Brian Rudman - a little knowledge isn't dangerous, just ignorant

Brian Rudman is perhaps the most regular of the NZ Herald's columnists to comment on transport issues in Auckland.  He comes at it from a rather predictable standard point of view which blends the railevangelism of the Greens with the cynical populism of NZ First.  To be fair to him, he does a bit of research, but the conclusions he comes to shows a rather dire lack of understanding of economics, a paucity of depth of knowledge about the sector and an unfortunate tendency to be driven by faith rather than evidence.

His latest column is headlined "tolls alone won't unclog our roads".  The implication being that someone claimed that they would.   A more honest headline in response is "trains wont unclog our roads", since column after column he has been preaching the gospel of the church of passenger railways.

What he is talking about is a proposal to introduce new tolls on Auckland's existing motorway network to "raise revenue" tax road users to pay for Auckland Council's grand transport plans, much of which is to fund infrastructure for subsidised public transport services.

There are three substantive issues here:

1.  Is the NZ$11.7 billion "funding gap" real and justified?  (i.e. should that much extra money be spent on transport in Auckland? What is gained by that? Who are the winners, and are they the same as the losers?  Why should anyone trust Auckland Council on this?  Given that all of the future money taken from motoring taxes and rates is already taken into account, has anyone asked Aucklanders whether they are willing to pay more?

2.  If there is a gap, how should it be funded?  Should users pay more for infrastructure and services they will benefit from?  Should ratepayers pay for infrastructure that increases their property values?  Should existing taxes go up? Should there be new taxes?

3.  Should Auckland roads have direct tolls/road pricing introduced as a different way to charge for road use, which could also reduce congestion by introducing the price instrument?

Is the NZ$11.7 billion "funding gap" real and justified?

On the first question, Rudman fails.  He doesn't ask this question.  With some irony, the Greens are attacking (with some good reason) central government's Think Big highway spending plans for being poor value for money.  Neither the Greens nor Rudman apply a similar test to the Auckland Council project list.  For many years, the former Auckland Regional Council had unfunded transport wishlists, is it any surprise the new Auckland Council has simply grandfathered that wishlist and added to it?

He simply parrots the simple line that Auckland "needs more public transport " and the myth of "building the passenger transport options that might well help unclog the roads without the need to build more".  Might well? Where in the new world have major rail projects actually unclogged roads?  What city has accomplished this successfully?  It's a simple belief system - it is one the Greens share - but it is just that, a belief.  The bare fact is that no new world city has significantly reduced traffic congestion from construction of a new rail link - none.  Advocates may argue that congestion would be worse without them, but that's just hypothesis, and it isn't based on any significant difference in mode share from car driver to rail after a line has been opened.

So let's take the highest profile project that he and the Greens advocate - an underground CBD rail loop.

The Treasury/MoT report that reviewed the Auckland CBD underground rail tunnel states that this project, estimated to cost NZ$2.4 billion in capital, with ongoing additional costs of NZ$37 million per annum (although revenue offsetting that is not mentioned), will only reduce car trips into the CBD by 2,000 a day - out of a total of 40,000.  Now 88% of commutes in Auckland are not to the CBD.  That stark fact is constantly ignored by almost all advocates of rail in Auckland.

Of the remaining 12% around, 42% of motorised commutes to the CBD in Auckland are by car - yes a majority go by public transport now. You might ask why that is a problem.

So his pet rail project, will reduce 5% of 42% of 12% of Auckland commutes, which means only 0.25% of Auckland commutes will be shifted from car to public transport.  It's a brave person indeed who claims that is worth NZ$2.4 billion.

However, he completely blanks out the other effect.  The CBD rail project reduces bus trips to Auckland CBD by 10%, with double the number of people taken from existing bus services, both subsidised and unsubsidised, than from cars.  NZ$2.4 billion would in part be about shifting more people from buses than cars.  In short it is estimated to accommodate only 19% of the growth in future trips to the Auckland CBD.  The rest would be travelling by bus, car and ferry.  In his own article on this very report he blatantly misses this point by saying that other improvements wont be able to "cope with the predicted 32,000 extra passengers into the CBD in the 2041 morning peak. For that we need the rail loop." No Brian, only 6,000 of those 32,000 will use the loop.  It's deception to claim otherwise.

So it has a negligible impact on congestion, in fact the effect is so low it will be more than offset by forecast growth in traffic.  It reduces bus use more than car use, and only 1 in 5 future Auckland CBD commuters (which are themselves a subset comprising 1 in 5 of all Auckland commuters) would use it.

Even if you presume that all of the car commuters to the Auckland CBD benefit from the 5% reduction in car trips (and presumably a handful of fewer buses), that means that only 5% of all Auckland commuters experience a reduction in the negative externality of congestion.  So quite why should anyone pay over NZ$2 billion, plus ongoing operating subsidies, for 6,000 new rail commuters and for 5% of car commuters to save time (which they would do, on the margins), is a mystery.  It either hasn't occurred to Rudman (the report is rather clear on this) or he is evading it.

If there is a gap, how should it be funded?

However, let's leave that to one side, because his column does.  How should the money be raised if it was legitimate in the first place?  He doesn't spend much time on how it should be funded, rather how it should not be.

The solutions be posits are to both spend existing funds differently and raise new taxes from motorists.

He wants the state highway budget "redirected" towards public transport. Beyond the Puhoi-Wellsford motorway project, he isn't too clear on what other funded road projects shouldn't proceed.  In the past he has bemoaned other parts of the country getting money for roads, when his beloved Auckland can't get enough to pay for what it wants.  What he neglects is that outside Wellington and Tauranga, virtually all state highway projects are about reducing accidents, not reducing travel time.  However, he is an Auckland advocate so let's just accept that bias as being natural to him.  To be fair to the Greens, they do seek to abandon large swathes of road projects, including the Waterview connection, Puhoi-Wellsford and Waikato Expressway series of projects. 

For new money, he supported the regional fuel tax Labour tried to introduce, but which the National government scrapped.  This was a stupid idea, and tends to be embraced only by those with a paucity of understanding of such taxes and their role in New Zealand.

For a start, regional fuel taxes in the past have been opposed by oil companies because of the administrative cost in applying differential taxes for a commodity distributed nationally.  Service stations near the boundaries of Auckland (which most people wont be aware of) would be winners or losers for fairly obvious reasons if applied regionally.   National tried regional fuel tax in the early 1990s and had to abandon it because oil companies calculated the revenue that should have been collected based on consumption in the regions, but applied the tax nationally to save on the administrative costs and boundary effects.  Regional fuel tax for Auckland risks being applied nationally again, unless government applies stiff enforcement procedures to stop oil companies repeating this - which adds another cost.  Something Brian curiously ignores given his pleading on the cost of operating tolls.

Secondly, he ignores the effect on diesel.  There is currently no fuel duty on diesel, because diesel powered vehicles are liable for road user charges (RUC), paying in advance for distance travelled on roads based (shortly) on maximum vehicle weight.  There are various reasons for that, but what it means is that RUC, in its current form, cannot be applied regionally because diesel vehicles have distance bought before they travel regardless of where the roads are.  So regional RUC wont work for now, without a significant change in technology.  Regional diesel tax would mean the 36% of diesel usage off road would have to have a refund scheme (as applies to petrol tax), which imposes an administrative cost on the agriculture, industrial and fisheries sector to which this largely applies - unless Brian thinks that off road users of fuel in Auckland should pay for Auckland transport, in which case he is arguing to get rid of refunds for off road use of petrol and LPG as well (and why only abolish refunds in Auckland).   He simply wont be aware of these implications of imposing new costs outside the transport sector.

In other words, his bright idea for new money is full of holes, but since Labour tried to do it (against official advice) it must be ok, because he trusts politicians of a leftwing bent.

Should Auckland roads have direct tolls/road pricing?

Most of Brian's latest comment is a diatribe against road pricing.  That puts him firmly in a camp I describe as populist left-wing opposition to tolling - he shares this with NZ First.


I am, in principle, in favour of road pricing as a replacement for taxation of motorists, because it creates a direct relationship between the road user and road provider, sidestepping the interfering influence of politicians seeking to spend motoring taxes on pet projects.  However, from an economist's point of view, it enables the price instrument to be applied to roads.  That alone means road users can be charged directly for the costs of the roads they use, accordingly to the proportion of usage, according to the wear and tear they impose on the roads, and according to the vagaries of demand and supply.   Congested roads would cost more, managing demand, but generating revenue that might be enough to remove bottlenecks and build new capacity, or may simply mean off peak charges are lessened to spread demand.  It is this lack of the pricing instrument, which affects both demand for road use, and the funds to supply roads, that is the biggest single factor in facilitating traffic congestion, and the negative externalities from that in the form of wasted fuel and increased pollution.  Even when applied bluntly, the effects of pricing on congestion have been seen clearly in Singapore, Oslo, Stockholm and London.

It would appear Rudman is almost oblivious to this, or at best dismissive of it.


He claims tolling is "not fair", because he doesn't believe Aucklanders should pay more for their roads and public transport than other New Zealanders.  Rather odd that, if Aucklanders actually wanted more roads and public transport than other New Zealanders, they shouldn't pay.  Who should pay?  Aucklanders pay more for land and property now, does he suggest people living in Oamaru pay a land tax to equalise it, or should Auckland land be subsidised? However, this is a man advocating a REGIONAL fuel tax, which would mean Aucklanders would pay more.  He can't make his mind up. It is a specious "argument" worthy of a drunken talkback caller.   Aucklanders should pay for the transport they want, maybe if they did, they may want less of it (and nothing could be "greener" than that).

He repeats the claim by Chairman of Auckland Council's business advisory panel Cameron Brewer that "tolling is a flat tax that hit the poor the hardest".  Yet I have never seen Brian advocate that poor motorists get a discount on their petrol tax (the equivalent to a toll now), or discounted train fares, or discounted phone line rentals.  Why is a user charge for one service a "tax" when it doesn't apply to others?  Again, a specious argument.  Even though Brewer's sensible suggestion that "it be levied at a reduced rate for service sector shift workers in off-peak times" has economic merit in that tolls should be lower at times of low demand.  Brian's regional fuel tax, which would be paid most by those in least fuel efficient (i.e. old) vehicles on slow lengthy trips would be paid more by them, but he blanks out even considering that.

His next claim is that tolling targets private motorists, whereas commercial road users and councillors (cue NZ First type rhetoric here) can pass it on.  Well what would a regional fuel tax do Brian? 

However, moving beyond this rather facile rhetoric, his big opposition to tolls appears to be because the collection costs are higher than fuel tax.  Now I've already fisked him on fuel tax given that the regional fuel tax would cost more than he thinks, and so would mean costs for administration by both government and oil companies, and for those off-road users of diesel facing a new refund regime.  However, he does use both the Northern Gateway toll road and the earlier Auckland Road Pricing Evaluation Study work to back up his claim that, yes indeed, having a direct customer relationship with users one by one and being accountable to them is more expensive than a tax.  However, as I have written before, the costs now claimed are for a government specified bespoke system that is far more expensive than it should be.  Work I've done elsewhere indicates the costs of collection can be much much less if you have the volume to sustain it and outsource much of it effectively, like utility companies do.  So this argument is less worthy that it appears on the face of it.

Yet the real benefit of tolls, compared to taxes, is that they can charge according to costs and demand.  The benefits to Auckland of road users paying tolls to use roads, compared to more taxes, is that they could be charged more for roads close to capacity and could be charged less for roads at off peak times.  This can spread demand, encourage use of other modes at peak times, and cause people to think again about whether it is worth using that rather expensive piece of infrastructure when it is highly priced.   Yes for "revenue" alone it isn't clever, but if that was the only measure, then electricity would be free and everyone would have paid for it through their taxes, so would phone calls etc.  The effect on use of electricity if it was paid for through your rates or income taxes would be dramatic.

To be fair to him, he is right in quoting the Auckland Road Pricing Evaluation Study work in opposing tolls on the motorways only.  I don't believe this can be justified in Auckland today, but I do believe that a shift from rates and fuel tax based funding of roads to tolls is justified.  The issue is how that is done (privatising Auckland Harbour Bridge might offer a clue).

If Auckland did have largely privately owned roads, charging usage on various basis (e.g. tolls, distance charging, property access charges), it would transform transport in Auckland, particularly by eliminating rates funding of roads (cutting your rates by 10-15%) and fuel taxes (cutting fuel prices by 20%).  It would mean users of main roads at off peak times would probably pay less, whilst at peak times they would pay more.  It would mean buses wouldn't need bus lanes in most locations, except where bus companies were willing to pay for special access.  Truck operators would probably change times of travel.  Short car trips would be more likely to be replaced with walking and cycle trips.  The legacy railway might even have a financially sustainable life, somewhere where it parallels road corridors too expensive to expand (or it gets taken over by them).  

Quite simply, it is Rudman who doesn't have a transformational state of mind.  He, and the Greens, are trapped in tired old solutions implemented en-masse in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s that have failed - in the form of new government provided rail transit systems.  He ignores road pricing, like it was ignored then (except at least then, technology was a bigger limiting factor than it is today).  He swallows the hackneyed and overused line that "building more roads leads to more traffic" (given Auckland has had a lot of new roads lately but no more traffic, he has failed to join the analytical dots).  He wants taxpayers to spend a lot of money for what are pet schemes, whilst he resists economics and employs contradictory arguments.

Auckland's transport could be transformed, with technology, pricing instruments and a more commercial and market oriented approach to the provision of infrastructure and services.  Cities from London to Stockholm to Singapore to Tehran even, have had success in better pricing of roads to reduce congestion, yes reduce.  New technologies in San Francisco and Los Angeles are offering real time information on parking availability with the scope for dynamic pricing of parking.  Bus rapid transit has demonstrated enormous success in Auckland in limited form as it is, and has also been a success in cities in the US, Brazil, Germany and Australia.

It is overwhelmingly clear that the advocacy of rail in Auckland is not about transport policy outcomes, but a broader agenda that is about intensification of the Auckland CBD, moving more Aucklanders into high and medium density housing, for environmental policy reasons, and because of a warm fuzzy feeling that electric trains are just great, but cars and roads are just wrong.

It isn't about Aucklanders making the best choices about how to get around based on the costs of travel, it isn't about balancing what people want in homes, businesses and leisure activities, it isn't about real environmental outcomes (because road pricing would deliver a bigger constraint to sprawl and reduce pollution due to traffic jams, than any rail scheme), it is about grand centrally planned visions that look nice in drawings and in theory, but don't actually deliver the real-world trade-offs people actually want.

The biggest irony is that the greatest beneficiaries of this agenda, if it gets pursued, are owners of commercial property in downtown Auckland.  Now they are far from willing, it would seem, to pay for more than a tiny fraction of the grand CBD rail project.   Is it not ironic then, that Rudman and the leftwing promoters of this plan are advocating a massive transfer in wealth from taxpayers across the country, to this small, some may say, elite group?

30 years since the foolish Falklands War

30 years ago a nasty little fascist military dictatorship launched a vain war to conquer a collection of islands 460km away from its territory.  The purpose was to rally a shallow machismo-like nationalism to divert attention from the economic disaster and oppression that it had brought to the people it pushed around.

Today its successor regime, democratically elected, and far closer to Western values of freedom and individual rights, is playing the same game.  Engaging in shallow machismo to demand that islands that are inhabited by people who don't want to be ruled by them, are handed over to them, and effectively commemorating a war that, by implication, it considered to be just.

For a woman called Cristina Kirchner, ruling a country in South America, to talk about colonialism is comical.  For the claim Argentina makes is because of its past Spanish coloniser (and her late husband's ancestry is no more linked to that land than it is to Spain).

Let's make it clear.  Britain discovered the Falklands, but France later established a separate colony on the Falklands that Spain acquired in the late 18th century.  Spain attacked the British colony, but a peace treaty divided the island.  However, subsequently both Spain and Britain abandoned the islands although leaving plagues indicating their claims.  Subsequently Britain returned, and Argentina attempted to do so, claiming Spain's authority.  It failed.

However, today countries don't fight territorial wars of conquest.  The Falklands have a permanent settlement of virtually entirely people of British descent.  Under the principle of international law known as self-determination, the future of the islands should be decided by those who live there.  As they have repeatedly made it clear, they want to remain under British sovereignty.   It's hardly surprising, given almost all of Argentina's post independence history has been pockmarked with dictatorship of both fascists and socialists, hyperinflation, corruption and economic illiteracy.  Kirchner has continued this tradition.

She has managed to reintroduce import licensing, constrained exports of food with export quotas and taxes.  Importers have to follow bizarre rules, that economic nationalists would be proud of, in that they need to export the value of the goods they want to import.  Absurd arrangements are set up as exporters make money by setting up multiple businesses to help importers get the foreign exchange they want.

Kirchner's regime in 2008 nationalised private pensions to help balance the budget, so she is a long proven thief, but a thief that commands enough patronage through subsidies, welfare and other transfers that she has managed to get re-elected.  

In fact, it has even started lying about its inflation statistics to the point that the Economist has stopped reporting it.  Argentinian politicians have long been adept at stealing from their own people through inflation to the point that the US$ is the preferred currency in the country.  Inflation is really around 25% despite official reports of less than 10%.   Of course the result of the preference to the US$ is strict monitoring of currency conversions with tax inspectors especially focused on such transactions.  The result is that larger companies arrange their affairs to minimise liability, small ones and individual Argentinians get their savings thieved either by inflation or Kirchner's patronage based administration.

Argentina's economy isn't stagnant, the rise in commodity prices has meant that revenue from mining and agriculture has kept the country afloat, yet Kirchner's profligacy has wasted away a period when the country could have boomed.  It could have built an economy like Chile, by doing away with patronage laden monopolies, trade licences and subsidies, and liberalising, but it refused.  It has even told RIM and other mobile phone manufacturers they must assemble phones in Argentina.  A few are proceeding to do so, at high cost, obviously creating less jobs than they are costing by raising the price of mobile phones.   The economics that brought Argentina from 2nd highest per capita GDP in the 1940s to third world are being replicated.

It's hardly surprising, she is allied to that poseur and economic lunatic Hugo Chavez, who helped fund her electoral campaign. 

So now she is using the Falklands to distract attention from the accumulated economic cost of her kleptocratic policies.  It is a tiresome expression of Latin machismo and bluster.  Argentina hasn't remotely got the means to militarily take the Falklands, and her interest is in vacuous nationalism, and to claim the oil and gas reserves that she claims are "polluting" "her" country and ocean.  They wont be if she was running them of course.

The fundamental issue with the Falklands is that self-determination is about what the people of a territory want.  The people of the Falklands want to remain British, not least because Argentina's unstable history of dictatorships of the left and right, kleptocratic lying corrupt regimes whether elected or not, is hardly conducive to closer relations.  Why would farmers on the Falklands want to pay extra taxes to export, or deal in the worthless Argentinian peso, or face the patronage laden courts, police or the socialist eccentricities of a country which elects Presidents who care more about their own pride and posturing than about their people.

That is why the Falklands will remain British for now.  For until Argentina and Argentinians create a country, a political culture, an economy, a legal and constitutional framework that people want to join, they will seek to remain part of the UK.  For however flawed it is and however distant it is, however slow its economy, however much of its glory is in history, Britain is still less corrupt, more stable, more dependable, and respects individual rights and freedom more consistently than a young post-colonial Latin American republic, barely a generation away from military dictatorship.

It is for that that good men and women served to defend the Falklands from the frightened young men of a military dictatorship 30 years ago.  The sacrifice and effort of those who defended the Falklands are to be commended and remembered, the loss and tragedy of those who were forced to fight the petty little war of Galtieri is sad.   

Earth Hour?

If I hadn't seen the odd reference I wouldn't have remembered that this event was meant to be today.  In the UK neither TV, nor the rest of the mainstream media have paid it any attention.

Perhaps in an age of economic stagnation, most people are fed up with smug middle class types telling them how good it would be if they used less electricity and cared more about environmental causes, and perhaps they are also tired of being told about how much harm they are causing, when the same types don't bother telling people of countries with far greater per capita contributions to emissions to do the same.

The environment matters because we breathe, eat, drink and live in it.  Yet without harnessing it, using the resources around us and applying reason to it, we would not survive.  The harnessing of energy and generation of forms of energy that only a few generations ago were mostly only visible in electrical storms, has resulted in a monumental improvement in the lives of billions.

That's something worth celebrating.  Let the people worshipping the dark do so, but I'm more concerned about the millions who don't yet have the opportunity to brighten their darkness with technology we take for granted because of the philosophy of those who don't believe people own their lives, that property rights should be defended or that science, reason and individual creativity should prevail over superstition.

Earth Hour is contrary to that, it proclaims that the answer to concerns about pollution is to abandon technology and the advantages that modernity has brought us.  That's wrong.  The answer is to embrace it, to embrace reason, to embrace the creativity of the human individual and to create property rights for that which people value (and hundreds of millions of people do value protected natural environments).

West Bradford shames itself

I don't need to say much about George Galloway, he is one of the most repulsive politicians in Britain today.  As Christopher Hitchens once said "the man's search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends".  He has been a sycophant of Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.  He misses the Soviet Union - the stale stinking behemoth of blood stained lies, oppression, imperialism and terror.  He supported the Islamist terrorists who festered in Iraq after the Western invasion, he supports Hamas, he said the Syrian people are lucky to be ruled by Bashar Assad.  On top of it all, this Dundee Catholic fifth columnist lies - blatantly - denying that for which there is video evidence.  He blames 9/11 on US foreign policy.  He claims to not support the Iranian system, yet said explicitly he supported the campaign of Ahmadinejad on Iranian TV.  His direct relationship with the Hussein regime was demonstrated with evidence, but he continues to deny it.

So how did such an odious creature get elected in a low profile Bradford West by-election?  Simple.

He has a high public profile (he appeared in Celebrity Big Brother in 2006).  He spent money and time in the constituency spreading his latest brand, of being a teetotaller who has always supported Muslims, who opposed the war in Iraq, opposes Western forces in Afghanistan, supports Palestinian militancy and opposes Western intervention in the Middle East.  He played to the tribalist, anti-Western bigotry of many ethnic Pakistani voters in the constituency.  He benefited from a week of appalling mismanagement by the government, and the continued ineptness of Labour leader Ed Miliband.  It was a protest vote, apparently driven also by Galloway targeting young Pakistani voters who otherwise may not have voted.  It has been alleged that some of his supporters voted for him as a rebellious action, for his shenanigans with Celebrity Big Brother were looked down upon by some of his Islamic support base.

Bear in mind also that turnout was low (25% or so down on the general election), and it was meant to be a safe Labour seat, which motivates less supporters for major parties to bother voting.

Yet while much analysis will focus on why the major parties, especially Labour, did so badly, the real menacing implication is that a man who has long provided succour to Islamists and dictators, can command such overwhelming support.  Was there not sufficient media scrutiny of Galloway?  If there had been much more, would his campaign have been harmed (and is it not for the other parties to do that?)?  Or do his voters agree with him - that Iran doesn't have such a bad President, that Syrians are lucky to be ruled by Assad, that criticism of Syria is because of the "good things" Assad does, that Saddam Hussein deserved to be saluted for courage and indefatigability, that Hamas is a force for good, that Islamists who shot dead 58 people at a Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad were to be supported, or the ones who bombed 48 people at a restaurant, or who let off a bomb killing 54 Shia on a pilgrimage, etc?

George Galloway has always done well out of politics, he has connected himself to whoever he can who opposes open, free, liberal Western democratic capitalist societies, and embraced variously Marxist, Soviet, Islamist, Ba'athist dictatorships.  He says one thing on the broadcast outlets of his favoured dictatorships and another in the West.

So it's about time that proper efforts are taken now to hold this friend of thugs to account, to reject his evasion and deception, and expose him once again.  However, although I hope most of his supporters are naive young voters who see him as a high profile protest against the mainstream parties (and their parents), I fear more than a few embrace an agenda that is anti-British, anti-Western, sympathetic to Islamism and believers of the rampant conspiracy theory ridden nonsense that passes for "theories" in some parts of the world.  Is anyone confronting this?

Idiot Savant has lost the plot and is clueless about Europe

For a while I would read the blog of Malcolm Harbrow, aka Idiot Savant, aka No Right Turn, if only because it would provide some useful coverage of Parliament, and it is helpful to know what the hard left is thinking. It's hardly surprising that I mostly disagree with him, except when it comes to individual liberties where he can often be right - and will call out politicians of all ranks on that, and bureaucracies as well. 

 After all he thinks that children are the responsibility of everyone, through the state. He'd only be happy if the welfare state expanded, was more generous with less limits on eligibility. After all, tightening up eligibility for the invalids benefit is seen as "sadism" by him. He considers Ayn Rand and objectivism to be a "cult". He thinks people are only free if they don't have to provide for themselves and can choose whatever they want to do with their time. 

Such a disjoint with reality indicates a fair degree of foolishness. If everyone was "free" to do this, then everyone would starve, freeze and die rather fast. In order for anyone to have this "freedom" to "do whatever you like" literally, someone else has to be forced to provide for that person, or to choose to sacrifice oneself for that person. It's quite absurd, but then I've come to the view that Idiot Savant is indeed absurd himself. He is a great example of the fundamental disconnection between reality, principle and morality that the hard left carries with it. See I am fairly generous about most people across the political spectrum. I think they genuinely do believe they want the best for humanity, in general. The key debate is the means of getting there, and the priorities in doing so. However, there is a more fundamental belief around rights, and the relationship of the individual to the state. Statists believe individuals are a means to an end, individualists believe they are ends in themselves. 

Idiot Savant doesn't believe those on the right or those who believe in less state want people to be better off, he actually believes that those opposite him on the spectrum are sociopaths.  Because he advocates using the state to force some groups to be better off, he thinks everyone wanting to shrink the state want the rich to be better off and the poor to suffer and die.  The idea that people who believe in less government actually want better outcomes for all is ridiculous to him, because he can't conceive of how you do that without Marxist redistribution and regulation policies.

The simplistic position he takes is that those who believe that the state should take from those better off and pay those worse off, are morally good. Those who want to force people to give people jobs, keep them in jobs, allow them to work less for more money, and to ban people from choosing to work more for less money in competition, are morally good. A big warm cuddly state that exists to facilitate such transfers of money from "rich to poor", to provide state monopoly services paying its employees generously, not expecting them to be accountable for performance and having safe jobs for life, and which ruthlessly restricts businesses or entrepreneurship when it threatens to undermine state monopolies, existing employment or punitive taxes, is his dream.

 He stands for unionised labour closed shops. He is willing to use shonky surveys developed by private companies seeking to promote their services if it supports his point of view. He touts tired old leftwing cliches about privatisation which have been proven to be false, whilst supporting implicit subsidies of the coal, dairy and timber industries. He manufactures a story about protests in London that he never witnessed, and which even the media he uses doesn't support. He likes to give the impression that he is authoritative, like a journalist, and does his research. Well patently he doesn't. He is an angry bigoted little man, whose view of his political opponents has become so bitter he may as well paint them all as fascists or caricatures of Montgomery Burns. 

Take his recent celebration of Nick Smith's resignation (which was entirely justifiable). He can't just stick to that, he has to say "climate change denial and destroying the environment are tribal shibboleths of the right, and so these portfolios will almost certainly go to someone with no commitment to them." Tribal shibboleths? Does he really think those on the right want to destroy the environment? Is it true that everytime National gets in power that it lets rip with pollution and destruction of habitats? Is this what the hard left tell themselves - that they are the great saviours of the planet? His comment on the UK's budget speaks volumes too about his inane grasp on reality. It's one thing to slate tax cuts for those on highest incomes, as par for the course for Marxists. However, he manufactures a claim that benefits are being slashed for the unemployed, disabled and the sick. It's simply not true (the kernel behind this is tightening up eligibility for disability benefits because of the hoards who remain on it, even though they may be as mobile as many others). He claims it is cutting the NHS, when funding for the NHS is growing (even a leftwing website bemoans at how low the increases are). He of course, like any Gramscian Marxist ignores the increase in the income tax free threshold for the very poor - he can't compute, accept or spread the fact that the evil child eating Conservatives might cut taxes for the poor. That interferes with his bigotry. 

However, the post which really caught my attention was his rant about austerity in the Eurozone. He said: But there's little doubt that these cuts will lead to tens of thousands of deaths in each country. And every one of those deaths can be laid at the feet of the foreign bankers demanding their pound of flesh. What they are doing to Greece and Portugal constitutes mass-murder on a vast scale. And they need to be held to account for it. He basically believes that cuts in health spending in Portugal and Greece are resulting in people dying citing a Guardian article. 

Let's assume that there is evidence of this, it is curious who he blames. 

 Does he blame the politicians in those countries, who spent other people's money and borrowed more money than they could pay back to buy goods, services, infrastructure, welfare for those people? No. They would be socialists. They meant well. Even the Greek politicians who deliberately lied about the public finances. 

Does he blame the voters who elected the politicians who spent the borrowed money that couldn't be paid back, and who ostensibly benefited from the excess spending? No. Suddenly the commitment to democracy and politicians acting on behalf of the people, even in countries with proportional voting systems, evaporates.

 Does he blame the citizens the countries whose taxes are funding the bailout of these countries? The taxpayers of Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands etc who have helpd finance this? No. They are irrelevant to him. 

 No he blames his bogeymen, his scapegoat, his hated minority, the "foreign bankers". The same "foreign bankers" who wrote off 79% of the debt owed by Greece to them (quite rightly so). Except of course, he's avoiding the point. 

 You see the austerity in Greece and Portugal is NOT about paying off bankers. It's about stopping those countries from continuing to borrow more. They are both still in deficit, the amount the government spends in both countries is more than they receive in tax. If his philosophy was applied, presumably taxes would shoot up in both countries (and they have to some extent). 

However, no. 

This little man in Palmerston North is venting his ranting spleen against foreign (note how xenophobia is good if you have Marxist motives) bankers.  He wants them to pay, and I doubt he means not using force.  See it's all very well caring about civil liberties, until you want to extract a pound of flesh yourself from your favourite scapegoat. 

Bankers should just lend Greece and Portugal as much as those governments want, and not expect any of it back right? Indeed they should be charities, right Malcolm?  Should the countries abandon the Euro and print their worthless new currencies endlessly until they can pay for it all? 

Let me be crystal clear, so that even an Idiot can understand. 

Austerity means living within your means.

Both Greece and Portugal are unable to borrow internationally to fund overspending, so they are getting taxpayers' money from other Eurozone countries, and IMF member states, to cover their current overspending. Money taken from people and businesses. The austerity measures they are required to undertake to meet this are to bring their budgets into balance. Something he once appreciated, when it was a government he preferred spending a surplus. 

If people in Greece and Portugal die because of reduced health care, it is because they can't afford it.  They are unwilling to pay directly or pay additional taxes to pay for it.  They are also unwilling to vote for politicians who will force some to pay additional taxes to pay for it.

Don't expect your health care to be paid for by money borrowed by politicians from people who don't believe you're willing to pay it off - because they have good reason not to lend it to those politicians who have now forced them to write off a good chunk of past bad loans.

However, Malcolm can help those people.  He could donate money from his own pocket to save the infants of Greece and Portugal.  He could arrange others to donate as well.  He could actually do some good.  However, if he has any charitable aspirations or interests, he really ought to say, because by and large his key interest appears to be in forcing others to pay more for state bureaucrats to help people - which isn't exactly philanthropic in deed or spirit.