Bye Qantas, hello Jetstar

The end of Qantas flown domestic services in New Zealand (well technically its subsidiary JetConnect), and their replacement by Qantas's low cost carrier Jetstar, will see a big increase in cheap seats on domestic flights.

However, the downside isn't just the end to competition between Rotorua and Christchurch, but also competition at the quality end of the domestic airline market. You see Jetstar is a true low cost carrier. Don't expect free coffee, tea, cookies or water on Jetstar. Expect to be crammed in with 177 people in an Airbus A320. Moreover, members of Qantas Club or top tier Qantas frequent flyers used to the lounges at Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch domestic terminals might ask what happens to them? You wont have premium checkin either.

So Air NZ's 80% hold on the business sector will grow, given Air NZ's most frequent flyers and Koru Club members can sit in the front half of a 737 and get four to five inches more legroom than the back - or more than what Jetstar offers by far.

However, most of you, like Americans and most tourists in Europe, don't give a damn about service or seating. You'll travel like cattle for an hour or more just to get there cheaply. This also is not really about Air NZ - it is about Pacific Blue - for it is the most likely casualty of this move.

UPDATE: Domestic Qantas Club lounges are apparently to stay for now.

So you're having an internet romance

Here are some tips, given recent news:

1. Don't ever ever give out your full name or street address until you actually meet the person concerned. Otherwise your risk a stalker.
2. If all your communications have so far involved text or pictures then use the phone. The phone will tell you at least the sex of the person, and possibly the age. It isn't 100% reliable on sex, and maybe 50% reliable on age, but it will tell you intelligence and articulation.
3. Talk on the phone at least two or three times before meeting.
4. When you meet, make sure it is in a public place, that you can check out the person concerned before you approach her or him, and if it isn't obviously safe (cafe outdoors) tell someone you are doing this. Agree to call your friend after the meeting to say you're ok.
5. Just DON'T travel long distances to meet people unless you are willing to take the risk of profound disappointment.
6. Remember people lie. About age, wealth, intentions etc. Let's take some stereotypical examples:

- Poorer, unemployed men will lie about employment status and prospects. Their inability to communicate fluently will out them;
- Older desperate women will lie about their age. Carefully consider the language they use about culture, life and how reluctant they are to send a photo. Out them by saying age doesn't matter, and if it works then decide if you prefer to say "but honesty does";
- Very keen young women will lie about their age, in the other direction. Out them by saying age doesn't matter, then let them down gently;
- Horny men will lie about how they just want to get laid. They wont expend much effort on you if you string them along, but could be fun to tease by finding out how perverted they are;
- Almost all men want to get laid. The difference is whether they want your mind and heart as well as body;
- Horny men pretend to be women to talk to lesbians online and get their photos, and will evade giving new photos or talking on the phone. That's why the phone is useful;
- Desperate men will pretend to be interested in just about anything to get attention. Probe answers about interests and pastimes to see what there is in it;
- Desperate women will flirt and act slutty excessively, just to get attention, but men probably like that;
- Married and attached men (and women) will pretend to be single, or divorcing, or breaking up. If there are regular times you can't call (nights, weekends), odds are you're the bit on the side. Ring at that time once, unless you want to be the bit on the side.

7. The better the online photo the less likely it is to be true. Ask for a photo to be taken in a certain context, i.e. wearing clothes mentioned, or with the car.
8. If you're sceptical, use a phone or number that you can surrender (e.g. old prepaid mobile) in case the person proves to be a disaster.
9. Be strict about honesty. A person may be a bit shy about some things at the start, but if they haven't owned up to major discrepancies within a week or so, then toss them to one side.

Finally, be realistic. The internet has the whole range of people of the world on it. It will be a numbers game or a matter of being discerning, but by and large most people aren't that imaginative or creative. First above all things, to thine own self by true.

An obituary I missed - Helen Suzman

If most are asked who was South Africa's greatest politican, you'll hear Nelson Mandela. After all he spent much of his life in prison and then enabled the peaceful transition of power from the racial autocracy to the one party dominated democracy. However, if not the the greatest, Helen Suzman deserves the most honourable mention. She was head and shoulders above the intellectually and morally handicapped Thabo Mbeki, and the thieving corrupt scum that make up too many ANC MPs. She was for too long, the sole voice of reason in South Africa's whites only Parliament.

New Years Day saw Helen Suzman pass away. The Economist's obituary tells so much about this remarkable woman.

It talks of her legendary bravery:

"Verwoerd, an earlier prime minister, a man she admitted she was “scared stiff” of, fared no better. “I have written you off,” he told her. “The whole world has written you off,” she retorted.

But also her principled opposition to race based laws regardless of source:

"when the African National Congress, once in power, began to impose quotas for blacks in jobs, she naturally and ferociously opposed it. In many ways black rule proved “a huge disappointment” to her: corrupt, spendthrift, anti-white, and doing little to help the millions of poor blacks whose lot she had tried to improve. Thabo Mbeki’s wilful ignorance over AIDS appalled her.

The world has lost a true principled fighter for freedom, a liberal woman in a country once dominated by bigoted conservative men, now dominated by misogynistic socialist corrupt ones.

It is telling that New Zealand's most well known activist against apartheid, John Minto, is so divorced from South Africa that he couldn't himself pen a column about the passing of this hero. South Africa owes far more to Suzman, than this petty socialist activist from NZ.

Scrap the regional fuel tax!

While Canterbury argues about whether to introduce a regional fuel tax to pay for transport projects that users aren't willing to pay for (and understandably so, as motorists of Timaru, where there is hardly any need for new roads wont want to pay for new roads in Christchurch), isn't it time for National to repeal this stupid tax that it voted against?

New Zealanders don't need a 5c/l additional tax on petrol and diesel at the moment, and certainly don't need local authorities planning how to spend money without having accountability to the users (especially with the tax levied at the regional level, when regions like Canterbury extend from Timaru to Kaikoura).

National and ACT opposed the tax when it was before Parliament. So when you voted to change the government, didn't you want change?

Three strikes?

ACT's policy of "three strikes and you're out" has instant appeal to many, as it sounds like it can keep criminals away for good. The Greens call it lynching, but then the response is mainly in reaction to the manslaughter of Pihema Cameron.

So let's stand back a bit.

What is the criminal justice system meant to do? Essentially three things:
- Change the status of an offender to someone who "wont do it again";
- Punish the offender (to be a deterrent);
- Protect society from future offending.

In that sense, the first conviction should be focused on rehabilitation. It would be refreshing to see a focus on that, a focus on the core chance to turn someone around. In that sense, the biggest disaster of the criminal justice system is to put first time offenders in prisons with recividists - where rehabilitation is tempered with learning how to be a real crim. Putting all first time criminals of a certain degree into a similar facility may address this. A second chance at rehabilitation may also be warranted, but the more frequent a re-offender the more the emphasis has to go from rehab to punishment to protection.

The degree of punishment is always with any custodial offence, but the more severe the crime the greater the punishment. Murder must always have the longest sentence for punishment, as it is the crime that deserves the greatest deterrence. However, grievous violent and sexual offences come next. Repeat offenders should get ever more stringent sentences.

Finally, it is clear that the recividist offender who has shown no interest in rehab should be locked away for extensive periods to protect society. There should be no question that someone who murders twice should never be set free. A repeat sex offender should almost certainly be kept from freedom for a substantial part of his life.

So, in the sense that "three strikes and your out" can allow the shift from rehabilitation for the first strike to preventive detention in the last, I support it. However it should not be a blunt tool. Three vandalism offences is not the same as three murders.

So I propose a "points" system. Such a system would see a convict "earning points" for offences. These would be base points for the crime itself, with additional points for the seriousness of the event. Bear in mind that being "out" should means being in prison for at least half of the remaining years of your life, with an option for renewal if it is assessed that the person concerned remains a threat.

You see, for murder it should be two strikes. For vandalism it may be fifty. For serious violent or sexual offences it could be three strikes, for lesser offences against the person four strikes. For theft it could be ten. Whatever it could be, you get the point. Graduated offences depending entirely on the basic victim impact, increased if the commission was particularly sadistic, calculated and repulsive. What? Ten strikes for burglaries? Well yes. It is better than today, when you may get a couple of years, and then another couple of years, so prison becomes a risk of the offending. You see many criminals do a number of tricks. Theft, assault, fraud or others.

So a points system might just address this. The points may add increasing sentences when you get to say 50 points and 75 points as the criminal builds up to being locked away for good. After all, they then can't say they weren't warned.

Oh and yes I assume victimless crimes are not included, such as blasphemy, drugs laws and not conducting postal services without being registered. For locking someone away for good for being a drug addict is hardly the sign of a civilised society.