Transmission Gully advocates defy economics

I noticed Porirua City Council is talking nonsense about the coastal highway route vs. Transmission Gully claiming that a broader economic evaluation was needed. You can see Porirua's submission here. I've read it, and it has the holes of Swiss cheese.

It is nonsense to say the coastal route will take 24 years to complete.

It is nonsense to say there is an "over-emphasis" on cost - whose money is it?

It is nonsense to say the coastal route will destroy tourism assets - find one that anyone in Wellington regards as significant!

It’s rather simple, Transmission Gully isn’t worth it – it is a $1.1 billion investment that returns benefits worth $550 million, and the coastal 4-laning will be worth it eventually, but not yet.

Porirua City Council – which wont for a minute commit any of its ratepayers money to Transmission Gully, is keen to commit other people’s money to it.

It reckons Transmission Gully is affordable if you:

- defer “lower priority road projects”. In fact, lower priority projects don’t get funded ahead of higher priority ones. What this means is defer higher priority, higher quality projects – and to do this you need to defer every single other new roading project in the region for 10 years, such as the proposed Basin Reserve flyover, and any improvements in the Hutt – all projects that return benefits several times their costs. The same time the submission says that all these sorts of projects can still proceed

- toll the Gully (brings in around 10% of the funds and reduces the benefits down to around a third of the costs, because few will pay to use the Gully when the current road isn’t congested );

- securing funds from the National Land Transport Programme (Land Transport NZ is only meant to fund efficient projects, which does not mean projects with benefits half those of costs).

Porirua City would kill the Petone-Grenada link road because it wouldn’t be needed – though Ngauranga Gorge and the Hutt motorway will both still be congested – and Petone-Grenada has the net benefits of Transmission Gully at a quarter of the costs.

If you left the running of highways to the private sector, you’d know whether Transmission Gully is a good idea or not. Mountains of analysis say it’s a dog – and the private sector could try and build it now, nobody is stopping them – it just doesn’t stack up as a road that enough potential users would be willing to pay enough money for, not by a long shot.

Porirua City Council wants to waste taxpayers money and road users money on a project that would mean no other major roading improvements are undertaken in Wellington for 15 years – it wont raise rates from the anticipated increased property values for landowners near the current highway – which shows it wont put its money where its mouth is – its mouth isn’t connected to a brain applying economic rationalism, and should be ignored.

No matter how you hold your mouth, nobody can get beyond this fact.

I don't care about Winston either

I agree with PC - I am not interested in what Winston does every day. Yes it is weird that such an important portfolio as Foreign Affairs is held by a Minister outside Cabinet leading a party that still wants to be seen as the Opposition, even though it is granting confidence and supply to Labour.

That's it. Nothing more interesting so far.

The obsessive reporters who think that every utterance about Winston or everything he does is interesting are WRONG. They remind me of the royal watcher parasites who spend lifetimes reporting on whether Prince X sneezed, who Princess Y gave a blowjob to and whether the Queen likes marmalade or strawberry jam - people with NO lives - and they play right into Winston's hands.

I once sat on a plane next to Winston, a few years ago when there was domestic business class - he shifted to the empty front row after takeoff - obviously fearing sitting next to a single unaccompanied male. Is that exciting news??? I don't think so.

The media hate him, it is so obvious and he knows it. They don't give half the scrutiny to anything Clark or Cullen does. So Winston can simply claim the media hate him, don't treat him fairly, and his supporters can nod their heads and say "yeah the poncy Auckland bastard journos always trying to bring our man down".

The Nats are out for blood, because he was once one of them - and now he wont sleep with them to put them in power - they are jealous of Helen. If Winston supported a Nat led government, they would be defending him, with grating teeth.

Until Winston says something interesting - such as opposing something the government is doing, or is found to have a young gorgeous lover, or punches some reporter in the face - I simply don't care. At best he is doing no harm - at worst he keeps Labour in power, but there is no alternative government.

National has little credibility criticising a man it made into Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer after the first MMP election - Labour and National, political prostitutes ready to sleep with whoever it takes to be in power. Winston knows this, and good on him for exploiting their unprincipled gutter instincts.

Men, kids, planes, fear Part 2

Well the news is that Qantas and Air NZ are not the only airlines adopting this policy. According to an airline forum, British Airways has a policy of not allowing unaccompanied children to be sat next to a male adult (and also not the emergency exit row, or the upper deck of a 747).

That forum also reports one incident aboard a BA flight involving a university lecturer and a young girl, which ended with the girl running to the flight attendants (after the man coaxed her into touching his genitals) and the man was subsequently arrested. Of course, there is as much risk of it happening near the toilets at the back of the plane as well, where people queue and there is little supervision – or the posh pervert could lure children into the cabin type First Class on some Emirates planes. BA apparently had its policy at the time this happened – although the risks of doing anything that isn’t observed on a flight have to be high (unless you’re on a quiet flight at night with a willing companion etc etc).

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Cathay Pacific and United Airlines also have this policy because women “tend to relate more to young kids” (Cathay Pacific) or are “much more maternal” (United).

Well there are umpteen women doing time for how they relate to young kids, and to say women are much more maternal is like saying women are much more lesbian – duh!

Nevertheless I stand by what I said yesterday – if consumers don’t like it, then say so. There are probably many other airlines with a similar policy.

I dare parents to say “I don’t care who you sit my child beside” or for men to say “sit me beside unaccompanied children”. Makes you feel uncomfortable? Why? Do you have the same latent fear that drives others and therefore the airlines to respond to their customers?

A coalition of the left and right have called for the Human Wrongs Commissariat (HWC) to intervene. How convenient! The left loves the HWC as it is Nanny State at its finest – telling consenting adults what they shouldn’t and should do. Of course some on the left (driven by feminism or their own latent fear) think this policy is ok –whereas they would be livid if it discriminated against Maori because Maori are disproportionately convicted for criminal offences. The Green Party motivation is to encourage men to be seen in a positive light, particularly given their very low representation in professions that involving caring for children – a low representation no doubt partly due to the witchhunt against men and their relationships with children that started in the 1980s and is seen in the Peter Ellis case. Radical man-hating feminists have driven this agenda and it is good to see there is a more rational response from the left on this issue. Umpteen false accusations and fears that any men hugging or alone with a child are wanting to fuck them has dissuaded many men from being close to children or being seen or thought of being alone with them – I know this, I have felt exactly the same when left alone with children of friends or neighbours - I worried what they might think, that I wouldn’t be trusted.

I am pleased that Keith Locke and the Greens acknowledge this and want to rectify this ridiculous state of affairs.

The right on the other hand smacks of hypocrisy. Wayne Mapp likes the HWC when he wants to call the bluff of the left. See National, rightfully, loathes the HWC when it engages in much of its nonsense about “equal rights” applying to the relationships between private consenting adults. For example the claim that advertising a “married persons golf tournament” was discriminatory. This claim is nonsense, and the HWC is itself a pointless waste of taxpayers’ money. The National Party should commit to abolishing it, (although it did create it in the late 1970s under Muldoon) , but the National Party is happy for a state politically-correct bureaucracy to act against businesses making a decision based upon what their customers want. Wayne Mapp would loathe the HWC opposing “single’s clubs” or being silent on special funding for Maori businesses.

National is trying for the support of the average man, offended that he is thought to be at higher risk of molesting children than anyone else. The average man is right to be offended, so is Wayne Mapp – but the offence is about a belief held by many people – the airlines reflect that.

So Keith Locke and Wayne Mapp are right to be offended, and wrong to want the state to intervene. The state should not intervene when people are offended by a business decision – this is a matter for people to take up with the airline, not use the force of the state to change it. If the airlines reverse the policy, will it make people feel happier, or will many people still secretly fear their children are placed beside a child molester on planes? I doubt any policy change will change people’s attitudes.

So - why are so many people scared of men with children? Is it rational to be extra-careful, or have we been taken in by years of propaganda that has taken things too far? This airline policy is a symptom only.

Vatican and homosexuality

CNN reports that the Vatican has issued its edict that state one the one hand that it “cannot admit to the seminary and to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deeply rooted homosexual tendencies or support the so-called gay culture” but if “homosexual tendencies are only the expression of a transitory problem ... these must be clearly overcome at least three years prior to deaconate ordination”.

So men who want to become priests who are fantasising but trying not to (in other words having a sly wank about Father McGuire or his son, but not doing anything else about it and feeling really really guilty), can become priests if it is transitory.

Kind of amusing really. The Roman Catholic Church has, of course, always regarded homosexuality as a “problem”. Now setting aside the number of existing gay priests (let alone the pedophilic ones), this is really just another example of the oppression that religion imposes upon the individual – if you choose to follow it. The Bible is full of passages damning homosexuality – as well as passages damning the consumption of shellfish, men with long hair, women with short hair and growing two different crops side by side.

As a libertarian objectivist, I don’t believe in God and since church and state are effectively separate in NZ and the UK (the heir to the head of the Anglican Church went to the last Pope’s funeral after all!), it doesn’t matter. Religion is irrational and that include Roman Catholicism, although the church has a couple of redeeming qualities – it has inspired some of the most magnificent art in history, and it was one of the founders of schooling for the masses.

And there is never anything wrong with catholic girls…

Men, kids, planes, fear

There has been a lot of noise about this, including Green MP Keith Locke opposing it, discussion on an airline industry forum, opposition from the right on I Hate Socialism blog and from Wayne Mapp, and Cathy Odgers wishing she could be banned from sitting beside children on flights too, the Men's Coalition has called for the resignation of the Children's Commissioner, Dr Cindy Kiro, and David Farrar is very angry at this too.

The bottom line is that Qantas and Air New Zealand should be able to operate their businesses in whatever way they wish. The airlines could adopt a policy of seating people man-woman-man-woman, or putting all men in the front, women in the back, or segregating people by race if they wanted to, and the state should not intervene. The bottom line being, the airline owns the planes and should be able to do whatever it likes – Air NZ almost always upgrades me on request and gives me seating I request. It could tell me to get fucked and sit down the back if it wanted, but it doesn’t. The airlines are presumably acting in accordance with customer demands – and the rationality of them is not the first issue – the first issue is that if you want to send your child unaccompanied on a flight, then if you want the airline to sit a certain type of person beside your child, and the airline agrees – (and the person sitting beside has no problem with it) then it is not anyone else’s business.

This applies readily to Qantas – it is a private company. Air NZ while publicly listed, is majority state owned – and questions can be raised as to whether it should ever act in a way offensive to its shareholders (i.e. N.Z. residents). Well, as it is a commercial investment (and the government cannot intervene in the decisions of the board or management on such matters), it should act according to its commercial interests and it appears to be doing so. If Air NZ revoked this policy, it would probably lose some business to Qantas for unaccompanied children – but would be unlikely to gain business from men. Very few men would say they wont fly on an airline because there is no chance of sitting beside a child – except those you might not want to! The airlines are reacting to consumers.

However, this doesn't mean I like the policy.

So what about the reasoning behind this, that causes the airline to respond and people to fear men?

There has been a concerted picture painted of men in the last 25 years as being potential rapists and child molesters – and the statistics bear out the fact that most cases of child sexual abuse involve men - but also that most cases involve men in the same household as the child. So we are talking about a very tiny risk. The implications of this policy are that there is a social trend to fear men having contact with children. This is not because child abuse has increased, there is little evidence of that as children have been getting abused throughout history, and it is only in the last 20 years that the complaints of children have been listened to and given credence in court (although in some cases, the evidence gatherers have manipulated children to giving them the answers that they wanted, rather than the facts).

So parents and caregivers (funnily enough, the categories most likely to abuse) are terrified of the man next door, the teacher, the coach, the priest, Uncle X and now the man on the plane. What is next? The man on the bus? Will men be not permitted to be located next to children in any cases without another adult present? What does this do for men who like working with children (it is sad that this is always a lead up for a joke that says “not THAT way”)?

Speaking of buses, I would say the odds of a dodgy man sitting beside a child go up enormously for long distance bus and train trips - largely because the driver or crew are not keeping an eye on passengers most of the time, and because the trips are a lot longer (and the passengers dodgier - with the exception of foreign tourists, the only men who travel alone on long bus and train trips are those who can't afford to fly or drive, or aren't allowed! Last time I caught a bus out of necessity, it was backpackers, the poor and former convicts travelling).

As I grew up, I encountered adult men as Santa Claus, customers of my parents’ shop, relatives, neighbours, people on holiday, and only in a very few cases did my parents warn me of one or two. Despite the popular myth, in most cases dodgy pedophilic men are easy to identify – and half of the answer is not to wrap children in cotton wool, but to encourage them to look after themselves. If someone (man or woman – women do this too, in small numbers, but those that do almost always get away with it because nobody believes it happens) does anything that makes a child feel uncomfortable, they should stop – tell them no and that they will tell someone, or hit them. Far better for a child to know how to respond to this, especially girls who are a greater risk of having creeps hitting on them in their teens than boys are.

One of the other myths is to ignore teenage boys. Teenage boys engage in far more sexual contact with children than men do, because they have more access, have almost nothing else on their minds and are trusted. Something around a third of all those getting treated for being sexual abusers are teenagers – so fear them too.

In short, I think Keith Locke is right in his assessment of the issue, in that there needs to be an end to irrational fear of men - as it has caused men to drop out of early childhood education and reduce positive contact men have with children - but he is wrong to ask the Human Wrongs Commissariat to intervene, particularly against Qantas, as it is privately owned. I find it interesting, though, that the lefties who would demand blood if Air NZ segregated passengers by race or gender or sexuality (what if a frequent flyer said they don't want to sit beside dark skinned people?), has no problem with this discrimination, presumably because it applies to men. I wonder how such people would react if the airlines seated known Muslims in the back of the plane out of fear of terrorism (David Farrar mentioned this too coincidentally)? It would also be irrational - but because it applies to Muslims (who don't have power in the leftwing subjective fantasyworld where white straight men have all the power and never get abused). Dr Cindy Kiro (the Children's Commissioner) has supported what the airlines are doing - but then if it became illegal for men to be within 10 metres of children without a permit, she'd probably cheer it on as the great advocate for state intervention that she is.

It is unfortunate that people think their children are at risk on planes with men – this is so incredibly unlikely, and it is very sad that people fear their children being hurt at every corner by men. The odds are very very low that children will be molested by strangers. As with Cathy, I am happy to have NOBODY sitting beside me on a flight, although I’d rather a quiet child than someone 20 stone (like certain bureaucrats).

The real issue are the social attitudes that have been taught and promoted by those who have a gender based collectivist agenda - the type that claimed that 1 in 3 fathers molest their daughters (TVNZ ran a telethon based on this fiction in the 1980s) - the type that regard a man complimenting a woman on looking sexy as being abusive - the type that are the feminist Taliban of our world, that listen to Catherine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin describing consensual heterosexual intercourse as effectively never being consensual!

However, the answer is over to you. It is up to the airlines what they do, and consumers. Once again, the Greens have shown their love for state violence to intervene - they want the state to use force against the airlines to stop this.

This is not the answer.

If you don't like this policy, try an airline that doesn't do it (Origin Pacific for example) or travel another way, or put up with it. As for me, as long as I get the seat I want and preferably have no one sitting beside me (unless they are interesting and hot), then I'm not too perturbed. However, I will tell any flight attendant who forces me to shift a previously allocated seat to get fucked - unless I don't like who I am sitting beside :)

This is not about the airlines, it is about a bigger social attitude that says that men having contact with children is risky - well on that basis, because 50% of men in prison are Maori, anyone having contact with Maori men is at a bigger risk of becoming a victim of a crime. If you want to change this, then it is up to men and women who aren't suspicious of men to reject it - as consumers. The airlines are reacting to consumers, simple as that.