The evil of Radovan Karadzic

Hmmm nasty Santa?

For some who don't remember the Balkan wars of the 1990s, it's worth having a run down of what happened, step by step:
- Titoist communism was already in decline in the 1980s after he died, with the Yugoslav Communist Party splitting into factions, on largely federal lines, as all of the 6 Yugoslav republics (and two autonomous provinces of Serbia). The decline in the relative power of Belgrade over Yugoslavia was felt in Serbia. Serb nationalist Slobodan Milosevic started evocating nationalist racist rhetoric against Kosovo Albanians in 1989, and spread fear among Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia that they should feel threatened. Albanian was banned in universities and government in Kosovo, despite 90% of the population being Albanian.
- Slovenia and Croatia both were increasingly fed up with the old communist bureaucracy of Yugoslavia and how the national wealth predominantly generated in the north in their republics was redistributed south to Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro. Slovenia was led by non-Serbo Croat speaking liberals who saw Western Europe as the model to follow, Croatia increasingly saw the rise of a reactionary group of nationalists, led by one Franjo Tudjman, who spread the same racist filth about Serbs as Milosevic spread about Croats.
- Milosevic took increasing control of the Federal Yugoslav government and armed forces, and talk of a new Yugoslavia, which would be more centralised was countered by talk of a new looser Yugoslavia with very little federal role beyond foreign affairs and defence. Slovenia decided to declare independence, a minor issue as Slovenia was fairly homogeneous. Croatia swiftly decided to do the same, which was more disconcerting.
- Slovenia was led by a pro-Western liberal government, and beyond a short lived battle with Serb controlled Yugoslav Army forces, successfully seceded de facto and de jure, and is now an EU member state.
- Croatia was led by a fascist nationalist government which glossed over the appalling genocidal past of Croatia in the 1940s, when Ante Pavelic slaughtered and deported non-Catholic Croats with full backing of Nazi Germany. Pavelic's feared "Ustashe" would go from town to town seeking out Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Christians - with the full complicity of the Vatican - and ordered that one third be converted, one third be deported and one third executed. Franjo Tudjman saw himself as the heir of Croat nationalism.
- Serbs in Croatia understandably feared greatly a repeat of history, and Milosevic greatly exaggerated the risk of this, but the fear was real. Serb dominated areas such as Vukovar and the Krajina became the battlegrounds between the Serb dominated Yugoslav National Army and Croatia. Both sides murdered and applied their fascist bigotry to each other, but the worst atrocities were noted at Vukovar. However, the Croats also engaged in "ethnic cleansing".
- Following the independence of Croatia, Bosnia Hercegovina, which had been governed by a fairly cosmopolitan coalition of Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks, the withdrawing Serbian controlled Yugoslav Federal Army started a new mission, the carving up of Bosnia. The fairly tolerant open government in Sarajevo was an anathema to the nationalist fascists in Zagreb and Belgrade, and so carving up Bosnia into parts of greater Croatia and greater Serbia was the mission of both sets of forces.

- Under the lead of Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb forces (essentially the former Yugoslav National Army) secured areas of Bosnia and systematically embarked on its open policy of "ethnic cleansing"which predominantly involved going house to house and kicking non Serbs out of town.
- Under the lead of Karadzic part of the campaign against Bosniaks and Croats was to detain men in camps as POWs, and Bosnian Serb soldiers were given free reign to act as they wished. Many Bosniak women and girls were raped as part of the terror campaign to displace non-Serbs.
- The Srebrenica massacre was the culmination of this policy.

and today Bosnia remains divided between the "Republika Srpska" run by the remaining Serb nationalist parties and the rest of Bosnia, shared by Bosniak and Croat political parties. If Ratko Mladic can also be found and charged, and Croatia hands over its war criminals, then some great steps forward will have been made. Bosnia is the hardest though - for there are stolen homes, massacres and the need to rebuild trust and community among people infected with bigotry. The road to reconciliation in Bosnia will be a long and difficult one. Prosecuting and incarcerating the new nasty Santa will be a first step.

Nothing to see here either

National's Housing Policy

oh sorry wrong link, but close enough to get the picture.

(Hat Tip: Lindsay Mitchell who explains why)

The state the Police want

Will de Cleene blogs on the Police Association's wishlist for government.

It's a list that should pretty much frighten anyone who believes in personal freedom.

Unsurprisingly, the Nats are cheering them on, but then some supporting the Nats think freedom means tax cuts.

Here are some of the points:

The cops want ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Orders), which of course exist in the UK and have for some become a badge of honour. Essentially it means being charged, convicted and sentenced without going to court for nuisance, vandalism, harassment and other actual offences. It's a good way to simply bypass the court system, and anyone who has spent a good deal of time in the UK will notice how little difference it really has made.

The cops also want compulsory DNA tests for all SUSPECTS, so even if you are not guilty, then it goes on a database. Of course if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, because after all, the state and the Police would never abuse this information would they? No. Big brother's warm embrace comforts us all. By the way the Nats like this idea.

Then there is requiring phone companies to keep a 6 month archive of all text messages - because, after all, the Police might want to read them. Imagine if NZ Post could easily copy and keep every letter you ever send in the mail, or Telecom recorded every voice conversation, and then ever email. Yes, nothing to fear though if you have nothing to hide right?

Like Will, I think on the spot domestic protection orders may be useful, because that is about protecting victims - but the rest is largely a recipe for the police to do as they please regarding innocent people. The focus of criminal justice policy should be on enforcing laws as they stand, and using punishment and rehabilitation (depending on the offence) to reduce re-offending and protecting the public from guilty people. Quite simply, the Police shouldn't set criminal justice policy - they have a view of the public that means they should have unlimited powers to do their job, and that people are guilty till proven innocent. Understandable on the job, but it isn't the basis for a free society that values personal privacy.

Idiot Savant agrees and says "It would be nice if we could get a police minister who remembered occasionally that what is convenient for the police is not necessarily desirable to society as a whole, and that police powers need to be limited and the police kept under constant scrutiny so that the rest of us can go about our business in peace." Indeed!

The bill starts rolling in

So according to Stuff $80.2 million for the newly nationalised railway, most of which is to replace the long distance passenger rail rolling stock. Now the $25.54 million for the Tranz Alpine is slightly odd, since it is actually quite a profitable service. I'm convinced if the damned thing had been sold this would happen anyway. The Tranz Coastal is profitable, but marginally so, and the Overlander is in the same category. So you might ask - why should $27.5 million be spent on a couple of passenger trains instead of raising fares so that the owner can borrow against future fare revenue? After all it is how bus companies and airlines work.

However, nooo Dr Cullen evades the truth about why this is "necessary". "The selling off our rail system in the 1990s was followed by asset-stripping and a failure to properly invest in the services" he said.

Well hold on. What investment was there BEFORE the 1990s? Well you only have to look at the age of the current rolling stock. The carriages currently used on all these services were built between 1937 and 1945. Their economic lives were coming to an end in the 1970s when it was state owned, and nothing was done except patching them up, much like the 1980s as well. I remember the services that are now the TranzCoastal and the TranzAlpine when they received oodles of state subsidies every year - and the rolling stock was not air conditioned, had no on board catering (trains stopped halfway at a station for people to rush out for the stereotypical pie and a cuppa), virtually no marketing, no on board service of any kind (unless you count asking the guard questions the odd time he walked around). The toilets dropped waste onto the tracks and were never serviced during the trip.

THAT was the state owned subsidised long distance passenger rail service on those routes. What changed this was Richard Prebble announcing, in response to pleas from the Railways for money to buy new trains, that there would be one final year of subsidies, bulk funded so the Railways could make the services profitable. Suddenly things happened, the station cafeterias on these routes were shut down in favour of on board catering, the trains were refurbished with new seats and suddenly marketing emerged. The Railways actually cared about attracting users, not attracting subsidies. The Christchurch-Greymouth express stopped being two trains leaving each town at the same time, passing halfway and finishing their trips in the early afternoon, and amazingly became one train in the morning one way, and returning in the afternoon, making it a plausible day trip for tourists. That train also got big wide panoramic windows, then air conditioning. It started making money.

Ah, you say, that was still under government ownership. Yes it was, government ownership to wean it off subsidies. So what happened after that? Well progressively over the following years, other services were refurbished, this continued after the Railways Corporation became NZ Rail Ltd (as an SOE under the SOE Act), and under privatisation as TranzRail through to 1994.

Oh so after privatisation it was run down? Well. Dr Cullen has announced taxpayers' money is to be used to refurbish a series of secondhand ex.British railway carriages to use on current services. What he hasn't said is that those carriages were purchased by the privatised Tranz Rail in 1996 for this very purpose, and to upgrade the Capital Connection service (which was done, without any taxpayer funding). 69 were bought, but the cost of refurbishment proved prohibitive at the time, as car ownership costs and airfares fell, and TranzRail was more focused on freight and monitoring the profitability of the long distance passenger rail services. Of course subsequently several services were cancelled due to lack of patronage (Southerner, Northerner, Bay Express, etc).

So the myth about how the private sector didn't invest in rail is largely false, as is the implied myth that the public sector did. The truth is that there hasn't been a brand new long distance passenger train put into service in New Zealand since 1972 - you'll see them swanning around Auckland now in their twilight years - the 3 bespoke Silverfern railcars. There is a reason for that - most of you have chosen to fly or put your money into owning a car, and the rest aren't in enough numbers to justify any more than bus loads, except for a couple of tourist routes.

Oh and you might ask why taxpayers have to pay for an upgrade of Picton Ferry Terminal, when the Interislander in all its guises has been clearly profitable for 44 out of its 46 years of history.

Hurray, Radovan Karadzic arrested

According to CNN, this vile proponent of genocidal radical nationalist filth has finally been arrested, as it appears the Serbian government has decided that it better bring forth these blood tainted murderers from its past, in order to be considered for EU membership.

Karadzic was one of the opportunistic thugs, backed by Slobodan Milosevic, to carve up Bosnia-Hercegovina once it had declared independence. The Bosnian government, at the time made up of moderate Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats almost instantly faced war on two fronts. Karadzic was determined to carve out at least a third of Bosnia to be part of a Greater Serbia - and it wasn't a Greater Serbia than Bosnian Muslims and Croats would be allowed to live in.

With Yugoslav Federal Army weapons, the Bosnian Serbs went from village to village embarking on the policy, coined by Karadzic himself with the infamous words "ethnic cleansing". It culminated in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males, in this so-called UN safe haven. Karadzic was the embodiment of the filthy collectivist snake oil of poisonous fascist nationalism in the Balkans. He was convinced Bosnia should be carved up into Serb and non-Serb portions, and the Serbs were fighting for the biggest portion, and any portion they brought under control would need to be "cleansed".

Indeed, the misnomer of "ethnic" cleansing is such, it is tribal, and quasi-religious, as the Russian and Greek Orthodox Church both gave their quiet blessing to this project.

Karadzic of course deserves a bullet in his head - as does the vile Ratko Mladic, the general who directly ordered the massacres, the murders, rapes, and the evacuation of non-Serbs at gunpoint in Serb held Bosnia. Mladic is yet to be found, as he remains protected by the stoneage thugs who still think their tribe is better than the ones up the coast.

A trial will be apt though, as it is time Serbs faced up to the atrocities committed in their name - which fortunately, recent elections seem to indicate that many have moved beyond. Croatia too must respond in kind, as there the Roman Catholic Church closed both eyes and turned around to the atrocities committed in its name. Then when the bloody truth of the Balkans since the early 1990s is more honestly revealed and understood, the region might just move on another step.

The story of NZ First

Winston Peters has built a political career on scandal so much that it would be ironic if the latest one led to his downfall.

From the late 1980s as a National Party backbencher Peters tried muckraking while Labour was in power engaging in the reform process, with the alleged grounding of a Cook Strait Ferry one of his odd (and failed) attempts at getting attention. However, he didn't have to wait too long to get a new one.

Winston first fronted National Party policy as a reaction to Labour's Maori policy. Winston was railing against the Treaty settlement process with concern about how the benefits of it wouldn't reach grassroots Maori. However, the 1990 election gave more, much more.

National was elected partly on the promise to abolish the hated Superannuation Surtax - that element of Rogernomics that wasn't about liberalisation but about penalising the retired who had made provision for themselves. A throwback to socialism to cover a budget deficit. You see National promised to abolish it, but didn't - sending hundreds of thousands of outraged pensioners into the arms of?

Winston.

You see around about this time Winston was developing a reputation as a maverick, after he got ejected from Cabinet, the likes of Winston, Michael Laws and more asinine individuals like Gilbert Myles and Peter McIntyre were moaning about the policies of the 1990-1993 National government, most of which were, to be fair, in National's manifesto. However, the betrayal over the Super Surtax hurt National bad. Core supporters looked for somewhere new to go, so in 1992 Winston Peters launched his own political vehicle with - NZ First. NZ First would be the party for pensioners, the party for those outraged by "special treatment for Maori", the party against "big business", the party against "crime". However it had another tinge, which you could see in the name - NZ First. It was nationalism.

Winston Peters railed against foreign investment (yes ironic given recent events), but most insipidly against immigration. He campaigned on the fears of white and Maori lesser educated New Zealanders that Asians migrants were "stealing their jobs" "bringing foreign culture" and "creating separate communities". Winston played his race card, and the votes came in. In 1993, Tau Henare joined him. From then, sensing Maori voters wanted an alternative to Labour, he stopped playing the "anti-Treaty of Waitangi" card and played anti-Asian, anti-foreign, pandering to the greedy grey grizzler vote, Maori voters and the talkback proletariat. He also went on endlessly about the "wine box" of evidence about allegedly dodgy financial arrangements to avoid tax in New Zealand - painting the picture of Winston against the big powerful corporates. Him the little man (apt when you actually encounter him in real life).

He did so well in 1996 saying "to get National out vote NZ First" in his campaign, he was able to play National and Labour like a tune, wandering back and forth between Clark and Bolger like a sleazy businessmen, wondering which prostitute he could negotiate the best price out of. Clark came with Anderton, which was less appealing, and Bolger offered him Treasurer, selling out his own Finance Minister Bill Birch (somewhat), so Winston went with Jim.

The result for Winston devastated his supporters. The Maori voters thought he'd keep Labour honest, and felt betrayed that he kept National in power. The greedy grey grizzler brigade who had a choice of Winston or the Alliance (offering Pam Corkery) aiming for the idiot "government can fix anything vote" also felt betrayed, because National was the great evil party of the "rich". Old people who genuinely felt betrayed by National on the super surtax (and rightfully so) were doubly betrayed by Winston, who went into bed with National.

They ignored that Winston actually ensured the Surtax was repealed in that government- it didn't matter, Winston's voters aren't smart enough to care about policies. He was tainted, and the antics of Tuku Morgan, along with many of his other MPs (remember Deborah Morris, Robin McDonald and the "Tight Five", all thought of as being wasteful and unproductive) hurt NZ First so much Winston nearly lost his seat in 1999 (63 votes between him and oblivion), and his party dropped below 5%.

However, while Labour won back the Maori seats, Winston in 2002 went back to bashing the Treaty of Waitangi, and back to immigrant bashing and crime. National did so badly in convincing voters that it COULD win, that Winston once again took protest votes with over 10%, but in 2005 faced the decline of the protest vote, as Winston offered nothing new. National sucked back half of his support, took his seat of Tauranga back from him, but Winston was wanted by someone.

Labour.

Labour just made it in 2005, after rallying the Pacific Island vote in South Auckland to vote, but it also found that its partner on confidence and supply - United Future, had been hit rather badly by the election, with a halving or so of its caucus. So while Peter Dunne was a reliable partner, he wasn't enough. So Clark had three options:
- Maori Party. That would've meant surrendering on the Foreshore and Seabed - too much bad blood and too much fear for Labour that it would be unelectable the following election.
- Greens. Undoubtedly workable had the Greens not wanted anything more on GE, or increasing welfare payments or the like. Certainly the Greens may have compromised to get into power.
- NZ First. Well, give away some tricks for pensioners, promise a wider harbour bridge with no tolls and give Winston a serious Ministerial portfolio, and he's happy. NZ First is largely inert.

So you see, Helen Clark tied her government to a man who during his career has sold opposition to the Treaty of Waitangi, opposition to Asian immigration and a barely shielded racism against Asians, opposition to free trade and foreign investment, and an overwhelming emphasis on populism and the politics of envy. A politician who always talked frequently about the dodgy dealings of the wealthy, the likes of Fay Richwhite, the Business Roundtable and other demons he liked to stir for the sake of the great kiwi tall poppy syndrome.

Now Winston has been shown to be the sort of person he himself would have finger pointed at and muckraked. With his Maori constituency as good as evaporated, his semi-literate pensioner supporters dying off, and anti-Labour talkback brigade evacuating to National, what is left for Winston Peters? Nobody every writes him off, he may still struggle through with barely 5% again or the voters of Tauranga may have a rush of blood to anything but their heads again.

However whatever happens to Winston surely will have ramifications for the party who relies on him to remain in government. Labour is continuing to sit with Winston. A position that will surely cost it, unless, of course, Clark is willing to jettison him closer to the election for maximum effect.

Something rather vile about this "purity"

For some time in the US, there has been a strong campaign by the Christian right to promote sexual abstinence among young people. Naturally, each to their own, and certainly abstinence is an option and choice.

However this report in Time has some rather disturbing overtones, overtones that at best smack of a pre-modern patriarchal ownership of daughter's bodies by their fathers, at worst a suppressed form of incestual slavery.

The Father-Daughter Purity Ball has girls as young as 4 engaging in dinner, dancing and testimony about the "pure life". 4??? What sort of psychological abuse is this that a little girl has to promise to her daddy to be a good girl?

The story of Kylie Miraldi, now 18, tells much of what this is all about:

"When Kylie was 13, her parents took her on a hike in Lake Tahoe, Calif. "We discussed what it means to be a teenager in today's world," she says. They gave her a charm for her bracelet--a lock in the shape of a heart. Her father has the key. "On my wedding day, he'll give it to my husband," she explains. "It's a symbol of my father giving up the covering of my heart, protecting me, since it means my husband is now the protector. He becomes like the shield to my heart, to love me as I'm supposed to be loved.""

So her heart is protected by her father (not mother no, and she can't be trusted herself can she?) until he decides it is ok to give it to her husband. Feminism anywhere? No. Like a piece of property this girl passes from father to husband.

Now I'm never going to decry the importance of fathers for daughters, or mothers for sons and vice versa. That is something sometimes ignored. However, for fathers to promise "before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity,"raises many questions:

What if your daughter prefers girls?
What do you do if she disobeys?
Where does she go if dad disobeys?

Yes it is one thing for girls to grow up safe, secure, confident and happy, but another to do so only in the shadow of a parent who implicitly owns their body until authorising it to be offered to another man.

Freedom of speech defended in Australia

The Federal Court of Australia has shown the worth of a written constitution by throwing out a law passed by the NSW Parliament as "unconstitutional". That law was specifically designed to criminalise "annoyance and inconvenience" to those attending World Youth Day hosted by the Roman Catholic Church.

Appallingly, the NSW state Parliament passed the law to minimise protests during the Pope's visit. NSW is not a theocracy. It is utterly absurd to try to limit protest against an organisation against which there are so many reasons to protest. Germaine Greer in the Observer is supporting the Court.

Greer rightfully said: "Freedom of speech cannot be maintained in a society where nobody ever says anything subversive or inflammatory. Academic freedom is only real if academic institutions exercise it. Freedom of the press cannot exist if newspapers censor themselves. In order to keep freedom of speech alive, the citizens must keep saying things that offend people, often deeply. Agitated though we might feel by some of the things people say, we have got to go on defending their right to say them. If we don't, our freedoms gradually shrink."

Indeed.

"Every few weeks, the British get into a bate about what it means to be British and how we might teach the foreigners who keep on turning up in our midst 'British values'. The most important legacy the British left the old Empire, now the disappearing and despised Commonwealth, is the package of British liberties, of which most important is probably habeas corpus, by which no one is to be imprisoned without trial. The Australian Federal Court justified its action in striking down the NSW law against annoying pilgrims by reference to the 'common law', the most precious inheritance any Briton can claim."

What is more disturbing is that not a single MP in the NSW Parliament could even start to defend this. Labour, Liberal, National, Democrat? Useless, every single one of them.

Winston wants to waste your money

Oh dear, he's running out of tricks from his hat, so now Winston wants to force you to pay to buy back businesses you don't want to buy (after all, you'd have bought them by now wouldn't you?).

The Dominion Post reports that NZ First would create something called "the New Zealand Fund" instead of giving you tax cuts, to make you invest in businesses that are politically (the word strategic is used, but that is code for political) important.

Oh he also wants to be softer on inflation, use more of your money to give subsidies away to politically and bureaucratically selected "winners" (see the great results Jim Anderton has had in doing that?), oh and he's bashing immigrants again, blaming them for "gangs".

Are the foreigner bashing, talkback calling, shallow minded worshippers of this short man who peddles xenophobia every three years still around in enough numbers to make him matter anymore?

After all - a vote for Winston in 2005 got you Helen Clark and Labour (he'll ensure his supporters quietly forget he's Minister of Foreign Affairs and NZ First grants Labour confidence and supply to govern). Why would anyone who wants a change do that ever again?

Mugabe sells Zimbabwe to new colonialists

Following on from the disgraceful vetoing of a draft UN Security Council resolution by the energy rich kleptocratic quasi-fascist Russia, with quiet approval by the amoral People's Republic of China, comes a report from the Daily Telegraph that Robert Mugabe now has a £4.5 million mansion courtesy of Beijing.

Why?

Because this self proclaimed defender of Zimbabwe's sovereignty against "British colonialism" has happily signed over the mineral rights of the country he keeps under his jackboot to the People's Republic of China. Colonialism surely? EU Referendum blog tells more, you see policy on sanctions is actually not up to the UK government, but the EU as a whole.

So, Mandela has his birthday and calls for more to be done about poverty - whilst South Africa's neighbour Zimbabwe suffers under a brutal thieving fascist dictatorship that sells out its wealth to another dictatorship. The UN Security Council remains totally impotent while it at the behest of Russia and China, both murderous enemies of freedom. Africa does next to nothing. Mugabe enjoys his last years with unimaginable wealth.

Stories from the Sunday papers

The UK Sunday papers are always full of interesting articles. Here are some I found particularly worthy of note:

Ahmad Batebi flees into exile: The Sunday Times profiles Iranian dissident Ahmad Batebi, who has been granted refuge in the USA, after fleeing Iran with the help of a Kurdish underground group. Batebi "had been beaten with metal cables, suspended by his arms from the ceiling and taunted with mock execution and had had his head dunked in excrement until he was suffocating". He had been given a death sentence since his image appeared on the front of the Economist during protests in 1999 against the Islamist regime.

Slave children forced to perform lethal acts in Indian circuses: The Sunday Times reports on how hundreds of children are sold into slavery in India with circuses, and how charities are trying to rescue them.

The 1000 ways the state can break into your home: The Sunday Times reports on the laws that allow central or local government officials the right to enter your home, business or car without warrant. Although to be fair, it only lists five and alludes to three more.

NHS spurns gift of free cancer drug: The Sunday Times reports on how the beloved National Health Socialists (NHS) refuses to administer a drug, which is safe and approved, because the pharmaceutical company producing it is offering it free. This is because it is against policy.

ETA bombs Spanish beach resorts: The Sunday Telegraph reports on a series of small bombs detonating on the northern Spanish coast, as the Basque terrorist organisation ETA continues to operate. There were no injuries.

Iranian adulterers to be stoned: The Sunday Telegraph reports on how eight women and one man are to be stoned to death for "adultery" in the Islamic Republic of Iran. "A man is usually buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the condemned dies."

However, I don't expect feminists and peace campaigners to protest about that of course.

The devil riders of Darfur: The Sunday Times publishes an extract from Halima Bashir's book "Tears of the Desert: One Woman’s Story of Surviving the Horrors of Darfur". You'll read about the atrocities of Sudan's Janjaweed militia, a situation aided and abetted and funded by Arab governments and the People's Republic of China.

Teenage soft drug use - so bad?

In this age of fear and incessant orders in the media about how to behave, the article from India Knight in the Sunday Times today challenges one taboo that no mainstream politician dare touch.

Drug use and teenagers.

The mainstream media today is confused about teenagers. On the one hand they are to be cosseted and protected from the evils of alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, gentle fragile beings they are, on the other hand they need discipline, they need to learn what's"right from wrong", and they need to learn the consequences of their actions. Coincidentally the media loves them, for being where the fashion industry seeks when it wishes to portray beauty, where the music industry finds image and style to throw onto the soporific soma it calls music. As it so wishes, the media treats teenagers as a group (not individuals) who we need protection from and who need protection, who are reviled and feared, but also (secretly) desired and worshipped.

India Knight's article taps into your desire to protect them, by telling her own story about drugs as a teenager.

Before you type your outraged comment about "not understanding the devastation drugs can cause" etc etc, let me make it clear. Despite my position that drugs should be legalised for adults (but only along with some radical changes to tort law/ACC, state health provision and clarification of private property and contractual rights), I do not believe they should be legal for children, and that supply to minors should remain an offence.

So what does Knight say? Well you should read for yourself. However here are some choice quotes to get you thinking:

"I know we’re all supposed to tremble in our boots at the evil of recreational drug-taking but experimenting with drugs just seems to me normal – banal, really. Teenage binge-drinking is another story, because soft drugs don’t cause you to get cirrhosis when you’re still in your early twenties, or render you so out of it that you get raped, or leave the streets of Britain awash with vomit"

"By the time I went to university I had grown bored with the druggy scene and had evolved enough to get over the sense that drugs were exciting and naughty"

"All of which makes me think that a bit of teenage soft drug-taking is, for the vast majority, simply a rite of passage. Just as having underage sex doesn’t turn you into a nymphomaniac, so underage drug-taking tends, in the vast majority of cases, not to turn you into a tragic junkie"

"A clean-living friend recently spent a weekend partying (without artificial help) in Ibiza and couldn’t help noting that although every person he came across was on ecstasy, they were all smiling, kind, polite, courteous and friendly.

Compare and contrast, he said, with trying to walk through central London on a Friday night, when every other person is loud, obscene, aggressive and trying to start a fight and there’s always some poor sod on the night bus with a bleeding face, to say nothing of crumpled girls who are either crying or comatose with drink. “I know which I prefer,” he said, and so do I."

Now I know some die from drug use, and I know some have permanent damage from drug use, which of course is the same for alcohol, and the same for driving, adventure sports, diving and other activities. However, has prohibition made dying from drug use more or less likely? Is it more or less likely that drugs obtained in a criminal environment will be tainted or diluted by poisionous third substances? Is it more or less likely than teenagers will confess to parents about drug use if it is criminal? Is it more of less likely than teenagers will approach Police or go to hospitals if they fear being arrested rather than looked after if drug use goes wrong?

People will take drugs. Drugs if used too much, too regularly or inappropriately (e.g. with alcohol, other medication) are dangerous. People with dire lives due to inadequate, negligent or downright abusive parenting will be prone to drugs, alcohol, crime and reckless hedonism generally. Turning your back against drugs isn't going to make them go away. Those who call for zero-tolerance rarely mean what they say - they wouldn't have the Police raid every teenage party they could sniff out, and then use the means of intelligence and surveillance available to hunt down those who might use, so they could then execute search warrants on teenagers' bedrooms. Carefree liberalism also ignores the truth that drugs can be very dangerous.

That's why there needs to be a dialogue about change, part of that change is taking this out of the criminal justice system, but it is also about not treating all drug use as devastatingly destructive. Many young people use drugs, as they use sex, responsibly and without serious long term consequences. It is called experimentation and learning about life - but the lines between abstinence, responsible experimentation and reckless hedonism scare parents, understandably so. That fear is the reason to talk about it.

OH and while you're at it, read Barbara Ellen's column in the Observer "A little bit of sex education never hurt anyone". Her quote to stir up the middle classes must be:

"There is a point in your child's life when trying to stop them 'knowing stuff' is a bit like trying to put out a bush fire with a water pistol. And, short of dressing your kids in Amish gear, educating them in an underground cell at home, perhaps strangling them when they hit 13 or, indeed, guarding them like Cerberus at the mouth of Hades, there's not an awful lot one can do about it."

Liberal Democrats call for tax cuts

After years of being to the left of Labour, in calling for higher taxes and being the party worshipping the religion of ecologism, the Liberal Democrats have made another swing now - closer to the "Liberal" roots of this unusual third party in British politics (which once had a proud tradition of being more classical Liberal/less government, but which merged with a centre-left faction of Labour disenchanted when Labour went Marxist/Trotskyist in the early 80s).

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (nicknamed "Cleggover" after telling tales about the number of sexual conquests in his life) announced on Thursday that if elected, the Lib Dems would cut government spending by £20 billion to fund wide ranging tax cuts for low to middle income earners. Although he'd raise tax on high income earners, and assuming I'm bizarrely in this category, then there is no way in hell I'll vote Lib Dem. However, still announcing less state spending is at least new among the big UK parties, although the ways to do it are unconvincing. I doubt £20 billion will be saved by scrapping ID cards, cutting the number of MPs and not expanding nuclear power.

Sadly this rebranding is still dripping with the envy of the left, and full of green taxes which wouldn't be so bad if there was any substance to the call for less state spending. The truth is to cut state spending the Lib Dems have to be tough on the whole state sector, that means slashing subsidies for all sectors of the economy, tightening welfare and encouraging people to make their own choices for health and education, not the current statist behemoths. The Liberal Democrats in the past decade have become the party that many of old Labour have gone too, and it is full of busybodies whose views are given free range in The Independent, as the paper of the ecological finger pointer. Unless the Lib Dems can show a consistent vision of less state and less government in peoples' lives it wont be anything more than a younger version of new Labour. Meanwhile, nowadays it just looks like the 3rd playing political whore, ever looking for a market that the two dominant parties isn't looking after - but straddling the far left against the war in Iraq and the liberal right for lower taxes isn't going to cut it.

Taxpayer can bear no more!

So says no less than UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling!

In an interview with The Times he has said that UK taxpayers are at the limit of what they are prepared to pay for "public services". Well, that's not going to stop him taking more money from my pay packet assuming I get another pay increase this year and a bonus. Nope, can't see my taxes being capped.

Of course what this is about is that the UK Treasury is in a rather dire state. On the one hand, the British government continues to be profligate with its state sector, the most recent profligacy being the nationalisation of Northern Rock, a building society that had clearly loaned too much to too many who couldn't pay them back. It also is running a substantial budget deficit, £24.4 billion in the three months to June alone. National debt (government debt) threatens to rise above 40% of GDP and there is now talk of borrowing to pay for current spending, not just capital investment in hospitals, schools, defence and transport. On top of that tax receipts are down, as the economy slows down.

In short, the newLabour reputation for fiscal prudence is looking badly damaged. The solution it chooses? Borrow more.

During the good times, the UK government didn't run budget surpluses - which it could have to lower debt and build a buffer of financial capacity to borrow during bad times. No, it continued to pour money down the enormous fiscal black holes of social spending, subsidising more housing, little used (and extraordinarily well used) railway services and the every hungry NHS.

So, whilst the Keynesians out there aren't worried - they always advocated borrow, spend and hope, the truth is that more borrowing is going to hurt.

Borrowing more means the UK government is competing with others for credit - given how tight credit has become for businesses and homeowners, this will only exacerbate the problem. In short the state sector will be competing with the private sector for credit. This only makes sense if you think the state sector can spend money better than the private sector, which is dubious at best. So expect interest rates to rise, further hurting businesses and mortgage holders (and so further dampening down house prices).

Secondly, borrowing more, particularly from offshore, will be inflationary, as it pumps more money into the economy.

There is, of course, the demographic timebomb contained within the UK national debt. The £640.5 billion of national debt consists of 44.2% of GDP, and this is at a time when the population is progressively aging, putting a higher strain on an already undercapitalised "national insurance" fund (which is no more a fund than any other Pay As You GO tax funded system) for pensions and the NHS.

So with credit tight, housing prices (and much of the private sector savings) heading downwards in most of the country, fuel and good prices soaring, the trade union movement is also starting to be restless. Calling for state sector wage increases well above inflation, naturally not giving a damn about the rest of us who would be forced to pay for them.

The Daily Telegraph editorial on Saturday does suggest a different approach, which is simply to do what householders and businesses are doing in a recession. Look for efficiencies in government spending. When the government spends money it is taken from elsewhere, taken from consumers and businesses. So when it is spent on wasteful activities that generate little return it is destructive to the economy.

For far too long the answer to problems in the UK has been to ask the government for money, and the new Labour administration has obliged. It is time for the Conservative Party to out the waste of government, and to wage war against it. Some simple questions could be asked of all government spending by those in control of it:
1. Will the spending genuinely generate more money for taxpayers than was taken away?
2. Would taxpayers voluntarily cough up funds for this spending if given the choice?
3. What harm would happen if this money wasn't spent at all?

Those are questions politicians of the British Labour Party seem unable to ask, it's about time they were.

Free trade could ease global recession

In a couple of weeks time the Doha round will stagger on. If the governments of the EU, USA, Japan and poorer countries were rational actors they would treat this as an opportunity, a huge one - to inject some growth into the world economy. The Daily Telegraph tells how important this is.

It would be a chance for the price of food to be relieved by multilateral agreement to abolish agricultural export subsidies, to end non-tariff barriers on agricultural trade, and move towards decreasing tariffs and domestic subsidies. That requires the EU, Japan and the US - whilst Barack Obama seems distinctly unenthused.

It would be a chance for developing countries to respond in kind by reducing their tariffs and non-tariff barriers to manufactured goods and services. That requires India, Brazil and African states.

However there isn't much chance for optimism. In the US, the Democrat led Congress is in protectionist mode, and in the EU Nicolas Sarkozy as EU President is really not interested at all. Meanwhile, the Observer reports how Oxfam and ActionAid are showing their socialist colours, with little interest in the Doha round. It also presents Haiti as an example of how liberalising agricultural trade can go wrong - which of course, ignores the truth that without EU, the USA and Japan liberalising as well, and without the rest of the economy opening up, then Haiti was only going to be half successful.

EU bureaurats strangle consultation

When the EU engages in "stakeholder consultation on the Commission's smoke-free initiative" you might think it would at least allow a smokers' lobby group to participate.

No. According to the Daily Telegraph's Simon Clark the European Commission has no interest in the views of smokers. Liberal? I think not.

"World's worst building" getting minor upgrade

Not PC described it as such, as has the Daily Telegraph and Esquire magazine.

It's the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, which is itself an empty shell. It is a concrete monstrosity, it has no utilities or rooms. Construction started in 1987 as a showpiece against South Korea, the host of the 1988 Olympics (which the USSR and China, North Korea's then allies, refused to boycott), construction stalled in 1992 after US$750 million had been spent on it, and the aid flows from the USSR (and the USSR itself) had disappeared.

According to the Daily Telegraph, a handful of top floors are to be refurbished at considerable cost. I wonder how this will happen, given it has no elevators and rumour has it that it was so badly designed and built (by North Korean state "companies") that the elevator shafts are not plumb (so elevators are out of the question using those.

The reports of "refurbishment" are most likely to be the use of the structure for telecommunications according to the Daily Telegraph report. This is surely the building that would be one of the first to get demolished when this enslaved country is finally freed.

How nasty can someone on the left be?

"Poisonous, spiteful, and bitter" is how Idiot Savant described Dr Michael Bassett. I think he ought to look in the mirror.

He has posted on how Margaret Thatched is to get a state funeral when she passes away, and he's gotten nasty about it.

He described Margaret Thatcher as "Britain's most hated woman", but the link he places that comment on gives NO evidence for this. Even though it is the Guardian, the most leftwing mainstream paper. Controversial yes, but most hated? How does a NZ blogger make that call?

Then he says "On the plus side, it will at least give her victims a final chance to throw excrement and rotten fruit at her as she goes past". Yep, poisonous, spiteful and bitter for sure. Nice stuff really. David Lange led reforms as radical as Thatcher, but he didn't say that about him did he? However executing Saddam Hussein is "barbaric revenge" which even he didn't deserve. Apparently being filthy and disgusting at someone's funeral is ok.

Now I accept he'll have a Marxist position on her saying "She deliberately drove millions into poverty and destroyed British society in pursuit of a demented dream of unfettered capitalism. Her economic "successes" (if you can call them that) were won over the bodies of the poor. And that makes her a criminal, not a hero". Although there is NO evidence she "deliberately drove" millions into poverty, although there is mountains of evidence that decades of postwar socialism stagnated Britain into decline and locked generations into low income low education based jobs like mining. By no means is the UK close to unfettered capitalism, and the economic success is patently obvious with low unemployment, inflation and economic growth that much of Europe has envied. The "bodies of the poor" were kept there by decades of leftwing patronising and pretending that government could protect them from the economic reality that the British economy had to move on to be cleverer and more productive. Frankly Britain has only gone part way down that process, with mountains of whinges and moaning in much of the country about why the "guv'mint don't do nout for them".

Yes she mistakenly supported Pinochet, but her political opponents wanted unilateral nuclear disarmament (UK disarms, kicks the US out of the UK, but the USSR can remain a nuclear power), to remove itself from NATO (so basically being neutral between the free West and the totalitarian Soviet bloc) and remove itself from the EEC (so economic autarchy, ala Eastern Europe).

I for one am glad she defeated tired old unionist Labour in 1979 to turn the bankrupt British economy around, defeated the blatantly Marxist indifferent-to-the-USSR Labour in 1983, and the clothcap moaning reborn old Labour in 1988.

I can appreciate people not supporting her policies, but to say people should throw excrement and rotten fruit at her funeral is simply vile - but I guess the left is allowed to do that, much like some on the left turn a blind eye when picketers initiate violence against workers who don't want to strike, and their families. This is not a time to give a eulogy to Lady Thatcher, but for the handful of errors she made (Pinochet, Poll Tax and social conservatism) she did much more to save Britain than any other Prime Minister since Churchill in WW2. Indeed, the telling legacy is that no major UK political party even approaches destroying the bulk of her policies. That is worth far more than the venom of a leftwing New Zealand blogger.

Why is Wellington doing so well?

I thought Lindsay Mitchell's post showing that average weekly income in Wellington has soared ahead of the rest of the country is telling.

What does Wellington do more of than anywhere else? Where does the money from this come from?

Bob Geldof and Bono don't harangue this lot

Africa's kleptocratic leaders.

When Bob Geldof and Bono bleat on to the Western world about how it is "neglecting Africa" you might ask why they don't ask Equatorial Guineas's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema why his son needs a US$35 million Malibu mansion, or why Gabon's President Omar Bongo has a 19 million Euro property in Paris.

According to the Daily Telegraph "the French fraud body OCRGDF, an anti-corruption campaign group has accused a string of African politicians of plundering vast sums from the often struggling economies of their countries."

The story tells of the obscene theft by some leaders of the revenues their governments take from oil and mining operations "for the country".

Don't go too fast John

Now I know that libertarians get a little flack for being hard on John Key, but tell me this. When he reneges on past National Party policy that was implemented when it was in government - and completely repealed by Labour, is it any wonder? I'd like, at least, for National to hold similar policy positions today that it held in 1999, because after all, what has changed to cause National to want to shift its policy closer to Labour? More importantly, has Labour moved towards National's policies? Hardly.

So when the NZ Herald reports that John Key says National will "investigate" opening the ACC Work Account to competition, you have to wonder why it is so insecure about a policy that it implemented, whilst a minority government, in 1999. A policy Labour gleefully repealed, with legislations overriding commercially negotiated contracts and effectively banning the private sector from providing ACC services that it had offered. Why isn't it even mentioning the ACC Motor Vehicle Account, which at the time was in the "investigate opening to competition mode"? I mean seriously, why is providing competition to a government monopoly something that so frightens John Key?

Come on John - announce competition for the Work Account, investigate competition for the Motor Vehicle Account AND the account for all other compensation. It's the least you can do!

Fair Trade still isn't

Increasingly UK newspapers have taken to producing their own TV clips, which unsurprisingly are often smarter and more interesting than the BBC and commercial TV.

Today I present to you a piece from the Daily Telegraph as part of a series it calls "Holy Cows". It is presented by Sameh el-Shahat from Egypt, and it tackles just a couple of the myths of so called Fairtrade. For example, looking at how much of a margin is taken for fair trade and how much actually gets to the farmers, and secondly how fair trade is a distraction from the real trade agenda of free trade. Paying farmers a bit more for the raw commodity whilst maintaining high trade barriers that prevent them from selling the commodity processed is cheating them. I've said before there are many arguments against this well intentioned distracting fraud here, here and here. Oh and to some more liberal critics, yes this isn't a non-initiation of force, but it is fraud, and it assuages consciences while distracting people away from the real issue - trade protectionism. This of course, is deliberate, as much of the environmentalist/leftist end of the political spectrum actually supports that (OxFam notably doesn't).

The article is here

The video here

Greens smoking the railway whacky baccy

According to the NZ Herald Keith Locke wants to make you pay to reinstate the long gone Auckland-Whangarei passenger rail service. Why?

He says "With the price of oil rising, people are looking more and more at alternatives to car travel. Sure, there are buses, but a lot of people, including myself, like train travel - it's smoother and more sociable, plus rail travels a different route to the highway."

So he likes trains, and it's for meeting people and it's a different route. Yeah man all good reasons to take more money from taxpayers. Sheesh.

He says the line needs fixing to be up to passenger standard, well it would be. However let's forget cost for a moment. There is a very simple reason why there hasn't been any passenger rail service on this line for over 30 years.

Travel time by bus - Auckland-Whangarei: 2hrs 20-40mins
Travel time by car - Auckland-Whangarei: 2hrs 20mins (if you're really really good)
Travel time by air - Auckland-Whangarei: 35min plus assume 30min check in and 1-1.5hr time to/from airports
Travel time by train (when last operating, diesel railcar)- Auckland-Whangarei; 4hrs 10min

Want to waste near 2 hours socialising and enjoying a circuitous route by train?

NZ assembled locomotives? no don't, really!

The desperate cry of the economic nationalist wanting jobs for his electorate.

New Zealand hasn't assembled a mainline locomotive in decades, and there is a good reason for that. It is the same reason New Zealand doesn't assemble cars or planes - it is far too high tech to be done in a country that has a relatively high cost of labour and hardly enough demand to justify the capital needed to do it.

It harks back to the nonsense of asking Sony, JVC and the like to disassemble TVs manufactured in Indonesia or China, so that kiwi drones could screw them back together again. China does it from scratch because the labour is cheap and demand is high - New Zealand has neither of those.

So when Trevor Mallard, keen to spend your money says "It's probably a very logical thing to do from a currency perspective, from a value for money perspective.". Well Trevor it wasn't in the 1980s when locomotives were imported complete from the UK for the main trunk electrification, it wasn't in the 1970s when locomotives were imported complete from Canada and the USA.

Locomotives have been re-engined in New Zealand, but let's face it, your local mechanic can put in a new engine in your car - but you wouldn't trust him to have get all the parts from Toyota and put it together would you?

The last locomotives assembled in New Zealand were a handful of shunters in the mid 1980s.

Now the workshops have manufactured freight wagons successfully and economically, and successfully refurbished most of the passenger rolling stock on the network. However, the new electric units Wellington will be getting in a couple of years aren't being assembled in NZ for a good reason. Rob Muldoon and the North Korean style economics of "self reliance bugger the cost" are long gone!

Veitch and real issues

Tony Veitch would not be an issue for the government per se, if the state didn't own TVNZ. Then it would be the matter of a violent man and his victim, and whether or not charges were or weren't brought, and whether she sued for exemplary damages or not. It's interesting to people because he was such a public figure, and frankly what he had to say never interested me one moment.

However, whilst the media circle this issue like piranhas (nothing so feral as the media turning on its own), it remains painfully incapable of offering any educated debate on major political issues that have an impact upon the whole country. Like whether or not education should remain a state monopoly, like whether the state should continue to own the dominant free to air broadcasting channels, like whether the welfare state and the system of pay and neglect is causing more harm than good in low income parts of New Zealand.

Why do people read blogs after all? Yes some bait you to the left and the right, and you know in advance what their views are, but others also give some intelligent insights.

and these are the unpaid blogs, the blogs that aren't run by the newspaper websites. For example, simply because it is my profession, I have yet to see a single New Zealand mainstream media outlet give consistently well researched coverage of transport or censorship issues. The tendency is to quote whatever lobby group or mainstream political reactions there are and take it from there.

"Me too" wants to spend more of your money

Labour has pledged over $400 million of your taxes (not petrol tax but general tax) to pay for the frightfully expensive Transmission Gully motorway. This doesn't even cover half the cost.

Now politicians pushing Transmission Gully are pushing a simple truth about democracy and how people think.

Most of those who want Transmission Gully are simply gunning for the government to make other people pay for it - you see if central government pays, it will be virtually invisible to those who benefit from it, as on a per person basis nationwide we are talking about over $250 for every man, woman and child. Politicians can hide that through borrowing. For property owners in Kapiti, Mana and Pukerua Bay, this is nothing compared to the uplift in values they will experienced. John Key wants the votes of people out there and Wellingtonians generally - he's willing to make the whole country pay for this piece of pork.

John Key could have said the following on Transmission Gully:

"Look, Ministers shouldn't be involved in decisions about what roads are built where. We have had nine years of Labour meddling in the decisions of government agencies as to what road funding should be built on, with special funds for "regional development", "walking and cycling" and goldplating of projects for little apparent benefit. Labour delayed the bypass of Orewa that is currently being built, and advanced other projects instead. It delayed Wellington's Inner City Bypass to placate the Greens through to the 2002 election. It suddenly found money for Tauranga Harbourlink to placate Winston. National wont play favours with motoring taxes.

You see I don't know whether or when Transmission Gully should be built. No Prime Minister should be making these decisions, because spending money on something so large takes money away from other projects. In fact Transmission Gully can't be funded by existing motoring taxes alone, so it would mean either taking more money in taxes or asking the users to pay for it. I say if the private sector is willing to pay for it, and users are willing to pay through tolls, let it be built. However I wont promise to spend over $1 billion on a big road in Wellington, because next week I might be asked about a big road in Auckland, and then one in Christchurch, and Hamilton and so on. What I will promise is I'll take politics out of road funding decisions once again, and let the decision on Transmission Gully be one of merit - not one of politics".

What he actually said according to the Dominion Post was:

"His party, if elected, would look at increasing the Crown contribution." Oh so general taxpayers in Invercargill, Auckland and everywhere else should pay for a big motorway to Kapiti?

"It's a possibility. We need to put it into the mix. It's a big issue and obviously things can move around. There's got to be a point where it works." Does there? Maybe it doesn't John. Maybe it's an expensive political bribe.

National would also introduce a greater use of debt-funding and relax provisions for public-private partnerships for major projects such as Transmission Gully.

"I think it can be built. A solution is going to have to be found."

John, it's just "me too" isn't it? Spending more taxes so you can buy a bigger slice of pork than Labour.

Embassy gets offended

The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is upset that the Wellington Film Festival is showing an animated film called Persepolis, which clearly offends their sensibilities.

According to the Dominion Post it says the film is ""full of lies and unreal fantasy", "exploitative and unfair" and "anti-peace and insulting".

Iran should know, since its leader called for Israel to be wiped off the map, since it is Iran that has been testing old missiles in a show of "mine's bigger than your's" and Iran that hosts a holocaust denial conference. It is Iran where men are routinely executed for being homosexuals, teenage girls who have been raped may get executed and girls are imprisoned who defend themselves against rapists.

So to the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran quite simply - go fuck yourselves. You have no moral ground to claim over the Wellington Film Festival. If you can represent a misogynistic bigoted violent government and not be offended by that, then your opinion isn't worth spitting on. The world will be a better place when you're mindless filthy twisted bigoted bloodthirsty terrorist breeding regime is overthrown.

18th again

And thanks to Tumeke for the effort involved. It does mean I can't take weekends off blogging though!

So what if the Maori Party rejects Labour

John Key will do a deal, he'll sell out National to a neo-Marxist authoritarian racist political party and the result will be more taxpayers' money to organisations that this party thinks are important, and the Maori seats (and local authority Maori seats) will remain. This party that only now acknowledges that the situation in Zimbabwe is bad, but carefully doesn't blame Mugabe or Zanu-PF, that hitches itself to the Barack Obama groupies (ignoring that he votes for higher agricultural protectionism), will be embraced by National.

After all, it needs policies to come from somewhere other than Labour doesn't it?

Posh isn't that posh

Victoria Beckham flying Air New Zealand (according to The Sun)?

Seriously, how poor is that!

Now I'm not saying Air New Zealand is bad. She would have flown Business Premier, which is one of the better business classes around.

However that is my point - it is BUSINESS class. A class that anyone one a high income can afford. Air New Zealand has no First Class.

What the hell is she doing flying LA to London on business class?

She should be on a private jet - it's how Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne travel between California and London. Is David getting too cheap?

Even if that wasn't available, how about first class? BA and Air France both have perfectly reasonable First Class cabins on direct flights on that route. United and American also have First Class, but Air NZ would be as good.

Oh and so why is this in the news in the first place? The flight had a bird enter an engine before takeoff so was cancelled and she was allegedly in "airline pjs and no makeup" which wouldn't do to return, and it wouldn't do to be bussed to the terminal (yes read the Sun if you care). Now I know Air NZ doesn't have pjs (unless this is a very new and welcome addition to the service), so she was taking used airline pjs!

Anyway, unless there is some record shortage of private jets, this is not the way someone of her wealth should be travelling. It's how I travel.

The new cheaper Aston Martin

Hey guess what, I've found an Aston Martin that is cheaper than a new DB9, it does almost everything as good as the DB9 but starts at £83,000 instead of £110,850. It's the V8 Vantage.

Problem is, of course, I have money committed at lots of other things, so like hell can I afford either one.

However, the idea that you shouldn't pursue something you can't afford doesn't bother some Wellington local authorities. According to the Dominion Post they are crowing about how the new design for Transmission Gully "saves $275 million". Hmmm really? It "saves" money that actually nobody has in the first place, just like the V8 Vantage is a saving over the DB9.

You see the potential users of Transmission Gully wont pay anywhere near enough money to pay for more than maybe 10% of the road's financing costs, the project itself costs more than all road projects underway throughout the country in one go, and even the money earmarked by the government for it is less than half the cost.

So Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast is dead right when she says "At the moment you'd be hard pressed to start it at all" and that it is in never-never land without a vast increase in funding. However the money can't come from road users without an increase in fuel tax, of around 5c/l ACROSS THE COUNTRY, which would raise about $150m a year. You might ask why you in Auckland, Hamilton, Napier, Christchurch or anywhere else should pay more for petrol largely so people living in the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington can have a choice of routes to get to work in the morning.

You see Transmission Gully is a very expensive solution looking for a problem. Safety isn't it, as relatively modest amounts of money have been spent on upgrading the current road. Congestion isn't it, as it is now pretty modest at peak times, and congestion north of the route is far more significant (which it will exacerbate). The only remaining argument is the bizarre notion that Wellington needs another route out and in in the event of an earthquake. Of course given the Rimutaka's have a road, and there is a port means this is rather specious. What is this route meant to do?? Is it worth $1billion of money from those who never benefit from the project to pay for some rather peculiar insurance policy?

Porirua Mayor Jenny Brash is well intentioned, but basically this is an enormous project to benefit a few suburbs in her city - Kapiti wants it because it is a subsidy for Kapiti dwellers commuting to Wellington.

I typically believe it is better to build roads than railways, but roads shouldn't be built when the users aren't prepared to pay for them. Politicians are looking for ways to make you pay for a road that you don't use - this is a small example ($1 billion) that is about having a cool head and saying no. Labour isn't saying no, but passing it on to local government (and giving it petrol tax raising powers!), Peter Dunne is addicted to this road, and National wont say anything because it doesn't like saying no. Wellington can't afford an Aston Martin.

ACT on law and order

Gonzo Freakpower (Will De Cleene) posts on his concern with the ACT law and order (or as they call it "Crime and punishment" policy) as it seems to approve of extensive surveillance. Specifically he mentions this comment:

"It is easy - if we have the right relationship with our traditional allies and they provide us with intelligence - to observe the movement of cars and individuals without the need for kicking in doors or planting bugs and GPS locators (although, clearly, the latter technologies have their role)."

and more. Which is somewhat disturbing. The trend towards surveillance of the innocent has been increasing in the UK and the US, and should stop in NZ. Sadly ACT doesn't get this.

However, I did think Heather Roy just touched upon something important when she said this is a political initiative:

"* Disruption to the gang's 'customer market'. Prostitution reform helped this. State run gambling helps this. Banning marijuana and party pills does not help, but provides them with customers."

Yes it implies some form of legalisation of marijuana and party pills. May not be full legalisation, but it might see some liberalisation that takes attention from peaceful adult use and focuses on children and harm minimisation.

So ACT, give up on surveillance and the big brother state - but think more about how to not use the criminal justice system to deal with how people run their own lives. One step back, one step forward?

Iran sabre rattles

According to the BBC, Iran has test fired nine missiles, including a new missile with the capability of hitting Tel Aviv. Is Iran trying to provoke or trying to deter? This wont deter, it will scare - and scared Israel is more likely to strike. Ahmadinejad may want war, because he isn't very bright. However, I doubt that many in Iran are happy about this move.

I fully expect the so-called "peace movement" to hold instantaneous protests at Iranian embassies, burning Iranian flags and calling for Iran to stop threatening its neighbours. Look forward to seeing some protest in Roseneath in Wellington for example.

Wont happen though will it?

The so-called "peace" movement never ever protests against militarism by anti-Western states, like Iran, North Korea or Russia. Yes remember those protests? The so-called "peace" movement is uninterested in peace, only surrender and disarmament.

It will be exceedingly dangerous if there is an attack on Iran in self defence - but given the choice between that and a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, it is no choice at all. Since 1979 Iran has been consistently the most pernicious influence in the Middle East, providing financial, military and spiritual succour to terrorists there and elsewhere (the IRA included at one time). It is a thoroughly vile and despotic regime. The preference has to be that Iran backs off, Ahmadinejad is displaced, it opens up its facilities for inspection and it backs off from its Islamist imperialism.

The party of moaning New Zealand

Cactus Kate posts on the vileness of NZ First coming to the fore again, with Peter Brown warning that Asian immigrants should "fit in".

Fit in to what? What is this fucking migrant himself think HE is doing picking on migrants from cultures that believe more in education, hard work, self sufficiency and family than HIS one?

So what should they fit into?

The tall poppy syndrome?
The "why doesn't the government" talkback mediocrity that demands that life be made better by the government fixing it?
The narrow minded pig ignorant personality cult followers that demand no accountability for their cult leader between elections, but think he's wonderful every 3 years?

No Mr Brown, you should go home - you and your party have done more harm to positive values of entrepreneurship, looking outwards, applying reason and personal responsibility than most Asian immigrants ever could. After all Mr Brown, what ethnic group has disproportionately low levels of welfare claims, imprisonment and high education achievement?

Yes, can't have people like that can we, because those who can actually read, get a degree and run a business aren't likely to vote for a populist personality cult led nationalist party are they?

58 years on - a little more truth from Korea

The Korean War, so closely following World War 2 was a particularly heinous affair. Intense propaganda from both sides shrouded the truth, and the truth was that at the time both North and South Korea were led by blood thirsty butchers. Both of whom were more blood thirsty than their allies of Red China and the US led UN forces. The North Korean side was particularly brutal, keeping some POWs in tiny holes standing vertical where they could kick heads at ground level.

However the truth of how the southern side acted has always been somewhat hidden. The North of course proclaims endless atrocities committed by the US side, which of course creates much doubt about the truth behind it. However, according to the NZ Herald, South Korea now has a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has revealed that a blind eye was turned as the South Korean regime executed 3500 political prisoners. Furthermore as many as 100,000 suspected leftists were killed in the first weeks of the Korean War. Whilst these slaughters were carried out by the Syngman Rhee regime, the US largely ignored or was modestly critical. The ends do not justify the means, and North Korea was not thwarted by slaughtering suspected South Koreans en masse - it was thwarted by concerted military action.

None of this should give sympathy to North Korea or credence to most of its claims of "atrocities". We probably will never know the extent of those. However, it is important to know what was done by our ally in the name of freedom. South Korea has grown, changed and become a free and open society for the past 20 years. North Korea need not be described. It doesn't reflect badly on either South Korea or the USA today, but it is worthy of remembering. South Korea can face its demons with bravery, and maybe just maybe one day North Korea may even start.

A broadcasting policy

If I were Broadcasting Minister.

Step 1: Sell TVNZ - give away 51% of the shares to the public, sell the other 49%
Step 2: Give away shares in Radio NZ to the public. Allow it to sell advertising, sponsorship or subscriptions.
Step 3: Abolish NZ On Air and Te Mangai Paho.
Step 4: Give away Maori TV and radio, and Pacific Island Radio, and Access Radio by giving away shares to all New Zealanders.
Step 5: Abolish the Broadcasting Standards' Authority, regulating broadcasting on the same basis as publications.
Step 6: Convert broadcasting frequency management rights into full blown property rights.

Note, all to be completed or commenced within one parliamentary term.

The state should not own or control any of the means of communication with the public.

Note, you'll never ever ever hear any serious balanced debate about abolishing public broadcasting on Radio NZ - which, of course, destroys any of their claims for being balanced and presenting all points of view.

Who are the perverts?

Australian PM Kevin Rudd is in a squawk because of Art Monthly magazine publishing a picture of a girl of 6, nude, on its front cover. It isn't child pornography, in fact it isn't even erotic - well unless you count the fact that MANY things are erotic to a tiny minority who have specific fetishes. The range of human fetishes is almost infinite, but by no measure was a crime committed in having her pose in this non provocative, non revealing pose.

However it is telling when both the Australian PM and the conservative Liberal opposition both join the same chorus of outcry at the image, including wanting to ban taking photos of naked children. Expecting fully a witch hunt of the girl and her family. The girl in the photo is now 11 and yet doesn't feel exploited. You see her mother, Melbourne photographer Polixeni Papapetrou took the photo.

The girl clearly has more courage than Rudd or the vile little weasel who leads the opposition, Brendan Nelson, by saying SHE is offended because Rudd said "he can't stand" the image of her. Too right. The image is rather beautiful in its own right/

A picture of her today with her family, and the photograph in the background is here, courageously on the Sydney Morning Herald website.

The image is not sexualising her - the naked human body is not, by its very nudity, an invitation to be sexual. The understandable fear parents have of their children being abused has been exaggerated to a phobia about children being seen. It is a phobia that means teachers are thought suspiciously if they give an upset child a hug, especially male teachers. It is a pernicious blend of an ultra conservative belief that the naked body is by nature sinful, and feminists who see exploitation and rapist men at every corner.

The image wont incite a child to be abused. How many children who have been abducted were naked at the time? The people sexualising Olympia Nelson are Mr Rudd, Mr Nelson and the henpecked Hetty Johnston, whose minds are filthy enough (or politically corrupt enough) to have decided that this little girl is a corrupting influence that needs covering up. Next there will be calls to make it illegal for fathers to see their daughters naked, or adults to be alone with any naked children (I mean parents here, after all there is plenty of evidence that much child abuse happens at home!).

Olympia hasn't been exploited, by her or any reasonable objective measure - it's about time that politicians and do gooders shut up and left her family alone. There is plenty of real child abuse going on in Australia, it's just not as easy to find, not as easy to "ban" and not as easy to get outraged about.

Mbeki gets a telling from the G8

I bet he didn't think for a moment that he, as the leader of the great and wonderful post-Apartheid "free" South Africa, would ever be held to account for his blood dripping handshaking collusion with Robert Mugabe - but he did.

Thabo Mbeki wont want to go to a G8 summit again.

According to the Times, Mbeki was told along with other African leaders that "trade and investment on the continent could be hit unless they acted to deal with the "illegitimate" Zimbawean president" (sic)

US President George Bush apparently directly criticised him - but that wont mean the leftie former lickspittles of Mugabe will possibly concede Bush was right to do this I am sure.

A Canadian official reported that African representatives were told:

"The Mugabe regime is an illegitimate regime and it should not be tolerated. Public opinion in G8 countries questions why the world would tolerate such a regime and questions why Africa would tolerate such a regime"

Mbeki apparently flew to Harare last weekend to try to meet Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangarai, but Tsvangarai rightly refused saying Mbeki couldn't be trusted. Quite right too, your enemy's mate is hardly someone worth talking to.

So the G8 is going to discuss increasing sanctions (though I wonder if the presence of Russia is a hindrance or a help).

Meanwhile, The Times has published one of its archive articles on its website, an editorial from 1985 about how Mugabe sought to create a one party state then. Yes, the same year I believe New Zealand opened diplomatic relations. The leftwing myth of the hero, blanking out the reality even then.

National's broadcasting policy?

Move along - nothing to see here.

Clint Heine says most of what I think. No Minister has policies I'll happily go along with, before giving away the remaining 51% of shares in TVNZ.

Ask your National candidate this : Why, in an age when it is the cheapest ever to set up a radio or TV station, or produce video or audio content and distribute it, worldwide, must I be forced to own and pay for content on TV and radio stations I don't watch or listen to and don't like?

David Cameron believes in something right!

"We talk about people being 'at risk of obesity' instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.

"Of course, circumstances - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make."

Yes! Amazing these words from the Conservative Leader David Cameron, according to the Daily Telegraph. Just when I think that the Tories are going to disappoint again, David Cameron actually makes a play for reason. Yes, by and large you ARE responsible for your lot. Yes, your own choices are actually what is important here. Revolutionary? Well the government didn't have much to say other than "He wants to hug a hoodie", true, but it shows something else - there is a bit of a philosophical underpinning to this man.

He continues:

"There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get any where near solving some of these problems, that has to stop."

Yes THIS is the moral nihilism that is at the heart of the decay of values, and the unwillingness of all too many to take responsibility for their actions and to not set boundaries. The simplest boundary is to respect the body of others. How hard is that? Well for too many teens with knives, it's clearly outside their (im)moral compass.

Now what this means in terms of policies is another thing. He went on about tax breaks for married couples, and that was about it. However for me, this is an important breakthrough. It is the confrontation of the idea that the mistakes people make are "society's fault". What is also notable is that David Cameron said this in Glasgow East - the latest constituency facing a by-election. Glasgow East is a textbook example of the abject failure of the welfare state, and it would be fair to say that Labour has taken it for granted and failed it miserably.

Glasgow East by-election or why socialism has failed

The Glasgow East by-election is occurring because its sitting MP, David Marshall, is standing down for health reasons. It shouldn't surprise, at 67 he is already outliving the average man in his constituency.

In the 2005 election he won with 60.7% of the vote. Yes he is one of those MPs with a strong true majority. The Scottish National Party (SNP) came a distant second with 17%, the Lib Dems third with 11.8% and the Conservative Party fourth with 6.9%. You get the picture, this is heartland Labour territory. Much of the media coverage is about whether Labour might lose, as the SNP is campaigning strong calling for nanny state to help food and fuel prices. Once addicted to nanny state, always addicted, although I hope the Tories might squeeze into third place (which happened, just, in 2001).

What's actually more telling are two sets of statistics. First, those about the constituency itself. This is a part of the UK that is not middle class, it is the absolute pits of despair - funded from the loving caring generous welfare state.

UK polling report describes the seat as follows:

"This seat contains some affluent suburban areas like Mount Vernon and Bailleston, but it is mostly made up of the post-war product of slum clearances, soul(l)ess tenements and terraces thrown up in the 1950s and 1960s into which the population of Glasgow’s substandard housing were decanted. The resulting estates, lacking employment and amen(i)ties were ravaged by unemployment, hard drugs, violence and gang culture." (sic)

It is poor white Scotland, with only 1.1% of the population not European. A quarter of the population under 18 and 20% over 60. Parts of the seat have a life expectancy for men of 62 - one of the lowest in the UK and akin to Bangladesh. Good ol' NHS doing wonders isn't it?

Only 7.6% of the population are graduates and just over 50% of adults have no school qualifications at all. Good ol' state monopoly education working then?

46% live in "social housing", about the same again in owner-occupied homes. 15.6% of homes have either no private bathroom or no central heating - in Glasgow!

Fraser Nelson of the Spectator explains further: "I once had the job of signing up the good people of Glasgow East to the electoral register — at the time, regarded as an invitation to pay poll tax. Gang graffiti scars the walls, police are virtually unseen. This no-go-zone status is new, and cost billions to achieve. Houses there are in good condition, money is being spent. But it has funded a hideous social experiment, showing what happens when the horizontal ties which bind those within communities to one another are replaced with vertical ties, binding individuals to the welfare state."

You see this is the dire world of welfare, drug and despair addicted Scotland "A boy born in Camlachie is expected to live to 64.5 — the same as in Uzbekistan. In Parkhead it is 62, the same as Bangladesh. Just outside its boundaries lies Dalmarnock where the figure is 58 — lower than Sudan, Cambodia or Ghana. The lowest is Carlton, where the figure of 54 is lower than even Gambia’s equivalent"

Nelson continues, pointing out the vile levels of dependency of those there and how irrelevant they are to Labour "It is invisible because the people in this Labour stronghold are of no use to politicians, who only do battle nowadays in marginal seats. When I last visited a pub there, to research an article, I was asked if I was a missionary — church groups are about the only people who bother with such places these days. Its horrors are hidden by statistical manipulation. Official unemployment is just 6.7 per cent. But add in such factors as those claiming incapacity benefit, and it quickly emerges that a scandalous 50 per cent of the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits."

However, you might think as a Labour heartland seat, this should be easy, this sort of seat is apparently what Labour is meant to be about.

Well no.

The people of Glasgow East have been rewarded by their loyalty with Labour by being ignored. Channel 4 reported that the party has as few as three dozen active members in the seat, and that it has never actually campaigned there in recent history on a door to door basis. After all, why would you campaign when those who vote do so as zombies, ticking the same formula as they are told time and time again that only Labour represents the working man, an irony given how the majority don't actually work. The Labour Party doesn't even have a database on the seat's demographics show where it's weakest and strongest. It has taken most of them for granted. With one part of the seat excepted, poor, destitute, welfare ridden, they'll vote Labour - nobody else will bother campaigning in this seriously dire part of Glasgow.

Of course as David Cameron says, the truth is that those in this electorate have, to some extent, given up. Although you do wonder how the inquisitive bright kid in this place fairs, when he risks being beaten up for being "smart", hounded at a school where intelligence makes you a social pariah, where one parent cynically thinks he's getting "too big for his boots", and with temptations towards drugs and other mindless decadence all around. They all vote for the status quo, and get it of course - and get it from a party only too glad that it gets a guaranteed House of Commons vote so it can have power, to look after the floating voter.

You see that's where, hopefully, all that will be proven wrong. This heartland Labour seat speaks volumes about the arrogance of many on the left for those they purport to give a damn about. Labour ignores them, doesn't even have enough local members who LIKE Labour, and the other parties completely ignore them too - until now. What has Labour done for Glasgow East? Kept the benefits flowing, kept the state monopoly schools open, refurbished some housing and left law and order to the gangs.

So the failure of socialist is apparent - starkly apparent. The formula is not more money for state monopolies and welfare. Yet this seat may offer a chance for the taste of change.

I'll leave the end to Fraser Nelson from the Spectator again:

"Labour, forced for the first time to focus attention on one of its ‘safe’ welfare ghettoes, may find it has nothing to say. Is it to promise more of the same? Or blame the wicked Conservatives? It is one thing for Labour to lose the leafy suburbs which Mr Blair won over in 1997. But to be rejected in a supposed heartland like Glasgow East would plunge the party into existential crisis, and rightly so. Because after all those years in power, and all those billions spent, its main legacy has been, quite simply, the most expensive poverty in the world."

3 years ago today

I used the tube twice today, and was gently reminded by coverage in one of the free papers that today is the third anniversary of the terrorist bombings that killed 52 innocent people and injured 700 in London.

It is notable that it had a low profile today. London has been scarred, but neither the economy nor the culture of the city has been substantively hurt. In the regard, the Islamist terrorists did not achieve their goal of frightening Londoners nor frightening the British government to withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan.

However I do wonder whether the relative nonchalance is naive, or a reflection of the success of the security forces in combating terrorist plots. I hope the latter, because Britain has paid a high price in individual freedom for security.

There is no doubt that it has proven more difficult than the Islamist terrorists thought to undertake their own filthy form of civil war against British society - but Britain remains vulnerable - and has to remain vigilant. Hopefully the naivete about Islamists who preach jihad in British mosques has been shattered - for too long the UK has relied only on its tolerance to battle the intolerant. The message ought to be that if you, as an individual, wish to declare war on Britain's government and society, you will no longer receive the generosity of tolerance. An (effectively) secular United Kingdom must never be negotiable.