the ARC, is still doing it.

Does he not realise how this strengthens the case for the abolition of the ARC?

Indeed it strengthens the case for abolishing bus subsidies. I'm neutral on the industrial dispute. That is between two groups of people negotiating payment and conditions for the provision of services.

However, part of the leverage in that dispute is that NZ Bus loses fare revenue when services are not provided. Yet, when it gets subsidies of, on average, $2 a passenger trip from ARTA, regardless of whether services are provided, then the main losers are Auckland ratepayers (who pay 60% of that subsidy) and motorists/commercial road transport operators (who pay 40% of the subsidy through fuel tax and RUC). It used to be that around half of all bus services in Auckland were fully commercial, in that fares more than covered costs and that the market was open to competition.

Now the proportion is much less, I have heard an estimate of around 20%, but it isn't clear. ARTA has "contracted over" commercial routes, so that one subsidised operator is paid to provide a set of routes. This effectively shuts out competition, which ARTA can prohibit if it undermines a contracted service.

Now, if NZ Bus relied wholly on fare revenue it might seek a settlement more quickly, as the business would be dependent wholly on pleasing customers, not a bunch of transport planners.

Daily Telegraph headlines this morning

Gay man 'tried to poison lesbian neighbours over three-legged cat feud'

Female predator pedophile stalked public lavatories

The pill gives women a taste for boyish men like Zac Effron

German banker used fake documents to work as a surgeon

Get the sense that Britain really IS about tabloid headlines?

French Minister of Pedarasty?

So you defend Roman Polanski.

Then someone reads your biography from four years ago where you say:

"I got into the habit of paying for boys . . . The profusion of young, very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide"

"All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously ... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire."

Let it be clear the age of these boys is not clear, they may be legal age.

However, it is a big oops.

He COULD come out and say the boys were legal age, I have no shame about exploiting prostitutes from developing countries who consented and were (young) adults (!). There is no proof he has broken any laws.

However defending Polanski does not make for a good look. Polanski no doubt was excited enormously and was in a state of desire, so he drugged and raped a young girl.

It is THAT that denies his moral authority for certain, whether his rapacious hedonism also does so is something we may not ever know.

TVNZ is not a Taonga

Brian Rudman is sad that TVNZ is to broadcast programming of a wide appeal, which he describes as "lowest common denominator pap". He ignores, like all of the elitist snobs in the cultural subsidy industry, that the very people he claims to give a damn about - the poor, the less well educated, the needy - are in fact the broad mass of people who like what he calls "lowest common denominator pap". They are, the lowest common denominators. Those celebrated by the left are also sneered at, for their cultural (lack of) taste, in preferring cheaply made entertainment to local content, American sitcoms to documentaries about the union movement in the 1950s.

They wont admit it, but the overwhelming attitude is supremely condescending, like a ruling elite intellectual class that knows what's best for those poor unfortunate souls that capitalism has rendered victims of its heartless system. Woe is they who must watch TV of such low brow that we must tax them and force them to pay for what is good for them.

To fix the appalling choices of the proletariat, Brian Rudman calling for TVNZ to get special taxpayer money for New Zealand programming (which is also a breach of CER and a breach of New Zealand's GATS commitments). He thinks TVNZ is a treasure and harks back to better days at TVNZ, when it had programming he liked.

He is right that news and current affairs were better, but not by much of course. He then misrepresents considerably the TV licence fee, which ceased directly funding TVNZ in the 1980s, as NZ On Air was created and the licence fee was used to fund programming to all broadcasters on a case by case basis. Indeed all of the licence fee money was replaced by taxpayer funding when it was abolished in 1999, much to the chagrin of those who wanted rid of NZ On Air altogether. The statement "Government was supposed to make up the $100 a household licence fee but that never eventuated." is dead wrong.

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage, which has a demonstrable vested interest in maintaining and expanding this role, said "Important parts of our cultural life would simply not be present without intelligent intervention from the government."

Important to whom? People unwilling to pay for it? The suppliers who couldn't get people to pay for what they provide if given the choice?

Public broadcasting makes cultural elitists feel good, and the left like it for providing more in depth news and current affairs that inevitably has a statist bias. Why? Because by being forcibly funded by the state, such a broadcaster can find it difficult to build a culture to challenge the role of the state in that and other arenas. How CAN you question state funding of businesses, health, education, welfare and the like if YOU are a beneficiary of it?

Public broadcasting becomes a creature of the status quo and an advocate of statist solutions. How often on Radio NZ do you hear someone arguing for less government against one arguing for more government, rather than 3 all talking about different ways of having more government to resolve an issue of the day?

No. TVNZ is not a Taonga. TVNZ is a commercial broadcaster that seeks to maximise audiences, it is no more special than TV3. The fact it thinks it is, is a good reason to shut it down.