Blogging on liberty, capitalism, reason, international affairs and foreign policy, from a distinctly libertarian and objectivist perspective
05 June 2007
Peace protests against Russia perhaps?
Some answers to Jeanette's questions
04 June 2007
Finally, food miles under attack
03 June 2007
Clark and Tizard on power
Anti-globalisation protesters are communists
Urophilia or watersports
29 May 2007
Tfl incompetence
25 May 2007
Removing accountability for highway funding
What do you do when a Crown Entity isn’t performing? Do you fire the Board, do you require its funding body (which is meant to be at arms length and independent from the other entity) to hold it to account? Do you stop telling it what to do, which overrides its usual processes for determining how best to perform its tasks? No – if it wastes money, you merge it with its funding body – so that it doesn’t even need to justify to another entity what funding it needs – it can fund itself!
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That is the main announcement by the Minister of Transport with the “Next Steps in the Land Transport Sector review”. It wont result in more efficient outcomes, it will result in the abolition of a structure that has been touted around the world as being a leader – what it will mean is that Transit will no longer need to bid for funding for its projects – it will simply ask itself, and local authorities will need to ask Transit. Transit Chief Executive Rik van Barneveld must feel burnt perhaps as much as former Land Transport Safety Authority Director David Wright, when LTSA was abolished, largely because of ongoing political disenchantment with its performance. Now Transit is in the gun, and while not blameless, it is more the fault of Ministers who would not let the system do what it is meant to do – Minister much prefer to meddle and interfere. Van Barneveld must wonder what he could have done, as he has been adept in responding to Minister's calls, and he is far removed from David Wright, who had little understanding of how much the LTSA was hated by the public, and how much Ministers were concerned about this.
The announcement today that the government wishes to merge Transit New Zealand (which is responsible for operating the state highway network) with Land Transport New Zealand (which allocates funding to Transit and all local authorities for land transport) will be a disaster. You see, Transit and Land Transport NZ WERE the same entity until 1996 – it is the reason Transit has the name “Transit” which everywhere else in the world means “commuting”, because Transit used to run the state highways and allocate funding to, well, itself and local authorities.
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The problem before was that, as is unsurprising, if you are a funder and a provider, you’ll fund your own activities first, and treat the bids for funding from the 85 local authorities as secondary. So Transit was split, and Transfund was set up as a specialist independent funding body. Transfund has since been merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority to become Land Transport New Zealand. However, in recent years Land Transport New Zealand/Transfund has been less than proficient at holding Transit to account for its spending decisions. Why?
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Firstly, contrary to official advice, Labour has refused to remove common board members between Transit and Transfund/Land Transport New Zealand. Jan Wright and David Stubbs were until recently, Chairs of Land Transport and Transit respectively, but also sat on each others Boards. Garry Moore incredibly, as Mayor of one of the local authorities that bids for funding from Land Transport New Zealand, is on the Board of Land Transport New Zealand AND the Board of Transit. Now this isn’t intended to cast aspersions on any of these people, but how can you expect Land Transport New Zealand to hold Transit to account, when it has common board members.
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Furthermore, the ability to hold Transit to account has been severely compromised by Ministers telling Transit what they want. Transit isn’t simply sitting back and evaluating what projects need building, it is getting political direction that Ministers expect certain projects to proceed because Ministers think they are a good idea. Of course when there are political expectations, costs go up and when contractors understand that there are political expectations, they ask for whatever they want from Transit – then Transit asks Land Transport New Zealand, and it is also expected to fund what Ministers want (even though legislation is meant to ensure Land Transport NZ is statutorily independent from Ministers).
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One of the criticisms of Transit has been that costs have got out of control, when in fact, this is the fault of a combination of:
- the Land Transport Management Act (blame Labour, Greens and United Future) for encouraging expensive “green plating” of road projects;
- Land Transport New Zealand for not being pro-active in disciplining Transit as to how much project scope creep should be limited;
- Ministers who wanted projects progressed with little regard for cost;
- Transit itself, when statements were made that projects should be progressed “regardless of cost” (in reference to Transmission Gully), in addition if Transit was unhappy with either Land Transport NZ or the Ministry of Transport’s monitoring, it would meet with Ministers directly. Indeed, government appointed board members would always have direct access to Ministers, overriding the independent advice of officials.
- the Clark Labour Government attitude to official advice that went contrary to policy, which tends to suppress the “free and frank” expression of views that officials are meant to be able to share. In this environment, telling Ministers that the people they have appointed (e.g. the President of the Labour Party) are not doing their job properly would have been a CLM (career limiting move). The introduction of a regional fuel tax is a classic example, it failed miserably in the past, but Ministers did not want to hear advice on this.
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By contrast, what should happen is that Transit is entrusted to manage the state highway network, identify problems (congestion, safety, inefficient routes) and prepare a programme of works, evaluated on the basis of cost and benefit, and present these to Land Transport NZ for funding. Land Transport NZ should, when looking at Transit’s programme and the programmes of the 85 local authorities, prioritise spending across them all – with reference to the government’s strategic transport objectives.
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In the past, when economic efficiency was the primary measure of spending on roads, in most cases the best projects, for the money, were implemented. There was a tendency to be risk averse and not advance more expensive, high risk urban road projects, prioritising rural realignments and the like. However, by and large, the system did ensure high value for money, and kept control of costs. It was helped by any increases in funding being rather discreet and progressive.
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Today, economic efficiency is only one factor in deciding what roads to build, and Labour has increased funding for roads many many times over, at a rate which has been inflationary. In short, Labour has so dramatically increased funding that Transit has been stretched to get things going – and that stretching has meant more staff, more contractors and the contracting industry demanding more and more to meet demand. You don’t go from having only two large road projects under construction in Auckland at any one time to eight without the cost going up. ^
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The only bright side of the announcement is that all fuel tax revenue will be dedicated to the National Land Transport Fund. This should be welcomed, and in fact is simply applying 2005 National Party policy. The other point to note is that National Spokesman Maurice Williamson has it dead right – which also should be welcomed. Maurice should know what he is talking about, he was the Minister who split Transit up in the first place! Kudos for Maurice for taking a responsible stand on this.
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The Greens will like this, because they don’t really believe in financial accountability and economic efficiency and will hope that Transit’s road engineer culture will get watered down – when they should be considered that the new entity will prioritise state highways over everything else. The Greens have long hoped they could dramatically change transport policy, they have, as well as presided over the biggest road building programme New Zealand has seen since the 1960s. I suspect that Peter Dunne wont care as long as Transmission Gully gets funded (since it is his own pet piece of prime pork), and neither will Winston care as Harbour Link (Tauranga's second harbour bridge) has already been funded (Winston's pork).
21 May 2007
What's next
Will the NZ Maori underclass get as bad as the British white trash underclass?
Why is there no history department at Rongotai College?
What does Mark Blumsky do to bring the government to account and demonstrate National is a government in waiting?
Why is it ok for the Australian women's soccer team to tour North Korea but not the Australian one-day cricket team to tour Zimbabwe? Is it because enough Zimbabweans are fortunate enough to live in Australia, whereas North Koreans are few and far between? or is there an inkling of truth in Mugabe's comment that this is racist?
Why does the 38 By the Sea Motel in Petone bother having Prime TV tuned in, when the reception is so shite, even though there is a clean line of sight to the transmitter tower?
Why are there Tararua, Masterton, Carterton and South Wairarapa District Councils, within one hour's drive between them all?
By what measure of naivety does anyone think that boy racers can be stopped unless either:
1. Boy racers are rounded up and put in prison until their balls drop and they are useful;
2. Roads are privatised and road owners face nuisance lawsuits from adjoining property owners unless they charge boy racers enormous tolls;
3. Brainless bimbettes stop seeing the measure of boy racers' cocks in the way their (largely) sad little mass production cars look like tacky white trash bogan wet dreams;
4. A culture of respect, personal responsibility and guilt for hurting, harming or disturbing others is inculcated by the education system and parents.
This blog is about to be revamped, revitalised and a new life, purpose and energy put into it.
It is time to suck the marrow out of life.
07 May 2007
Sarkozy isn't Thatcher
04 May 2007
Blair wont be too upset
In conclusion, while more results are coming in (too soon to make a call on Scotland), it was a general swing towards the Tories and away from Labour (and the Lib Dems). Natural this far into a government that has been in power for 10 years. Nothing too dramatic.
03 May 2007
The Union or nationalism?
02 May 2007
Memories
01 May 2007
Tyranny of distance
26 April 2007
Stupid celebrities
Anzac Day
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Not PC has made most of my points, in that war is the second worst state of being for any country. The only thing that would've been worse than World War 2 is surrender.
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Very few people in New Zealand today lived through war – directly. I don’t mean the country being at war, but the fighting being far away, which in itself is bad enough for the families of those fighting – but war on your doorstep. In that respect New Zealand is fortunate because of its isolation from invasion. Australia is less fortunate. East Asia carried a tremendous cost during World War 2, and subsequently in Korea and Vietnam specifically. The UK bore a high cost in World War 2, though this was little compared to the cost born by citizens of most other European countries (with the exception of those too gutless to do anything to fight the evils of fascism – there is nothing honourable in neutrality in World War 2, how can it be moral to be indifferent to the bigoted murderous tyrannies of Nazi Germany or militarist Japan?).
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Those who have lived through war have seen many things most of us would choose to not think about. The destruction of buildings, places, utilities we take for granted, the fear of being bombed or shot, the disintegration of normal life in pursuit of day to day survival and avoiding death. When all people do is that, there is little capacity to build, grow or have recreation. At worst, war sees the death and injuries of people, day after day. It is not like a one-off accident, because in war most of the deaths are deliberate. The enemy is out to destroy you, to destroy the means to retaliate, it is out to defeat you so it can conquer and pillage.
Consider how the allies treated Germany and Japan after the war, how its citizens were treated, cities rebuilt, infrastructure repaired and modern thriving peaceful liberal democratic countries built. Consider how Germany and Japan treated those who it conquered. It was true imperialism, at best pillaging the natural resources, at worst executing the local population or using them for military experiments.
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The so-called “peace” movement would have you surrender for that. It is not that different from saying you shouldn't defend yourself against a murderer, rapist or thief - because you don't want to hurt the source of the harm.
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Liberal democracies don’t go to war lightly. Wars are expensive in terms of money and lives, and unpopular. Liberal democracies go to war in defence of themselves and their allies. Korea and Vietnam were both about that. In the first instance the war ended roughly at the same point as where it started, before North Korea attempted its conquest of the south. In Vietnam, the non-communist allies were so incompetent and unpopular that none of what the West could do saved a rotten regime from being conquered by another rotten regime, which was more popular. More recently, Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been engaged in war had their respective government not started them by their own aggression.
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I understand why people oppose the glorification of war, but ANZAC Day does nothing of the sort. Those who reject commemorating it are happy enough to have the day off work, and are happy enough to enjoy the freedoms protected by those who did fight.
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Those who do not recognise that are either naïve, stupid or sympathetic to tyranny.
25 April 2007
Regional petrol tax (sigh) again?
So a regional petrol tax is proposed for Auckland, a really stupid idea.
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Why?
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1.Last time it was tried (early 1990s by National, but don’t expect them to remember it) to help fund Auckland and Wellington public transport, the oil companies levied the tax across the country at a level equivalent to what it necessary to raise the same revenue from only Auckland and Wellington. Why? Because petrol is taxed at the “border” it is the equivalent of a customs duty, and it is was administratively simpler to simply apply it to all petrol sold across the country. Unless a new retail sales tax is applied to petrol on top of fuel excise duty, and oil companies are legally forced to charge it in Auckland alone (better define that), this tax is likely to be applied to the whole country at a lower rate.
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2.Even if it IS applied to Auckland only, it will kill off service stations not far from the Auckland “border”, after all, why would you fill up in Pokeno if you could go to Mercer and pay 10c a litre less?
3. If you have a diesel or LPG vehicles you pay NOTHING extra. Why? Because diesel vehicles don’t pay a fuel tax (because the majority of diesel is not actually used on the roads, and a diesel tax for road use would mean a refund scheme for that diesel), but instead pay road user charges (which charge according to distance and weight). Since road user charges are bought in advance, and there is no way of detecting where in the country they are bought (or used), expect sales of diesel cars to go up in Auckland to avoid the new tax.
4. The money raised isn’t to be spent on roads, but on a rail electrification scheme that at the very best could serve perhaps 10% of Auckland commuters (though so could improved buses at a small fraction of the cost). 87% of Aucklanders don’t work downtown, and around 40% of the remainder wont be anywhere near a railway station. Perhaps an additional 2% work near a station outside the city, but in short this project will do next to nothing for most Aucklanders – except those living near a station who work in town and would rather ride a train than a bus.
This tax is to force you to pay for most of the cost of their journey to work, because the fares raised from these trains pay around a third of the operating costs, and they wont pay a cent towards the capital costs.
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This idea is going ahead, despite official advice, because Helen Clark wants to electrify Auckland rail – it’s like a toy, a big expensive toy she wants to leave for Auckland and be remembered for it. Despite record levels of transport funding through both road user taxes and Crown funding through Land Transport New Zealand (LTNZ), it is telling that LTNZ is NOT willing to fund electrification of Auckland rail. This tells me it is an inferior project to all of the other road and public transport projects that it funds, remember it is spending $2.3 billion this financial year, this is 2.5 times the funding it allocated in the year Labour got elected, and this is after Labour changed the legislation around LTNZ so that public transport projects could be funded at a lower threshold for appraisal than road projects.
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The Greens will support it because they have a fetish for electric trains – the economics don’t matter, it is a matter of pure faith that forcing people to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for trains they will never use is “good”. It is a matter of faith that this will reduce congestion, even though there is a not a single city in the new world that has electrified an existing railway service and seen traffic congestion reduce on the parallel corridors because of the electrification. If you can find, please show me the report on the marginal congestion costs for the parallel corridor before and after the electrification – because I actually would like to see the conditions necessary for that TO work.
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This is about totems – Helen Clark and Michael Cullen are building a electric network of totem poles in Auckland, paid for by a stupid tax that is probably going to be paid for by all petrol motorists, but not paid for at all by around 15% of Auckland motorists who don’t use petrol. Setting aside the foolishness of heavy subsidies for public transport, a network of bus priority lanes across Auckland and luxury buses could do nearly the same job for a fraction of the price – but no, we must bow down to the altar of the railway.
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Auckland is not London, Paris or New York, where new electric metropolitan railways can make a difference (in a few cases). Auckland’s entire rail network carries 3.8 million trips a year with around 70 carriages, in London the Waterloo and City tube line (perhaps one of the least used) alone carried 2.5 times that with 20 carriages (and no the tube cars do not have 3.5 times the capacity of the Auckland ones, they would be lucky to be able to carry double).
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That gives you some indication of the difference in economics.
By the way, you already pay a 0.66c a litre tax to every territorial authority in the country (it's the same for them all making it easy to distribute), you might ask Auckland City Council and all of the others whether they spend their share on transport? Go on, few of the so called journalists in the New Zealand media can be bothered to research these things you see.
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Oh and why are Auckland roads congested? Simple. Everyone pays the same to use them regardless of demand - it is tragedy of the commons. Singapore charges according to demand and congestion is kept at a low level - but no doubt most of you think public ownership and funding of roads works, even though virtually everywhere it happens you get chronic congestion in major cities.
nрощальное Boris
19 April 2007
Remembering NZ culture
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Virtually no sign of it appears online, except kiwis asking about it.
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Someone must have a video recording of it somewhere, or have acted in it or the like. How good (or bad) is TVNZ in archiving its past?
Tough on youth crime?
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His punishment? 3 months supervision. He’s away laughing, the poor bubba.
Look how effective the criminal justice system is. The NZ Herald reports he had first embarked on a criminal life five years ago. At 11! Last year he faced 43 motor vehicle, burglary and theft charges.
43!
So every time he steals, violating people’s property and their lives, he’d get the proverbial wet bus ticket and be told “don’t be so naughty”, and he does it again and again.
This time he deserves ten years. Ten years will deny him a good part of his youth, given he has denied life to others and doesn’t care. Meanwhile his parents can be sent the bill if they think he isn't a grownup yet.
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Either he is a child and they are responsible, or he is an adult and can be punished. How much damage can an individual cost in terms of property, people's personal wellbeing and time before you decide that it is time to protect people from a petty thug.
18 April 2007
Women are special according to AA
Congratulations Tesco
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Tesco has made a record profit of £2.6 billion. I would like to say simply – well done! This is a 20.3% increase in profit on last year, with a 10.9% increase in sales. Why has this happened? Two reasons:
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1. Tesco is selling what people want to buy at a price they are willing to pay;
2. Tesco runs an efficient tightly managed operation that keeps costs down low (and as a result avoids waste).
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Tesco has not got a statutory monopoly, or a de facto monopoly (there are plenty of shops selling the different merchandise Tesco sells), nor is it subsidised (unlike many of its suppliers, such as European farmers who whinge and moan about their buyers wanting a good price – which effectively means they want consumers to pay more).
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Britain is the only country I know of that considers a market with four major retailers, all competing vigorously on quality and price, and umpteen smaller retailers, a “monopoly problem”. What is DOES have is an envy problem, arising from middle class Guardian reading, Radio 4 listening wankers who decry that Britain doesn’t always have the smattering of small, high priced, low variety shops that add so much quaintness to the shopping experience – while at the same time they sneak off to Waitrose to get their organic mungbean surprise (or whatever).
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Tesco succeeds for the most democratic of reasons – people choose to shop there. Despite all of the media bashing by the envy classes (who look down their nose at the average family who simply want cheap good quality groceries, instead of locally grown or fair-trade organic, hand made, in season chelseaberries), shoppers have voted with their pounds and pence. It is a more honest expression that any vote at any election.
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You don’t see people traipsing into Tesco begrudgingly wishing that everything wasn’t so expensive, or the selection were better or that the queues were shorter, like they do with the state owned Post Office here in the UK. They go out of choice. Within 15 minutes walk of my place I can choose Tesco, Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury’s or Budgens, and a smattering of smaller retailers each of whom sells some of the things those shops sell, usually at a higher price, and sometimes at better quality. I go to Tesco when it offers the best deal for what I want.
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Tesco is a highly successful British company embarking on a worldwide expansion. The sort of expansion that should make it and its shareholders proud. The global presence usually seen in large firms from the USA, Japan, continental Europe and the like – you know the flipside of those who bemoan how the British car sector has largely disappeared. They forget that Britain’s recent economic success has been on the back of the service sector. Long may it grow.
17 April 2007
Green fascism
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“In a world of poverty and starvation, to spend $109,000 on a gas guzzler is downright wrong in my opinion. If you’ve got that much money spare, donate it to Oxfam and get a normal car.”
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Why stop there? Why should you own a boat, or indeed a holiday home, or a second car, or how about designer clothing, or how about a house that has more bedrooms than the number of inhabitants, or how about that overseas holiday?
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It is comments like this that simply want me to tell the likes of Russel Norman to fuck off.
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Besides how leftwing and deluded Oxfam is on many things, what right does he have to tell anyone how to spend their own money?
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If I want a luxury car, then so be it – I am likely to get something called pleasure from it – happiness, and I’m willing to pay for the petrol. I am not making Russel pay for ANYTHING, it is my money. Besides the lump of taxes the state gets from this exercise (which Russel will happily want to decide on where that is spent), it employs people producing and maintaining the car, but most of all – it is MY life.
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Russel may think he knows best how to run other people’s live, to dictate how they spend their money, to give people guilt trips about spending money on what he thinks is “wrong” vs what others like. I think fairtrade goods are a complete scam, hiking up the price of products so that everyone along the way can cream an “over market” premium, whilst encouraging poor people in developing countries to produce goods that are in overproduction. However, Russel probably buys them. I think it is a waste of money to buy anything produced by Michael Moore – a socialist fatcat who flies first class and enjoys the high life while bleating on about poverty that he never actually experiences. I also think it is downright wrong that ultrarich “celebrities” vomit forth platitudes about “saving the planet” and making average citizens feel guilty, while they consume goods and services without that guilt.
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The problem is Russel has the strange Green religious obsession about being “anti-car”.
Want to be forced to fund political parties?
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Whatever way you cut it, this is compulsory funding of political parties.
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Nobody spinning this one way or another can escape that it is making you pay for the activities of a voluntary association that you may or may not have ever chosen to join or support financially.
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You might ask why everyone isn’t forced to pay for all other voluntary associations?
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You should. You’ll be told “that would be ridiculous and unaffordable”, and that would be correct.
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You next question should then be – why should I be forced to pay for YOUR voluntary association? Why is YOUR one more important than mine?
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You may ask why the proposal is NOT that all political parties should get the same amount of money, after all, the advocates of this often go on about equality, and how unfair it is that some have more than others. They spit out their own jealous venom at those who are richer than others. However no, the biggest recipients will be the two encumbents
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You may ask what the proposal means for you wanting to fund a campaign by your own money – remember it “your” money. Money you haven’t stolen, defrauded or cheated from anyone else, but money you have property rights over (something politicians don’t often understand).
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In North Korea, Ceaucescu’s Romania, and indeed under any totalitarian government, the one think people could never escape was politics. In a free society it is something people take for granted. You need not vote, you need not be a member of any political party, in fact you can enjoy getting on with your own life peacefully.
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Those of us in politics sometimes think that those who are completely outside it and do nothing about it are stupid, naïve or even lesser people as a result. In fact, some of those outside politics simply think there is something more interesting than choosing or supporting people who, by and large, want to tell others what to do. Unfortunately those outside politics make the biggest mistake by thinking it will all be ok, until they find some politician has actually interfered with something that matters to them.
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I have voluntarily supported several political parties in my life, including one very small one. One reason I never joined a trade union was because I refused to support the Labour Party by proxy (another was because I didn’t think it offered me anything).
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Political parties have come and gone in New Zealand’s history, and maybe one day Labour and National will go too. The spectre of this has haunted both parties quite recently, but survival is a fairly strong incentive to change.
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I don’t care which part of the political spectrum you come from – it is absolutely immoral to force private citizens to pay for political parties – organisations that are not publicly elected, and are not accountable to anyone for their activities.
People elect political parties based upon the individuals put on the party lists and a desire for those people to govern – but they do pay taxes to fund government NOT the parties. It is the job of MPs to represent the views of their electors and to govern or to oppose. That is what they are paid to do. We do not pay political parties directly through taxes because it opens the door to corrupt, biased funding that nobody can be clearly accountable for.
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Quite simply, if a political party cannot convince people that it is worth funding by their own choice, then by what twisted logic is it moral to force them to do so?
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The argument that “the Labour Party exists for your own good” does not wash – in fact it is eerily reminiscent of the attitude taken in one party states. Now "the two main parties are good for you, and the smaller ones a bit less good for you, and the smallest not at all".
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And no, the fact that some other countries do it is not a rebuttal. In fact is the argument of a person without an argument – it is like the child who tells his parents “but Johnny’s parents let Him do it?”.
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So that is it – do you want to be forced to pay for political parties? And if so, why aren’t you paying for them now? Why can’t you and your supporters convince people to choose to pay for political parties?
16 April 2007
French Presidential elections - Sarkozy please...
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France inspires romance, and has an arrogance than in many ways can be understood. It is little coincidence that the term “joie de vivre” seems to mean more in French than its English translation. Examples of French prowess continue to impress, such as its recent achievement in rail engineering (who can fail to be impressed by a rail speed record of 575 kph– albeit at a cost the French media tends to ignore. France’s relative wealth has been static for some time, it simply has a state and an economy that is not conducive to new business, tends to ossify large state owned infrastructure companies, shielding them from competition. This economic stagnation is not yet fully reflected in its social services. Healthcare continues to be the envy of many in Europe, but growth last year was the 2nd lowest of any EU member state.
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France’s malaise can be seen in how it has slipped in per capita GDP (PPP basis) to between 17th and 23rd depending on measurement, leaving it rivalling Italy for being bottom of all western European states besides Spain and Portugal. 25 years ago France was 7th, a parallel somewhat akin to the slide New Zealand suffered from being 1st or 2nd in the 1950s to being 22nd by the 1980s.
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Unemployment remains high at 9%, exacerbated by labour laws that make it difficult to fire, that keep the working week at an underproductive 35 hours by law, while the fiscal situation has bled red ink for some time. Public debt at 66% of GDP is costing more and more of the high tax take. The rejection of the EU constitution was the delivery of two messages, one was the curious hard left anti-globalisation message that rings strong in France and which is about hanging onto what France has. The other was a rejection of the status quo, fed up with the Chirac years of saying much but doing little.
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So for many in France this time the Presidential elections are about the decisive question about what happens about the French economy. The 2002 election saw the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin fail to oust racist old fool Jean Marie Le Pen from the runoff, so that the runoff election was a case of Chirac being the lesser of two evils. This time Le Pen is still promoting his filth. However there are three other serious candidates.
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The poll leader is Nicolas Sarkozy, who is touted as the Thatcher of France, but frankly if he proves to be as liberal as Blair it will be a surprise. He plans to liberalise labour laws, lower taxes, cut public debt and give universities more autonomy. He clearly is the only candidate interested in serious reform, and the fact he remains ahead in the polls indicates a substantial French acceptance of the need. He wants a new slimmer EU constitution, which is clearly welcome.
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Closely behind is Segolene Royal, the socialist candidate who has consistently been behind. She, by and large, represents the past, including increasing the minimum wage, pensions, abolishing flexible employment contracts for small firms and create half a million subsidised jobs. She wants a big socialist EU, though her weirdest comment has been “Chinese courts are more efficient than French ones”. Her plans are expensive, she wants new public housing, a big spend up on education, on other words she is promising much with no way to pay for it.
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The possible dark horse is Francois Bayrou, a centrist candidate who embraces some modest reform, he wants fiscal prudence, mild tax cut, but would also renationalise gas and electricity utilities, and is a huge fan of agricultural subsidies. He polls closely behind Ms Royal.
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So next weekend the question will be, who will be in the runoff. Most likely it is Sarkozy vs Royal, in which case Sarkozy will probably win. If it is Sarkozy vs Bayrou, Bayrou may win.
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However, from a libertarian point of view there is little to be cheerful for, but to hope that for the sake of the French economy, the EU and international trade, that Sarkozy wins. As the man least enamoured about subsidies and a big EU, he is likely to be most conducive towards moving on trade in agricultural commodities in coming years, and to reject the big bureaucratic centralised EU that is the dream of many European socialists, keen to snuff out diversity across the 27 member states.
14 April 2007
Stupid and evil
Hong Kong
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I don’t care – it’s a fantastic way to break up a trip between NZ and Europe. It beats Singapore for shopping hands down, and climate – a perfectly pleasant 18-23 degrees not the stinking humid 30 degrees, as well not being the stuffy fear driven smiling face of nanny state.
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Yes there were things to complain about, the smog, the annoying little South Asian men offering “copy watch” or “copy bag” every 15 seconds or so in Kowloon (glad I stayed on Hong Kong Island), the preponderance of utter crap in the night markets that would suit chivvy/bogan Brits to their white stilettos and baseball caps. However it has awoken me to some of the splendour of Chinese culture, the appreciation for education, hard work, respect for the elderly, and the fact that as I was taller than most people they simply got out of my way (and I’m only 5’10”). I wonder, do elderly people get mugged and murdered and raped there? Do children get neglected and ignored by whinging trashy parents demanding more money from the government while they sit on their arses?
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In addition, I noted that there is no competition law in Hong Kong - though there is much discussion about it, but also department stores and malls have a tendency to have competing shops or franchises for similar products (e.g. bedding, clothes). It may be unconnected, but somehow Hong Kong has found ways to avoid free market capitalism being this monopolistic behemoth that so scares the left.
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So given the variety of options to fly to Hong Kong from London, cheaply (particularly Air NZ, Virgin, BA and Oasis which all offer either premium economy or cheap enough business class to make the 12-13 hours tolerable), I can see HK being an annual trip.