Kiwiblog

At last Air New Zealand is set to put personalised inflight entertainment systems in all its long flight planes.

Singapore Air has had this for oh a decade or so off memory. Makes a world of difference when travelling cattle class. In fact Singapore Air economy class has a better entertainment system than Air New Zealand business/first class on their older planes.

I’m flying on Singapore Air next Tuesday so I’ll have the chance to compare again first hand.

Amazing race. Things looking good considering they started off the pace and had a stuff up part way through.

In my experience, being told to get on your broomstick is one of the milder taunts used in the House and I am surprised that Judith Tizard seemed so genuinely upset by it.

Maybe Judith could have a chat to her colleagues about their propensity to yell out “go take your pills” to Nick Smith whenever he is speaking. Personally I find that far more offensive.

Karl du Fresne slams the Family Planning Association as a failure.

New Zealand has the second-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the OECD and our abortion rate remains one of the highest in the developed world. The rate has more than trebled since 1980 and, most tellingly, it has steadily increased in the age groups where the FPA directs much of its efforts. For girls aged 11-14 it has doubled since 1991, and for older teenagers – those aged 15-19 – it has risen by 60 per cent.

The FPA’s own surveys show young people are having sex younger and putting themselves more at risk. Gonorrhea cases are up by 52 per cent and chlamydia by 28 per cent. In the Auckland area, 53 per cent of people with gonorrhea are aged between 15 and 24 and antibiotic-resistant cases are increasing.

I don’t agree with everything Karl DF says on the FPA but I certainly think their “Rubba No Hubba Bubba” campaign was awful.

Stuff ran this Reuters story about a 16 year old girl in the UK who is going to go to court to overturn a school ban on her wearing the ring at school.

Now there is only an obscure reference to the fact that:

Lydia Playfoot’s parents help run the British arm of the American campaign group the Silver Ring Thing, which promotes abstinence among young people.

The Ministry of Truth blog explores this in great detail and highlights the commercial involvement and motivation of her parents. One goes away with an entirely different picture to that which you would get from the news story alone.

It would be nice if someone in the media did the same amount of research as the blogger did.

Hat Tip; Iain Dale

ACT in 1996

ACT in 2007

Upon learning Telecom was the only ISP which sent lawyers to every engineering workshop on roadside cabinets, one wag in the audience yelled out:

“Telecom is actually a law firm which happens to own a network”

Classic.

Heh. At Tel Con 8, one ISP Manager spoke about the challenges of dealing with customers, and gave the example of the customer(s) who rang up in a panic because he had deleted the Internet.

Actually he had just deleted the icon For Internet Explorer!

MPs are keeping the strict rules about photos of them in the House.

Dave2 suggests the photo above may be why

Luke, I am your puppy!

Hat Tip: Smelling the Coffee

The City Vision/Labour cabal have given Auckland Deputy Mayor just a few hours to resign as Deputy Mayor, or they will seek to sack him from the role, despite it being over 90% of the way through their three-year term.

I just love being able to hassle Aucklanders over their dysfunctional Council. No matter if they are left wing or right wing, they always look embarrassed and mumble how it isn’t their fault.

This is just wrong on so many levels.

Hat Tip: 0 Blog

Both the Dom Post and The Press editorials are on police recruiting standards. The Press:

Police recruiters have lowered entry requirements. They have agreed to let recruits who have not filled all their course requirements graduate on a form of probation. Now, it looks as if they have turned a blind eye to substandard intellectual performance among some recruits.

The police have sought to keep this quiet, unsuccessfully. They will be smarting over the resulting publicity. For one thing, the shortcomings are surely not representative of the vast majority of new and budding police officers. As well, it will simply add more discomfort to the image crisis suffered in the wake of inquiries into the dreadful problems around rape complaints.

Nevertheless, the over-sensitivity is doing the police no good. It is safe to expect that the public would respect them more – and be readier to dismiss the concerns about a dumbing-down in recruitment standards – if the hierarchy did not appear so furtive.

The smart thing for the police to do would be to set out frankly and clearly the true implications of attempting to meet New Zealand First’s fatuous target. The dumb thing would be to insist that there is nothing to see here. With the evidence continuing to seep out at intervals, the police bosses are the ones who risk looking stupid.

The Dom Post:

Now, more than ever, the police need to be rebuilding public confidence. There have been too many bungles, too many mis-steps for its faith to be maintained. That is why a report that indicated the police are lowering standards for recruits should be ringing alarm bells in the Beehive and in police headquarters. That it is not is simply confirmation of the problem.

The standard now is that recruits have to pass a cognitive test proving they are of at least “low average” intelligence – as smart or smarter than at least 23 per cent of the population. As the report points out, that means many criminals and members of the public would be in a position to outsmart the least intelligent of the police.

Despite assurances to the contrary, it is clear that the low standard is being driven by the need to meet the Government’s promise of 1000 extra frontline staff by 2009. That is a mistake, and one that could have tragic consequences.

The police have powers that no one else in the community has, powers that go to the heart of people’s civil liberties. The law allows them to arrest, they can detain, they can demand blood, breath or dna samples. They are given powerful and potentially lethal tools to do their job, including firearms and Tasers. That makes it imperative that the public is able to trust all of them to exercise the highest standards of judgment.

No one is pretending that the police have anything but the toughest of jobs, dealing with the worst of society and the worst of situations, or that most do the job to the highest of standards. However, there cannot be any tradeoff between quality and quantity.

For her part, Police Minister Annette King seems to regard the issue as one she need not concern herself with, as she is willing to accept the police management’s assurances that police college graduates are up to scratch.

That is not what the minister should be doing. She needs to be taking a more active role. Rebuilding public trust in the police demands nothing less.

Jesus Christ. Every day there are stories about who the PM has been texting with regards to the America’s Cup. I’m sorry, but who gives a fuck. Sure maybe one original story about her taxting Dalton, but to have it front page news, and then today the story is how Helen texted Trevor to say she didn’t think the race was off to a good start.

Let’s sack Peter Montgomery and just have all media reports be based on Helen’s texts.

Alan Hogg has just scored his 34th conviction for driving while disqualified. The man should be in prison. On top of 34 disqualified driving convictions he has 13 for drunk driving plus some for dangerous driving and drugs influenced driving.

With all respect to Judge Davidson, but what fucking planet are you on when you talk about giving him “the chance to get out of the cycle of offending”. He has been offending non stop for 18 year. His latest offences were done while on bail. Do you think he hasn’t had such chances before?

Why does the Government spend tens of millions on road safety campaigns, when the very worst offenders get slapped by a wet bus ticket only?

Press Political Editor Colin Espiner is blogging on politics at the Stuff site. And the good thing is, it is a proper blog with a comments facility, and Colin actually participates in them. A good move Fairfax and Colin,

The NZ Herald reports on the useful activities which take place on CYFS courses for youth offenders:

* smoking marijuana
* drinking alcohol
* handling firearms

The only thing missing is sex!

The NZ Herald has polled on who should take responsibility for the death of Folole Muliaga and only 22.3% say it is Mercury Energy, with around double that saying the family.

While I think it is good that few NZers have gone along with the PM’s campaign of retribution against Mercury, the poll is somewhat simplistic by asking for a sole source of responsibility, and even before we know what killed Mrs Muliaga.

On the basis of what we do know to date, I could probably list around 40 things which if done differently might have stopped her death. Around half a dozen are actions Mercury could have done, around 20 are things the family could have done, and around half a dozen are things the hospital or health system could have done. When there are around 40 contributing factors, just picking one is somewhat simplistic. Of course as the PM has done that, one can’t really blame the Herald for doing likewise.

Hot Topic reports how Rod Oram has poured scorn on the Greenhouse Policy Coalition:

These contortions can be comic, such as watching Roger Kerr of the Roundtable denying some of his most cherished principles. Having argued for years for markets and against taxes, he now concedes that in some cases markets can fail. He fears carbon trading will be one, so he is advocating a tax. Perhaps he might wish to revisit markets he’s championed to see if some of them have failed too.

But both Oram and Hot Topics overlook one of the most basic elements of economics. I can only conclude Oram has put his dislike for some people ahead of his considerable analytical ability.

Even at Stage One economic you learn that a perfect market needs perfect information. The less information one has the less effective a market is. This is why Trade Me works so well – it is very close to a perfect market with information on price, goods, seller reputation etc etc.

Now carbon trading is an excellent concept. It is one many support. But make no mistake, the information on carbon emissions is seriously flawed. There is a huge amount of unknown information on what does emit and absorb carbon and other greenhouse gases, and at what rate etc.

So to scoff at Roger Kerr for saying at this stage a tax (which has certainty) might be better than an emissions market, is to expose one’s own understanding of what one needs for a market to be successful.

As information becomes better over time, I am sure an emissions market is the superior choice. But one can have a rational debate on whether a market vs a tax is best *at this stage*.

Mingle² – Online Dating

I was surprised at first that my “movie” rating was only a PG, but to help with rebuilds the front page now only has the last three days of posts, instead of the last eights days which it used to be. So not very representative.

But if we go to my archives page, we have:

Mingle² – Online Dating

The rating is based on:

* sex (25x)
* death (24x)
* dead (19x)
* rape (18x)
* gay (17x)
* kill (7x)
* abortion (6x)
* bastards (5x)
* bastard (4x)
* gays (3x)
* crap (2x)
* fart (1x)

And that’s just from the subject lines!

Hat Tip: No Right Turn

A big thumbs up to TVNZ for their announcement that they are putting some of their content onto You Tube on a dedicated channel.

Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution makes good points on inequality and redistribution:

We don’t take steps to redress inequalities of looks, friends, or sex life. We don’t grab a kidney from you to save someone’s life, even though that health difference was unfair brute luck. Redistribution of wealth has some role in maintaining a stable democracy and preventing starvation. But the power of wealth redistribution to produce net value is quite limited. The power of wealth creation to produce net value is extraordinary. Most of America’s poor are already among the best-off of all humans in world history. We should be putting our resources, including our advocacy and our intellectual resources, into wealth creation as much as we can.

Lefties can scream in the comments below

Heh. YouGov has done a poll on what are the most hated Internet words. In reverse order they are:

10= wiki, podcast and avatar
9 cookie
8 social network
7 vlog
6 webinar
5 blook
4 netiquette
3 blog
2 blogosphere
1 folksonomy

With efforts we can get blogs to No 1

Stephen Franks blogs his concern about the culture of Police HQ (now called the Office of the Commissioner).

Stephen shares his own experiences from Select Committees, and also cites their treatment of OIA requests.

TVNZ has a fairly detailed summary of their Sunday programme on getting behind Folole Muliaga’s death.

I found it interesting (and sad) that the husband had tried to discuss the account with Mercury but because his name is not on the account, they would not talk to him due to the Privacy Act.

If he did explain his wife was sick, I would expect Mercury to show some flexibility with the Act, by at least noting down what he said. There are lessons to be learnt there.

But the Privacy Act does often prove a barrier when dealing with many companies. For example I help my parents out with Telecom when they have a problem. Now even though I say I am their son, they sometimes won’t deal with me, so now I just claim I’m my father and hope my voice sounds 70 something!