04 December 2006

Let businesses discriminate against customers

What do you think the drinking age means? Does it mean that bars can sell alcohol to anyone down to that age, or is it COMPULSORY to sell alcohol to people down to that age?
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Well the Human Wrongs Commissariat has said that it is illegal for a Wellington bar to ban 18 and 19yos. Apparently this is true, which is a nonsense.
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Whose bar is it? If the bar wants to ban 18yos or 80yos it should have the right to do so. Indeed, it should have the right to ban whoever it wants. If 18 and 19yos don’t like it, then they can protest, call for others to boycott it, but they have no right to use the state to force themselves onto premises within which they are not welcome.
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It’s called freedom – some premises don’t want teenagers drinking there – so let the owners ban anyone they wish.
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You see this is the fundamental failure of political debate from left and right. Some think it is should be the “right” of an 18yo to go into a bar, regardless of what the owner thinks. Other thinks it should be illegal. In fact, the law says it is compulsory for the bar owners to let an 18yo drink there. It should be none of the above.
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UPDATE: Idiot Savant doesn't think businesses should have the right to turn away whoever they please. Presumably he thinks its ok for barowners to ban ugly people, fat people, thin people, stupid people, blondes, redheads, short people and tall people (because the Human Wrongs Act doesn't mention those) from bars.

02 December 2006

National's new line up and it's slide back to Labour's philosophical heartland

Political correctness portfolio is gone, I’m not too upset about that, Wayne Mapp didn’t know what to do with it – and the concept of political correctness is essentially not talking about things that are “forbidden” by the political zeitgeist. In other words, wanting to abolish all laws that are race specific or funding that is racially driven. I somehow think National doesn't know how to handle this.
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Of the rest? I've ignored those who are ok - business as usual, nothing to get concerned about...
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Bill English in Finance – well I look foreward to his genius giving us cutting edge economic policies, or John Key writing it all. Go on Bill, impress me - if you can take on Cullen and win, I'll changed my view of you.
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Nick Smith remains of course, looking after climate change no less. So wait for the new tax and intervention policies from him. He is also spokesman on building and construction. Why? Authoritarian tosser.
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Judith Collins is spokeswoman for family affairs (besides welfare and veterans' affairs without the apostrophe). Again why? What is she going to do for families? PLEASE abolish the Families Commission and Commissioner for Children's roles. That would be delightful, then wind up the portfolio. So I wait.
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Murray McCully for Foreign Affairs? So he wants to travel, or you want him out of the way. However, sport and recreation? Leave well alone -that portfolio is unnecessary.
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Lockwood Smith for Immigration and Revenue. The man who wouldn't confront the teachers' unions when he had the chance - sleepwalking his way to retirement. Courage isn't his forte for several reasons.
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Wayne Mapp for Defence and Auckland issues? No, you are better than Judith Tizard (but then so is my niece). Auckland doesn't have special issues that require intervention.
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Chris Finlayson on arts culture and heritage. Should be a brief portfolio, but will it be? (oh Shadow Attorney General, Treaty negotiations - now these matters).
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Tim Groser for trade. Excellent choice and frankly the only one.
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Lindsay Tisch. Tourism, small business and racing? Tourism should really just be wound up, it is simply the services sector. Small business? Why small business? Shouldn't it be part of commerce? Racing is just a joke - I'd resign from that Lindsay - nobody needs it.
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Pansy Wong for ACC and ethnic affairs. ACC is fine, but what is an ethnic affair? I know it is why it exists, but I'm damned if my Scottish parents are going to get much from this.
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Splitting Maori Affairs between Georgina and Tau is interesting, but then why not? Having two people dedicated to this area can't be bad.
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Paul Hutchinson has Tertiary Education, Research, Science & Technology/CRIs, but also disability issues? hmmm.. Children? Why is there policy on children? THAT is insidious, but then Hutchinson is a bit of a prick.
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Richard Worth for economic development. Well given that the Alliance created that portfolio, it ought to go too - what could he possibly do?
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Kate Wilkinson for consumer affairs and labour/industrial relations. Clearly not a high priority to do anything about labour laws with someone so lowly ranked, but apparently quite smart.
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Eric Roy for outdoor recreation? Give me a break. Unless it is about legalising outdoor shagging on private property, this has little value. It's about private property rights.
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Sandra Goudie has internal affairs and senior citizens (!). Senior citizens is another waste of damned time. Stop balkanising people into minority groups - treat us all as individuals! Sandra did oust Jeanette Fitzsimons from Coromandel though, which is something worth celebrating.
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Nicky Wagner has youth affairs, another seriously dud portfolio
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However, the Women’s Affairs portfolio is back, with Jackie Blue. Presumably the Nats wont be getting rid of that utterly useless Ministry. It is a Ministry of collectivist feminism, to lobby for funding for women’s health (fuck testicular and prostate cancer, and the lower life expectancy for men), women’s education (girls are doing better than boys though hmm), women’s justice system (men are many times more likely to be in prison than women – it can’t be because it’s their fault because the same doesn’t apply to Maori men does it?), etc etc.
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The state should not be sexist, it certainly should not have a Ministry that is, by definition, sexist. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs will not help National advance policies consistent with its principles – it hires people who overwhelmingly are pro-Labour. It should go. Other departments do not consult it unless they are similarly ideologically inclined (in which case why bother?), or are told to. MWA, you see, would typically take the view that anything that affected people without much money would hit women harder, and that somehow a policy should do something about it.
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Indeed it should – it should abolish the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, donate the funding in one whole year to Women’s Refuge then give the rest back (as part of a widespread cut in government) in tax cuts. Jackie Blue said "Without any doubt, National will be putting together policies that benefit all New Zealanders, but we will want to make sure that women are not disadvantaged in the process." I guess it is ok if men are then is it? Given she is against hospital vending machines with unhealthy foods and drinks, I am not optimistic that she'll be anything other than a tweedledum to Pete Hodgson. Another school prefect.

01 December 2006

Brash's resignation


I am saddened but not surprised that Don Brash has resigned from Parliament. It will be all the better for him personally. He wont join ACT sadly, or Libertarianz even ;-)
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His legacy is viewed in mixed ways across the political spectrum. To those on the left he was an anathema, and many there have been spitting out the venom they accuse him of starting – when much of what he did was to challenge their comfortable little world. A world view that means that challenges are responded to by name calling, insults and their own bigotry – the bigotry against people who are personally successful, wealthy or foreign. The left talks about the rich the same way as southern segregationists use the word "nigger", it plays the envy card on demand. Most of all, the left were horrified that Brash's views on not giving Maori privilege through government measures, are held by a lot of New Zealanders, and National nearly won as a result. Labour's provincial heartland voted National in droves - Labour was only saved by the big cities and a concerted campaign to scaremonger voters in low income parts of Auckland.
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To the conservative right Brash was a godsend, though one they initially were wary of. However, he was groomed to say the right things at the right time to shore up that vote. A vote that, while probably topping little more than 8-9% all up (take the 5% max that the Christian Coalition could have cobbled together, and those who are too conservative to vote anything BUT National) was motivated to turn out and vote. Unfortunately, they were his undoing.
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To the libertarian right he was a godsend too, but in a different way. You see, Brash is, pretty much, one of us on many issues. On economics he believed in minimal intervention, in private property rights and in government getting out of the way. On social policy he was more concerned about delivering quality and choice in health and education, but unlike Libertarianz he believed in retaining a welfare state as a last resort. He was keen to promote a culture which was the antithesis of the New Zealand tall poppy syndrome, one which celebrated success. I heard Don Brash speak at a SOLO conference in Auckland and had some wine with him afterwards. At the conference he engaged in a formal debate about whether or not a government central bank was necessary, he believed it was and that there was competition in currencies between countries, so little need for it within countries. He responded to countervailing arguments intelligently and with good humour.
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He was was more libertarian than many in ACT. He was socially liberal, with little interest in censorship or the state interfering in people’s private lives. He didn’t believe in legalising drugs, but could understand the arguments in favour of reform. However, most of all, Don Brash could understand philosophy and the application of philosophy to public policy. He could debate intellectually about both. He is a gentleman, and at that time was simply a relatively newly elected MP. The group of us talking to him joked about him becoming leader, which of course he fudged – little were we to know.
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I have written before about Brash’s achievements. The positives are substantial. He broke the mould of the unspoken politically correct view on Maori. The view that essentially, they ARE oppressed, they need special government help and the law should treat them differently. He questioned that, something that when others mentioned it, they were shot down in flames by those proclaiming “racist”, in their Maoist like intolerance for reasoned debate. Whatever Key and English do to provide succour to the Maori Party, this issue is now out in the open.
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Brash put tax cuts clearly on the political agenda, he justified them credibly. Credibly because not only the surpluses that Dr Cullen spends, but also because of bureaucratic waste. People believe both that the government is wasteful and that it doesn’t need to tax so much to pay for publicly funded services that most people want (health and education). Tax cuts are no longer just the “give money to the rich”, they are “give me back my money”. It wasn’t the government’s money to spend in the first place.
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Also important are Brash’s confrontation of the RMA, one of the most anti-private property fascistic pieces of legislation in recent history. The legislation that allows all and sundry to delay what others do with their property, when it has little effect on them. He also confronted the welfare state, the notion that it was acceptable to have intergenerational welfare dependency, and to persist with the notion that it is caring to just keep giving people welfare.
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Those messages, along with Brash being himself. Being socially liberal, voting consistently for civil unions and prostitution law reform, COULD have won the election. Brash is liberal on social issues, he is not the conservative that some National strategists had him play up to, or that many on the left believed he was. Unfortunately the National Party could not stomach an intelligent economic and socially liberal leader. This is where things went wrong.
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Brash’s success in boosting support for National with his principled approaches to Maori issues (despite pointless statement on pure blooded Maori that meant nothing), taxation and welfare were seen by both ACT supporters, and the conservative Christian right as providing a platform, not entirely dissimilar from what worked for Bush in 2004. The idea that Brash could rally the largely ignored conservative right to vote National. Those voters had largely been burnt from politics firstly in 1996 when the Christian Coalition failed (thank God!) to get 5% of the vote, secondly by United Future giving Labour confidence and supply, and thirdly by Graham Capill’s revolting hypocrisy.
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Brash’s made three big mistakes:
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The first was to deny the Exclusive Brethren. The left has made much of this non-issue, a weird religious sect campaigning against a Labour-Green coalition and supportive of a National led government. That is no big deal, but Labour milked religious bigotry in a manner it would not even THINK of if it were Muslims or Maori spiritualists, to make it look suspicious. Brash should have said, as PC has once said, is the same as Reagan once said “"When people join my campaign, they are supporting me; I am not necessarily supporting them."
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This would have neutralised it. Unfortunately Brash, a political novice, was pressured by National’s spin doctors and strategists to lie – a typical political response, deny and lie and hope it goes away. It works for Labour, usually, but not the Nats.
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The second was to talk about “mainstream” New Zealanders and about families, and stumble when talking about race. He did this in order to get publicity and also motivate the conservative base to vote for a man who otherwise, is a liberal atheist. On families, he should have said little more than families are important and a family is any group of people who live together with mutual interdependence and love, and if pushed resist defining it further. He should have steered miles away from talking about the mainstream, alienating gay/lesbian/bisexual people, and Maori. He could have talked about government existing for all New Zealanders, giving no preferences but also no discrimination towards any minority, with the individual being the smallest and most ignored minority. Idiot Savant ripped into him on this, and made some very good points, whoever advised him to talk of this was a fool, and Brash was mistaken for doing this. It hurt National in the main cities.
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Finally, he simply did not act as himself. He was being protected, no doubt seduced by the promise that those who play the filthy game of politics knew better than he how to attract votes. In fact, it was his honesty, his gentle respectful manner, his combination of intellectual rigour and liberalism that attracted much support when it showed. When he was trying to be a politician, he got hounded for it - he's not convincing when he doesn't really believe in what he is saying.
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The left attacked him for being racist, until it realised that a large number of New Zealanders were also concerned with the prevailing bureaucratic view that you daren’t criticise any special government programmes/laws for Maori. The left attacked him as being only for the rich, until the National policy did not remove the top tax rate introduced by Labour, and large numbers of New Zealanders saw they would benefit from modest tax cuts (and knew that Labour’s surpluses were hardly sign of a government unable to fund the core services they wanted the state to provide). It was epitomised by Helen Clark calling Brash cancerous and corrosive, while Labour bemoaned the depths to which NZ politics had dropped – ignoring that Labour was supplying at least half of the ballast, and in enormous denial about forcing the NZ public to fund its pledge card.
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Of course Winston Peters, who actively played the race card in several elections regarding immigrants, is now Minister of Foreign Affairs. I’ll let the leftwing blogosphere reflect how principled and moral Helen Clark and the Labour Party really is given it chose Winston and NZ First, when it could have chosen the Greens or the Maori Party. It will simply blank that out though as being irrelevant - which it wouldn't be if National was in power - the hypocrisy of tribal politics.
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Aucklander at Large rightfully points out the personal toll politics imposes on people. It is high, and it is a game for the merciless, I hope Don Brash enjoys a break from it - and takes the opportunity to comment on the sidelines when and where he believes he can make a contribution.

Helen Clark speaks on ANZUS and nuclear ships


My mistake, I didn't notice who said it, it was hard to tell.
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Stuff reports “National Party leader John Key says there will be no nuclear powered ships entering New Zealand's harbours as long as he leads the party and he accepts the ANZUS treaty is dead.”
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Well of course Bolger started this, when he didn’t need to. Now John Key is clearly trying to cozy up to the Greens.
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Come on John, give me one evidence based reason why nuclear powered ships should not enter New Zealand harbours? I can’t wait. You’d rather surrender to the scaremongering cabal of unscientific leftwing nuclearphobes, the same ones who will go to France, Japan and other countries and consume nuclear power without a second thought. The same ones that hardly uttered a criticism of non-Western nuclear powers, while constantly blaming the USA, UK and France for nuclear weapons – because, you see, they were morally equivalent to the USSR and communist China.
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ANZUS? Well yes it is dead, he says he is just acknowledging it. Well that isn't necessary John, unless you clearly don’t want to align yourself with the war on terror. No, far easier to take the cowards’ approach. Be “independent”, don’t look like you are aligned to the US, because so many in the media, universities and the like are anti-USA, anti-capitalist, whilst saying nothing about the likes of Matt Robson going to Cuba to felch lyrically about how great that one-party authoritarian state is. When you catch the tube several times a week John, you understand what the war on terror means - it means every day I am a potential target, along with a million others, including thousands of New Zealanders. However, far easier to surrender the argument and pander to the "it's the American's fault Islamists murder innocent civilians" view.
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So there we have it – John Key, surrenders to unscientific nuclearphobes and
ambivalent on the war on terror. He want to be more bi-partisan on foreign policy. Why stop there? Why not economic policy, education policy, Maori policy? Indeed enough of confrontation and division - "let's think about not what divides us, but unites us" (as David Lange once said). By the way John, how many votes do you think this issue cost National? Seriously?
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I’ll wait to see whether David Cameron or John Key is worse… the jury is still out, Cameron is well ahead, but Key is having a sprint. Think I'm wrong? Well don't take it from me, no other than Jordan Carter sees the replacement of Brash with Key as a victory for the left philosophically and politically. He calls it "a strategic victory for Labour and for social democratic politics".
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Sadly, I believe he is right. However, when National moves into Labour's ground it traditionally wins - witness 1949, 1960 and 1975. 1990 it won partly due to disenchantment with Labour, but it also attracted back most of the pro-market vote Labour won from the New Zealand Party in 1987. However, whatever party implements centre-left policies shouldn't matter to Jordan. His philosophy is where National is heading, and he shouldn't care if his tribe wins or not, as long as the status quo - that Labour supports - is largely unchanged.

David Benson Pope and kinky BDSM

1. Everytime someone mentions it, I feel ill. I find him a repulsive little man, but...
2. it is absolutely irrelevant whether he or any other MP is:
a) an ascetic;
b) wanks furiously to memorable earlier life experiences;
c) gay, bisexual, lesbian, heterosexual;
d) likes being spanked or spanking or whipping or bondage or retifism or klismaphilia or urolagnia or coprophilia (if you don't know don't ask and certainly don't look it up on your work PC);
e) buys used underwear or socks off the internet from university students;
f) has occasional conventional sex with a life partner;
g) gets buggered by a strap on worn by a prostitute.
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I don't give a damn. Wishart's muckraking is not about policy, not about the law, but about being a judgmental little prick about what consenting adults do in their own time. Ian Wishart's motives I believe are twofold:
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1. Sex sells. There is a prurient interest in "phwoar what did the pervy MP do". However Investigate isn't the Sun.
2. Catering for the finger pointing Christian conservatives. The type that would be outraged to know the MPs who are gay but in the closet, or who would punish their kids if they caught them masturbating.
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In short, the people who have their own perversions, of voyeurism and in being fascinated in what other adults do (and either wanting to secretly join in, or to burn them at the stake).
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These people are far more disconcerting than most of the pervs who have found this post through googling some of the words listed above.
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There are reasons to attack Benson-Pope - my simple one is that he is a prick, based on personal experience.