Bono appears at Tory conference

After years of ingratiating himself with the Blair/Brown regime, Bono decides if the electorate likes the Tories "I will follow". In the hope that with David Cameron two hearts beat as one on aid, he wants to save people living in cities where the streets have no name. You see talking about helping Africa, spending other people's money to help Africa is even better than the real thing to him. Bono believes sometimes you can't make it on your own, so he needs the support of the incoming government to continue his campaign (yes I know, enough of the song "humour").

Sadly he undoubtedly will get vertigo if he actually learns about the problems of Africa, how much it is to do with poor governance, a lack of individual right protection and property rights, how much the protectionism of the EU on agriculture impoverishes, and how the solution to Africa's problems is to look at other continents that are far more prosperous and see that it's about capitalism, it's about government that protects rights and is impartial.

So Bono asking that the UK government spend 0.7% of national GDP on aid, is not just morally dubious, it simply wont work. It is good money after bad. Aid has made Africa addicted to other people's money, addicted to the notion that its problems can be solved if only other people wiped debt and paid it more money. It's simply wrong.

Bono has good intentions, I don't doubt that, but he needs to understand that the causes of Africa's relative poverty are multifaceted, and perhaps the biggest external limit on Africa is trade policy. If he embraced free and open trade he'd be embracing trading out of poverty. However, beyond that Africa needs good small government, it needs a culture of respecting individual rights and rejecting mysticism, tribalism and socialism. It needs the rest of the world to stop providing any form of comfort and support to the gangsters who run too much of that continent.

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.