Government announces annual transport funding programme

Land Transport New Zealand (the government's land transport funding agency until now) released its final National Land Transport Programme outlining how it intends to spend your fuel tax, motor vehicle registration and licensing fees, and road user charges for the next financial year.

From 1 July it merges with Transit New Zealand, so that the funding agency gets to fund its own activities - whilst local authorities get to compete with that. Yes, Labour has reversed some of the transport reforms of the 1990s which ensured transparent competitive bidding for transport money. After all who needs to ensure value for money, or accountability when you can have one big behemoth of a bureaucracy.

$2.439 billion from the National Land Transport Fund, plus around $220 million extra from taxpayers. Yes Labour is spending your motoring taxes on transport.

$908 million is for routine maintenance of roads, the administration cost of the relevant agencies (which isn't small), the Police policing the roads (see this is managed separately but is very hard to get accountability for), and research and development associated with managing road networks.

Another $402 million is for periodic and preventive maintenance on roads, which is about renewing the whole surface (and includes bridges and the like). The precision of spending on maintenance is important and better than most countries (certainly better than the USA). Even so, Chris Olsen Chief Executive of Roading New Zealand (an industry association of contractors) says the maintenance spend is inadequate. Certainly it is at an efficient level, but it would be interesting to know if local authorities and Transit are concerned. The funding system should avoid underspending on maintenance, if politics is kept out of it.

Beyond that we have new construction with just over $1 billion being spent on roads, most on state highways. My only question is whether local roads are getting enough, especially since local authorities have to get around 45% of funds for new local roads from hard stretched ratepayers. There is a case for local road improvements being funded by road users, but ensuring local authorities are accountable for this is critical, and it is one reason I supported requiring local authorities to put their core arterial and collector networks into roading companies.

The Greens complain that not enough of road users' money goes to subsidise public transport, this year $325 million is going into it, which is nearly ten times the amount in nominal terms compared to when Labour first was elected, and $86 million more than last year. It is $100 million more than what is going into upgrading local roads - remember local roads carry half of all traffic movements and comprise over 80% of the network, but public transport's share of journeys is less than 10% nationwide.

On top of that another $49 million is to be spent on "community focused activities" (encouraging people to change travel behaviour), walking and cycling, and subsidising rail and sea freight. All activities that don't actually pay a cent into the National Land Transport Fund.

Now one thing politicians like to do with this announcement is claim that they are personally responsible for the decisions of a statutorily independent board for funding pet projects.

So it's worth having a look at this enormous document to see what really is happening with a handful of high profile projects. I thought I'd look at:

SH20-SH18 "Western Ring Road" in Auckland
Kopu Bridge replacement approaching the Coromandel Peninsula
Transmission Gully in Wellington

There are bound to be others that interest people, but well these all have a profile, some of which is undeserved:

Western Ring Route: Five sections of this route need completion, and money has been allocated to complete four of these. This will mean the Upper Harbour Motorway is finally completed allowing fast efficient trips between the North Shore and West Auckland bypassing Hobsonville. It also will mean a continuous motorway from the Southern Motorway at Manukau through to Mt Roskill, with a second Mangere Bridge relieving the bottleneck north of the airport. However it does still mean a problem between Mt Roskill and SH16 - the Waterview connection. The PM wants a massive tunnel to be built on this section (the only part of the route proposed for tunnelling curiously enough), when it could just be built on the level with overbridges like all of other sections. $5.5 million is to be spent investigating this further. All in all 4 out of 5 for the Western Ring Route, the parts worth building are being progressed at a fast pace. However there really has to be some sober thinking about the Waterview connection. Current estimates have it costing more than all of the other segments of the road built combined (and that is six individual projects), so one has to ask why this part has to be goldplated and greenplated?

Kopu bridge: $100,000 of funding to complete design. Nothing about starting construction. Hmmmm. Surely a 2 out of 5 for that, perhaps there are RMA reasons? Perhaps it too has become too expensive?

Transmission Gully: Well that $1 billion folly will get $1 million spent on completing the investigation phase, but more importantly $13 million on detailed design in the next year. That is serious money for design alone, but the total design cost is $41 million. That is more than the total road budget for some councils. So big money ploughing into it, but resource consents not yet achieved or enough property purchases. So maybe 3 out of 5 for progress, but it is an enormous waste of money.

It would be nice to think National will change things, will refocus funding towards projects that are economically efficient, less money on public transport just because it is "nice to do". It would be more nice for the Nats to change things to be more commercial, less political and seek the funding provision and management of roads to be decided based on what users want, not what politicians think is the populist "road of the year".

The Nats once did have such a policy - there is no good reason not to at least go back to that.

Police truce with mafia

This is how John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the UN, described the Bush Administration deal with North Korea in the Daily Telegraph today.

He effectively says the collapse of the concrete tower, dramatically presented to television is not as significant as the collapse of the Bush Administration's foreign policy:

"North Korea has violated every significant agreement ever reached with the United States, and all indications are that the North is again following its traditional game plan. It is quite adept at pledging to give up its nuclear programme, having done so several times in the past fifteen years. Not once, however, has it actually taken decisive steps to do so. Indeed, quite the opposite."

His article describes how North Korea has played the West as a fool, time and time again. There is no evidence that it has stopped any activities whatsoever, its announcement that it has nuclear weapons and the subsequent deal to NOT allow full inspection of its facilities and NOT dismantle its nuclear weapon stocks shows how North Korea continues to play.

North Korea had transferred nuclear technology to Syria, which both deny, even though the ample evidence that the infrastructure destroyed by Israel in Syria was almost identical in layout to the Yongbyon facility, and that the lead North Korean engineer working at Yongbyon had visited the facilities in Syria. Israel thankfully destroyed this facility, but don't expect the so-called peace movement to be grateful - many of them will only start to be concerned if a nuclear weapon goes off in Tel Aviv, but even then I'm sure that would be "Israel's fault".

Bolton warns:

"Europeans appear overwhelmingly to favour the election this November of Senator Obama, in many respects because his foreign policy is so congenial to their tastes. It may be comforting now to think that the unilateralist cowboys are about to retire to their ranches. It will be less so when we are all confronted, as we will be inevitably, with the continuing reality of Iranian, North Korean -- and other -- nuclear weapons programs."

There isn't an easy solution to North Korea. There is no military option as it would provoke an attack of devastating proportions. However, there should be no negotiation.

North Korea has only learnt through deterrence to not attack the South or Japan, since 1953, although it has repeatedly engaged in terrorist and espionage attacks. It is one of the most evil regimes on the planet - negotiating with child torturing scum is not likely to produce an outcome morally superior to deterring it with the trigger threat of annihilation. North Korea after all has no compunction whatsoever about letting around a million of its citizens starve to death, about having tens of thousands of men women and children be slave labour in gulags and executing those who try to leave. To think that a regime capable of such profound evil is willing to negotiate an end to having the ultimate means of threatening the world, is naive. North Korea is a regime we will have to wait out for death or a coup - meanwhile, let Kim Jong Il know that if he dares start a war, North Korea will suffer massive retaliation and this time South Korean, US and allied forces will go all the way to the Yalu River - and complete the job.

Bolger the sellout

As was widely expected the NZ Herald has reported Jim Bolger has become Chairman (I refuse to call someone who leads a meeting a piece of furniture) of Kiwirail. I shouldn't be surprised though, after all he was in the Muldoon Cabinet that orchestrated Think Big, he campaigned in 1987 against the reforms of Roger Douglas, campaigned in 1990 on getting rid of the National Super Surcharge and broke that promise, and opposed Winston Peters then made him Treasurer. He'd call it pragmatic, it's simply unprincipled. He doesn't need to become Chairman of the Clark government's latest acquisition, but Dr Cullen clearly loves it "Jim, we are lucky to have someone with your skills and your dedication to New Zealand on board with us,". Yep Bolger knows how to run a railway, after all he's been part of a government that ran it as a nationalised department, part of one that privatised it. Brilliant.

Dr Cullen also said "By bringing our rail system back into public ownership - following the buyback of the tracks four years ago - we will spare future generations from subsidising a private rail operator" Well we could just NOT subsidise them at all Michael, thought of that one?

Meanwhile Helen Clark has shown her intellectual might in saying "One locomotive can pull the equivalent freight of 65 trucks," Yet with all that, the 65 trucks can run without subsidy but the train can't, because Helen, the train needs a duplicate piece of infrastructure, and those wagons are nigh useless without being hooked up together with that locomotive, whereas 65 trucks can do 65 DIFFERENT trips, or the same trip - funny how there aren't that many freight consignments requiring lots of truckloads carrying the same goods at the same time to the same place.

Of course the Kiwirail board had to include the token unionist, Ross Wilson on its board. Look forward to Jim Bolger asking future governments for more of your money to prop up Kiwirail -

Maybe it should have a new slogan

"Your railway your money subsidising their freight and they're laughing"

Tunguska a century ago

I remember reading books when I was a child about the mysterious explosion, comet, meteor or whatever it was, that hit Siberia exactly 100 years ago today. Tunguska is now widely acknowledged by scientists to have been the site of meteoroid explosion or comet fragment.

The BBC has a good write up about it here.

"Some 80 million trees were flattened over an area of 2,000 square km (800 square miles) near the Tunguska River. The blast was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and generated a shock wave that knocked people to the ground 60km from the epicentre."

It took 13 years before any outsider is known to have actually visited the site, and another six years for a formal expedition to arrive (remember in 1927 the Soviet government had far more pressing things to do oppressing the masses and changing them into Lenin's new men).

As the article says, had it hit central London, the entire metropolitan area of Greater London would have been razed clear as far out roughly as the M25. It's a reminder that Earth is vulnerable to the flotsam and jetsam of the universe entering its atmosphere. Almost all of that burns up. Here is hoping that those watching the sky can warn us all sufficiently in advance and allow action to be taken - after all, a large object striking the oceans would be far more catastrophic than another one at Tunguska.

Of course there is also much interesting reading on the wiki post.

Mugabe the hero

Yes who is surprised he is attending the African Union summit, among his peers, a prick to piss on. According to the Times:

"He dined at a lavish luncheon given by his Egyptian hosts, hugged heads of state and other diplomats in the corridors and stayed at the Peninsula Hotel, one of the most luxurious in this Red Sea town. “Mr Mugabe is staying there as a courtesy by the Egyptian Government,” a hotel spokesman said."

Nice to see that aid being well spent Egypt - I bet the Bush Administration is highly amused!

At least Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga isn't accepting this charade. He wants Mugabe suspended "until he allows the African Union to facilitate free and fair elections". Italy has withdrawn its envoy from Harare, and calls for all EU countries to withdraw diplomats from Zimbabwe.

National's pork for sport

National has announced a policy - yes I know it's astounding really. Quite simply it wants to force you to subsidise one form of entertainment, one type of pastime, indeed one that is responsible for a remarkable number of ACC claims every year - it's sport.

Now I've nothing against sport, I mean what sort of person would do. It is the ultimate free choice, it is engaging in competition, it typically involves some combination of skill, physical agility, physical strength, endurance and tactical ability. People almost always do it because they enjoy it, the single biggest exception is when parents make kids do it, or schools do. In fact sport is so popular that once upon a time the All Blacks played for fun not money - yes really!

So something people enjoy, that attracts thousands upon thousands to volunteer their time to coach, tens of thousands to play and millions to watch and encourage, shouldn't need forcing people to pay for it, should it?

Well the Nats think so. Instead of giving you a bit more of a tax cut, they'd rather spend your money to prop up a sports club that has done alright without Nanny State, or to increase the price of sports equipment for schools (you see suppliers see Nanny State coming when they can make money from her).

So how does John Key justify this? Let's take some choice quotes from his speech:

"It's no great revelation that New Zealand school children could do with a bit more sport in their lives. Research shows that one in three of them are obese or overweight." Well John you could say they could do with a bit less KFC, or could simply walk to school or bike, they don't need sport per se. John gets worried easily though "(Parents) tell me their kids would rather sit in front of a computer than practice down at the nets. That's a real worry. It's something our country has to change." Well John we could always have a country full of software engineers who can pay to go to the gym from their 20s and 30s, or a country full of aspiring All Blacks - wait we have a lot of the latter already.

So basically he's worried about health - he could encourage more by cutting subsidies for public transport so kids walk and cycle more, but I doubt he'd say that of course.

So what will he do?

The key plank of his policy is to give schools more money for sport "We will ... give them sports funding to use as they see fit – be it buying equipment and uniforms, hiring sports co-ordinators, or paying for service contracts with local sports clubs. We will simply ask schools to ensure that any extra dollars we give result in more students actually taking part in organised sport." So in other words, schools will want to get bang for their buck - though you do have to wonder what organised sport is? How many kids actually play physical games of some kind that aren't really sports? If so, what's wrong with that, or do schools need to organise them! Don't you four kids be playing with a ball on your own, you must be organised! Organised!!

Hmm.

Then he wants to subsidise sports clubs to take on kids - after all it's better to do that than take less tax off the members isn't it?

But wait, John Key reckons he can spend existing money better, he goes on about how much money SPARC wastes now - which of course is a reason to stop taxpayer funding of it.

What's more disconcerting about National's proposal is that it has that tinge of Nanny State about it -the kind that authoritarian regimes like Nazi Germany, Maoist China and the like did with physical exercise. Nationalism, strength through joy and the like. Statements that sports means kids are "learning about teamwork and co-operation, about playing fair, and about winning and losing." really is quite nauseating. Teamwork and co-operation? Yes of course comrade, far better than individualism, hard effort, striving and competition. Though sport could be about all that too. Now there is a point of truth in saying "I think we can make a significant difference to troubled young people if we can get more of them playing sport." Well yes, but that's light years away from subsidising sport nationwide.

Yes I know it is light years away from that motivation, but really why the hell is it the state's business how people enjoy themselves? If the entire country gave up sport and started playing computer games or cooking well, reading and playing musical instruments why should it be the government's business?

You see sadly John Key has come to a similar conclusion as Labour, he just argues about the detail of government funding, but he says explicitly "it's clear that government has a significant funding role to ensure more Kiwi kids get hooked into sport"

No it's not John, just another reason to not vote National. Frankly I'd rather more kids got hooked on reading, and respecting the bodies and properties of others than wanted to whack a ball around.

Oh and National has more policy on subsidising entertainment, John Key said "I am not going to talk to you today about National's policy on high performance sport. Having medal winners as role models is a critical part of motivating young people to participate themselves." Frankly John, if you're going to tell the bulk of taxpayers that you want to force them to subsidise people who live their lives in professional sport and all of the glory and wealth that that brings, I doubt most taxpayers would want to listen, but if you want to adopt the Chinese, East German and Australian approaches of subsidising Olympic athletes, then why don't you do it with your own money?

As Lindsay Mitchell rightfully says:

"Look. Those children who want to be involved in sport already are. Those who do not can do without the brow-beating. This is just the worst confirmation of National being a bunch of socialists. The state owns you. You will be fit."

F'ing Tracksy

Yep I know I'm not the only one. The website I use to track who you all are, where you came from, where you went, what search engine words you used, what you looked at and who linked to me etc etc is playing up big time. Tracksy simply says I've logged out when I log on.

So I may have to go elsewhere, since I need a way to find out whether searches on urolagnia, getting upgrades, Jade Goody's tits (shudder) or the like remain popular or not. For those with blogs it is fascinating how people actually find it. Disturbing when you find a post on a rather nasty crime attracts hit from people looking for "crime porn", those that enjoy reading the graphic details of some nasty violent or sexual offence, providing courtesy of the media. Anyway, it may be time to choose another excellent little spy site to keep an eye on who you all are and what you are doing.

Kiwirail?

Yes you see according to the Dominion Post, that's the new name. Kiwis have bought it, kiwis will subsidise it.

Got to love "Insiders said the trains' new livery would include a "non-Labour reddish" colour as well as the yellow front and rear required for safety reasons."

Why does it NEED new livery? Can't we just wait until the current coat of paint needs replacing? We already have three sets of colours on the network, surely Kiwis can be spared the re-branding - or is there something political about the country suddenly having Kiwirail Red on trains all over the place? Just to remind you of who made you buy it back?

However, the name may not be wrong. Nowhere else in the world does a government name a national railway after an endangered flightless bird, that was ravaged by the modern world and which today, without enormous amounts of protection, would be eaten alive by predators. It is largely loved for sentimental rather than practical reasons, is almost never seen by the everyday public except in museums zoos unless they go out at night in certain places in the middle of the North Island (ok I know that's an exagerration).

Surely the funniest thing though is that when "Kiwirail" seeks to buy trains, most of the manufacturers will think it's some third world outfit that ships furry fruit about.

Oh well, wonder where the Toll people will be now, besides booking their winter holiday to the Northern Hemisphere thrilled they ripped off a small centre-leftwing government so royally, making a handsome capital gain AND keeping the profitable road freight business on favourable terms. Well done men, you wont find a Dr Cullen again that quickly elsewhere.

No Minister rightfully criticises the "pretence of man-on-the-street, good-cunt, ordinaryness", and yes what is wrong with New Zealand Railways or Railways of New Zealand. The acronym NZR was well known (and somewhat loved) for generations.

Nicky Hager author?

Nothing shows how unbelievably lazy too many New Zealand reporters are in the MSM than their treatment of Nicky Hager. The treatment being that he is somehow an impartial "author" who strikingly only seems to produce revelations of national interest in election year, as he now has done as reported by Stuff (in the same vein).

Hager has an axe to grind/barrow to push that is too obvious to anyone who is intellectually honest. He is a long standing leftwing activist. Trevor Loudon outed Hager a couple of years ago on his blog. He is no different from Ian Wishart, except Wishart holds a different part of the spectrum, a conservative one. I treat both the same way, some interesting revelations but in substance they are both muckraking to find something worth throwing at their political opponents. They are by no means quality investigative journalists or truth seekers.

Hager is a chardonnay socialist par excellence, a member of a wealthy family (though who knows if he spends any time sharing that wealth with the needy he apparently cares about). Reagan did once say that Jimmy Carter was so obsessed with poverty because he didn't have any when he was a kid, perhaps Hager is in the same vein.

Hager campaigned against US nuclear ships entering New Zealand waters, a campaign largely directed at undermining ANZUS of course wich had widespread leftwing support. His long term involvement with the so-called "peace movement" (or rather the West unilaterally disarm and the nice Soviets and Chinese are bound to follow...) and continued association with the far left surely bring his credentials into question.

The appropriate response by the National party should be clear - yes we have consultants assisting us with our campaign. However Mr Hager, given your strong interest in having a centre left government elected why should anyone believe you will ever give more than one side of the story?

Hager is a partisan hack - his affiliation is almost certainly that of the Greens given his behaviour. My question is when will the MSM actually describe him for what he is? He isn't just an "author", he is "author and leftwing political activist". He is no more objective and balanced on the National Party than Michael Moore is on the Republicans.

Deregulating education becomes Tory policy

Well at least a move towards the Swedish model, which the left in the UK, US and NZ all remain willfully blind about. The Spectator describes it in some detail. It was discussed, wholly positively, on the BBC today. In summary in Sweden:

- Anyone can set up a school, a charity, church, private trust or private company. It can operate for profit.

- The school must demonstrate it meets certain conditions for registration (committing to a bare curriculum), but can then teach whatever it wishes and however it wishes beyond the state defined minimum.

- Parents choose the school, and funding follows the student. Parents can change schools and funding follows.

In Sweden it is a roaring success, so successful that all political parties in Parliament support the policy, except the communists. It means that consumers (parents) have the power, the schools have to be attractive to parents and pupils, and that decisions on how teachers are paid and how schools operate are made at the school level (you can see how scared teachers' unions get when central bargaining gets undermined). Some government schools have folded as a result, some local authorities have sold schools - and the sky hasn't fallen in.

It would be a great step forward if this policy came to pass in the UK, it would be too much to ask for the New Zealand National Party to actually be so bold as to consider this. Wouldn't it?

Margaret Pope

Following the NZ Herald article by Margaret Pope, repudiating Dr Michael Bassett, I have a small tale to tell about her. Quite simply I actually knew her briefly at university at around the same time as her relationship with David Lange became public.

Margaret Pope was a mature student studying law at Victoria University. She was in the same contract law class as I and to give her fair credit, she was witty and quite clever. Certainly you could see how Lange's speeches could come from this articulate and well-read woman. I was 19 at the time admittedly and of course, several of us would have casual conversations about politics. She made it abundantly clear that she despised Roger Douglas, and was quite devoted to Lange. Of course none of us knew at the time that she was Lange's mistress, that would appear in the papers later that year (1989). Pope did not come across as some hard socialist, but she also was uncomfortable with the policy focus on economic liberalism, she was supportive of the anti-nuclear policy. My impression was that she was somewhere between the left of the likes of Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson, and the Mike Moore, David Caygill centre-right.

Of course what happened between Lange and Douglas was simply that Lange used a press conference to repudiate a Cabinet decision, an experience that was bound to critically undermine confidence by Ministers in Lange's leadership. Why Lange did so is never going to be known, for those of us on the liberal right, we will simply believe he lost courage to sell flat tax and many on Labour's left contributed to his doubt, Pope presumably was part of that. Those on the left are likely to believe it saved the Labour government from splitting apart. As always, speculation on history at this level is little more than mental onanism - I look forward to reading Bassett's book because he has often come across to me as being intellectually honest, despite some on the left who prefer insults to actually debating him. After all, there is ample evidence that Lange became beholden to the Labour left on the anti-nuclear policy, wrecking NZ's relationship with the US by forcing Lange to backtrack on a commitment to the US to allow a non-nuclear powered non-nuclear capable ship into NZ (the USS Buchanan), because the US still maintained its "neither confirm nor deny" policy - but then I guess it was ok for him to do that, and to overturn Cabinet decisions when it suits him, because it suited the left. Indeed, to this day neither flat tax or nuclear ship visits are on the agenda of either major party. I doubt whether this was due to machinations by Pope, but I also don't doubt that she was unhappy with the outcome.

No WE are not at fault Tapu Misa

Tapu Misa in the NZ Herald has claimed "We are all at fault for bad kids"

What rubbish. What a completely abrogation of parental irresponsibility. I'm not to blame at all, and neither are millions of others. Bad kids have themselves and their families to blame, not the amorphous cop out called "society".

You see she is claiming kids reflect the "values around them". Indeed they do, the values they see at home whether it be hard working courteous and loving parents, or lazy, abusive and hedonistic ones will speak volumes - but it isn't my fault. She paraphrases Plato rather ignorantly saying "Plato talked about the best of us being the wise and the virtuous, guided by the idea of the common good for the benefit of the whole community." You know, the philosophy that most dictatorship and autocracies have adopted? The idea of telling others what to do because it is in their interests.

She then goes into "we" mode. Who does she think she speaks for? "We" this "we" that. You don't speak for me Tapu Misa, so get rid of your "we" statements, when you mean "me". Or don't you even mean that, in which case, who the hell are you meaning? Why don't you like people having individual responsibility?

She says:

"we more enlightened beings place a higher value on individual success, as measured by the accumulation of wealth; we have nurtured greed, cynicism and the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake."

Do you? I think individual success is measured by the individual, as long as you don't seek to force others to make you live, you should live your life as you see fit. Why do you nurture greed and cynicism? By the way, there is nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure, as long as you don't infringe on the rights of others at the same time.

"We have been so intent on throwing off the shackles of religion that we have thrown out spirituality with the bath water, and with it the idea of morality, of the virtuous citizenry that a civilised society needs."

Have you? You said you went to church. Again, it's partly nonsense. There is a problem with ethical nihilism and a non-culture of hedonistic cannibalism. A culture fueled in part by welfarism, in part by cynical envy of the successful and a culture of blaming others for your own inate lack of self belief. That is more the point, but you're far far away from the solution. You see your article is about abrogating personal responsibility for one's own life and that of your children. I'm not at fault for other people's children. Maybe you need to go back to some rather simple points:

- When you have children you are responsible for them, that means materially, emotionally and spending time with them;
- The very basic values you should teach them are that they are in control of their life, but they should respect the right others have to control theirs. That means your property and body is your own, but so is everyone else's. It means you have to earn more, you have to be clever to do this, which means work;
- Success is up to you, live your life as you see fit, but respect the right of others to do the same. Do what makes you happy under these limits, and be proud, enjoy yourself, embrace and enjoy life;
- What other people think of you is not as important as what you think of yourself. Don't live for the sake of others, or how others will judge you, live for you, and let those you associate with be those who support who you are.

However, it's not as simple as saying "it's society's fault" is it?

Criminals clean up tagging

Remarkable really, I seem to recall this had long been an idea promoted - those convicted of relatively minor offences actually having sentences which do some good. According to the NZ Herald it's a success. Amazing.

The abortion debate drops a level

Now I am no friend of Ken Orr or the Right to Life movement, indeed it should be irrelevant what my views on abortion are - but the use of imagery that implies a threat to Ken Orr's life, as reported in the Press, is simply vile. The use of violence by a handful on the abortion debate in the USA is well known, and equally vile - it plays into the hands of the other side.

The debate is legitimate, those who wish to ban abortion advance the rights of a fertilised egg above that of a living person, those who wish abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy advance the idea that a foetus who could live outside a woman's body should be denied this, as its mother has that choice. Most of us think a line should be drawn between when the foetus has rights and the mother does - but the debate is important. Anyone who wishes to use force or threaten force in this debate (or indeed in any), has lost moral authority.

Barclays can go to hell too

You don't have to go far from home in the UK to find those who help prop up Mugabe's government and his Ministers, you see Barclays is banker for Mugabe's thugs and even buys Harare government bonds.

You see this is what it does:

"Barclays' Zimbabwean subsidiary lent the Mugabe regime $46.4 million (£23 million) last year through its purchase of government and municipal bonds and is one of the main contributors to a government-run loan scheme for farm improvements, the Agricultural Sector Productivity Enhancement Facility (Aspef). At least five ministers have received loans for farms seized from white Zimbabweans under the Aspef scheme, intended to boost agricultural production, which has collapsed since the seizures began

This statement defended its activities:

"[Barclays] services are critically relied upon by many of the 135,000 customers for their day-to-day operations to maintain access to banking and employment, with a benefit to the wider community. This continued presence brings the benefit of avoiding additional hardship [to that] already being experienced within the country."

I would love to know how in a country with inflation running at over 4,000,000% a year, Barclays can provide banking services worth anything to the average Zimbabwean? The local currency is worthless. It buys Zimbabwean government bonds, no doubt with foreign exchange. If it didn't participate in this market, the Zimbabwean government would have to go elsewhere, and funnily enough banks in friendly regimes like China are far from capable of undertaking the activities Barclays does.

So I'm going to find other insurance providers next week and cancel my policies. Barclays can royally get fucked. Like far too many companies today, it talks the talk about the value destroying bullshit called "corporate social responsibility", and plasters this nonsense on its website. It then has a description of the "operating environment" which ignores completely what is going on.

So go on Britain. Go take your money out of Barclays, tell them why, at this time of tight credit, it could do with a message that being bankers to those who encourage men to murder and abuse children is not ethical or moral. Barclays no doubt will claim that closing its operations will hurt locals, it may do so, but does this make up for continuing to help finance the murderous regime,to continue finance the loans to its thugs? When does it stop being moral to be bankers to dictators?

Mugabe was once a hero? Only in the heads of the willfully blind

James Kirchick in the LA Times wrote late last year about Mugabe's past, how it was whitewashed. You see the UK felt guilty for colonialism and the racist Ian Smith regime, so it tolerated the brutality of Mugabe. Kirchick wrote:

"over several years in the early 1980s, Mugabe executed what arguably might be the worst of his many atrocities, a campaign of terror against the minority Ndebele tribe in which he unleashed a North Korean-trained army unit that killed between 10,000 and 30,000 people.

Yet, even in the midst of these various crimes, Mugabe never lost his fan base in the West. In 1986, the University of Massachusetts Amherst bestowed on Mugabe an honorary doctorate of laws just as he was completing his genocide against the Ndebele. In April of this year, as the campus debated revoking the degree it ought never have given him, African American studies professor Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, who had been in favor of honoring Mugabe two decades ago, told the Boston Globe: "They gave it to the Robert Mugabe of the past, who was an inspiring and hopeful figure and a humane political leader at the time." Similarly, in 1984, the University of Edinburgh gave Mugabe an honorary doctorate (revoked in July of this year), and in 1994, Mugabe was inexplicably given an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II."

Mugabe humane? Only if your red coloured glasses mean you can't see the blood he spilt from the early years on. Anthony Daniels in First Post points out it is time Africa was liberated from its so called liberators. He says that "Nelson Mandela's description of the Zimbabwean catastrophe wrought by Robert Mugabe as a failure of leadership is a failure either of intelligence or of honesty, or of both. There comes a point at which euphemism turns into untruth; and Mugabe's regime long ago passed the stage of mere human error that the term 'failure of leadership' implies."

Noting that South Africa has only been saved from the same fate by the collapse of the Soviet Union:

"If the ANC had come to power with the Soviet Union intact - which would have been impossible without a civil war - it would have made contemporary Zimbabwe seem like a garden party."

Mugabe has done only what many other post-colonial African leaders have done. A fifth of the Zimbabwean population has fled; but a third of the population of Guinea, under the leadership of another hero of African liberation, Sekou Toure, fled. It would be difficult to say who was the worst liberator: the competition is so stiff. Africa is the one continent in which, with a few honourable exceptions, there has been little advance or progress in the last forty to fifty years. What Africa desperately needs is liberation from the liberators. But who is to do it without renewing the catastrophe?

Indeed - the great truth about Africa is not that the West has let it down, which it only has done so in part - with trade policies that have hurt it - but that Africa's post colonial rulers have, in most cases, used decolonisation as a path to personal enrichment. From kleptocracies to nepotistic autocracies, Africa has been let down badly - and only Western colonial guilt (with lashings of Soviet, Chinese and other third world Marxist support) has let that be. Mugabe is simply showing the bankruptcy of African Marxist liberation politics. Nelson Mandela stepped to one side from this because F.W. de Klerk was prepared to negotiate South Africa's transition to becoming an open liberal democracy, and because the Western world would tolerate or expect nothing less, when Gorbachev had destroyed the Soviet's totalitarian empire that once philosophically armed the ANC. Mandela's hero status in moving South Africa from the tyranny of apartheid to its tenuous relative freedom is deserved, but that is all.

He has let Zimbabwe down, and most of his ANC comrades continue to do so. His unwillingness to confront Mbeki and the evil of Zanu-PF surely stands out like a sore thumb. Yes he is an old man, and he may well have had his last public appearance - but he could have called a spade a spade. After all, who more than anyone could have changed events through his own words and eloquence, and who is more untouchable against Mugabe and his thugs than Mandela?

What is it going to take to stop tolerating Mugabe?

I write this post with rage, rage against Mugabe, the Zanu-PF murderous savages, rage against Thabo Mbeki the cheering lying handmaiden of Mugabe, rage against many of the fellow African "leaders" who care more for the wealth, privilege, status and power of their corrupt regimes than Africans, rage against the liberal left who fawned over Robert Mugabe, ignoring how his great heroes treated civilians in Matabeleland in the early 1980s. You see Mugabe's evil is far from new, but the spineless guilt over British racist colonialism from past generations infected the intelligentsia and the body politic with a wilful blindness at the time. Sadly Margaret Thatcher inherited a process that had gone too far to resist without inciting further civil war, and so Mugabe was handed Zimbabwe on a plate - for him and his savage comrades to slice up and swallow piece by piece.

So why am I angry? Look at the photo of Blessing Mabhena - he is 11 months old. This photo of him is on the front page of the Sunday Times. This is part of the account of what happened:

"There was a tremendous hammering on the door of her home. Realising that President Robert Mugabe’s thugs were hunting for her, Agnes Mabhena, the wife of an opposition councillor, quickly hid under the bed. It was too late for her to grab Blessing, her 11-month-old baby, who was crying on top of it.

“She’s gone out. Let’s kill the baby,” she heard a member of the gang say. The next thing she saw from under the bed was Blessing’s tiny body hitting the concrete floor with a force that shattered his tiny legs."

When all was quiet, she slipped out of the house with the baby to seek help in Harare. The 12-mile walk to Harvest House, the headquarters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), took most of the night. The building was awash with fleeing victims of the terror. But in the chaos there was nobody to get her to hospital. With a relative’s help, she eventually reached the Parirenyatwa hospital, where Blessing, so named because she and her husband thought he was a gift from God, was x-rayed.

These are the types of people Thabo Mbeki shakes the hands of, the people that the South African government tries to stop the UN Security Council from condemning, the people Nelson Mandela only says "are a tragic failure of leadership", the people that Barclays Bank provides offshore banking services for.

So what would it take to bring Mugabe down? It's quite simple. South Africa could turn off the fuel and electricity, it could impose sanctions on the Zanu-PF leadership and Mugabe's Cabinet and their relatives. It could lead a call that it will not recognise Mugabe's leadership and boycott attendance at the African Union summit if he goes. It could render him persona non grata and demand that a free and fair election be held, with peacekeeping forces sent in to ensure political rallies and voting is not subject to violence. It wouldn't take much.

Or it could do a Tanzania and simply invade, overthrow Zanu PF and hold elections itself, and hand power over. Zimbabwe's military would collapse if any serious effort was made to confront it. You see the ANC was far from opposed to foreign military involvement in the affairs of African countries when it was getting generous Soviet help. However, let's face it, if it is hard enough to get South Africa to condemn a murderous dictatorship, it wont confront it militarily.

The Sunday Times reports how in 2000 Mbeki openly said that Anglo-American imperialism was trying to overthrow Mugabe. That says a lot, a lot about what a Marxist thug Mbeki really is. He lied about "quiet diplomacy" which was really about him meeting his old mate Mugabe and then meeting the Tsvangarai to just say it will all be ok - it's like having your abuser's best friend mediate in your relationship. However, he isn't the only one. Namibia's foreign Minister reportedly said reports of violence in Zimbabwe during the elections are "unverified rumours".

However Botswanan President Ian Khama has reportedly reprimanded the Zimbabwean Ambassador (Botswana is one of the best governed countries in Africa), Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has criticised Mbeki's attempts at mediation and condemned the violence. Mugabe needs to be further isolated if there is to be any hope.

So as Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission claims Mugabe has an unassailable lead in the election, Deutsche Welle reports Bush calling for an arms embargo and travel ban on officials, whilst China's official Xinhua news agency reports the result as if it were normal, constitutional and legitimate, ending the report with the statement that there were hundreds of election monitors.

Nice one China, yep the Olympics are being held by a regime with great moral credentials.

So what's the bet that Mugabe will go to Sharm el Shaikh for the African Union summit, the same organisation that whitewashes what goes on in Zimbabwe. VOA has reported the G8 may not consider the regime legitimate.

Of course the best outcome would be to take Mugabe's own advice. He says only God can remove him from office, it is long overdue to try to at least accelerate the chance of a direct encounter - whoever can accomplish this will be one remarkable hero.

North Korea still in the Axis of Evil

Numerous reports this week said that North Korea is no longer in the "axis of evil" because of it being apparently compliant on destroying its nuclear programme - in fact the US Administration never said this at all. It was removed from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, notwithstanding that there is not the slightest evidence that it has stopped doing so.

Of course what to do about North Korea has never been easy. A state already isolated by its own choice is difficult to isolate further with sanctions, especially when China is its lifeline and has no interest in encouraging the regime to fall and the country to collapse completely. Military action was never an option, with North Korea's 1 million strong army, aged but ample cruise and ballistic missile defences, biological and chemical weapons arsenal all able to inflict mass death and destruction on South Korea, as well as Japan. North Korea is not Iraq, although the ability of North Korea to sustain a war for more than a few months is questionable, there is little doubt that within days it could slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in South Korea with impunity.

The great Clinton administration, admired and loved by the liberal left, did a deal with North Korea to subsidise a light water reactor and energy supplies if North Korea gave up uranium enrichment. North Korea lied (it's used to this, it does this daily to its entire population on virtually everything) and developed nuclear weapons anyway - almost laughing at the naivete of its enemies. New Zealand taxpayers were part of that dupe, paying NZ$500,000 for heavy fuel oil for North Korea- while it lied about its nuclear weapons programme. It was hardly a surprise, as there was never any incentive for North Korea to give up nuclear weapons development. Why should an evil totalitarian dictatorship surrender this enormous power potential to the rest of the world? After all, it brings attention and most importantly gives a bargaining chip second to none.

So Bush, far from saying it isn't a member of the Axis of Evil, did say according to CNN:

The United States has no illusions about the regime in Pyongyang," he said. "We remain deeply concerned about North Korea's human rights abuses, uranium enrichment activities, nuclear testing and proliferation, ballistic missile programs and the threat it continues to pose to South Korea and its neighbors.

Meanwhile according to the Sunday Times, China has ramped up its treatment of North Korean refugees to shooting them on sight. The Beijing regime is concerned that Koreans fleeing persecution may embarrass China during the Olympics so is stepping up efforts against them:

"The police are doing house-to-house checks for North Koreans in the villages and checking household registration papers much more thoroughly in the border towns... But the most effective new measure is a cash reward, which people believe can be £150 for informing on a North Korean in hiding"

They are sent back to North Korea if found, and placed in gulags to be beaten, used as slave labour or executed. This of course is far more brutal that Tibet, but you don't see many protests for North Koreans do you?

The Sunday Times also has an interesting article about the lack of clothing options available in North Korea's capital Pyongyang, derived from a Chinese report in the Chinese National Defence Journal. Central planners might admire North Korea's commitment to travel demand management, with forced spreading of working hours:

"Office starting hours are staggered between 7am and 9am to avoid the impression of a rush hour on the excellent public transport system. All employees must report half an hour before the official start of work to pledge allegiance to Kim Jong-il, the “dear leader”, and his late father, the “great leader”, Kim Il-sung. "

Sue Kedgley might admire the almost non-existence of private cars and...

"There is no advertising and the few taxis charge huge fares beyond the means of most North Koreans – twice as much as a taxi in Shanghai, for instance.... Only four colours of clothes are permitted: black, green, blue and white. The government distributes clothing fabric by rank, with an ordinary official receiving enough to tailor one new jacket a year. However, they may buy their own shoes."

The absence of capitalism, consumerism, the absence of waste - the lack of energy use. Think how gloriously environmentally friendly they are!

What about Obama's other spiritual mentors?

Much was made a few months ago about Barack Obama's connections with the preacher Jeremiah Wright - who had once said that 9/11 was the US reaping what it had sowed and that HIV may have been a conspiracy created by the US government. After first saying he disagreed with him, but that disowning him would be like disowning his grandmother, he then disowned him. Yet this isn't the whole story.

More recently, Obama had been criticised by the lunatic religious right for asking which parts of the bible should people look to for morality, specifically quoting Leviticus. Of course this is a legitimate question to ask, and plays well to secularists and atheists. It shows Obama as being thoughtful. However, Obama is not without spiritual mentors even though he has passed on Jeremiah Wright.

Another controversial figure is Father Michael Pfleger, a Catholic, who said Hilary Clinton had faked crying and felt entitled to be President because she was white - Obama condemned those remarks, but he and Father Pfleger have been friends for 20 years. Pfleger has long had radical associations.

However, Illinois State Senator James Meeks has been a more disconcerting mentor for Obama. A Baptist Minister, he has been a State Senator since 2003. According to the Chicago Sun Times:

"Another person Obama says he seeks out for spiritual counsel is state Sen. James Meeks, who is also the pastor of Chicago's Salem Baptist Church. The day after Obama won the primary in March, he stopped by Salem for Wednesday-night Bible study. "

He allegedly said that Brokeback Mountain was brought to us by Hollywood Jews, (and that wasn't a good thing). Two pieces of bigotry for the price of one. According to GayWired:

"A spring 2007 newsletter from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named Meeks one of the "10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement". The newsletter cites him as both “a key member of Chicago's ‘Gatekeepers’ network, an interracial group of evangelical ministers who strive to erase the division between church and state” and “a stalwart anti-gay activist… [who]… has used his House of Hope mega-church to launch petition drives for the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a major state-level ‘family values’ pressure group that lauded him last year for leading African Americans in ‘clearly understanding the threat of gay marriage.'” "

Furthermore:

"According to a 2006 Chicago Sun Times article, his church sponsored a "Halloween fright night" which "consigned to the flames of hell two mincing young men wearing body glitter who were supposed to be homosexuals." "

Charming. If it were John McCain with such links, you can be sure that the liberal left wouldn't leave him alone - but it is Obama. It remains odd that a man whose public statements are so liberal seeks guidance from bigots. The real question is, who is the real Barack Obama? Is he stupid and naive? Is he liberal, but gains something from a collection of bigots? Does he share the bigotry? Or is his strongly leftwing past (something many of his policies represent) simply shared by his spiritual friends (all of whom are strongly leftwing on the role of the state)?

Perhaps US voters should ask.

UK Labour gets 3.07%!

Henley is a rather nice village to the west of London, not far from Windsor. It is Tory heartland country. The Henley by-election was to replace Boris Johnson as MP, and so was always going to be a Conservative shoo-in, but Labour did not come second in Henley, or even third behind the Liberal Democrats (who did come second). No, the Greens, which have no representation in the House of Commons beat Labour. On top of the that, the fascist British National Party beat Labour.

That isn't a great reflection on the Greens or the BNP, Henley isn't some environmentalist fascist stronghold, they got 3.8% and 3.54% of the vote respectively. Labour only got 3.07%. Yes not 30.7%, the decimal point is right at 3.07%. More fascists felt there was a point to vote than supporters of the government.

Now Labour was never going to win in Henley, realistically a good third place would have been the expectation. By elections are a chance to vent. However fifth is utterly devastating. The gap between second and third is enormous - 27.85% for the Lib Dems being second and 3.8% for the Greens in third. Imagine being a member of Labour in Henley - you might ask why bother (you should!).

It is a slap in the face of the overspending, big government arrogance of the Gordon Brown administration. A government that signs the Lisbon Treaty, though it promised a referendum on an EU constitution, a government that continues to ratchet up fuel tax for general revenue, whilst expecting people to save and conserve.

What it says is that the government inspires so few, interests so few and its cloying behemoth of regulation, taxes, subsidies and nanny statism is contemptuous to so many. Now I'm not pretending the Tories are a great advancement, but Gordon Brown must surely be worried. A hat trick of failures - the local elections, the Nantwich and Crewe by-election defeat and now Labour fifth beaten by fascist white nationalists, where it should be third only beaten by the two other main parties. Labour lost its deposit in this by-election, perhaps Labour after Blair is rudderless and devoid of inspiration and philosophy - if so fine, but let's remove it from power.