T shirt banned by NZ censors

Warning content below may offend - seriously don't read any further if you are easily shocked....

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The tshirt concerned is from the band "Cradle of Filth" and depicts a woman dressed as a masturbating nun, with the words "Jesus is a Cunt". The woman concerned appears to be enjoying herself and her breasts are bare with her genitalia concealed only by her hand. I haven't placed a copy of the image here out of respect of Christian readers, because I want them to at least understand my point - and besides, Google will enable anyone to find the tshirt within minutes.

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The Office of Film, Video and Literature Classification (OFVLC) has deemed the tshirt is now banned. Yes banned. It is "grossly objectionable due to its obscene content" and so is injurious to the public good. Yes you can face imprisonment for possessing that tshirt now, whether or not you knew it was objectionable. You could also face imprisonment for selling it, giving it away, letting a child see it - in fact, that's it. You see "objectionable" places the tshirt on a par with child pornography - so a tshirt of a piece of art is cross the threshold of unacceptability like a video of a child being raped and murdered.

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Hmmm.

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I can see why some would be upset by the tshirt. The words on the tshirt would shock and offend any Christian - but then if there was a tshirt that said the same about Charles Darwin, Ayn Rand or myself, I might be shocked, but I wouldn't want it banned. I'd think less of the person who might wear it, but that's it. Hardly a reason to make it criminal. Words on a tshirt that are not defamatory (sorry Christians, Jesus isn't alive by any objective legal definition) should not be banned - they are words, they offend but do not harm. The Society for the Promotion of Community (of Christian Fundamentalists') Standards (SPCS)said the words are "grossly obscene and blasphemous language directed at the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is worshipped, adored. praised and revered as the central Person of Christianity". As Stephen Fry once said "so you're offended? So fucking what?"
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I am offended daily by the vileness of the actions and words of individuals and governments, I'm offended by people who don't wash and use the tube, I'm offended by foul mouthed yobs at 1am shouting outside our flat randomly, I'm offended by the BBC wasting money it took from me by force to pay exhorbitant salaries to people on commercially oriented programmes, I'm offended by restaurants that don't give me what i ordered. The world does not exist so governments can protect you from being offended.

The question I want to know, is that if it is illegal to have those words on a tshirt, is it illegal for me to even have them on this blog? Well US law protects me I expect given the hosting of this site - but if you can't write that phrase, then it has serious implications as to where the line is drawn on offending people through writing!

So what about the image? Was the woman in the image (I believe it was a photograph) forced to pose that way or reveal herself? If so, then there is an issue of assault and she would be a victim. If not, then let's think carefully - could she pose like that in someone's premises legally?

The answer is yes. There is no crime in a woman dressing as a nun, exposing herself and masturbating assuming she consents and is of age, which appears to be the case. So again, we are just talking about people who would be offended by the image. So let's deconstruct this. The person depicted on the tshirt isn't offended. The person buying or owning the tshirt isn't offended, but others not involved at all in the tshirt, except seeing it - are.

So we are to protect people from being offended from seeing an image that, in real life, would be perfectly legal to copy. This is rather unlike child pornography, where you are in serious criminal charges for attempting to undertake those activities in real life.

So why ban it? Well it appears the OFVLC is protecting Christianity and chastity, which seems rather strange as I didn't think it existed to do that. SPCS quotes this statement from the decision:

"The injury to the public good that is likely to be caused by the availability of this T-shirt originates from the manner in which it associates an aggressive and misogynistic meaning of the “harsh, brutal and generally unacceptable” word c### with Jesus Christ, and depicts an image of a chaste woman engaging in sexual activity. A fair interpretation of the messages conveyed by this T-shirt is that Christians should be vilified for their religious beliefs, and that women, including chaste and celibate women, cannot stop themselves engaging in sexual activity."

So there is injury to the public good simply by using a rude word with Jesus Christ? What if I say Kim Il Sung is a cunt? That will offend millions, but so fucking what?

The "image of a chaste woman engaging in sexual activity" is a curious description of something "bad". For starters the woman may not have been chaste, but was simply a model for the t-shirt. Secondly, the first sexual activity of all women is presumably when they are "chaste".

Does the tshirt say or imply Christians should be villified? Hardly. It is anti-Christ (careful use of the word), and depicts nuns as being sexual - which undoubtedly some are, and funnily enough the law doesn't criminalise them if they do or don't. However it isn't seeking oppression of Christians, it offends their primary prophet, but it is a stretch to say it villifies them. Does it imply that women cannot help themselves engaging in sexual activity? Well it implies the one on the tshirt can't, maybe some nuns can't, but then again, so what if it does? Would a tshirt that says "slut" and depicts a woman masturbating without wearing nun gear be criminal? Would a woman wearing a tshirt that says "i'm a slut" be criminal?

Let's be clear. I wouldn't wear this tshirt, I wouldn't listen to this band. I wouldn't be impressed by someone who did wear it, but the idea that you can be imprisoned for wearing it is frankly absurd and offensive.

I know many Christians will cheer this decision - but some of them wouldn't cheer if they faced the same offence for a tshirt that might say "gays carry AIDS" or something else that reflects their own beliefs but offends others.

Censorship law should simply not exist because people get offended, it should only exist to protect victims of real crimes. No crime was committed in the production of the tshirt design, so it should be nobody else's business.

You can ban anyone from your own property from wearing the tshirt and I have no objection to a mall owner or any other private property owner telling someone to leave if they wear the tshirt. That should be your right. However, to ban possession of the tshirt generally, across the board is absurd.

So in New Zealand, wearing this tshirt in your own room is a crime. However you can have a woman doing exactly what is depicted in this tshirt and it is wouldn't be.

By the way this tshirt caused an issue in Perth, WA recently. A 16yo has been charged with "offensive behaviour" for wearing it. Yes, the Police have their priorities right, and of course the Christian right is cheering on the prosecution.

Don't believe for a moment National would change this, or even ACT. Yes I know there are "higher priorities", but think about it. If someone in your family had criminal charges for owning this tshirt, buying it off Ebay and it being intercepted by Customs and the like - and presumably even downloading the image from the internet - would you still not care?

oh and what's to be banned next?

Hattip on this case to no less than the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards, forever cheering on the suppression of tshirts with dirty words and bare breasts.

Story of a couple of neighbours

One man with a kindly face, let's call him Mr. T used to do business with the man next door. He would sell him various things and the man next door was quite wealthy, he and his wife would regularly go on overseas trips and always wore excellently fitting suits. When they were away they'd have a nanny looking after the children. The man next door, let's call him Mr. R, had quite a family of kids. However he was rather cruel to them. Sometimes they would have nothing much to eat, sometimes he or the nanny would beat them, lock them in a room and hurt them again and again, and threaten them. Well this is what the kids told Mr. T, but he wasn't so sure that they hadn't provoked Mr. R. After all, the kids used to loved Mr. R, and he thinks the kids have some other friends who tell them what to think. He tries not to notice the blood, the screams and the fact that the odd kid has scrambled into Mr. T's yard looking for refuge and keeps hiding.

This has been going on for some time and the oldest kid (Master M) had had enough and has the support of the other kids to boot their father out. However, the father threatened the kids to be on his side, he told the nanny to beat them up unless they say how much they love Mr. R. Mr T. doesn't believe Mr. R would do such a thing and that it is lies spread by the outsiders, he says the oldest kid and Mr. R need to sit down and sort things out. However, when Mr T. leaves, Mr. R gets the nanny to try to catch Master M, put him in his room and gives him a thrashing for being obstinate and ungrateful. After all Mr. R has led the household for 28 years.

Things with Mr. R have been getting more difficult though. Some of Mr. R's kids have told others that a couple of the kids have been killed by the nanny or other staff, and the kids are sick of nearly starving all the time while Mr and Mrs. R go off to Italy, Egypt or the like. Mr. T says that the kids and Mr. R need to sort it out, and continues to try to help. Mr. R just tells the kids to behave or they will be thrashed, beaten, locked up and maybe something worse will happen to them.

The story isn't over though, because Mr. T has given up worrying about Mr. R's family. It's a surprise really because Mr. T and the club he belongs to used to care a lot about them 30 or so years ago when the nasty Mr. I looked after them, and treated them all as second class citizens and beat them up if they didn't stay in their place. Mr. R said they were equals and was somewhat loved for that.

Mr. T just thinks it is up to the kids to sort out whether Mr. R is head of the household or not, he doesn't care that Mr. R is armed, his nanny and housekeepers are armed, and he has killed a couple more kids to emphasise that he is in charge. The funny thing is the kids had a vote on it, and Mr. R told them that if they voted for Master M. they would all be thrashed severely, maybe even maimed or killed. Mr. R said they wanted him anyway. That was good enough for Mr. T.

Mr. T is happy believing Mr. R that the kids who he beats, starves, tortures, maims and kills want him to still run the household. He still sells Mr. R food, electricity, petrol and the like, and still has social meetings with him. He wont help the kids, they should figure it out for themselves.

Shame it's not fiction

The arts are too important to state subsidise

An excellent article in the Daily Telegraph by conservative columnist Simon Heffer (who is regularly disagree with) today argues forcefully for the arts, but equally so that state subsidies are corrosive not conducive to civilising society.



He talks of the view of composer James Macmillan:



"He observed that we are trapped in "a cultural regime which adjudicates artists and their work on the basis of how they contribute to the remodelling, indeed the overthrow of society's core institutions and ethics"; or, in sum, the view that "anything that is not Left-wing is intrinsically and irredeemably evil".



Furthermore: "He would tell me how he would attend meetings of the Society of Composers and sit aghast as profoundly untalented people sat around complaining about the lack of state funding for their "jobs". (George) Lloyd, who had hardly ever received a penny in public subsidy in his life, could not grasp this mentality."


If people wrote music that others wanted to listen to, they would not need a cultural welfare state. As Mr MacMillan has found, they go out and buy CDs, they attend public performances, and reward excellence by patronage.


Lloyd went further: he always argued that if the state paid composers to write what they liked, they would write self-indulgent rubbish."


So state subsidies can fund rubbish, no surprise there - you are forced to pay for what you don't like, as if it is "good for you".



However Heffer argues that while the moral case for ending state subsidies is clear, the arts do need money:



"I cannot, to use an old cliché, see why bus drivers should pay taxes so that I can have a subsidised seat at Covent Garden. However, I am equally convinced that, if the arts are not subsidised in some way, we shall career ever more quickly down the path to being a nation of philistines."



By that he means tax credits, I'd argue that it would be better simply to lower taxes generally so that the arts, like all other activities would be better able to thrive as people would have more money to spend on what they enjoy.



It is always curious how those who despise elitism and business success are all too keen to force elitism onto taxpayers in the form of the subsidised arts. It is a vile concept that someone who is an "artist" deserves to be paid money by force from those who simply don't like what they produce. Why can't artists that produce what nobody is willing to pay for simply be allowed to fall by the wayside?



"Those "artists" who feel the state owes them a living, and who in return embark on the destructive project Mr MacMillan so rightly identified, would have to learn the difficulty of having no merit. State funding in its present form encourages this poison in our culture and in our society. One day, we might have a Culture Secretary with the sense, and the moral vision, to reform it."

The ACC deception

So Labour says National will privatise ACC - oh I wish.

ACC Minister Maryan Street made this absurd statement:

"Putting the world-respected ACC scheme up for sale will rob all New Zealanders of the security they have enjoyed in the event of accidents, wherever and however they occur, for several decades"

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Hold on a minute.. "world respected"? Where in the world has the government abolished the right to sue for personal injury by accident and replaced it with a state owned insurance monopoly which pays everyone the same for any accident regardless of fault? Exactly. It was investigated and abandoned in Australia and the UK.

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"the security" she talks about is illusory. ACC is fine if you are at the top of your career and an accident robs you of the ability to undertake that work. You'll get paid off as long as is necessary. However if you were, for example, a medical student and an accident destroys your ability to be a surgeon then tough - you don't get compensated for lost future earnings, but for lost current earnings. If you are a child and get crippled by a car accident, it's the same. So much for security, and never forget that the ACC state monopoly gives you no choice - you have to pay whether or not it is adequate for your needs.

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Now yes ACC advocates will say you don't need a lawyer, it's fast and the risk of losing a case isn't there. However, hold on I'm not saying people shouldn't take out accident insurance. They certainly ought to choose that, and then pay according to what the insurer sees is the exposure. For example, a young person who has little driving experience and plays contact sports will pay a high premium, but a middle aged person with no claims and a clean driving record will probably be rewarded. ACC does none of this. ACC does not penalise the accident prone or reward the cautious - it charges all the same, except for employers by category. However "good" employers pay the same as "bad" employers.

Street goes on "Once National has traded away the protection the current state monopoly offers, accident compensation will become a lottery" Well hold on, how is it a lottery to pay premiums to the company of your choosing according to your own risk? Isn't it a lottery as to whether ACC is adequate for your needs or not? Why should ACC pay the criminal teenager who cripples himself in a burglary the same as the teenager who is biking safely hit by a reckless driver?

She quotes a Merrill Lynch report saying it is more expensive in other countries than NZ, yet the truth behind those figures is hard to extract. For example, what does a person get for being blinded or made quadraplegic in Australia compared to NZ? In other words, is the reason ACC is cheaper on first look because it IS the el cheapo option in terms of paying out?

It is interesting to take this point "the report found that without ACC - and under a scenario similar to that in Canada, the US and Australia – roughly 70 per cent of current ACC clients would only receive benefits through social security and the public health system, a significant erosion of the support they now get. ... individuals would be forced to take out private insurance in the event they fall off a ladder or injure themselves in a rugby game - and be left without accident compensation if they don’t.

Amazing, so the rest of us wouldn't be forced to insure ourselves against a rugby injury if we don't play the game? That's what the rest of the world offers - insurance based on your own risk. ACC socialises all risk and payments - so we all pay the same and receive in kind!

In addition:

- In other countries compensation is a single lump sum or series of lump sums, in NZ payments can continue for years and years while people are considered "unable to work". Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party candidate Michael Appleby has often said he is on ACC, it seemed to be the case election after election.

- In other countries not everyone who has an accident gets compensation. If you accident saw off your finger in other countries, unless you are insured for that, you wont get anything. In New Zealand you get paid. In other words, in New Zealand ACC pays you for being stupid or negligent, the rest of the world doesn't unless you pay to be insured on that basis.

It would be interesting to analyse further. Street just assumes.

She quotes a PWC report that says ACC is "best practice". Funny how nobody else adopts that. I have accident insurance now in the UK, if I was in NZ again I wouldn't rely on ACC for my own accident insurance - because I'd want a lot more than what it offers. However, Street may answer this?

Why shouldn't those who pay ACC pay less for no claims and more for risky behaviour?

Why shouldn't those who pay ACC pay more for higher levels of cover if they wish?

Meanwhile, I'm going to read this PWC report and examine what it is about - it deserves closer scrutiny to find out what questions were asked and which ones were not asked.

UPDATE: According to Stuff John Key confirms National will open up the ACC employer accounts to competition, WHICH the PWC report mentioned above says could, if properly regulated, result in improved outcomes and efficiencies. So let's be clear, Labour will oppose it, but its own report says there may be advantages in doing what National is proposing. However National wont privatise ACC, but the left somehow thinks opening the government sector up to competition is privatisation - maybe it fears no one will want to do business with the public sector if given the choice?

RUC f'up

Now I am not opposing the increase in Road User Charges, as long as it is transparently justified by the cost allocation model used to determine what all road users should pay to recover what is paid in road maintenance and construction costs.

Remember also that with all fuel excise duty now fully dedicated to the National Land Transport Fund (something I would have thought Labour should be crowing about), it means that the proportion of road spending paid by diesel vehicles dropped below what was appropriate, so the increase is likely to be justified (i.e. a diesel car shouldn't pay more for road use through RUC than a petrol car through petrol tax, on average).

However to lie to Tony Friedlander, the long standing chief executive of the Road Transport Forum - the main trucking lobby group - about RUC, is outrageous. Tony is a smart guy, though he was once Minister of Works under the Muldoon administration. If Annette King has said, "Look Tony, we wont give you notice anymore", he wouldn't have liked it, but at least she wouldn't have gone back on her word. Furthermore her own press release is deceptive, as it almost implies that only vehicles up to 6 tonnes face the increase, by only referring to examples up to that weight and attaching a document about vehicles up to that weight.

Of course what this means is that operators wont buy RUC licences in advance to avoid the increase, as has been done successfully in the past (and if managed well does provide a sudden cashflow advantage that could be invested wisely).

So something that arguably is justified as an increase has become a political nightmare by deception and sleight of hand.

Lynchers may be brought to justice

CNN reports that some new evidence has been found related to a 1946 lynching case in Georgia, USA.

On July 25, 1946, two black sharecropper couples were shot hundreds of times and the unborn baby of one of the women cut out with a knife at the Moore's Ford Bridge.

And in the days following the massacre, residents of the community about 40 miles east of Atlanta, Georgia, were tight-lipped with federal agents sent by President Truman to investigate.

Georgia state representative Tyrone Brooks has said "they think there was enough evidence in FBI files at the time to bring a case against the suspects. He said his group has identified five suspects in the slayings who are still alive."

If this proves to be the case, a handful of elderly men (they are likely to be in their 80s or so) will plead how unfair it is and cruel it would be to try, convict and imprison them.

No.

As long as the evidence stacks up, these men should be forced to fear the consequences of their action. Their families and friends should know what they did, and the lives of other elderly murderers should remain ones tinged with fear that their final years will be in disgrace, alone and behind bars.

3 stories about sex

1. A high class (!) escort agency could soon open in Dannevirke called "Promiscuous Girlz" according to the Manawatu Standard. Honestly, it's not a good start when you use "z" for "s" like some south central LA outfit. You do have to love the comment from the council though "From our viewpoint, there is bugger-all we can do about it". That service may also be available there, after all what else would a discerning Dannevirke clientele want? (who knows?).

2. Stuff reports a Brisbane couple (mother and stepfather) had the 15yo daughter sign a "contract" for him to impregnate her because the couple had already born two children with congenital diseases. It started with using a syringe, but naturally that failed so he tried the natural way. The girl finally told a family friend who encouraged her to go to the Police. The idiot said when arrested "Did you not see the f---ing contract?" Yep, because you really can sign a contract to bypass criminal law and the age of consent. You might think people who regularly have children with congenital diseases ought to get the message?

3. Stuff also reports in Papua New Guinea that a security guard forced a 15yo female shoplifter to pay for her suspected crime through sex. Charming.

Now you can see why prostitution is relatively respectable.

Review a politician

Yes go to this website and write a review of one of the Parliamentary party leaders. Very few there now, so get in and have a go. John Key has four reviews so far, some have none. So go on - give them a score!

Sue Kedgley's latest economic lunacy

Petrol prices rise (as do diesel prices). Demand for buses goes up in response, buses start overcrowding. The solution proposed by Wellington Regional Council? Increase fares, as it will moderate demand, recover the increased cost of fuel and reduce net subsidies. A great chance to lower costs to taxpayers, give bus companies more money from passengers that could be used to increase service capacity and encourage more people to walk or cycle instead of riding the bus.

No no, it's so wrong. Ignoring the value of increasing fares, Kedgley wants the money tree to be plucked to subsidise them more!! She wants people who aren't riding buses, ratepayers, to pay for those who do - to encourage people to overcrowd the buses.

It is sheer economic lunacy.

The opportunity now is for bus subsidies to end, for bus passengers to pay the costs of providing them with services, reducing demand from those who are price sensitive (and likely to walk, bike or not travel instead), providing room for those who are willing to pay, and incentivising the bus companies to put on more services to make money from the higher fares. However, Sue doesn't care about the much harangued ratepayer.

When the left is wrong about rail

Idiot Savant naturally is cheering the renationalisation of rail. Maybe no one bought him a train set when he was a kid. As is sadly the case of far too many on the left, he’s swallowed hook line and sinker the myth around Tranz Rail. There are elements of truth, but the story is far more complicated.

Though he treats the privatisation of New Zealand Rail as if it were something criminal saying “Unfortunately, the people responsible for that corrupt privatisation are still walking free” Yes, one of course is the Chairman. However, what about those responsible for this outrageous nationalization? Why are those who have taken taxpayers’ money and paid for a company around double its market price ever able to show their faces in public again? If a company director did a deal to buy another company well over the odds in price, he better demonstrate it would generate returns – actually Kiwirail will cost the new shareholders a fortune, and for what?

Well according to Idiot Savant the “private sector's focus on short-term profit led to asset stripping and running a minimal service”. Like he’d know. He is pretty much just churning out the leftwing propaganda from the era. Like he noticed that the privatised Tranz Rail increased long distance passenger rail services and ran them as such for some years before the impact of significant airfare discounting and cheaper car and petrol prices eroded patronage. The privatized Tranz Rail carried more freight per tonne km that the railways in New Zealand EVER did before. Just bigger longer trains on longer distances, many at night are invisible to most. Yes it didn’t spend up large on track, but a report in the mid 1980s said that the track had effectively been goldplated – overengineered for purpose in many cases. Privatised Tranzrail expanded its carriage of milk by rail and coal by rail, and even reopened the odd branch line for regular freight services (Dargaville). It bought a brand new ferry, which turned out to be a bit of a bad purchase, and started the Lynx Fast Ferry service which was eventually killed off by complaints against waves in the Marlborough Sounds that saw a speed limit imposed under the RMA. The last time a ferry had been bought by the government owned railways was 1983 and before that 1974, buying another and leasing a fast ferry was hardly “asset stripping and running a minimal service”.

He goes on “No matter what happens, freight and people are still going to be moved, but the market is unable to see far enough ahead to provide for it” Really? Noticed how privatised airports tend to be no worse, and often better equipped that state owned ones. Notice how ports all effectively run as local authority owned businesses, unsubsidised. Notice how many railways were actually built by the private sector, indeed the entire US rail freight sector is privately owned and operated – and yes it carries very large volumes of freight. Some of France’s motorway network is privately owned and provided and the rest are government commercial companies. The market wont provide? More a lack of imagination, permission and crowd out by the state.

He continues with the idea that “road transport pay its real costs, rather than continuing to be effectively subsidised by the government.” He doesn’t actually know what that means I am sure. It’s often trotted out by the anti-truck pro-rail believers (it is a religion after all), when the evidence is that the road transport that competes with rail does pays its share of roading costs. You might argue about negative externalities, but then nobody pays that in any economic or non-economic activities (or charges for the positive externalities). It’s just part of the leftwing environmental religion around transport.

He then says National wouldn’t possibly level the playing field between road and rail “Instead, they're likely to "leave transport to the market", entrenching existing inequities and repeating exactly the same mistake which led to rail being run down in the first place.” Well again he’s well out based on the last National government, but then I wouldn’t ever guess what the John Key Labour lite administration might do. National before sought to require roads, like rail, to be run by profit oriented companies. What it will do in the future is anyone’s guess, but the key point is that the long held myth by rail enthusiasts that road freight has some enormous advantage over rail needs to be exposed.

There are problems with the current system of road funding, financing and management, but nothing will dramatically change the amount of freight that goes by rail for a simple reason – rail is only efficient at moving bulk or containerized freight over relatively long distances, with few exceptions. Subsidising it more is subsidizing those already using it. It’s about time the worshippers of the grand sacred religion of rail engaged their minds.

Oh and if you still subscribe to the rail good, truck bad theory, I've fisked that one before as a study commissioned by this government demonstrated that in some cases trucks have a lower environmental impact than trains per tonne km transported (in some they are higher and in some are the same). So if it's not economically efficient, if the environmental advantages are dubious and sometimes illusory, then why buy the railway at all?

Indeed Idiot Savant, why do you want taxpayers to subsidise:

- Solid Energy's coal exports to Asia;
- Fonterra's dairy export business;
- Forestry companies logging and wood product businesses?

Awfully funny position for a socialist methinks.

UPDATE: Rodney Hide tells it like it is - it's going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars for taxpayers without any return.

Jim Anderton talks the same mythology of Idiot Savant, claiming rail is a natural monopoly. Funny how it finds it hard to compete with road freight and coastal shipping, this really isn't the characteristic of a natural monopoly is it? He scares us into thinking the Nats might sell it again - frankly who cares as long as taxpayers don't have to pay any more?!

Reading the PM's speech she makes a key mistake:

- Rail does not necessarily have a fourfold energy advantage over road for freight movements, that is long dated (1981) and discredited figure. The true figure is probably closer to 2-2.5 given improvements in roads, truck technology and the types of freight now moved. The truth is that there has been no good study done of this since then.

Tories offer solution to West Lothian question

With devolution of many policy matters regarding Scotland from Westminster to the Scottish Parliament, the unfair situation has emerged that while matters such as education and health for England remain a matter for the House of Commons, Scottish MPs in Westminster can vote on matters that only apply to England. Don't forget this applies to Gordon Brown also. His constituency is Scottish, but he apparently has the right to govern England on matters that wont ever affect his constituents.

This is the West Lothian question. British Labour wont confront it, because it likes having Scottish Labour MPs able to vote with the government. However, David Cameron is willing to confront it. The Daily Telegraph reports that the Conservative Party will require that only MPs from England will be able to vote on matters regarding England. Other MPs will not be permitted to participate.

This is a sensible position to take, it avoids any nonsense of more assemblies and the like, and removes the nonsense of matters of England being voted on by MPs from other constituent countries of the UK when it doesn't affect their constituents at all. Amazing, the UK Conservative Party isn't disappointing on this issue!

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!