Infratil and Stagecoach

Stagecoach UK has sold its New Zealand bus operations to Infratil – the local utilities investment company. Nothing exciting there, except that Stagecoach was an exceptional owner of companies that local authorities had let run down over many years. There is little doubt that both Auckland and Wellington now have far more modern bus fleets, and better bus systems than they had when the ARC and Wellington City Council ran services as ratepayer funded monopolies.

Stagecoach NZ never paid a dividend to Stagecoach UK (despite what the NZ Herald report says Ross Martin claimed), although it did go for a good premium over the original purchase price – and rightfully so – Stagecoach poured a lot of money into new buses, albeit with some help from local and central government subsidies - around half of the services in Auckland were commercial - getting no subsidies at all. Certainly Stagecoach Auckland and Wellington are a far cry from the union run, antiquated Yellow Bus and Big Red bus fleets they took over from local authorities in both cities.

The government is reviewing the regulatory regime for public transport – this is in response to calls by some in local government to get rid of the right of bus companies to run commercial services. Some want bus companies to be regulated, and subsidised so that local authorities can control them. I suspect Stagecoach was fleeing a regulatory regime it saw as having potentially a limited life – which is a shame.

Infratil is a good owner though, and no doubt will do its best - but lest we forget what Stagecoach did for urban buses in Auckland and Wellington - it actually wanted to run them as businesses for customers.

Treasury to review Transmission Gully vs. the coastal highway costs

The Dominion Post reports that Treasury will undertaken an independent study into the relative costs of the two routes. This is unprecedented open interference into the affairs of Transit and Greater Wellington Regional Council – but it is about spending Crown money. I don’t doubt Treasury will have a good go at this.

Hopefully that should sort it out – since the proponents of the Gully think Transit would rather not build a big 27km motorway instead of a handful of smaller projects (unlikely) and that the Greater Wellington Regional Council – which previously strongly supported the Gully route – is biased against it!

Poor Treasury. If it comes out in favour of the Gully, it will be in favour of a half built option that needs to be completed at some point to be really worthwhile. If it supports the coastal route, it will get the mountains of abuse from the pro-Gully lobbyists – including Porirua City which keeps coming out with some nutty ideas.

However, Treasury can hardly be seen as having a vested interest, and is not as hated as Transit is on this issue – yet!

Have the Gully proponents noticed that the congestion at Paremata is gone?

Hey Jim - Matt's gone!

Jim Anderton’s personal – I mean Progressive – Party website still lists Matt Robson as an MP.

Given, like most small parties, the Jim Anderton party lost votes and is down to one seat, Jim needs to wake up - it's just you Jim - ask Peter Dunne what it felt like.

However, NZ First's link on its website to the confidence and supply agreement with Labour wasn't working when I checked it either. To its credit, United Future has its whole agreement posted.

Fundamentalist religion – the ugliest cancer on the planet?

I hate religion, I really do – people can get whatever comfort or whatever they want from whatever ghosts they believe in, build churches and change their lives for their ghosts, and even try to convince people to believe in their ghosts, but that is where it should end. Believe in whatever you want, but don't infringe on the rights of others justifying it through your faith.

I am sick of hearing how humane and loving Islam is – frankly about as sick as I am hearing about how Christianity is the same. Those who say this confuse the religion with those claiming to follow it. Now I couldn’t give a flying fuck about whether the true Islam is Osama Bin Laden’s or not, much like whether Christiantiy is led by the bigoted Pope, Queen Elizabeth the 2nd, Brian Tamaki or Benny Hinn (now THAT’s an evil little fucker!) – but I do care about the evil pricks who use religion to justify slavery, torture and rape.

The Daily Telegraph today in this story that a village council in Pakistan has decreed that five women ranging from 15 to 22 should be abducted, raped or killed because they refused to honour marriages forced on them when they were.. wait for it … aged 6 through 13. To their credit, the girls’ fathers are supporting them, and as a result have the death penalty imposed upon them.

See it all started when a father of one of the girls shot dead a member of another family, following some dispute where there were shots from both sides. The village council said appropriate compensation for the family was to make the girls of the family (both the man who killed the other, and his brother) marry male members of the other family – in other words, children were chattels to be given over. Of course it was a mullah in the village council who imposed this sentence.

Evil barbaric scum. The same scum who supported the Taliban banning girls from school - treating women as illiterate little slaves.

The Pakistani government recently prohibited this practice, but its fair and unbiased police seem to be doing little to enforce this law.

Oh, but all cultures are the same, don’t judge other cultures say the postmodernist cultural relativist vermin.

Duncan Bayne gives a good summary of why he regards all religion as fundamentally irrational here.

On top of this, The Times in London reports how a film in the Netherlands made by a Somali refugee (and now Dutch MP) about Muslim oppression of homosexuals carries no credits, to avoid murderous Islamic nutters making those who helped produce the film into targets for their peaceful religion. The report shows how some Muslims, who chose to move to the Netherlands, a highly liberal country, are basically out to shut down criticism and dissent. The semi-libertarian gay MP Pym Fortyn was shot by an ecoterrorist – a Green nutter who did it for the Muslims and hated Fortyn railing against environmentalists forcing railway lines to be built under cow pasture, because they hated any disruption to nature.

The true murderous life hating philosophy of these lowlives is obvious – they have no place in a liberal tolerant society which would allow their views to be expressed, but would not allow their violence to be.

Islam, at the very least, needs to go through a period called the Enlightenment. It happened to Christianity, and the worst excesses were buffed off, mainly by separating church and state – then it needs to go through a steady level of secular decline, as it has in western Europe.

Religion does nothing for me, at best it is historically quaint and gives some people quiet comfort and support – but I would rather it fade away.

That means all of the evangelical nutters as well - the proponents of "intelligent design" (such rot!) and the life hating, sex hating, freedom hating mullahs of Christianity. They would turn the world into a fundamentalist state little different in effect from the Taliban.

May they all rot.

Mark Blumsky's maiden speech

Mark Blumsky, former extravagant Mayor of Wellington and new Wellington National list MP has made his maiden speech, and besides some good stuff about less government and tax, he made 3 statements that show he can’t keep his hands off of things:

1. “We need to see progress on Transmission Gully. We need to see it now; it is necessary” I need say little more on this as I have blogged extensively about. Mark, lower tax and building a billion dollar road with a negative benefit/cost ratio don’t add up. Stop trying to waste our money.

2. “Out at the airport, it is vital that the new generation Boeing 787 jets are able to land in Wellington” Why Mark? What do you know about aviation? I believe they can land, but there is no indication Air NZ wants them to, because there is not enough demand for long haul flights from Wellington beyond Australia and the Pacific. Wellington-Singapore isn't going to happen, when they don't do Christchurch-Singapore anymore. Besides the 787s don't come for 5 more years. Shannon in Ireland played this cargo cult mentality – built a big airport and nobody came. Leave business to business Mark, you know shoes, you don’t know transport.

3. “We need to look seriously at some level of local government amalgamation.” As a libertarian you might think I believe in less local government, and I do. However, Owen McShane some time ago wrote that the optimum size of local authorities was not necessarily bigger. Yes some councils are too small – Banks Peninsula clearly is and is merging with Christchurch. Excessively small councils find it hard to attract talented staff and face high overheads due to poor economies of scale. However there is a more insidious face in big councils – big councils can waste money more easily because a tiny rates increase means a decent windfall in revenue – so big councils think they can undertake any lunatic scheme individual councillors dream up, because the cost of each scheme is relatively low. So you get art, business subsidies, video libraries, youth cafes and all sorts of utter nonsense that councils shouldn’t be doing – Mark should know, he led a council that embarked on continuous increases in local government spending.

The answer to local government is NOT to amalgamate, although if councils want to, it shouldn’t be stopped – but to eliminate unnecessary functions, which ultimately are all of them. Councils should be forced to get out of all activities that they can charge users for, and get out of social activities like housing and community centres. If you like something council does, pay for it yourself! Big councils want to do more, they want to interfere and tax more - bigger councils are not better!

Mark doesn't really believe in the free market, he believes in being popular - and frankly has not been impressive as much beyond a businessman and a cheerleader for Wellington.

Mark, do you want councils doing less, rating less and if so, what would YOU cut, or is the National policy on local government to do nothing?