Gareth Hughes a clown once more

What the Greens say about an unprofitable Hamilton-Auckland passenger rail service.

Ohhh a new rail link? Yes, we want it, you should pay for it, it must be good, it's a railway. People like trains, see the petition of those people who want it? No we didn't ask how often they'd use it, stop being mean, we want it, you pay for it. Go on, it's good for you. How much? We don't know, who cares, you'll be made to pay anyway. It will reduce congestion? How much? We don't know, we ignored any evidence that says it will do nothing.

Gareth Hughes is proving he is as much of a clown as Keeping Stock showed he himself demonstrates.

He says "the commuter rail connection had real merit and offered a long-term option for linking Auckland and Hamilton. Yes, so hard to get between those cities with that state highway, the buses that use it and even the Overlander rail service.

He goes on as the Waikato Times reports "Hughes pointed to the 2011 World Cup as a "great incentive to get a commuter service happening"". Yes, nothing so good for the environment as encouraging Aucklanders to live in Hamilton and commute, and commuting has everything to do with the Rugby World Cup, right?

Follow the thinking so far? Well Gareth doesn't even know there is a railway already between Auckland and Hamilton (most of it double-tracked) "The Greens wanted to see a "corridor of national significance", with construction of a rail-line – or space for it to be built – alongside the Waikato Expressway". Presumably he's never actually travelled between the two cities by land.

This staggering level of ignorance should render the Greens as being a laughing stock. Let alone the wilful blindness of the Greens and local authorities in Waikato ignoring that the last time such a service was trialled, it was for 16 months from 2000 to 2001, undertaken by the then privately owned and unsubsidised Tranz Rail (you know that awful foreign company that leftwing legend has it destroyed the railways). The trial was not a success, even though it used the relatively comfortable Silverfern railcars, it carried on average 12 passengers a day south of Pukekohe.

That's not even a profitable busload. A profitable rail service would need to carry at least 12 times what the trial did, every day, in each direction.

However, the Greens aren't about economics, or reason, for them railways are a religion, and any idea of a new service must inherently be good because trains are good, always.

You should be forced to pay for them because of this, because it is about faith "Mr Hughes said the Greens did not have costings for a Hamilton-Auckland commuter rail link, but they believed the cost-benefit ratios would still be greater than those for new roads.

No costing, no idea about how many people would use it, but they BELIEVE it would be more beneficial than new roads.

If the Greens are so blindly ignorant about something which is rather easy to dismiss, can you imagine how often the Greens engage in such a faith based view of the world (especially given how they dismiss those who have one they disagree with?).

Nuclear fusion achieved?

Well so says the Korean Central News Agency

So I can't wait for that country's willing idiots in NZ to cheer this on, since it already cheered on the DPRK nuclear weapons programme.

The same agency of course says US troops commit 60% of the crimes in South Korea.

It also claims the US is the worst offender of human rights in the world in that:

"In this society one can live only by way of racketeering and through fraud and swindle. Without these practices one cannot but be pushed to the fringes of society where one can not keep body and soul together, denied even the elementary rights to eat, get clad and have a shelter....Drug abuses getting more rife in the U.S. with each passing day are producing an increasing number of mental and physical cripples."

So methinks that scientists need not be planning a trip to Pyongyang soon to discover fusion.

Con-Dem anti-reason anti-business coalition

Well it's out, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has shown its true colours, and they are colours of a red and green coloured wolf in the sheep's clothing of Cameron and Clegg. The new government is no more friendly to capitalism and to reason than the last one.

The coalition agreement now published gives the impression of being pro-business, and the impression of dealing with the budget deficit, but it commits to a vast range of new spending measures, and to interfere with private businesses on a grand scale in multiple sectors.

The envy-touting, dependency supporting left should be relieved, and the Greens thrilled.

Take the following:

- "The parties agree that funding for the NHS should increase in real terms in each year of the Parliament, while recognising the impact this decision would have on other departments. The target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid will also remain in place." Yes, the NHS, subject already to record spending increases in the past, can continue to extract ever greater inefficiencies, and not be accountable for it. Meanwhile, the British taxpayer will have to mortgage to continue increasing state aid to developing kleptocracies.

- "We will restore the earnings link for the basic state pension from April 2011 with a “triple guarantee” that pensions are raised by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%, as proposed by the Liberal Democrats" So the retired wont have to face any austerity, just their children and grandchildren. Why? Well given they voted for profligate governments in the past you might well ask.

- "We further agree to seek a detailed agreement on taxing non-business capital gains at rates similar or close to those applied to income, with generous exemptions for entrepreneurial business activities" No income tax wont be coming down, it is about increasing capital gains tax. Yes, if you get capital gains for your OWN profit, not for "business" then screw you, Clammyegg wants your money.

- "We agree that a banking levy will be introduced. We will seek a detailed agreement on implementation.. We agree to bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector" Why? Well let's tax one of the country's most successful service sectors, never mind which banks never needed a bailout and those that did. Oh and let's deter the most successful people in the sector being tax resident in the UK, to please the envy ridden proletariat. So it's off to Switzerland for that lot then?

- "We have agreed that there should be an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK to live and work" Don't worry, you'll not be attracting the best and brightest anyway, they'll be leaving. Nice sop to the BNP though.

- Finally, taxpayers will prop up a massive programme of Green fetishes and an effective end to growth in the British aviation sector including "The creation of a green investment bank" (quite where the money comes from is irrelevant), "Measures to encourage marine energy" (again, whose money?), "The establishment of a high-speed rail network" (ah the grand show off project that has next to no positive environmental impact), " The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow. The refusal of additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted" (privately owned airports and the airline industry can go to hell, less competition for European airports and airlines), "Mandating a national recharging network for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles" (with whose money?).

So that's it. More spending, more taxes, more regulation of the current crop of hated businesses (banking and aviation), and worshipping at the totem of environmental fetishes regardless of cost and benefit.

No reason behind most of it, and a distinctly anti-business agenda particularly if you are in finance or aviation.

Anything for freedom? Well, besides scrapping ID cards, ending the storage of internet and email records without "good reason", and something called a "Freedom Bill", there isn't much. Free schools, paid for by taxpayers maybe, and talk of some tax cuts (which don't offset tax increases of course).

Anyone who voted Conservative expecting less government, less interference in business and a more reason based view of policy should be sorely disappointed. When the Treasury briefs the new government on the fiscal debacle, it will become clear how little of this can be afforded, and so it will be a lie, taxes will go up dramatically, other spending will be slashed substantially or a conbination of it all. Furthermore, with a new agenda of faith based Green initiatives, reason appears to be distinctly absent from this administration. The government wont be shrinking.

Fortunately I didn't vote Conservative.

Who owes a huge debt?

One of the likely contenders to lead the Labour Party, as it moans and groans about how the incoming government is paying for the debt it incurred, is Ed Miliband.

Apparently he tweeted "We owe Gordon a huge debt: Britain is a fairer country and our world is more just because of what he did."

No Ed, the country owes a huge debt because of Gordon. You lying lowlives pretended this wasn't real, scared the people who you've made dependent on the state that they would be out in the cold if it was addressed.

Gordon Brown has left the UK with record public debt, a record budget deficit (at levels akin to Greece) and a legacy that will burden taxpayers for many many years, including the children of taxpayers.

Good riddance. It was the most optimistic outcome of the election that you spendthrift liars were ejected from continuing to borrow your way in office by propping up those who you depended on for power.

UK 2010 - NZ 1996

Despite the noisy baying of far-left violence touters outside Number 10 last night, already demanding their own bloody vision of the future, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat (a leftwing wit called it Con-Dem) coalition is not a return of free market Thatcherism.

More's the pity.

Had the Conservative Party been a party touting a shameless belief in capitalism, wealth creation, property rights and a sound scepticism of government on both practical and moral grounds, then this coalition might actually be positive for freedom in the UK. The sole thing the Liberal Democrats can bring is a belief in social liberalism - and by that I am not meaning the vile socialist conformity that means that a priest can be arrested for expressing his point of view, but a belief that individual rights comes first, at least in respect to law and order matters. The element of the Liberal Democrats sceptical about laws on drugs, censorship and creating new offences every time a particularly hienous crime is committed, would be helpful.

Sadly, the salad bowl of these two does not fill me with optimism, yet I am going to give this government a chance. Why? Life's too short to be constantly negative, so I'll rate this lot on what they do, not what they said they would do. For the latter would simply be depressing.

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So I am hoping taxes don't go up, although both parties campaigned on it to greater or lesser degrees.

I am, in fact, hoping that the Lib Dem promise to make the first £10,000 of per annum income tax free goes ahead. That WILL help put money in the economy, just not the way that socialists embrace.

I am hoping that the promises to abolish ID cards, and get rid of the criminal offences created under Labour since 1997 are kept, and the Orwellian Independent Safeguarding Authority is abolished.

I am hoping that LibDem Finance spokesman Vince Cable's recent conversion to cutting the deficit means that some serious spending cuts can be implemented this year.

I hope privatisation increases in pace, noting that unlike NZ, it isn't a dirty word in the UK, and continued throughout the Blair and Brown administrations. The Royal Mail, Channel 4 and Met Office were all considered for sale under Labour, and should be back on the agenda.

Finally, I am hoping that the Conservative policy of allowing anyone to set up a school, with minimal regulation and funding following the pupil (ala Swedish school vouchers) proceeds. It is perhaps the only policy that had anything worthwhile in it.

Yet the seeds of discord have already been sown in this coalition. The LibDems have been promised over 20 middle and junior Ministerial roles, for a party with 57 MPs this is grossly disproportionate compared to the 307 Conservative MPs. It is especially disconcerting given that absolutely none of them have ever been in government before.

So this is where the parallel to NZ lies. In 1996, the National Party and the NZ First Party formed a coalition. It immediately caused discord among many NZ First supporters who opposed National, so the LibDems will already be under substantial grassroots pressure to ensure the Conservatives have their policies severely moderated (not that there is much to moderate).

However, with over 20 LibDems in executive roles it is easy to see where announcements of sheer banality and stupidity will come from. Bear in mind the LibDems include those who have been aligned with the Marxist Stop the War Coalition (Chaired by the supporter of North Korea's regime, Andrew Murray), the LibDems embrace the European Union in ways that the Conservatives rightly find an anathema, and the LibDems are fanatical supporters of cutting CO2 emissions according to the Green Bible of "fossil fuels always bad", and have a Cabinet Minister leading that policy. The announcement of broad agreement on many policies would seem to indicate that the Conservatives had little to surrender, and showed how little the Conservatives really offered that means chance.

Yet it still remains that there are many in the Conservatives eager to cut back the role of the state, and many in the LibDems keen for the opposite. How long those tensions can be papered over is unclear. It helps that, unlike NZ in 1996, the minor party is not led by a prima donna who seeks attention, but does little work. Although it also helps that Clegg and Cameron genuinely get on, not something that could have been said for the Bolger-Peters relationship at first.

Whatever happens, there will be disenchantment. If it proves to be a government shrinking the state then the LibDems will split, as it has been the repositary of protest votes for leftwing opponents of New Labour for so long. If it proves to be a government of pablum and little serious change, then many Conservatives will be fed up and bored with government that simply "conserves" what Labour did, and makes selective cutbacks (and tax increases) to address the deficit.

For myself, I don't expect much difference. If that proves to be the case, then the big question will be whether David Cameron will have changed politics in the UK in form (not substance) by moving the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats together (leaving a sniping increasingly leftwing Labour in Opposition), or if this is the start of a polarisation process as the two parties find their inevitably diverse wings sniping and building support for a revolt.

In any case, the losers will always be the taxpayers, as no major party was standing up for them this election.