11 October 2010

National-ACT fails Auckland

Clap - clap - clap.

Margaret Thatcher once commented about how horrified she was in the 1970s when a senior Conservative MP expressed the view that socialism was "inevitable" and the Conservatives existed to slow it down and moderate it. In other words, when the Tories would get elected, it was to tinker, but by and large whatever Labour did in government would not be overturned.

One wonders if the current National minority government in New Zealand has the same profound inspiration - to preserve the legacy of Helengrad and tinker.

When I now see the results of the local government policy of that government then all i can say is well done. Because it passes the test of the Tories before Thatcher - maintain and continue with the policies of your opponents.

Auckland, all of Auckland, now has a Mayor - more empowered than ever before, to lead a council with the wide ranging powers granted to it by Sandra Lee and Judith Tizard in the height of the Labour-Alliance government that was Helen Clark's first term.

Why? Because Rodney Hide and ACT, cheered on and fully supported by John Key and the Nats, facilitated it.

In 2008 when Labour was kicked out, there was hope from some that it would mean that the local government policy of Labour, that National and ACT opposed, would be rejected.  The hope being that local government would no longer have a "power of general competence" - which Labour and the Alliance (supported by the Greens) gave councils, allowing them to enter into ANY activity they wish, which of course means they can grow (what councils will shrink?).  Even with a change of government, local authorities could subsidise anything, enter into any business activity, enter into any form of social activity (schools, healthcare, housing and welfare even) and government could not stop them, without a change in the law.

With Rodney Hide appointed as Minister of Local Government, there was some hope that this would be wound back - that rates might not be increased unhindered, and councils could not engage in ever more new activities, crowding out private business, private non-commercial activities, and ever imposing higher financial and regulatory demands on the people they claim to serve.

To be fair he briefly tried in 2009 to change the powers of local government, but failed because National decided to keep the Local Government Act 2002.  

However more importantly he failed to answer the question "What should be the role of local government"?  

The answer implicitly given is the same as Sandra Lee, except she answered with conviction:

"Whatever elected local politicians want to do".

In parallel he inherited the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance commissioned by the Clark, Peters, Dunne regime.   He could have, rightly, decided to treat it as curious but out of step with the objectives of the new government.

No.  He embraced it.  With the exception of the blatantly racist pandering of the proposed Maori only seats (as New Zealand remains increasingly alone in ascribing credibility to the patronising fiction of democracy being racist), it was as if the government had not changed at all.  Same policies, different people implementing them.
So the "super city council" (let's not pretend Auckland as a city changes because the petty control freaks who seek to govern it have only one place to rule it from) was created.  Not only was one council created out of eight, but the role of Mayor shifted from being cheerleader and chairman of the council, to having power over money and private property.   

So the biggest local authority in Australasia has been formed, by parties ostensibly committed to free enterprise.

Some ACT supporters thought it was a cunning plan, believing that a bigger council would be dominated by the "centre-right" (which you should be glad for. "Better than the socialists" right?).  

The victory of Len Brown does not exactly demonstrate that.   He has already stated his priority is joining the railevangelists in making ratepayers (and the government) pay for three rail lines.  Projects that are not economically viable in their own right, none of which will generate enough in fare revenue to pay for their operating costs let alone the capital that will be destroyed in building them.

So John Key and Rodney Hide have created a powerful local government entity and Mayoral position that is unfettered, and now a cargo cult loving, "think big" socialist has been elected as Mayor.   Not only that, but this Mayor is talking about a referendum on having apartheid Maori seats. 

Well done.  I don't know quite what Labour can say to this - as I can't imagine it would have been substantively different if it was still in power.

Hide says it is "good for Auckland".   Well given he let it all happen, and endorsed letting voters choose a council that can do what it wants to Aucklanders, he can hardly complain.

It's politics not values after all.

So, if you're unhappy about all of this, will you be voting National and ACT next year?

UPDATE:  It is telling that Idiot Savant thinks this is an epic fail for Rodney Hide.  He's right you know.

05 October 2010

So what would you do?

Whenever any government announces spending cuts, there are always those who are recipients of the money (that isn't their's) who claim it isn't fair that the state isn't taking quite so much money off of other people to give them some, and those who are on their side, constantly sniping about anytime the state does less.

Few governments cut spending while running surpluses, as it is only when years of past profligacy catch up that reality has to be faced, as it is in the UK.

However, "journalists" (I put inverted commas in place because so few of them understand making intelligent queries about what goes on or are capable of comparing current with historical events) rarely ask the two most important questions of such naysayers:

1. How would YOU cut spending or increase taxes? Who would lose out in your world? For example, if child benefit is to remain universal in the UK, what spending should be cut instead, or should the very people who currently receive child benefit pay more tax instead??

2. How much of your own money will you be using to compensate those who are losing out on the spending cut?

The typical answer to the first question is "I don't know". In other words, a mindless opposition to politicians who, to be fair, are simply trying to balance the books and reduce the rate of borrowing. The more philosophical ones of a leftwards bent would make a flippant comment about "the rich should pay more tax" (or bankers), or that defence spending (the left hates defence) should be cut.

The second question invariably draws a blank. Spend your own money helping the poor, or schools, or hospitals? Actually do something rather than call on government to force everyone else to do so?

No - it is the moral vacuum of too many of the left who have never really thought of voluntarily raising money or spending their own money to relieve poverty or keep open a school, hospital, library, art gallery or whatever it is they are so stouchly defending.

Whereas I simply think that if you can't be bothered contributing something substantial yourself then your advocacy for forcing others to do so, through the state, is morally bankrupt.

Destroying the welfare state

"There will only be schools for the rich"
"We wont have any hospitals for the poor"
"Families will struggle"
"It's so unfair"

Such are the ridiculous hyperboles thrown about because the British Government is proposing to cap the welfare state by (get ready for the poor bashing moment):

1. Eliminating child benefit for anyone earning over roughly £44,000 p.a. (where the second highest income tax rate cuts in);
2. No one will be able to receive more in benefits (including housing, council tax etc) than the average wage.

So the top 15% of incomes in the UK (yes apparently £44,000 p.a. is rich!!) wont get welfare. "An attack on the principle of universality"! Oh what a tragedy. Families that WONT get welfare.

It really has come to this. Britain is overspending at a rate of £2 billion a week, but a cut in welfare for the comparatively RICH, sends the left into apoplexy. A saving of £1 billion a year, and it is portrayed absurdly as an attack on the poor.

The British welfare state is not under threat.

British taxpayers still pay for everyone's children to have compulsory education.
British taxpayers still pay for the most centrally planned and socialist universal health care system in the world (and funding for it isn't to be touched).
British taxpayers still pay for benefits for those out of work, unable to work and to reward breeding up to the average wage.
British taxpayers still pay for much of the population to be housed.

All the government is doing is cutting back on welfare for the middle classes. It is a start, but it is NOT destroying or even challenging the welfare state.

The opponents of these cuts do NOT have an alternative to reduce the deficit, they like to pretend continually borrowing to pay these benefits is better (none ever propose other cuts, few propose more taxes on the rich who will lose from these cuts anyway).

However, most disconcerting is the belief that families are "entitled" to help from the government. No notion that it is their own taxes they are getting back, no notion that when one breeds you should look after your kids yourself. A culture of being "entitled" to someone else's money or more absurdly, to get your own taxes recycled through the state.

The Conservative-Lib Dem government isn't challenging this revoltingly corrosive dependence on the state. What it is doing is abolishing welfare for wealthier families and capping welfare so that nobody gets more in welfare than the average person takes home from working.

For this to be controversial to anyone other than hardened Marxists who believe money grows on trees and that people should ideally get paid money for no reason at all, is tragic.

Oh and if you think New Zealand is less silly, then take the OECD figures from the Daily Telegraph, which claims payments per child per annum are on average US$3,133 per annum in NZ.

What is wrong with people paying for the consequences of their own breeding?

04 October 2010

Sell it and change the channel

Yes Paul Henry was a dick for his comment about the Governor General.

However, doesn't it show once again why you shouldn't be forced to have an ownership interest in TVNZ?

TVNZ should be privatised. The last National government was confidentially investigating exactly that at the time, but time wasn't on its side before the rise of Helengrad.

The rise of digital TV (first by Sky via satellite and Telstra-Clear via cable, some time before terrestrial broadcasting) will mean much more radio spectrum will be available for TV channels. There is no need for the state to own four of them.

TVNZ has long been a laughable excuse for a public broadcaster, caught between trying to be the lowest common denominator folksy, once over lightly, reduce everything to parochial or sporting analogies, asinine banality, with the ernest attempt to try to be the repositary of kiwi kulcha and the need to produce news and documentaries for adolescents.

Selling it would mean Paul Henry would be with an employer who would respond completely to what its customers (advertisers or subscribers) wanted.

At that point (and right now) you can simply abstain. Don't watch. If enough of you do that then the democracy of the market will remove him from the airwaves, but you can remove him from your screens now - just don't put that channel on when he is on.

03 October 2010

Religion of armageddon

Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s may recall when the next ice age was being forecast, which over time became concern about the greenhouse effect/global warming/climate change. Now there are two key dimensions to the issue of global warming:

1. What does the science say?
2. What should be the public policy response to this?

A rational debate around the science is all very well, and should continue, although many would argue it is more likely that there is anthropomorphic global warming than not, the issue may be more a matter of scale. We already know that the issue of scale and speed of any global warming has been contentious. Any rational person would welcome ongoing inquiry into this area, because it informs what comes next.

The public policy response has been my main area of contention, because it has provoked in many a desire for intervention based on regulation, taxation and subsidy, rather than considering how existing regulations, taxes and subsidies are negative in relation to emissions that may contribute to global warming. As most of those concerned about global warming also happen to be on the political left (and as such show little regard for property rights or concern about the growth of the state) it has caused greatest consternation among liberals who see it almost as a convenient excuse for the left to pursue much of its agenda.

After all, hatred of commercial provision of energy, the private car, aviation, industrialisation, consumerism and capitalism predated global warming, as did the worship of inanimate objects, plants and animals OVER humans.

Because whilst some in the environmental movement truly do have good intentions, have genuine concerns and want the world to be a "better place" in ways that many would agree with (less pollution, improved living standards), others have less concern for humans. The ends justify the means for them.

These are the ones who claim to talk the talk of "non violence" but believe in anything but that.

You see they start by fully supporting the violence of the state in enforcing laws to restrict or compel you as they see fit, including to take money off you to give to whoever they want. The idea that non-violence applies at all levels is absolute nonsense.

It is followed by a willingness to undertake the euphemistically called "direct action", which is essentially trespass, vandalism and obstruction to destroy the product of other people's minds and labour or take it over.

Underlying all of this is to deliberately engage in grotesque hyperbole about what will happen with global warming. The underlying message being that we are all doomed unless something is done about it. This scaremongering has little basis in science, every basis in science fiction and is intended to frighten people into following a line of thinking that there should be NO HIGHER PRIORITY than to cut CO2 emissions (only in Western liberal democratic developed countries mind you, not Russia, China, let alone the Gulf states which are by far the world's highest emitters). Emissions become the measure of success, NOT the net impact, not living standards, not life expectancy, but the composition of the atmosphere. Think atmosphere before people.

It matches the economic nihilism of the same people who think economic growth cannot be sustained (based on the false premise that wealth is solely generated from raw commodity discovery and consumption, rather than the application of reason to all available resources) and must be redistributed. The same who have the socialist notion that it is "unfair" that the countries and cultures that embraced capitalism, science and reason above all others first are wealthier than those that did not, and that means wealth should be stolen from the developed countries and given to the developing. The idea that human development and industrialisation should be curtailed and restricted, because it is "killing the planet" (let's depict the planet as something living of course).

Now spreading this Armageddon concept and the urgency of action has proven to be insufficient. Truth be told the environmentalists are terribly unhappy that they have had poor electoral success in most countries, and that the "urgency of action" has largely been seen in governments dabbling in energy, transport and a few other sectors to encourage less emissions. Governments wont wage war on the car, plane, power stations or industry because most people like their car, like to travel, like electrical appliances, like their jobs in such industries or those related to them, and want better living standards.

So scaring people that they will die if they don't act on global warming has failed, because neither voters nor governments are that interested anymore. The next stage is obvious - scare them that their children will hate them and turn on them.

That is where this video came in:



Showing Greenpeace in its true form, as driven by people who show anger and a desire to threaten violence underneath the shroud of panda bears and humpback whales.   Greenpeace is a multi-million dollar business peddling the propaganda of a new global religion that doesn't take kindly to those who point out when it is wrong.

However, it is most clearly seen in the now infamous Richard Curtis video depicting how school-children who want join their fellow drones in the religion can "hilariously" been blown up - Taliban style - like what happened in London, Paris, Madrid, Baghdad, Kabul, Istanbul, Moscow etc. It is part of a campaign called 10:10.



Neither the Green Party of England and Wales, nor Greenpeace have uttered a word about this. All I can say is bravo for scoring a spectacular own goal, and showing that the term eco-fascism is not an exaggeration. Name a situation when it is funny to show a teacher blowing school students up like a bomb for not agreeing with the teacher or the rest of the class.

Of the businesses that deserve to be pilloried for supporting this, the list of O2, Kyocera and Sony, can also include the Royal Mail and Adidas.

I don't expect the British Con-Dem government to respond, led as it is by a man who made a point of joining the Conservatives to the global warming religion, and with a coalition partner that is one of the most fervent adherents to it.

01 October 2010

Where is the attention deficit?

The scientific discovery that so-called "Attention Deficit Disorder" may be inherited by some children has of course now let many millions of parents off the hook for their poorly behaved and anti-social children. Some were reported as being relieved they weren't to blame, as if they were also relieved of responsibility for how their children behave (although a cruel person would argue if it is in the DNA then one shouldn't replicate it) or perform at school.

It is a measure of these times for parents to evade responsibility for their children and their actions. It can be seen in the flippant approach of far too many (men in particular) who don't want to carry the responsibility for their own reproduction. It has long been timeless for teachers to notice the parents who refused to accept responsibility for their children being disruptive or violent at school. I recall my parents being told at parent-teacher evenings they need not have bothered coming along, because the parents the teachers really want to meet are the ones who never turn up - the ones who prioritise TV, the pub, their friends or their latest shag over their own kids.

Whilst undoubtedly medical science will continue to discover bio-chemical and genetic bases for all sorts of behaviour (I await the undoubted discovery that some pedophiles, sadists and masochists are born that way), the mistake is to think that there is nothing that can be done by means other than medication.

As Theodore Dalrymple writes in the Daily Telegraph, the real "attention deficit" is from parents, in particular fathers. He says "far more British children have a television in their bedroom than a biological father living at home throughout their childhood".

The destructive legacy of this is seen in boys growing up looking for male role models in all the wrong places (in the case of some ethnic minorities, gang culture in the teens is rife at both supplying and seeking out fatherless boys), and girls who learn from a certain age the main way many women get male attention, and so seek "daddy" figures of not quite the kind they need. The ease by which attention lacking young people now have communication means to pursue these surrogate father figures who prey upon them is largely ignored, and is probably too shocking for the middle classes to truly accept.

Far easier for some to blame their genes, far easier for politicians on the left to say it is poverty.

Far harder to confront that a combination of the welfare state, the post-modernist abstinence from individual responsibility regarding breeding and the lack of promotion of life values is what is the issue.

Ireland's forthcoming default

Two article today present antidotes to the typical leftwing "f'ing bankers" reaction to the foolish decision by the Irish state to bail out its most profligate bank.

City AM's Allister Heath blames the Euro for feeding Irish banks with low interest fiat money, when interest rates should have been far higher. The Euro, reflecting the dominance of German economic conditions, wouldn't reflect the boom of Ireland.

The Adam Smith Institute takes things further, blaming the ridiculous 100% government guarantee of deposits at Irish banks for encouraging profligacy and costing taxpayers an absolute fortune (and removing any interest in people considering how viable their banks really are). It calls on the Irish government to end this guarantee, slash state spending and withdraw from the Euro.

The fear being that the Irish state may default itself, which of course would render all its borrowing as junk, but would mean the state would need to cut back to what it can afford.

Meanwhile, if you wanted to retire in Ireland and buy a house, now is the time.

27 September 2010

It's quite a jump to the left

After losing this year's election, the British Labour Party purged Gordon Brown, as he proved himself to be one of a long list of Labour leaders who only lose elections (he joins Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot, James Callaghan, Hugh Gaitskell as post war Labour leaders who never won an election).  It has been on the search for a new leader, and had five candidates get nominated.  

Only one was a woman, demonstrating once again that the party that claims to do so much for women, can't bring itself to get led by one, and Diane Abbott (the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons) came last, not helped by being the most leftwing candidate by far.  It is telling that the winner said patronisingly that she was "right to stand", if only to avoid Labour looking embarrassingly like what it hates.  She and unionist Andy Burnham were not serious contenders.

Ed Balls, former Education Secretary, was a Brownite, and came third, but the real battle was the bizarre spectacle of two brothers contesting for the leadership, each with a different taste to offer.

The Milibands (as comedian Andy Hamilton quipped he wasn't used to the new metric politicians) were raised by Marxists.  The difference is that David Miliband, the older brother, grew up and was strongly affiliated with Tony Blair.  Ed Miliband, the baby, preferred Labour of the 1980s. 

Ed Miliband was an intern to Tony Benn, one of Britain's most ludicrous Marxist cabinet Ministers.  Benn once argued that the British government should nationalise the 50 largest companies in the country - in the 1970s, having been Secretary of State for Industry.  A Marxist dad, a Marxist mentor, it was little surprise that in the 1990s he started writing speeches for Harriet Harman and then Gordon Brown.

It is also little surprise that he won the Labour leadership for only one reason, the trade union movement overwhelmingly backed him.  You see the British Labour Party leadership race is decided in part by the rank and file, in part by MPs and MEPs and in part by "affiliates", which is code for the unions claiming weight by assuming that members of the union are Labour supporters.

The 1.3% margin over David Miliband means Ed is not the choice of MPs or Labour members.  More importantly it means Labour is sliding back to whence it came - the politics of class warfare, wealth envy and hatred of capitalism.

Ed Miliband wants to keep a 50% top rate of income tax, he wants new taxes on banks (all banks, whether bailed out by the state or not) to reduce the deficit.  He has indicated he wants to slow down the reduction in the budget deficit (remember this is the rate of overspending, not the level of debt, he just wants to grow debt more slowly), he wants to grow welfare and chase more jobs overseas with a new minimum "living wage" and most disturbingly he wants a High Pay Commission to regulate private sector pay.

How much of this was to get the unions on side or not is unclear, what is clear is that even after being elected as Labour leader he continues to trot out the Gramscian rewriting of history that covers up Labour's role in the decimation of the British economy.

The story told is:
-  The banks weren't regulated, they acted recklessly and all needed bailing out.
-  Gordon Brown cleverly saved the world the country by saving the banks, and by running a huge deficit to keep the economy functioning;
-  Without a big government borrowing money and spending it, the economy would collapse.

The truth of fiat money, Labour riding off the back of consumers borrowing and spending and speculating on property, that only three banks were bailed out by the state, that bank deposits for over 95% of the population were protected anyway, that Labour had run budget deficits almost continually whilst in power, that Labour had wasted fortunes of money on bureaucracies and vanity projects (the Olympics will be the last one) that destroy wealth not create it, and finally that Labour's goal of reducing inequalities was hindered by the promotion of a welfare dependent society, with state housing, state jobs, health and education, all are whitewashed over.

The best that can be said about the last 13 years is that they could have been worse.  That Labour still supported privatisation in government tells you how much more mature it was compared to New Zealand Labour.   However, the only reason Labour gets away with it is the cultural dominance of the BBC which happily perpetuates a  centre-left view of the economy, and the ineptness of the Conservative Party and the business sector, both of which are scared of backing capitalism or in the latter case, rather keen to engage in  continued corporatism.

Allister Heath in City AM is particularly worried that the trend has now moved clearly leftward, on Miliband:

"He supports high tax not primarily because he thinks it will raise revenue but to punish the better-off. Ken Livingstone wants to go even further. Even though bonuses are already mostly taxed at a marginal rate of 51.5 per cent, Miliband wants to increase the bank tax, reintroduce a bonus tax and slap a Tobin tax on financial transactions. He believes in the need for the government to regulate pay levels in the private sector. He supports a new graduate tax."

He concludes with a bleak forecast:

"There is no place in Miliband’s intellectual framework for the idea, shared by Thatcher, John Major and Blair alike that too much tax and too much red tape is counter-productive, reduces effort and investment, chases away capital and talent, impoverishes the nation and destroys the public finances. Instead, to Miliband, the private sector can be taxed and beaten and throttled – and it will always come back for more. This view of the world is shared almost entirely by the coalition’s Vince Cable wing. The two men appear to agree on everything apart from the budget deficit, about which Miliband is in denial.


The opposition hates the City and wants to tax everything that moves; Cable agrees; the Tories are too scared to resist. The public, which has not been exposed to a proper defence of capitalism for years, wants to lash out. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to remain optimistic about Britain’s long-term future. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear for the UK’s jobs and prosperity."

I am slightly more optimistic, as I think the Vince Cable wing of the government is just about releasing steam from the left of the Liberal Democrats with no real substances behind it. I also think the British public wont stomach the Labour Party of the 1980s today any more than it did then. However a decent defence of capitalism is rare in the UK, with only the Adam Smith Institute and City AM being consistent on this.

Is it time for a UK TeaParty to bolster the Coalition to cut spending?

23 September 2010

The bleating as the tit is taken from the mouths of the dependent

As the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition undertakes its comprehensive spending review (which unlike that in New Zealand is about finding opportunities to cut spending almost across the board), more and more of the absurdities of the British welfare state are appearing.

The latest case to cause bleating from the "government is good" left of the Labour Party are payments of mortgage interest to the unemployed.  Yes, you see if you are eligible for the unemployment benefit in the UK, you too are protected from not making your mortgage payments by the state paying for the interest on your mortgage!

So you're not exactly poor, you have property and you expect other taxpayers, property owners and others to maintain your "investment"?   The effect on this is to keep property values inflated about true market value.   It disincentivises people from taking out insurance on mortgage repayments or income, and keeps them as homeowners when some would ultimately decide to bail out, putting their homes on the market lowering prices.   It penalises first time home buyers once again, because it is part of New Labour's programme of middle class welfare, exacerbating the housing price bubble and making it more difficult to people who actually do want to own their own home.

However, the coalition didn't announce it was cancelling this absurd benefit, but reducing the interest rate which would be paid.  You see the state has been paying 6% across the board in interest to mortgage holders on the unemployment benefit even though floating mortgage rates are currently tracking below 4%.   It isn't just welfare, it's a future taxpayer (public debt) funded windfall!   The government simply wants to reduce it to the prevailing market rate.

Still there are plenty moaning about how "unfair" this is, the same who completely ignore where the money comes from (borrow it) and ignoring the impact of being "kind" with other people's money has on those whose money it was in the first place, or on the markets they distort.

The comprehensive spending review wont abolish the welfare state, but it hopefully will completely destroy the middle class components of it.  The universal child benefit (or "you've been breeding, congratulations, here's some other people's money to reward you for having a fuck"), the winter fuel allowance (or "you're old and you forgot it gets cold in winter, so you blew your money on that trip to Barbados"), the "freedom bus pass" (or you haven't even reached pension age, but you're earning a 6 figure sum so how about getting half of your daily commute for free) etc etc, all need to be severely curtailed.

The worst deceit of the last 13 years of New Labour has been how it has used stealth to get so many of the British public dependent on state handouts for part of their income, funded almost entirely on borrowing from their children and grandchildren.   Well Gordon Brown's fiscal profligacy chickens have come home, they can't be evaded and the growth of that debt must be curtailed.

It is one thing to claim the welfare state is about addressing poverty, but it has become a form of insurance to cover people's investment and lifestyle choices.  That should now be coming to an end.

22 September 2010

Take a drive on World Car Free Day

Why?  Because cars are NOT bad.

They have offered enormous choice about where people can live and work and play.  They offer privacy, comfort and flexibility.

Competitive Enterprise Institute spokesman Sam Kazman said:

"The automobile has improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in remarkable ways. It has taken the mobility once reserved for aristocrats and democratized it, immensely expanding the choices that average people have regarding where to live and work. Instead of pushing a misguided political agenda to reduce car use, we should be celebrating automobility"

The hatred for the car ignores that on a per passenger km basis, the number of deaths and injuries from cars keeps declining, that the fuel consumption of cars keeps improving, and the pollution from cars reducing.   Transport for London estimates that emissions from road transport will drop 30% by 2030 if it simply does nothing because of improved efficiency of engines.

The main problem which has cars as the symptom is traffic congestion caused by the ineptness of governments who run them as a commons, without proper pricing and without any concern for delivering a service to customers. 

The incredible growth in car ownership in China and India is not because people there are stupid, but because they want to have access to travel when and where they want to and carry their belongings easily.   It goes against the wide eyed certainty of planners who think they know best how to organise cities and how people move, but the simple truth is that cars bring good, and the growth in car usage will continue regardless of how cars are fueled.  Indeed regardless of the ways that planners find to tax and penalise car use (although thankfully all fuel tax in New Zealand now goes on land transport spending, which is 85% roads).

The car is one of the most liberating technologies the world has ever seen according to Loren Lomasky.
 He comments on why cars and roads are so well used:

In the end, highways are so heavily used because millions of people judge that driving enhances their lives. The striking feature of the critique of highway building programs is that what should be taken as a sign of great success is instead presented as a mark of failure. But the only failure has been with the critics’ attempts to talk people out of their cars and out of the neighborhoods and workplaces that their cars have rendered accessible. This failure is well-deserved. Automobile motoring is good because people wish to engage in it, and they wish to engage in it because it is inherently good.

If only politicians (and voters) would surrender roads from state control, and let them be run commercially by the private sector, like every other utility shown to be far more dynamic outside state control (e.g. telecommunications, aviation, electricity).

21 September 2010

Regular service will resume shortly

I've been away, brief periods in France, Germany, Poland, Russia, China, transited Belarus and then spent a longer period in a small highly controversial country of which I can write precious little about here for legal reasons.

All I can say now is that I never thought that arriving in the People's Republic of China would bring with it such a sense of freedom.

UK, NZ and international politics writing will return shortly.

25 August 2010

The Green view of freedom is eerily Leninist

It is hardly surprising that the Greens oppose voluntary student union membership. After all, such organisations are the training grounds for all too many leftwing political activists, and having such undisciplined access to power and money is a great entree into how the state works.

The great ideological myth around student unions has its direct parallels with the Rousseau view of the "general will" taken to its logical end by Marxism-Leninism.

It goes like this:
- Students are an identifiable collective body of people with a common set of interests. As they are deemed to lack power, having a representative body is in their interests to put the "student view" to the university and more widely to government.
- Student unions can provide that representation, and as such embody the "general will" of students. As long as they are elected, regardless of turnout, the student union can perform this task.
- The "general will" is comprised of the interests of students. Those who disagree with the student union are against the interests of students. As the media, government and universities listen to student unions, this proves they are seen to be representative;
- Students who disagree with the student union are a minority. Their views would only be legitimate if they were carried by the union. If it isn't the view of the union it doesn't represent the 'general will" of students, and could possibly be against it;
- The strength of students is dependent on the strength of the student union. Allowing anyone to opt out of the union would be seen as weakening the expression of the general will of the students. It is an attack on students.
- Students collectively can decide to allow for opting out of membership of their unions, but if they choose not to allow that, then students can't complain. It is the general will of students whether or not they want voluntary student membership.
- Those who wish to contradict this are "anti student" even if they are students.

That twisted perverse logic is what Gareth Hughes is expressing.

He claims making all student unions voluntary somehow takes away the right for students to choose because to him students have a "collective brain".

It's complete snake oil and quite disgusting. If students want to be represented by a student's union they should feel free to set one up by choice or join one, by choice. If they don't then let it be.

It is a diversion to claim universities would charge the same money and fund the association itself. Universities shouldn't do that either.

It's so simple. If students don't want student unions (and their services) then they fail.

Most importantly, if any individual student does not want a union to represent her or him, then the student union should get the hell out of the way.

and the unreformed Leninist merchants of Orwellian collectivism should not get in the way of this!

23 August 2010

Australia sits on the fence

As much as some on the left and right might want to make of it, there were not two profoundly differently views of how Australia should be governed offered by Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Neither offered inspiration and indeed both may be in parties quietly wondering whether the previous leaders of both major parties would have had a better chance at winning.

Julia Gillard offered a vision of "the state is here to help", which sold the total lie that somehow the Australian Federal Government had anything to do with Australia largely escaping the global financial recession. Indeed, it is more that Australia escaped in spite of the Federal Government's efforts to waste the money of future taxpayers by borrowing and spending pork like it was going out of fashion. None on the left in Australia care to note how without a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, without laws that forced banks to lend to those who could not afford to pay and without net Federal government debt (one of the positive legacies of the Howard administration), that the banking sector down under was far less vulnerable to the vagaries of the property bubble.

Ah but Australia does have a property bubble right? Well yes, and that is something that Gillard and Rudd have helped maintain, with a great deal of help from China (and its neighbours) treating Australia as the great mining pit of the southern hemisphere. Nobody can start to pretend that the key reason for Australia's immunity from recession and having its property bubble pricked is the maintenance of high commodity prices whilst China still rides a wave of immense increases in domestic productivity, fueling domestic domestic.

So Gillard tried to sell the snake oil that Labor saved the Australian economy. The biggest snake oil of all was that somehow the Federal Government deserved a share of mining profits over and above existing taxes.

Tony Abbott rightfully knew this, and confronted both that and the persistent claims that Australia should kneecap its economy to help most countries in the world grow their CO2 emissions. However, he himself was a little more disconcerting. It is clear his social conservatism turned many likely Liberal voters off. The poor results for the Liberals in Melbourne likely reflect that.

Yet as much as Gillard and the ALP might like to play on it, neither she nor Kevin Rudd (hardly socially liberal himself) have a glorious record on personal freedoms. The attempts to employ a Singapore/UAE/China style filter on all Australian ISPs smacks of the nanny state par excellence. Bearing in mind that New Zealand politicians sometimes have the tendency to follow our cousins across the Tasman, this was rather disconcerting.

So neither deserved endorsement, and neither got it.

Instead, Australia has rather quaintly dabbled with the Green Party, which if it was honest would effectively shut down much of Australia's primary industries if it could. Like Green Parties elsewhere it blends some social liberalism with a warm cuddly embrace of higher taxes, more government, bans, compulsion and an anti-Western foreign policy.

However, its single House of Representatives MP wont be the deciding factor, it is the independents. The big question is what pork they will demand for their constituencies to grant Gillard or Abbott a majority.

The longest standing independent is Australia's Winston Peters - Bob Katter. Katter was with the National Party, and resigned because he was opposed to privatisation, deregulation and free trade.

Oh and just before those on the left get excited he was also a fan of the politician that has been perhaps Australia's closest example of genuine fascism in recent times - Joh Bjelke-Petersen. The man who banned street protests, who had his political opponents in his own party under Police surveillance reporting directly to him.

Although Katter was with the Nats (and is a climate change sceptic), his father was with the ALP, so where he swings could be about the amount of pork he gets.

Other independents are ex National or Liberal (Rob Oakeshott andTony Windsor) and left because of differences over whether Australia should be a republic or of a clash of personalities. Both of them are likely to be warmer towards Abbott. Another possible independent is Andrew Wilkie, an ex. Green (and ex. Liberal), who is probably warmer towards the ALP.

So who knows what will happen.

However, if it is about pork, the danger is that the "winner" gets tainted for giving preferential treatment to certain electoral divisions (a "division" is a constituency in the Federal Parliament). Let's hope Australian taxpayers don't get such a blatantly raw deal.

18 August 2010

So what now kiwi lovers of less government?

Some voted for National in 2008 to get rid of the big government "the state is sovereign" leadership of Helen Clark. Labour openly preached what it saw as the benefits of government spending more on health, education, welfare, housing and subsidising business. It also created new bureaucracies, gave local government almost unlimited powers to do what it wished with ratepayers' money and sought to tell people how they should live, for their own good.

Labour unashamedly embraced big government, a partnership where the iron fist of state regulation, tax and subsidy would direct the economy, and all major areas of social policy.

National was thought, by many, to offer something different, a change in direction, suspicion of the state, belief in less taxes, less state intervention in the economy, and being more open about choice in education, health care and superannuation.

After all, National offered part of this in 2005, and to a limited extent went in that direction (haphazardly and inconsistently) between 1990 and 1999. Isn't it fair to assume a change in government is a change in direction?

Well no. You see this National government runs deficits, doesn't reduce the size of government, spends more on state health and education, maintains the national superannuation ponzi scheme and has continued to subsidise and interfere with the economy. Property rights are no better off. National is being what it is used to being - a conservative party that keeps what Labour did before and tinkers.

To be fair to National, John Key didn't offer too much more than that in the first place. So some thought it was right to vote ACT.

Bringing Sir Roger Douglas back into the fold gave some hope that a Nat-Act coalition could see one of NZ's two bravest former Finance Ministers having a key role in Cabinet. After all, if Labour scaremongered over Douglas, it wouldn't be hard to ask why Clark, Cullen, Goff and King would complain about a man being in Cabinet who THEY all shared Cabinet with. However, John Key (and the National Party) are political invertebrates.

So ACT got Rodney Hide as Minister of Local Government. Well that was something. Time to reverse the Labour/Alliance "powers of general competence" granted to local government, time to at least cap rates to inflation, time to have local government protect rather than abuse property rights.

No. Not only did it mean none of that, but the Nats took Labour's Royal Commission of Inquiry into Auckland Governance, and implemented almost all of its recommendations. A new big Auckland council, with almost unlimited powers to do as it wishes.

Is that what ACT voters wanted? Bigger, stronger local government?

No. Same with the dabbling with the "hang 'em high" crowd represented by David Garrett.

ACT had potential, it did believe in less government once, it did have senior leaders who would talk the good talk. As flawed as Rodney Hide is, and Sir Roger Douglas, there were more than a few occasions when one could say "bravo".

However, ACT's first real chance at power (it wasn't part of the 1996-1999 National led governments) hasn't just been disappointing, it has even seemed counter-productive.

So what now?

The obvious answer I would give is to offer Libertarianz, although some may say it is still a small party, and many have harbour hesitation whether those within it have the capability or the interest in stepping up to be a serious electoral option for the next election.

So I might suggest this, from afar. It is time for those within ACT and National, who do want less government, less tax, the shrinking of the state consistently, to contact Libertarianz. To attend at least one meeting, and talk about how to move forward.

You don't need to agree with all of the policies, but to believe in the principle of much less government.

No one else is going to do it.


14 August 2010

Morally bankrupt feminists

It's awfully nice to sit in Cambridge, England as a female academic. You can enjoy a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle, choose to study as you wish, travel as you wish. You don't need to rely on men to defend your rights, indeed you can associate with whomever men and women as you wish (and who wish to associate with you). You can be unmarried, married, a mother, childless, heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, chaste, atheist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever. You can pose nude, or live the life of a hermit. You have a range of freedoms delivered through law, but more importantly culture and modern social norms that are the envy of many in the world.

So why does Priyamvada Gopal writing in the Guardian think that what the West offers women in Afghanistan is

"little to offer Afghans other than bikini waxes and Oprah-imitators"

because..

In the affluent west itself, modernity is now about dismantling welfare systems, increasing inequality (disproportionately disenfranchising women in the process), and subsidising corporate profits.

You see she opposes the military intervention in Afghanistan, whilst also opposing "misogynistic violence". Yet she offers the women of Afghanistan absolutely nothing in return.

Her claim is that "The real effects of the Nato occupation, including the worsening of many women's lives under the lethally violent combination of old patriarchal feudalism and new corporate militarism are rarely discussed."

Her evidence for this is patchy. Besides scorning a single book about something called "Kabul Beauty School", she trots out the usual Marxist/new-left rhetoric which is more about language than substance.

The patriarchal feudalism of Afghanistan is appalling, but the Taliban was the codification of it as law - with all women and girls effectively property of fathers and brothers The phrase "corporate militarism" implies a sinister profit-driven military mission, an assertion which has little substance when there are now substantive efforts to extricate national armies from Afghanistan.

However, it is party of this privileged academic's view that the West is not worth her pissing on, in comparison to Taliban run Afghanistan.

Her hyperbole continues:

"The truth is that the US and allied regimes do not have anything substantial to offer Afghanistan beyond feeding the gargantuan war machine they have unleashed."

Gargantuan? By what measure? By the fact that much of Afghanistan remains outside allied control?

What does she have to offer?

The usual vacuous bleeting "social justice, economic fairness, peace, all of which would enfranchise Afghan women".

Nonsense. Peace existed IN Afghanistan when the Taliban was in charge. It enfranchised no Afghan women. "Economic fairness" is the typical Marxist platitude which means "give the people I support more money by taking off those I don't support". Quite how this is meant to happen spontaneously is curious, but since she doesn't have to say what it is (and you'll be accused of being foolish for not knowing what the hell "fairness" is), then it doesn't matter of course.

Finally "social justice"? Does she expect that if Afghanistan is left well alone, that the culture and traditions of that society, with the heavy dose of Islam than runs through it, will produce "social justice"?

Is she just stupid and naive, or is she simply part of the cadre of leftwing feminists who hate the relatively free and open West that grants them unparalleled choice, economic opportunity and individual freedoms who overly romanticise cultures that have none of it?

She believes in "radical modernity", and with the exception of her neo-Marxist buzzwords, says nothing about what this looks like or how to get there. However that's ok. Like all of the West's critics you can damn what is happening, claim the West is, in effect, little different to stoneage patriarchal tribalism, and feel you've done your bit to spit on the USA and carry a torch for Afghan women.

It's morally bankrupt. Bankrupt because without major intervention, the prospects for serious change in the lives of Afghan women are glacial. Bankrupt because with intervention there have been positive changes, but nothing remotely on a scale necessary to make Afghanistan a haven for basic individual rights.

However, anti-Western fifth-columnists like Gopal would reject that. She would damn a wholescale military and political occupation that, as in 1945 Japan, would instigate a constitution, government and laws that would explicitly protect the individual freedoms of Afghan women, girls AND men and boys, and create a secular state. Her interest in Afghan women is exactly the type of tokenism that she accuses Western nations of applying. She believes Western powers treat the plight of women in Afghanistan as a way of gaining sympathy for continued military action. She is not entirely wrong, but the motive is not a mythical "corporate militarism", but part in parcel with the need to defeat the Taliban. It is one of the clearest examples of the Taliban's moral bankruptcy.

No, you see for her the plight of Afghan women is part in parcel of her being able to blame the West for it, and not only that but to deny the blatant differences in the rights and freedoms of women in the West with those in pre-modern societies.

Toby Young in the Daily Telegraph goes a step further, in claiming that the very same feminists remain muted about the treatment of women in Iran. They don't want to join what they see as "racist" or "far-right" criticism of Islam, so the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani gets neglected. Young says that with few exceptions, notable Western feminists keep their mouths shut:

"We’ve heard nothing from Germaine Greer, nothing from Gloria Steinem, nothing from Jane Fonda, nothing from Naomi Wolf, nothing from Clare Short, nothing from Harriet Harmen."

Another case is now that a 14 year old girl in Abu Dhabi is now in prison for "consensual sex" with her school bus driver. She claimed rape, and in much of the Western world the issue of consent would be irrelevant, but this is the UAE. A stone's throw from Iran and similar moral standards.

You'll notice that the standard leftwing feminist blogs are silent on all of these cases.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil makes it better does it?

What is this silence about?

Is it fear that damning Islamists will result in retribution? In which case these feminists are like the meek little girls they never wanted to be treated as, and don't deserve to hold their heads up as defenders of the rights of women.

Is it the very racism they may accuse others of? That is, that women in "those" countries live in different cultures and it would be wrong to judge their torture and abuse by "our" standards. "Exhibit A" in moral bankruptcy.

Is it the fear that damning systems or countries that are not Western aligns them with the very West they all live in, enjoy the advantages of, but continue to criticise? Maybe so. However, is this not just childish political tribalism that keeps one morally blind to the seriousness of what is being ignored?

Or is the more honest point that none of them know what to offer? Without the use of force to overthrow tyranny, it isn't obvious how to confront brutal well-armed dictatorships of one kind or another. Yet if thousands or millions of women in the West confronted the embassies, politicians, companies and media of those regimes that have warped moral standards around women surely it would make a difference. Would the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have quite as much moral fortitude if most of the Western feminists weren't docile in the face of his butchering clericocracy?

As Toby Young says, we don't know, but if would be nice if those who claim to care would speak up:

"Could the West’s self-appointed defenders of women’s rights have done anything to prevent the wholesale slaughter of their sisters in the developing world if they’d taken up their cause? Could a feminist outcry today about the plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani do anything to prevent her death? We will never know, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that their continuing silence reveals the moral bankruptcy of their movement."

10 August 2010

EU = socialists that are out of touch

There is a budget deficit crisis in most EU Member States, which of course is meaning they are no longer particularly keen on funding the European Commission's endless demand for more tax victim money to fund feather-bedding of farmers in western Europe, grand infrastructure projects in eastern Europe, ridiculous projects (such as duplicating GPS and CNN) and the jobs for life in Brussels.

The EU is seeking a 5.9% increase in budgets this year, which is laughable given virtually all EU Member States are cutting their overall budgets, some on a grand scale, to live within their means.

The response from Member States has been to look askance at this, as the EU is acting as if there isn't a recession and isn't a fiscal crisis across Europe. The Eurorats simply want to close their eyes and ears and continue wasting money as usual - bearing in mind that almost all of what the EU spends money on is destructive to economic growth (the only good thing is to police Member States from introducing discriminatory interventionist policies).

So what is proposed? The EU will liberate Member States from this burden, to make them all full of glee that they don't have to worry any more about paying for the EC (the European Commission being the bureauratic arm of the EU).

Instead, the EU will impose a tax on the PEOPLE of the EU. According to the Daily Telegraph, the EC is pushing for the powers to impose pan-European taxes on financial transactions and air travel.

This somehow is meant to be palatable to Member States because it wont be their burden, it will be the EU taxing the public.

You see the EU only thinks of itself and Member States as the legitimate actors here, the long -suffering European taxpayers are merely cogs in the machine of the grand project.

Take this quote:

Janusz Lewandowski, the EU budget commissioner, said: "If the EU had more of its own revenues, then transfers from national budgets could be reduced. I hear from several capitals, including important ones like Berlin, that they would like to reduce their contribution."


Note the euphemism "revenues". Not revenue from selling goods or services to willing buyers, or making investments in commercial businesses that generate dividends or capital gains, no it is revenues taken by force, where the only sliver of accountability will be voting for the European Parliament, where every vote has the fraction of influence of a vote at a national level.

What is astonishing is the bizarre belief that somehow having Member States to reduce their state contributions (but have the people living in the Member States pay new ones), is somehow a great achievement?

The UK Government is thankfully having none of this, with Commercial Secretary, Lord Sassoon (who despite the name doesn't have great hair) saying "The Government is opposed to direct taxes financing the EU budget... The UK believes that taxation is a matter for Member States to determine at a national level and would have a veto over any plans for such taxes". None of the Liberal Democrat wishy washiness about Europe there.

However, it does show how the EC is a funny little world isolated from political and economic reality. It should face budget cuts, which would make Europe far better off as a whole, although the French would object as the biggest beneficiary of the status quo.

The EU's only value today is maintaining open borders and in rules that stop national governments providing assistance to their own businesses or in protecting local businesses, beyond that it is a project of tired old failed Euro-socialists whose own vision of the state has just been demonstrated to be a recipe for stagnation.

CER's last hurdle

The largest barrier to free trade between Australia and NZ looks like it finally has a good chance of being addressed according to the NZ Herald.

For decades now Australia has blocked imports of New Zealand apples on spurious grounds of biosecurity. I participated in a couple of CER bilaterals in the 1990s where this was the key issue (I was fighting for another sector) and Australia would never relent. CER offered no recourse if Australia kept blocking access other than the political ones. Naturally for NZ, access to Australian markets was far more valuable than for Australia to get access to another market the size of Melbourne (if you're generous).

So the WTO, hated by the Greens and the anti-free trade luddites, has proven its worth once again, by showing up the Australians for being protectionist hypocrites - calling for free trade in agriculture through the Cairns Group at the WTO, but unwilling to offer it to its closest trading partner.

It wont be easy, no doubt the socialist Gillard and farmer friendly Abbott will both reassure Australia's cosseted apple industry that they will appeal, but it's simple - you cannot block New Zealand apples under the excuse that they all contain fireblight and will ruin your precious crop.

So good on the WTO, it needs some words of support, especially since neither the President of the United States nor the "President" of the European Union nor the Prime Minister of Japan have any interest in free trade!

06 August 2010

The joy of capitalist "exploitation"

"The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all"

So said economist Joan Robinson writing about underemployment in South-East Asia at the time.

(hat tip: The Economist Leader, 31 July 2010).

05 August 2010

Damn, missed...

Iran's military leader, who runs a regime that executes children who are raped, executes teenagers who have sex outside marriage, has avoided being despatched to the only place he deserves - oblivion.

21 July 2010

Bits and pieces

Yes, I do now have broadband internet at home, but this little interregnum of blogging will be brief as I will be away for a couple of weeks sans any sort of electronic communication at all.

So what's been happening?

1. The right concerns but the completely wrong answer. While Nicolas Sarkozy proves there is nothing a French politician likes doing more than regulating the lives of others, Old Holborn makes the point quite succinctly here. After all, plenty would be offended by the scene of a man walking around with a woman on a collar and lead, but why should it be banned? Meanwhile, is one of the key reasons for this issue being raised because the liberal socialist left refuses to confront Islamism directly, and is willfully blind to the oppression of women by most Islamic cultures because it sees any enemy of the West as a friend?

2. The Con-Dem British government is off in several directions, primarily focused on cutting spending it has decided to slash spending on its core responsibility - law and order. Whilst there are undoubtedly efficiencies to be gained in the sector, and undoubtedly many people shouldn't be imprisoned for a whole raft of offences that are more civil (e.g. not meeting child support payments) than criminal, is the question being asked as to whether there should be less criminal offences at all? In other words, if there is no victim, why should it be a criminal matter? Prison is effective at its core role - protecting the public from criminals. One report suggests that replacing prison time with community sentences will increase crime.

3. The Obama Administration is showing how empty headed and vapid it really is, by its continued embrace of xenophobic anti-capitalist rhetoric against BP. Now it is accusing BP of lobbying to release Libyan terrorists from British custody, when Exxon-Mobil and Shell did exactly the same thing. It is accusing the British government of being a party to providing succour to terrorists, when it happened over a year ago under the Gordon Brown regime, and was in fact the devolved Scottish government (albeit with Downing St tacit approval). Quite what the Obama Administration thought would be gained by hassling the newly elected Prime Minister about something he had nothing to do with, is rather curious.

4. Australia is having a Federal election. A choice between a feral unionist and a feral evangelist. Neither are deserving of a vote from a libertarian. Whilst it is tempting to back the "mad monk" Abbott, because of climate change alone, the Liberal Party remains liberal in name only.

A better choice, given the preference/AV based voting system is the Liberal Democratic Party which lists Ayn Rand as one of the great classical liberals of history. It seeks to abolish victimless crimes, significantly cut taxes (income tax would have the first $30,000 tax free then a flat tax of 30%), engage in a major privatisation programme, replace welfare with negative income tax and promote free trade. Think of it as ACT with balls AND a belief in personal individual liberty.

It has more to it than the Secular Party which seems more a reaction to the Christian politics of Abbott and the now defunct Rudd. It is broader based than the Shooters Party, which is essentially just about the freedom of peaceful people to own firearms. It also doesn't have the obsessive believe in anti-discrimination laws of the Australia Sex Party, as tempting as that party may be to some.

4. A city councillor in Wales is suspended for Tweeting "I didn't know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off." Apparently this is against the local authority code of conduct according to the Public Services Ombudsman. If ever there was a reason to abolish this body or to make those on it undertake training in fundamental individual freedoms, this is it. Britain is a country where expressing your opinion about a religion is restricted, because it might upset the precious little flowers who believe in ghosts.

5. New Zealand's government continues to disappoint. The weak will surrounding mining in national parks, the continued evasion of reality over climate change and the inability to lay down an agenda that directly confronts the anti-human anti-science statism of the Greens, and by default the Labour Party, should cause many more National and ACT voters to weep. Now you're going to vote for an Auckland Mayor who will be more of the same.

UPDATE: Well it would appear the Australian Liberal Democratic Party is more disappointing than it may seem. I have been informed privately that it is largely marketing driven, and that the presence of Ayn Rand on the front page was for marketing purposes. I'd be curious if any Australian libertarians and especially objectivists would interrogate Liberal Democrat politicians as to what they REALLY believe in. A laudable goal would be to return the Liberal Party to its core principles, but the chances of that may be as much as there is in getting the (New Zealand) National Party to do so as well.

01 July 2010

Mines, railway or jobs

I just had to comment on this.

Green MP Catherine Delahunty is waging war against Nightcaps, a small town in Southland I have long been aware of, as it is the locality of a collection of lignite mines. Well it isn't the town, but the mines she hates.

There is some local concern about the pollution arising from the mines, which have existed in one form or another for over a century. The mining is carried out by two companies. One is Australian (boo hiss bad) which she mentions as "Eastern Corporation of Australia", the other she doesn't mention is state-owned Solid Energy.

Now let's be fair here, if the mines closed, then the town would be a shadow of its current self. Jobs would be lost, and people would have to relocate (although Catherine would probably want a generous welfare state to keep people living there off the taxpayers' back).

What she neglects to mention is that the government COULD actually cut back the mining there rather easily. Solid Energy is the obvious first target. Presumably the Greens would close the company down.

However a less visible target is Kiwirail. You see most of the mined lignite leaves Nightcaps on a railway branch line, which has a daily coal train. The line is the last railway branch line in Southland (other than that there is the Main South Line running from Dunedin to Invercargill and onto Bluff), and if it was being run commercially it would probably face closure. Unless, of course, the mining companies would pay commercial rates for freighting the coal (they did under privatisation, but the line needs bridge and track replacement as it has not had serious renewals since it was built).

Yet with Kiwirail now state owned and subsidised, a policy endorsed and cheered on by the Greens, it effectively subsidises the mining operations they despise.

On top of that the mine she talks about is apparently on local authority land. Presumably she believes in empowered local government, yet Southland District Council doesn't do what she likes

So one state intervention - propping up a railway, is having results (keeping open some mines) that those who PROMOTE state intervention, despise.

So what will it be Catherine?

Keep subsidising the railway?
Keep local people employed in mining and supporting those employed?
Let local authorities continue to own land used for purposes you don't like?
Close the mine and the town?

What a choice for those addicted to planning the world around them.

What would I do?

1. Run the railway commercially or offer it to the mining companies to buy if it is that important to them.
2. Enable the property owners of Nightcaps (and across New Zealand) to enforce property rights against noxious levels of trespass of gases (smoke) and dust.
3. Tell the local authority to sell the land (as it should with any surplus land).
4. Leave the mining companies to do as they wish.


What law do you want abolished?

Yes, it may be hard to believe, but the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government is asking just that.

Now it would be too much to hope for taxes, planning laws and much much more to be abolished, but there IS a chance here to do some good.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said in today's Daily Telegraph:

"today we are taking an unprecedented step. Based on the belief that it is people, not policymakers, who know best, we are asking the people of Britain to tell us how you want to see your freedom restored.

We are calling for your ideas on how to protect our hard won liberties and repeal unnecessary laws. And we want to know how best to scale back excessive regulation that denies businesses the space to innovate. We’re hoping for virtual mailbags full of suggestions. Every single one will be read, with the best put to Parliament"

Now you may be cynical, and I am a little, but this is STILL a great step forward. Imagine anyone from the Brown/Blair regimes saying anything like this. Administrations that thrived on passing new laws to fix problems.

So it is a great chance. The website to make suggestions is here. It helps if you have a UK postcode and probably helps most to vote for the best ideas (there are many wingnuts out there and people wanting new laws passed).

So what would YOU abolish?

24 June 2010

Osborne’s emergency budget accepts Labour’s larger state

The Conservative-Lib Dem emergency budget, presented yesterday by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, was meant to fix the fiscal nightmare created by Gordon Brown’s decade or so of profligacy. The man who borrowed and spent up large in the boom years, increasing public debt year on year, and then suddenly switched to a half-baked version of Keynesianism (whereby he does the same in the bad years, ignoring that Keynes did say that in boom years such debts should be paid down).

The fiscal position Britain is in is stark. It is NOT because of the government bailing out banks. By 2016 the UK public debt will be £1.3 trillion, that is even WITH the cuts in spending and increases in taxes from the emergency budget, being over 70% of GDP (and that does not include PFI and pension obligations which are not counted as debt). What Osborne has done is effectively halve the deficit – deficit being overspending – by 2015. He is making the problem grow at half the speed of Gordon Brown before the UK reaches a theoretical balanced budget by 2016.

How is he doing it? Well if you listen to some it sounds like he’s been tough on spending. He hasn’t. 23% of the reduction is by pilfering even more from British taxpayers than before. In other words, the Con-Dem administration is ACCEPTING that Gordon Brown was right to spend more. The argument is a matter of degree. As much as George Osborne is cutting spending, he isn’t cutting it back to remain within the relatively high tax envelope Britain has, he is raising taxes as well.

Most stark is that VAT is being increased from 17.5% to 20%. A significant hike which will choke off retail spending and hurt almost everyone. Perhaps it is the price for the inane British worship of the NHS, but it isn’t presented as that. A Bank Levy is being introduced, punishing all banks for the foolishness of some. Capital Gains Tax is increased as well. He is even investigating a “Financial Activities Tax” (or a tax to chase finance out of the UK to Switzerland). Hopefully that will go nowhere.

There is some modest good news on tax.

Some tax thresholds change, which lowers taxes on some smaller businesses and those on the lowest incomes. Company tax is being dropped by 1% a year every year for four years to reduce it to 24%. That in itself will be positive for business growth in the UK. Small companies will only pay 20%. A stark contrast to some! A proposed tax on phone lines is to go. Fuel, tobacco and alcohol taxes have not been increased. The minimum income threshold for income tax is being increased slightly. However, of course none of this offsets the hit on VAT.

On spending the picture is very mixed as well.

He announced an average of 20% spending cuts across departments (excluding health and overseas aid), which will be detailed later in the year. How that might affect core spending such as defence, justice and police will be curious, but the devil will be in the detail. Sadly he hasn’t simply decided to abolish departments to make that easier.

Public sector pay is frozen for two years, when it should be frozen until there is a surplus. Quite what business would increase pay when it is bleeding red ink (especially for people often unemployable elsewhere) is beyond me. Those earning less than £18,000 wont be subject to the pay freeze, but are all getting flat pay increases – regardless of performance (and Labour say the Tories hate the poor?).

The retirement age is to be raised to 66, but pensions have become another huge bribe. Future state pension increases will be linked to earnings, not inflation, producing a huge demographic based fiscal nightmare for the medium term. Nobody is telling pensioners they don’t get back what they put in, but what their children and grandchildren will be paying in taxes.

As welfare spending increased 45% in ten years, that had to be tackled too. Benefits are only to be increased according to consumer prices, not retail prices (a lower level). A host of tax credits will be wound back. The ridiculous £190 grant to pregnant women (which the last government said was to encourage them to eat healthy, when it typically was used to buy a TV, clothes or any other luxury item) is being abolished. Child benefit is frozen for three years, but absurdly is NOT being taken away from those on middle to higher incomes.

Housing benefit, which costs more than the police and tertiary education combined, is being scaled back by capping the total amount paid. Apparently some families with earnings of over £100,000 have been getting housing benefit legitimately!!

Privatisation is part of the picture too. The sale of the high speed rail line to the Channel Tunnel, the NATS (air traffic control system), the student loan debts and the Tote were announced. None of this is controversial.

Yet so much more could have been done to avoid any tax increases. Simply ensuring all benefits/tax credits were only available to those in the bottom quartile of earnings could have saved billions. There could have been a clear and decisive end to corporate welfare of all kinds. Finally, whilst it would have been politically unpalatable, the greatest gains could have come from raising student fees and charging for basic NHS services (say half the cost of doctor visits).

Yes, the Con-Dem government has avoided the UK facing the kind of run on its currency and public debt that the socialist countries of the Mediterranean are now facing. However, it has retained the dependency mentality of entitlement to benefits because you breed, health care on demand rationed by queuing and enormous bureaucracy and government always “being there” to help individuals, businesses and the like.

Gordon Brown’s big state is still there, most of the cuts are not cuts, but just stalling of the growth of the state. The fact that 23% of the deficit reduction plan comes from increasing taxes should tell you that this is a conservative government with a small “c”, it is not a government of smaller government and free markets.

22 June 2010

Cuts are not painful

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is preparing the country for austerity, mk III.

Mk 1 was the easy part, the 1% trimming of public spending to save £6.2 billion in the current year, essentially the spending the Conservatives had promised to cut. Was not much, but a taste of what was to come.

Mk 2 was last week. £2 billion worth of projects were cancelled, and another £8.5 billion deferred. Almost all of it spending approved in the dying years of the Brown regime. This included the absurd "investment" of £80 million that the government didn't have to "create" 200 jobs, although I doubt the average wage was close to £400,000 each!!

Mk 3 promises to be much much "worse" say the papers. Actually, it mostly wont be painful, if it weren't that 20% of the austerity will comprise of tax INCREASES in one form or another. Capital Gains Tax and VAT are likely targets, and it is they that will threaten the recovery, not the spending cuts.

There will be major cuts hopefully. Public sector pay is expected to at least be frozen if not cut, and public sector pensions are expected to face severe cuts because they are becoming unaffordable. Welfare benefits are likely to be frozen as well, with a scythe taken to the "middle class welfare" Labour built up to buy votes. One of the absurdities of the UK welfare state is how many recipients are on above average incomes. Hopefully it will be the end to that and more.

You see the Tories have stupidly ringfenced health and overseas aid spending for no cuts, which means it will be welfare and public sector pay that get hammered. Painful?

No. It isn't painful unless you think living within your means so you are lumbered with debt (or your children aren't) is painful. It is called being prudent. It isn't painful to stop stealing money from future generations. The UK public sector is already better paid that the private sector - yes you read right, the average income in the public sector is 2% higher than the private sector for similar jobs.

It isn't painful to wean people who are on average and above incomes from the state tit, so they actually bear the cost of raising their own children. It isn't painful for the private sector to no longer be shouldering the burden of competing against a bloated public sector staff.

Already the government is announcing new privatisations, the latest being the high speed railway between London and the Channel Tunnel.

It would be too much to hope for no tax cuts, or for the NHS to start charging for GP visits and face its own cuts, or for student fees to be at least 50% cost recovery, or for welfare to be time restricted (and only restricted to UK citizens!). However, it will be the start of rolling back the creeping (and bankrupting) state of New Labour.

Labour's lies about it are too easy to refute. It "threatens the recovery" if the state doesn't keep borrowing at record levels. Furthermore is the deceit that the deficit is about bailing out banks, when the truth is that the proportion of spending related to the banks is close to 2%. Labour is claiming it is ideologically led, as if overspending and growing the state by Labour wasn't.

The deficit is a legacy of Labour bribing voters with their kids' stolen future earnings, it was immoral then and is now. It is only moral for this government to end this as swiftly as it can, and start to confront the debt.

Note the difference with a certain government on the opposite side of the world.

15 June 2010

Bloody Sunday reprise

30 January 1972 in (London)derry is a day that sadly will always be in infamy. A day that Catholics in Ulster will see, with much justification, as the day the British Army turned on those it was meant to protect, but also a day that many Protestants will see as a provocation by terrorists.

The report of the Saville Inquiry will be released today, and so i wont predict what it will say. However, I do have three points to make in advance.

1. For those who seek justice, seek convictions and imprisonment of British army officers who killed, it is worth bearing in mind how many IRA terrorists who also have killed before and since that day, who have been pardoned and released. Was that right? No. Does it mean the British soldiers who gunned down civilians deserve to not face justice? No. However what should happen?

2. Reflect on how utterly disgusting and repulsive it is that the Blair Administration seems to have given a blank cheque on time and money for this Inquiry. £191 million is so far beyond what even compensation for the victims and their families would be, that it shows once more what happens when governments treat those they are meant to serve with contempt. It should not take twelve years and £15 million a year to gather evidence, and come to conclusions. I don’t expect much self reflection from those who have profited indirectly from Bloody Sunday.

3. More important than all of this, consider how tribalism, this time flavoured with religious sectarianism, can completely disregard the rights of the individual. How mind numbingly stupid it is to label anyone Catholic or Protestant, when it is simply about "us and them", with the same mentality that has seen the blood of millions spilt. The same mentality as in Rwanda, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Nazi Germany, former Yugoslavia and the list goes on, and on. The surrender of the individual to the group, the demonising of the "other" (outsiders), and glorification of the "group". It is only tragically funny when you consider how unlikely in most cases to find such people in Northern Ireland capable of holding cogent arguments about theology. The Northern Ireland peace process has NOT been about rigorously pushing individual rights,and reason to reject the knuckle-dragging mentality of religious sectarianism. Instead it has been about ending the fighting, keeping quiet and moving on, whilst British taxpayers have poured a fortune to prop up an economy on life support.

The malignant, evil philosophy that blends religious hatred (fired up by churches on both sides, seen most recently in the insane rants by Reverend Ian Paisley shouting "antichrist" at the previous Pope), tribalism and scape-goating has left Northern Ireland still full of many who think the poverty, desolation and decay of the region is due to what the "other side" did. Meanwhile, with a British government facing fiscal ruin, perhaps the chance exists for the 70% of the Northern Ireland economy "produced" from the state sector, to be paired back, and for the people of Ulster to start focusing on themselves, generating wealth and prosperity and treating each other as individuals, rather than members of communities that exist in their heads.

11 June 2010

Dutch elections, victory for freedom

The elections in the Netherlands have produced two substantial winners and two losers. However, I will let you count the number of times in the media YOU see how one of the winners is portrayed.

The first winner is the new leading party, the VVD (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy) which is a party of economic and social liberalism. It is similar in mould to how ACT (NZ) presents itself. It believes in free markets, welfare only for Dutch citizens, and reductions in taxes. It appears to have gained nine seats, increasing vote from 14.7% to 20.4%.

The second winner, is the new third party, the one that will get the most publicity, the PVV (Party for Freedom). It is led by Geert Wilders, a man who the British government sought to ban because he opposes Islam. The PVV believes in substantial tax cuts and reductions in the welfare state, the abolition of the minimum wage, is sceptical about the European Union, and believes only immigrants who embrace Dutch humanist and Judeo-Christian values should be admitted. Wilders is radically opposed to Islam, which means he is portrayed in much media as being "far right nationalist". However, like the late Pim Fortuyn, Wilders is no fascist. He simply vehemently defends the social liberalism and tolerance for individual diversity that the Netherlands hold dear AGAINST those who wish to destroy it. On top of that, he would implement a radical programme to cut the role of the state. It has gained 15 seats, rising from 5.9% to 15.5% of the vote.

So between those two, 36% of Dutch voters supported scaling back the size of government.

The losers were:

The CDA (Christian Democrat Appeal), a centrist conservative party. It believes in reducing state spending, but also tougher controls on drugs, prostitution, abortion and euthanasia. It supports decentralised control of schools and hospitals, and wider European integration. It is the party of the outgoing Prime Minister, Jan Balkenende. It lost 20 seats, to drop from 26.5% to 13.7% of the vote.

The SP (Socialist Party), which believes in the welfare state, state health and education, and opposes privatisation and globalisation. It was originally a Maoist Party during the height of the Cultural Revolution. It lost 10 seats, dropping from 16.6% to 9.9% of the vote.

It would seem Dutch voters rejected conservatism in favour of small government, and the financial crisis has also seen them turning from Marxism.

Other results were modest losses for the centre-left Labour Party (from 21.2% to 19.6% of the vote), and the centrist (conservative socially, economically leftwing) Christian Union (from 4% to 3.3%).

There were also gains for the Democratic 66 Party (an unusual blend of liberalising labour markets, supporting tax cuts and market reforms to healthcare and education, combined with environmentalism, radical social liberalism and a federal Europe) which soared from 2% to 6.9% (arguably another party that believes in less government) and the Greenleft party (which is an unsurprising mix of environmentalism, former communists and believers in big government socialism) which went from 4.6% to 6.6%.

So capitalism is hardly under attack in the Netherlands when the main parties that gained support believe in more free market policies, with the only leftwing party making any gains hardly making up for the losses from other leftwing parties.

Blogging disrupted

Just to note my blogging regularity has been disrupted because of:

1. Being overseas twice in the last few weeks (with glacial speeds available);
2. Moving home;
3. Two and a half weeks to get a phone line installed to carry broadband (and no, there is no cable TV option, as Virgin Media hasn't cabled my street).

So whilst I wait another 7 working days to get POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), after which I can get broadband, service is not going to be regular. No, I'm not getting it from BT, not only because it is an expensive and poor quality deal, but also because since BT has lobbied hard to destroy BSkyB's property rights in programming (which were built up commercially against two government owned competitors, and three government licensed ones) I figured I no longer needed to give a damn about BT's property rights on local phone lines.

Meanwhile, the British media has been focused on:
- Gunman who went on a shooting spree (but few have asked whether others having guns might have stopped him earlier);

- The Gulf of Mexico oil leak, Obama's xenophobic attack on BP to make up for his own impotence on the issue, and BP's own incompetence;

- The World Cup (which sadly is unlikely to see a New Zealand-North Korea final, as much as it would upset millions) is hyping up England and South Africa;

- The next stage of austerity, as the Con-Dem government "warms" up the British public for spending cuts perhaps ten times that already agreed (whilst the public continues to remain ignorant about what cuts actually MUST mean, such as cutting the welfare state and increasing university fees). Much good is being said about focusing on the role of the state. Few yet understand how drastic and urgent the cuts have to be, and sadly it will also include tax rises;

- The ultra-tedious contest for leadership of the British Envy, Spendthrift and Spin Labour Party, now no longer including a relative unknown who said Margaret Thatcher should have been assassinated in the 1980s. Most recently it now include Diane Abbott, who is notable for being a black woman. One of the contenders, Ed Miliband, said it showed the diversity of the Labour Party. It was pointed out to him that two of the contenders share the same mother (his brother David Miliband is also standing), and of course another man called Ed is standing as well.