UK goes into armageddon mode

Hundreds of millions of refugees!

40% of species extinct!

1 in 6 people facing water shortages!

£3.68 trillion economic cost!

The end is nigh unless the state spends £184 billion to avoid it.

Yes, the UK is agrip of a madness - environmental madness, and it has a new report to fuel it. The big news here comes from an absurd report soon to be released by Sir Nicholas Stern (former chief economist of the World Bank) has been released in the UK saying if greenhouse gases are not reduced, the world will end.

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So what has been the reaction?
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- You’d hope there might be some informed debate about whether this prediction is realistic?
- You’d hope someone would ask whether £184 billion would be better spent on improving people’s lives in other ways (take the Bjorn Lomborg proposal that clean water would do more for the world's poor than tackling climate change)?
- You’d hope someone would say, even if this IS correct, there is little point the UK acting alone when it is responsible for under 2% of greenhouse gases (though shutting down completely would make a difference), so why cripple your economy until you’ve convinced China, India and the US to do the same?
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No – almost all of the media has presented one view, a sheepish following of the report.
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UK Environment Minister David Milliband has hopped on the bandwagon proposing new taxes such as:

- Annual rises in fuel tax;
- Taxes on incandescent light bulbs;

- Exhorbitant taxes on vehicle ownership;

- Taxes on inefficient washing machines;
- Taxes on flights to EU countries.
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The fuel tax proposal is particularly cheeky, saying that if oil prices drop then fuel tax should increase to make up the difference!! So if oil is plentiful and cheap, the UK will pay more and more in tax. None of the proposals have any assessment as to the net effect on the economy, on the environment and on demand for air travel, driving etc. It is, essentially, a left wing manifesto of ecological taxation.

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As Professor Philip Stott of University of London says "despite all the evidence that green policies make no difference, 'environmentalism' takes an ever stronger hold on our way of life" He says that "much 'environmental' policy is little more than discredited Left-wing thinking dressed up as pseudo science to look acceptable. Worse still, these green myths have become a back door for a new strand of authoritarianism."

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He's right - we are seeing this in the obsession with recycling, an obsession that isn't properly investigated (PC has a useful post about it here). People get fined in the UK for not recycling, regardless of the phenomenal cost to subsidise it, without even thinking twice about getting people to pay the actual cost of landfill use (so putting out the rubbish isn't subsidised as well!). Stupid policies (subsidised landfills) beget more stupid policies (subsidised recycling). Don't dare question recycling though -the EU says it is good so all bow down to to Brussels - almost none of the mainstream media here questions recycling.
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So what does Her Majesty's loyal opposition say? The BBC reports David Cameron AGREES and so do the Lib Dems. Wonderful! So no debate on such a radical issue. Not even questioning why the UK should tax itself silly in a way that makes no difference at all to climate change. It is like stopping one person pissing in the pool while the others continue unabated.

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and what would I do? Well, not a lot. Here are some ideas for the UK:

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1. Phase out all agricultural and industrial subsidies, why tax "bad behaviour" while propping up inefficient producers?

2. Spend fuel tax money on maintaining properly the road network and funding efficient road improvements before privatising the entire road network (allowing the new owners to toll it);

3. End subsidies to public transport;

4. End subsidies to energy use;

5. Privatise British Energy, letting the energy market operate unrestricted. Eliminate price control for energy.

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You see then people would use less energy and less transport because it wouldn't be subsidised by anyone else - but that wouldn't mean the central planners would have much to do then would it? The UK should, at the very least, pause for a second and realise it should not act to destroy wealth when it seeks to act unilaterally on the environment. It should simply remove government restrictions and subsidies that most blatantly are bad for the environment - and there are plenty of those.

Thieving bastards have conference

Ha! Once I voted Labour - the party that once had some honour, some dignity, now drips with the sort of power hungry arrogance National was once known for under Rob Muldoon.

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Having happily used your money, extracted from you by force, to fund a key part of its election campaign (and none of the other parties having the same funding to spread its manifesto the same way), the Labour Party has voted in its conference to support compulsory funding of political parties campaigns based on the previous party vote.
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How absolutely fucking convenient. The incumbent government – naturally – does best. The NZ Herald quotes Dr Cullen paraphrasing him saying:
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Labour sought a political system that was inclusive and open and could not be "simply bought and sold by the rich and powerful".

He added: "And that cannot be achieved without the state providing support to the process of democracy itself."
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Inclusive and open? So all parties get the same funding? No. Bought and sold by the rich and powerful? Oh so forcing people to pay for it, and using taxpayer’s money to pay for your campaign isn’t being powerful? The state providing support – as if it is some benign independent body, rather than something Labour controls.
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Andrew Little’s attempt for Labour to admit it had broken the law and move on failed to get support – the little piggies have their snouts in the trough so much they can’t see outside it for the muck that sticks to them. Red party good, blue party baaahdd.
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This is an absolute outrage for several very important reasons:
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1. It is blatant discrimination against small or new parties. In short, it is Labour’s way of using your money to give it an advantage over any future Alliance, Green Party, Maori Party, United Future, NZ First, ACT, Libertarianz, Destiny NZ etc etc. If you believe a liberal democracy means that the incumbents shouldn’t be subsidised over new entrants then this alone is a reason to be outraged. Imagine if in the private sector an incumbent company could use taxpayer’s money to subsidise its advertising campaign against a new competitor – that is what this is.
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2. It is morally unconscionable to force any New Zealanders to pay for political parties, which are voluntary associations with voluntary membership. Most New Zealanders have no interest in funding political parties, forcing them to fund everyone from the Greens to Destiny NZ to the thieving Labour Party to ACT to the Maori Party and NZ First is immoral. The argument that funds will be divided according to the vote at a previous election is ridiculous – that means that everyone is funding everyone. It means Asian immigrants fund NZ First, it means gay couples fund United Future, it means exclusive Brethren fund Labour, it means union leaders fund National. I don’t want to be forced to fund organisations I don’t believe in, I am sure neither do you (unless the one to benefit the most is the one you support).
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3. It is about replacing voluntary funding of political campaigns. Labour opposes any individuals or groups running their own campaigns to support political parties – this is because not enough people with enough money want to fund Labour. Like any organisation that can’t get enough money, it is unhappy. I know this only too well myself. However, Labour isn’t just unhappy that not enough people want to fund its campaign (ungrateful sods after all that money we have used in government to support lots of causes), it is that more people want to pay more money to Labour’s opponents. Like spoilt little brats who find themselves no longer the favoured child, Labour members are having a hissy fit – instead of trying harder to convince people and businesses why funding the Labour party is a good idea (don’t ask me why it might be), Labour has decided to promote force. Only this time it is force to STOP people spending their money campaigning. As David Farrar says this may be one of the most serious challenges to free speech in recent times. Not content with banning you from spending your own money on TV and radio advertising on a political campaign, Labour wants to stop you spending it at ALL. So that’s it – free speech gone – just go away, don’t you DARE think of opposing the government – your taxes have paid for bureaucrats to decide who gets what for campaigning.

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Labour's $1.4m debt, which is not just about the taxpayer's money it illegally used, clearly hurts and it wants you to bail it out. So after paying your taxes for government services, Labour wants you to pay for it. The cheek, and they go on and on about the exclusive Brethren spending their money to try to help National get elected (which failed), to divert attention from their own practices.
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So there you have it. If Labour introduces legislation to change electoral funding in advance of the election it will be an absolute travesty. Labour did not campaign with this policy and was not elected to implement such a radical change in our liberal democracy. Remembering it spent taxpayer’s money illegally to campaign, more than any other party by a long shot (and NOTHING they can throw about regarding National’s GST faux pas can take away from that), so it is fortunate to still be in power because Winston Peters and Peter Dunne have their snouts in the Labour trough keeping them there.

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Remember, if it happens it is because you did nothing to stop it.

Labour Christian

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Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders? (so said Nietzsche) well I don’t really care, since I’m an atheist. So why does Labour care? Well according to Stuff David Cun*liffe seems to think Labour can reclaim a moral dimension that Christianity contains that he thinks belongs on the left.
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Well, I don’t think much of Christian morality – it is a religion largely dedicated to the worshipping of self sacrifice and the glorification of the god promoted stringing up of his son like a carcass, for everyone else.
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Nevertheless, given what a prick Cun*liffe is, the more he dedicates himself to self-sacrifice the happier I’ll be.

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and Labour searching for morality. Good luck, I've lost what respect I had for a party that HAS done good.

Conscience votes - should list MPs be able to vote?

As I was thinking about the Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill, I started to wonder about how appropriate it is for list MPs to cast conscience votes. Why?

Well let’s consider the philosophy behind MMP. It is a system designed to provide a combination of fair local representation (electorates) with MPs who are meant to represent the views of their electorates, and provide fair national representation to enable governments to be formed based upon the notional support of (more often than not) around 50% or more of voters. The list MPs explicitly represent parties and the platform that parties present to the voting public for their list votes. List MPs cannot be voted out of Parliament explicitly – only by voters rejecting the party, which means it is an all or nothing vote for a policy platform. List MPs ought not to do more than represent the party manifesto. People did not vote for them, they voted for the party.

This works all very well when we are talking about legislation when parties have policies. Labour says yes, National says no, the others say yes or no etc etc. Conscience votes are another matter. If you were asking what party to support on a range of conscience matters you might be disappointed, especially in the two main parties where a spectrum of views tends to be represented on these matters. So is a tick for Labour that gets Ashraf Choudhary in Parliament or a tick for National to get Pansy Wong really meaning you want her to represent you on conscience votes? Maybe, maybe not.

More importantly, given that the electorate vote is so typically devalued in forming governments (it is most highly valued by the four minor parties dependent on winning certain electorates to get into Parliament), should it not be recognised as being the representation of the views of the local community on conscience votes? Marian Hobbs can legitimately claim to represent the views of Wellington Central voters on conscience matters and I am betting that, most of the time, she would be. Other electorate MPs may or may not be, but frankly those MPs are best placed to poll constituents. Many electorate MPs DO poll constituents on conscience issues - list MPs have no constituency to poll, and if they did it would double count the views of the electorate MPs. So if only electorate MPs could vote on conscience issues this could mean that the electorate vote would be seen by voters as a choice for the individual who best represented your views as a resident of an electorate, rather than choosing the party for government.

So, what I am proposing is that list MPs have no right to vote in Parliament on conscience matters, unless the party concerned has a unified position and will vote as such (which presumably includes the electorate MPs which not only represent their constituencies but also supplant list MPs in the first instance as a proportion of that party’s seats in Parliament). If it is not part of a party’s policy platform (in which case it is reasonable to expect all of the party’s MPs to vote identically and that the list vote DOES represent the views of voters who can endorse or reject the platform), then it should not be the party list MPs making a call – because they would be making a call on an issue they were not elected to represent and for which they cannot be held individually accountable.

Easy to police? Well the choice would be simple. If a party had a policy on a bill, it would not be a conscience matter and all of the party's MPs would be expected to vote consistently. If it had no policy, then list MPs must abstain and electorate MPs can vote on their conscience.

So what would this do? For starters, it would energise parties to develop policy responses to conscience votes because many of their MPs would want to participate. Green and NZ First MPs under the current parliament would have no votes on a conscience issue unless they had formulated a consistent policy (as they have no electorate MPs). The Greens typically do have views on these sorts of things, so they would be ok.

You can see it being seen as unfair that electorate MPs get to vote on conscience matters, and more often than not it is Labour and National list MPs that can’t (because neither major party is prepared to adopt policy one way or the other on the drinking age or smacking or prostitution or civil unions etc), but the Green and ACT list MPs can because both parties have a policy on the drinking age (presumably, though I never knew ACT did). For starters, most electorate MPs will be Labour or National anyway. However it also pressures all parties to start thinking philosophically about all issues in front of Parliament, and if they can’t it is left to those best able to represent the views of voters – electorate MPs. Does it mean that if I say voted Marian Hobbs as my electorate MP and Greens for the party list that I get two bites on a conscience issue in Parliament? It sure does (and you don’t need to ask to think I’d vote like a masochistic lunatic). It also means that the Greens, ACT and any other parties with policies on conscience matters actually get a higher profile, because voters who care about these issues may prefer to vote for them than National or Labour.

Which of course, is the primary reason it will go nowhere. National and Labour have everything to lose from this idea. Nevertheless, is it worth thinking about?

London's bus route from hell - C11

Warning - expletives follow!

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I fucking hate so many of the passengers and drivers on this route - as Oswald Bastable would say, oxygen thieves the lot of them.

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There... There may be worse bus routes, after all I’ve hardly rode on the 600 or so routes that collectively suck in £750 million a year in subsidies (which is utterly ridiculous for a city with low car ownership, exhorbitant and rare parking and horrendous congestion, especially since subsidies were nil in 1998), but that doesn’t matter. Of the two I use most, the C11 Archway to Brent Cross is dire. I only get it from Finchley Rd to Belsize Park with groceries - but no more.
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It was operated by a local company Thorpes, which you notice because half the buses haven’t been repainted in the colours of the new owner – Metroline – but there is no indication that Metroline has done anything to improve service. Besides the delays (which are somewhat not up to the operator, London is hell to drive around), there are many problems.
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It’s not just the pokey little buses that have few bell buttons (so if you are standing or not seated in the right spot you have to get up and walk through the other passengers to get at it). These buses are small single deck, cheap and uncomfortable.
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It is the rude scum of the earth who ride on it and the drivers. I mean it – the world would be a better place if around a quarter of the people who ride this bus were eradicated and about a quarter of the drivers (see I am nice!)
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I’ve had the driver who kept packing in people on the bus even though there was little room. Didn’t matter, after all we are human freight. The driver who wont tell kids to stop being loud and obnoxious while they don’t give up seats to the elderly. The driver who drives right past your stop, well after you pushed the bell and then says “you didn’t push it, I can’t pull over” when there is no traffic and then says “oh well get off at the next stop”, ignoring my elderly mother who then would have to walk a further 100 metres and a pensioner who also wanted the same stop. The driver whose driving caused a child to fall over and hit her head. and wouldn’t pull over to let the parent and child get out. In other words, the drivers show a level of service that I’d have expected in Tirana in the 1980s. There is not the slightest level of interest in the passengers being comfortable, safe or even valued – frankly, many drivers would happily drive empty buses back and forth (given the bus companies get paid a subsidy independent of the number of passenger that ride it, I wouldn’t be surprised). Driving fast and furious and braking suddenly, why should they give a fuck? Demand for bus drivers in London outstrips supply, clearly because there are plenty of useless fucks living in London and anyone who is any good is snapped up quick.
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There must be good drivers, I assume they work at the crack of dawn, when the passengers are few and better quality (sleeping off their booze, crack, pot and late night watching quiz tv).
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Most of the drivers have the personality of a rock – the buses may as well be remote controlled. Stagecoach Wellington drivers are truly people to be grateful for – I can see why drivers don’t ever get thanked by passengers leaving.
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Then the passengers. Besides the handful of brave pensioners and others who live in Belsize Park, Hampstead and the like using it because it is raining or to short cut a trip to Waitrose, this route goes from Brent Cross to Archway, through some of the direst estates in Camden Borough. From these estates yes you get people on low incomes, they in themselves are not a problem, it is the subset of space wasters that are the problem. The subset are:
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- Obnoxious chavvy kids and teenagers. They are travelling for nothing (thanks to red Ken Livingstone’s socialist mayoralty). Besides being stupid and rude, they are just oxygen thieves when they occupy seats while pensioners stand, take up lots of seats and don’t move when they are in people’s way. They all need boot camp and if that fails castration to stop them producing more space wasting scum. Britain’s first problem is putting up with these shits – other cultures would threaten them with violence and treat them with disdain, in the UK the kids have knives and everyone is scared (legitimately) of going to court for hurting the poor parasitical fuckers.

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- Unhygienic people. The ones who stink of urine, faeces, pick their noses and eat it and other practices that are too revolting to mention. I’m sorry, people who are that revolting need someone looking after them and they shouldn’t be out on their own. This is Britain’s second problem, people are too fucking polite to say “hey nose picker, fucking do it somewhere else you revolting creep”.

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- Thieves. Pickpockets, need I say more. Not enough prisons to lock them up, being tough on crime would help reduce traffic congestion.

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- Other rude scum. The ones who sit while pensioners stand, who sit in the aisle seat while the window is empty. The ones who stand in the aisle blocking people from getting on because they are talking to their mate and wont move out of the way.
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I do have a solution for this. The Metroline bus franchise should be terminated. The route should be open for a commercial operator who can charge commercially viable fares – which will mean no free fares for the young and the underclass of the filthy and rude will be less likely to afford to catch it. Disadvantages people? Does it bollocks! It means they might get off their arses and walk, the distances aren’t that far and the most obese country in Europe needs it.
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Meanwhile, I’m following my own advice. I have a large umbrella, I can walk the distance I use this bus in 20 minutes.