Annoy the Greens - support a road

OK, so this may be a bit of mischief making, but given that the Greens use public consultation processes as a chance to lobby and gain publicity, I figured that a few of you might want to respond in kind.  Especially since the Greens are telling enormous porkies in their anti-road campaign.

Whilst the Greens and Labour have hosted an anti-car, anti-road, pro-higher subsidies for public transport conference (Smart Transport is a euphemism for "you're not smart, but we are"), the NZTA is consulting on improving the highway from Wellington city to the airport.

Now this project basically involves completing the four laning of Wellington Road and Ruahine Street to a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, and a flyover from the existing tunnel to Buckle St so through traffic bypassing the city can bypass the crowded Basin Reserve roundabout.   The section to be fixed is the only remaining major bottleneck between the city and the airport, given half of the route has been a four lane 70km/h highway since the airport opened.  At the city end the one-way system the Greens were prepared to stand in front of bulldozers to stop, feeds the traffic to and from the motorway to the north of the region. 

All of the land involved in this project was designated for road widening or the tunnel duplication over 40 years ago, and much of it is held by the NZTA for this purpose. None of it should be news as it was envisaged by the De Leuw Cather report on Wellington transport in the early 1960s that proposed the Wellington Urban Motorway (fully built as far as Bowen St, half built to Vivian St then unbuilt) and an underground railway extension to Courtenay Place. However, the Greens (and its ginger group Campaign for Better Transport) are opposing it, because it is a road, and trucks and cars will use it.  They would prefer those going by car to catch the bus, or to spend a fortune of other people's money on their favourite totem - a rail scheme, which of course would lose a lot of money, to be paid for by other people's money, and wouldn't meet the needs of most of the road users.  

There is already a limited stop commercially viable bus service running every 15 minutes that bypasses the congestion from the airport to the city and the Hutt, with free wifi - so there isn't a lack of public transport.

Now you’d expect the Greens to focus their efforts on the most expensive (and permanent) part of the plan and to oppose the second tunnel because it will remove a major bottleneck that slows down car and truck traffic from the airport and eastern suburbs. The effect will be for buses to be less competitive, because many use a parallel one-way bus only tunnel to bypass the congestion. On top of that it doesn’t have a positive benefit/cost ratio, an argument used to oppose extending Auckland’s Northern Motorway to Wellsford, but curiously ignored whenever the Greens advocate rail based projects (unless the results are gerrymandered to suit the outcome sought).

However, the Greens aren’t opposing a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, not loudly anyway. They are opposing the Basin Reserve flyover – because it is a flyover.

The flyover is the part of the project with the best economic return and it will have the most positive impact on pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users. Why? Because reducing about a third of the traffic flow around the Basin will allow for longer crossing phases for pedestrians, and for cycle lanes to be established along with bus lanes. Buses coming from Adelaide Road towards the city wont face queues backing up from Buckle St. However, these facts get in the way of the ideological tunnel-vision of the anti-car, anti-road lobby.   The bridge is "ugly" and part of an “outdated vision” because apparently nowhere else in the world are cities building new roads – except everywhere of course. A few hundred metres of two lane one way road over a roundabout wouldn’t get people excited in Melbourne, Oslo, Vancouver or Paris, but it’s a road, so it’s evil.

Some are pushing for an alternative plan, which doesn't work because it rules out two current major movements (between Adelaide Rd and Mt Victoria Tunnel).

So if you want to show your support for the people who pay for state highways (the whole project is fully fundable from fuel taxes and road user charges), then put in a quick submission in support.  You can be sure the Greens will have rounded up a few thousand to oppose it - because it's a road.

There is an online form here.  So support a decent highway from Wellington airport to the city, indeed from the growing media and film sector based in Miramar to the city.

Oh and the deadline is today.

UPDATE:  See the Greens are already seeking you support their groupthink agitprop.

Some of the nonsense written by Gareth Hughes:

"Wellington needs urgent investment in public transport and safer cycling and walking".

Really? Beyond the hundreds of millions spent on brand new trains, extending electrification to Waikanae, upgrading the Johnsonville line for new trains, upgraded stations, new rail infrastructure, new trolley buses?  What's unsafe with cycling and walking? Missing a footpath? 

"It certainly doesn’t need an 8 metre high flyover that will deface much of Wellington’s heritage precinct including the war memorial, the Mother Aubert crèche and the Basin Reserve."

Much? You mean between Buckle Street and Mt Victoria Tunnel?  That's "much" of the heritage precinct? Deface by having a bridge skirt the northern side?  Hyperbole again.

"In particular, we support light rail from the CBD out to the airport."

Of course you do.  You have a religious passion for light rail.  Forget it would cost hundreds of millions, lose money, not relieve congestion, put a privately run commercial unsubsidised bus service out of business, and not meet the needs of freight or people travelling from outside the CBD to the airport - it's light rail, bow down and get excited, it's cool man.

"Wellingtonians do not need an uneconomic urban motorway that will take out dozens of homes, depreciate land value, reduce the town belt and increase air and noise pollution."

It isn't an urban motorway.  The homes are either state owned or on land long designated for road widening.  The effect on the town belt is derisory, and there isn't evidence it will increase pollution.


"Cities such as Seoul and Seattle regretted building flyovers in their cities and have replaced them with attractive and spacious urban design."

One in Seoul, plenty more remain.  In Seattle it was weakened by an earthquake and it is now being replaced with a tolled bored tunnel highway - exactly the type of bypass for Wellington you all opposed.   Such a conspicuous lie.


"There is no evidence to suggest there is a need for such a costly and imposing roading project." Several kilometre long traffic queues for 1.5 hours every morning from Mt Victoria Tunnel, and the same around Oriental Bay.  No, no evidence at all.  Long evening queues southbound towards the Basin holding up all traffic, including buses heading for Newtown.  No evidence.

"demand for better public transport is sky-rocketing".  Which is why the airport bus frequencies have improved.  More fare revenue, but then you don't really approve of anyone making money from transport.


"In the short-term, better traffic signalling and bus priority measures would largely mitigate congestion around the Basin at a fraction of the cost."

Says who? The architects who developed a "solution" that prohibits traffic movement between the tunnel and Newtown?  How would this mitigate the queue from Mt Victoria Tunnel

"Light rail through the CBD out to the airport is a cheaper and more sustainable option that would  alleviate congestion and offer commuters an affordable option in the face of future oil price rises."

Cheaper?  How?  Don't have a price do you?  Loses how much money?  Where in the world have new light rail schemes alleviated congestion?  How is it an option for freight, or people going to/from the airport from the rest of the region?  How is it affordable when you need to increase rates or other taxes to pay for it?

Just loads of empty vacuous spin, worshipping the altar of new subsidised railways, freight is invisible, as are any people not travelling to and from the CBD.

They are even so backwards in thinking that they don't push congestion charging, bit too much "user pays" and high tech for a party that loves trams?

What's really pathetic is that the Greens have stopped arguing against new roads because of them not being economic, but chooses to lie about what they will do and the basis for them.

Democracy is not freedom

I'm not as pessimistic as Peter Cresswell over Libya, because the country has never itself been a hotbed of Islamism, and there has been only scant evidence of Islamist involvement in the rebel movement.  Indeed, the loudest claims about Islamists have come from the Gaddafi regime, keen to scare its erstwhile Western friends into supporting Gaddafi.  Libya has had over 40 years of a regime that embraced Islam, but also pushed a secularist agenda based on Gaddafi's erratic Green Book.   Libya neither has the history of Islamism that Egypt has had, nor the poverty and sectarianism that have bolstered Islamism elsewhere.  Of course, I hope I am not wrong, yet there is a window of hope for Libya emerging.

I believe Libya will have a better future without Gaddafi, but let's not pretend that "liberation" of Libya means Libyans will be free - they will simply be less oppressed and have some freedoms that were denied them under Gaddafi.  For the oft-repeated statement "the Libyan people will now be in control of their destiny" or "the Libyan people will not determine their future" has been said in some form or another by the likes of Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy and others.

However what does that mean?

At best what they mean is that Libyan can become a democracy, and that Libyans can then vote for their government.  

However, ticking a box on a ballot is not being in control of your destiny.

A functioning liberal democracy (bear in mind that in the Arab world only Iraq can be said to come close to this) has to have certain core freedoms to function.  Freedom of assembly and association, so that political parties can be formed and operate, and for people to organise politically outside parties, are rather essential.   Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are essential for a proper contest of ideas to occur.   Almost as important are for the core functions of the state to operate objectively, so that when laws are enforced they do not target based on political belief, or when elections are held, the counting or management is not subject to corruption.

It would be a bold presumption to say that Libya is about to get all of that.  For even some ostensibly liberal democracies in Europe have struggled to manage this 20 years after the end of the communist bloc.

However, even if Libya appeared to have all of that, would Libyans really have control of their own destiny?

Unless Libya's future government is constitutionally constrained to protect Libyan's individual freedom, then all democracy will do is put their destiny in the hands of the largest number of hands.   You don't have control of your destiny, when your rights are up for a vote.

For example, will Libya protect apostasy?  It hasn't been a crime so far, but it is a serious criminal offence in much of the Muslim world, including Egypt (with the death penalty in many countries).

Will Libyan private property rights be protected?  Human rights advocates rarely care at all about this, yet it is about protecting the products of people's minds, which is essential for survival.

Will Libyans be entitled to live their lives in peace as long as they respect the rights of other Libyans to do the same?  Or will they face restrictions based on politics or religion?

The only way Libyans will have control over their own destiny, is when the word "they" means "each and every individual independently deciding how to live their lives" in peace with each other.

That could only come if Libya gained a government that existed not to initiate force against them, but to protect them from the initiation of force.   To ensure that under a liberal democracy, it would need a constitution to protect that.   I doubt that in the wildest dreams of most of the rebels that such an idea is in the minds of many.

Eliminating a totalitarian dictatorship, particularly one that was so outwardly aggressive towards other countries (though funnily enough you rarely heard the so-called "peace" movement decrying Libyan imperialism), is positive.  It is likely Libyans will have more freedom than they have had for a long time, but let's not pretend that they will have "control of their destiny".  

At best they will have a very small say in the government that will control their destiny.   It is like asking the slaves to vote on who will be their master.

Keynesians steal from the aspiring middle classes

You might have noticed the price of gold skyrocketing in the past year or so.  You might wonder if this is a bubble that is going to pop, spectacularly.  Well, it might, but there is a reason why gold (and to a lesser extent silver and platinum) are becoming preferred investments, it is because of fears about the alternatives.  Those fears are because of the abject failure of the Keynesians to deal with a financial crisis that started with a fiat money fueled credit bubble, exacerbated by perpetual government deficits and "saved" by printing money.

You see the real bubble which is being manufacted is inflation.  Central bankers and governments invented the euphemism "quantitative easing" to hide what they are really doing - because most kids at school learnt in economics why printing money doesn't make any sense.  However, quantitative easing is printing money.  It is the easy solution of dictators who don't know how to pay their soldiers, civil servants and the like.  Now it is the easy solution of elected governments who are afraid to let prices collapse in those parts of their economies subject to the credit bubbles, and who are afraid of being forced with the full reality that they have been engaging in fiscal child abuse for decades.   The French government for example, started running deficits in the mid 1970s, so it was borrowing off of people who are now in their 30s and facing either higher taxes or less "benefits", so that their parents and grandparents could have an easier life.

Investors are moving into gold because inflation mean that a whole host of typically "safe" investments no longer are.  Conventional bank deposits (even ignoring the risk of some banks that face sovereign debt risks)

will now not pay enough to cover inflation.  Furthermore, government bonds are now seen as significantly riskier than they once were because of the default of Greece and the near defaults of many others.  Those without such risks are paying such low rates of interest (for demand is so high), they are insufficient to compensate for inflation, so investors diversify their "safe" investments.

Of course what this means is that the vast bulk of the population, who put their savings in "the bank" in some form or another, are losing their money.   In effect, their government is stealing from them by printing money in order to avoid the consequences of others facing devaluations in their businesses, property or other assets.

To put it simply, the Keynesians, who can be seen in both government and opposition in most major governments, are stealing from the vast bulk of the population, by stealth, in order to avoid the fallout of letting some selected businesses and assets from collapsing in value to correct the years of the credit bubbles.   Who does that hurt?  It hurts the young and those on relatively lower incomes who do not have property or do not have any other savings mechanisms.   Don't expect the politicians on the centre-right to have an answer, because they'd rather stay in power, like those on the centre-left.  Those on the far-left want to put their heads in the sand completely, and pretend inflation isn't an issue.

It is - the evidence is seen in gold.

One alternative to gold are to buy shares, which of course many have been doing, although the sheer volatility and complexity of it means that it works well for larger investors and institutional investors who have the in-house expertise to spread risk and seek opportunities for bargains, particularly looking at more robust foreign shareholdings.  The other is property, which of course has been the source of part of the problem in the first place.

The property conundrum is that there have clearly been significant property bubbles in many countries facing the crisis, such as Ireland, Spain, the US and the UK.  Australia has a bubble, but that is commensurate to its own commodity led economic buoyancy.  New Zealand's one is more volatile.   However, we may yet see the spectre of property prices easing up as investors see less risk of losing value in property than in inflation.

Now Central Bank governors and governments may claim that if inflation takes off (we are talking around 5% now, so it's hardly dead) then interest rates will be increased, and the usual monetarist solution to inflation will be applied.  Except, of course, what happens with stagflation?  Will the Keynesians insist that when economic growth is nascent that there should be more and more money printed, and forget inflation?  In which case, batten down the hatches for that battle wont be won.  Or will the monetarists tighten the screws on credit and interest rates, and strangle what little growth there is to kill off the bubble of inflation created by the Keynesians?

For Barack Obama, David Cameron or indeed John Key, the hope is that this doesn't come to pass.   None would swallow what they would have to do to ride things out, which is to give up on printing money, let a significant correction in asset prices occur (including a major slump in property prices and share prices), stop deficit spending and begin the long slow road towards economic recovery based on setting businesses free.

Instead for all of their weasel words, they will continue to steal from the vast bulk of the public by creating inflation, devaluing their own public debt, and creating cheap credit to save themselves from facing voters with the reality of many years of boom and bust economics based on fiat money.

Keynesianism failed before, and it is failing now.  It is about time that both it, and monetarism were consigned to history and a serious investigation begin as to how to reform monetary policy with free banking.   If you think that sounds absurd or frightening, then reflect on the past three years and give a better solution.

Bye bye Gaddafi, well done rebels and NATO

From the reports overnight, it appears that the Gaddafi regime is either in tatters or on the verge of engaging a final bloody battle. I wouldn’t put it past Gaddafi to do the latter, for the one thing that can be certain of the last 40 years of his regime, it is his willingness to lie incessantly and to react murderously on a whim.

There is, of course, great reason to celebrate the end of Gaddafi. He has spent his whole career following a megalomaniacal path of personality cult and self-aggrandisement, considering himself to be leader of Africa (and getting a semi-polite muted response from most of the rest of Africa, mainly because it looked forward to gaining some of his oil wealth in exchange for his friendship) and supporter of umpteen terrorist causes from around the world. He has over that period aided, funded and armed plenty from the IRA to the 1970s Marxist terrorist gangs in the West, such as the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades in West Germany and Italy. He supported communist insurgents in the Philippines, and often declared his solidarity with the Palestinians, though was not exactly a friend of the PLO. Of course he will be most well known in the West for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 and the bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986.   He also provided extensive funds to the Ceausescu regime in its development of a weapons industry (Gaddafi and Ceausescu were particularly warm with each other), whilst Romanian spies stole intellectual property from Western firms, and both countries developed chemical weapons.

Perhaps the one odd thing about Gaddafi is that you can almost always predict that he would be on the side of the dictatorial, the fascist, the murdering and the anti-Western. He supported Idi Amin in his fight against Tanzania, and granted the murderous brute asylum when he was overthrown. He supported the Iranian revolution and has long maintained warm relations with the Iranian Islamist regime.

He waged war against his dirt poor southern neighbour of Chad, and bombed a French airliner in retaliation for French intervention to protect Chad. All the time having warm relations with the USSR, and gaining Soviet arms. He pursued development of chemical weapons although has never used them. More recently, Libya sought to improve relations with the rest of the world, but notably provided cheap oil to Zimbabwe in solidarity with Robert Mugabe. He also supported the now fallen Tunisian dictatorship of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Domestically, he ran an economy almost entirely dependent on oil wealth that would rise and fall according to the price of oil. In the 1970s he embarked on a socialist programme that included at one point free supermarkets, but this all collapsed in the 1980s as oil prices dropped and economic sanctions from the West tightened up markets for Libya. The more recent rises in oil prices have helped, along with his sudden willingness to co-operate with the West following the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime. This, of course, saw him courting plenty willing to turn a blind eye to his past, from Prince Andrew to the London School of Economics.

Meanwhile, he ran a regime that was heavily focused on his own personality cult and the worship of his incoherent body of ranting called the Green Book. In this he mixes Islam, socialism and a disdain for free speech and liberal democracy in the style of an unhinged man. He would be funny, if he were not so lethal. Gaddafi was always ruthless towards political opponents or those suspected of plotting against the regime. Like any such regime he ran a ruthless secret police force, and Libya was never ever a haven for human rights.

Anyone with a smidgeon of belief in freedom will celebrate his overthrow, although it is unclear what will follow, it is difficult to imagine it could be worse. Certainly, the risk of an Islamist revolution seems slight in Libya. As a curious footnote, it might be worthwhile to find those in New Zealand who were once acolytes of Gaddafi. Like veteran Maori radical Mike Smith, the late communist radical Syd Jackson felt warm about Gaddafi’s regime. New Zealand’s media is all incredibly forgiving of those who were friends with mass murderers, but then again what can you expect from those who don't check their facts to justify an editorial line.

Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the fifth columnists in the West who will denounce all of this, who will claim that all along they opposed Gaddafi, but also opposed NATO’s intervention to protect the rebels and civilians from Gaddafi’s own war against his own people.   People like Andrew Murray, a noted sympathiser of the Kim Jong Il hereditary nepotocracy, who not long ago was damning the whole thing in the Guardian.  The ones who would rather sit on the fence and impale their moral reputation than accept that a people have overthrown a militarist dictatorship, that was more than willing to use its own army to crush opposition. For you see, for the leftist apologists of Gaddafi to accept that, they would have to accept that NATO did GOOD, that the UK and France (let’s not pretend the Obama Administration led this, or did more than come in behind) acted morally and justifiably against this murderous tyrant. Watch now as they point at Syria and say it is hypocritical not to intervene there, yet these very same people would oppose such a move. Watch as they deftly ignore Castro and Chavez's warm support for Gaddafi, brothers in blood spilling.  Dare a NZ journalist ask Hone Harawira's view on any of this?  Maybe someone might seek to go to Tripoli to do some research on the regime's archives and see how many lowlives worldwide were paid off by this regime?

Watch also as Obama, suddenly come out of his shell, to proclaim a kind of victory months after he was the do-nothing President.  

This is a victory by ordinary Libyans, who watched their neighbours in Tunisia and Egypt reject tyranny.  It was supported by NATO, but only because Cameron and Sarkozy were determined to prevent a bloodbath on their doorstep (and had a degree of guilt for how UK and French governments had appeased the regime in recent years).  Italy and Germany were obstructive, the USA tagged on behind.

Now is a chance to rebuild, for Libya to be a friend and for the truths of Gaddafi's decades of waging war on the outside world and tyranny on his own people, to come out.

UPDATE:  The New Statesman reminds us of some of Gaddafi's erstwhile friends.  Remember the one career where you can be feted internationally, at the expense of foreign taxpayers, whilst maintaining a record of mass murder, is to be a politician.  Yet so many people still like politicians to make decisions for them.

Professor Juan Cole writes top ten myths of the war in Libya.  It includes the perpetual (and vile) claim that it is all about oil.

Ed Miliband's scapegoat for looters

It is the mainstream view in the UK that the riots reflect, in part, a breakdown of morals. Politicians across the spectrum have said this, even Labour Leader "Red" Ed Miliband said the riots were "inexcusable". He knew that taking the line of Ken Livingstone that the riots were because of cuts, would have ended his political career as Labour would have been sidelined, even by its loyal sycophants - the BBC and the Guardian - as being on the fringes. So he waited, now it is a moral breakdown, but not one that is the responsibility of the people who rioted or their parents.

The problem is not the systematic failure of the welfare state, education system and a fundamental breakdown of ethics among hundreds of thousands, it is “greed, selfishness and gross irresponsibility” he is reported as saying by the Daily Telegraph. He accused David Cameron of a “shallow and superficial response”. He ought to know, he is the master of it.

On the face of it, most would agree with such a phrase, but within it lies something far more pernicious.

For he deflects blame from those who actually committed the crimes, or those who negligently don't police their children (or even encourage them) to say:

The bankers who took millions while destroying people's savings: greedy, selfish, and immoral; the MPs who fiddled their expenses: greedy, selfish, and immoral; the people who hacked phones at the expense of victims: greedy, selfish and immoral

The moral relativism comes out once again, but most disturbing is how he can't see the underlying contradiction in his empty argument.

MPs' expenses are an easy target, not one anyone will disagree with. He included it because it looks “introspective” for an MP to blame “his own”. However, it is curious that it took a Conservative leaning newspaper – the Daily Telegraph – to “out” all of this, and it “outed” MPs from all parties. It wasn’t Ed Miliband who did it. Of course the qualitative difference between MPs who get legitimate expenses paid and those who got more is rather insignificant, although Ed will claim it is material. It is OK for MPs to be paid for by taxpayers, who have no choice to pay them, not OK if the MPs get more by committing fraud and lying about it - noting that obfuscation of the truth, and telling half stories is the stock and trade of being an MP.  Ignoring his acquiescence during this entire period, and his full participation in the last government is a demonstration of that. 

He raises the phone hacking case, because it is part of Labour's vendetta against News Corp for turning on it, when they had been getting on so well when Blair led the party.  The phone hacking cases are under investigation. They are alleged cases of trespass into people’s voicemail accounts. Certainly a serious concern, but then again it is not quite the same as destroying someone’s home, or business, or murdering them, or raping them. Is it Ed? However, this is part of Ed’s monologue that you can point fingers at “big business” or in this case privately owned media that isn’t slavishly sycophantic to his view of the world, or he himself. Phone hacking is an initiation of force, but is different dramatically in terms of degree of impact and consequences to the riots.  Yes it is a criminal case, but why not raise the spectre of the students who looted the Conservative Party headquarters, or the shootings and knivings in low income areas?  That would be shifting blame to the perpetrators you see.

However, note how he put his enemy number one in the sights.  Labour has a new scapegoat to blame for the economy, the deficit and now social breakdown and disorder.  

He said that the looters were acting like the legendary “bankers who took millions while destroying people’s savings”. Who were they Ed? Doesn’t matter, as it has become part of Labour folklore that the recession is entirely because of bankers, and the budget deficit is because of bankers. What people’s savings were destroyed Ed, when the government guarantees up to £85,000 in personal bank deposits? Who did bankers “take” from? Their employers? Since when is being paid your salary and bonus, but making bad business decisions “taking” something like committing arson, murder, rape, vandalism or thieving? Yes some banks made out loans to people who couldn’t pay them, but these were decisions made by consent. The more fundamental problems were around those who invested too heavily in property in some locations, when moral hazards weren't identified and monetary policy that offered fiat money as unearned credit.  The financial crisis was a series of errors and mistakes, largely by people who took decisions that were legal and unsustainable, including politicians.  Bank bailouts should never have happened, but does Miliband truly think people who make monumental catastrophic business and public policy errors are like criminals?  By what measure does he rank himself, his own colleagues, and his former leader Gordon Brown as being a part of all of this?

As Allister Heath said today in City AM:

Many of the looters – especially the younger ones – would have had no idea that MPs abused their expenses. Britain’s dispossessed minority does not watch the news or read papers; many are functionally illiterate, having been let down by sink schools, collapsed families, terrible neighbourhoods and gang culture. The vast majority are so far from the mainstream of the economy that they don’t understand what investment bankers do. The only rich people they are properly aware of are footballers, entertainers or local gang leaders. There is no empirical link between the crisis of 2008, the subsequent bailouts and the looting of 2011.

The moral bankruptcy of his moral relativism is astonishing. Ed was happy being part of a Labour government with billions of tax revenue fed from banks and their staff, to pay for its generous welfare state, Leninist style health system and overexuberant capital expenditure. However, now he treats them as “the enemy”. Fine Ed, close the City of London, see how much of the UK’s GDP disappears when you treat an entire sector of the economy as if they were feral youth who do nothing but destroy.

After all Ed, when have you EVER created wealth? You’ve never created a business in your life. You’ve never really worked for the private sector, for the people who pay taxes. You’ve spent your life living in a very exclusive part of London, absent of poverty and those you claim to give a damn about. Raised on Marxism, you’ve never seriously questioned what you were weaned on, and now you want power, and you damn thousands of people who bring income into the country and live lifestyles that are NOT criminal (but pay buckets of tax that you and your colleagues live off of).

Think for a few moments about the moral equivalency Ed Miliband has put together.

Bankers who made poor judgments about investments that bankrupted their employers, (but not the politicians who used taxpayers' money without consent to rescue the banks) are the same as the:

- Driver of the car that mowed down three young men on the footpath in Birmingham;

- The boy who beat an old man into a coma for complaining about a fire lit in front of his home;

- The boy who raped a girl of 13 in the riots after mugging her;

- The men who stole from the student who already had a broken jaw;

- The man who set fire to a shop just to watch it burn down;

- The groups who lined up in a queue to steal from shops.

Ed Miliband doesn’t pick on the people who raise feral children, doesn’t pick on the ASBO laden chavs who have hounded pensioners into early graves, doesn’t pick on the multi-billion pound deficits his government created that the next generation of children and grandchildren have to pay back, doesn’t pick on the unionists who constantly want more money from struggling taxpayers.  He doesn't think they are selfish.  Not the salaried medical staff in the NHS who have absorbed much of the doubling in real health expenditure in the last government.

No, you see Ed Miliband is the politician for the looters, the dependents, the people who have jobs paid for by the effort and entrepreneurship of others.  Ed is the politician for the welfare beneficiaries, who aren’t grateful for the taxes that others paid for them to be housed, fed, clothed or for their kids to be raised, educated etc. Ed is there to demand that even MORE money be borrowed from future generations, that even MORE taxes be taken from the peaceful, productive, hard working and entrepreneurial, and that it is because if you don’t, the feral underclass will riot – and it is because there are bankers who make bad decisions.  Ed is there for the public sector workers, the people who get paid, on average, more than the private sector.  The people who get more generous pensions, more pay rises and who are all carried by the private sector.

He should be an easy target for the Conservative Party, but it is a zone of philosophical vacuousness, as is seen by the disgusting Louise Mensch who in a matter of days has both embraced statist authoritarianism in suggesting the government “shut down” social networking sites at times of crisis, and in accusing History Professor David Starkey of racism, because he clumsily claimed there were many youths of the white underclass who now talk the language of the black underclass. 

The Conservative Party is incapable of fighting the cultural battleground in favour of individual liberty, personal responsibility, respect for property rights and disrespect for those who seek to promote violence as a way of life. It is palpable in its unwillingness to defend bankers in public as a sector, because mindless populism overrides principle, which is the norm in the party of people who believed they were born to rule.

Miliband's call for responsibility is achingly hypocritical, when he evades any responsibility for his part in a government that created the economic conditions for the financial crisis, for its part in overspending every year after Labour's first term, for its part in creating a client-voter sector of welfare dependents, suckling off of the state tit, with Labour's endless "programmes" to help them into work, whilst never letting Nanny State ever really take away the milk.  Never confronting the client-funders, like the teaching unions, who resist pay or conditions that reflect performance. 

The people who take responsibility in Britain the most, are the people he is least interested in.  Those are the entrepreneurs, the business people, the employers, the families who raise children at their own expense, the people who aren't dependent on the state.   He preaches wholesale abdication of responsibility in his embrace of the Leninist NHS, which has a philosophy of people not having to ever take responsibility for their health, for the state will pay.  He preaches the same with state pensions - don't save for retirement (a chance to tax you), the state should pay.  He preaches the same with housing - if you buy a home, pay a tax on the transaction, if you don't buy a home or pay private rent, the state will pay.

His philosophy is bankrupt, his approach to public policy has palpably failed, and now he shifts blame on the perpetrators to bankers, MPs and the news media.  

He has no answers, and through his disgusting moral relativism, has shown his own moral and intellectual bankruptcy.