Kiwiblog

The Dom Post Editorial today:

The mayoral war of words that greeted the report of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance and the Government’s swift response to it, has merely proved the commissioners’ implied message that their cities comprise a sprawling metropolis, the councils of which prefer to work in silos, believe one community is superior to the others and that, given the opportunity, mayors would rather engage in verbal battle than unite to secure a structure that would benefit most of those they purport to represent.

Indeed the Mayors have proven the case for change.

To their credit, Auckland City’s John Banks and Waitakere’s Bob Harvey seem to have glimpsed what the commission was trying to achieve when its three members delivered their report late last month. North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams and his Manukau counterpart, Len Brown, seem unable, however, to see beyond the prospect that their mayoral chains will have to be stowed for good after the next local body election, possibly now two years away.

I would agree that Harvey has been constructive.

The kerfuffle with which the four mayors responded to the Government’s post-commission plans simply underlines why much of the rest of New Zealand regards their politics as toxic and why reorganisation of local government north of the Bombay Hills is urgent.

You won’t get integrated public transport and a proper roading strategy until you have one Council.

Mr Banks is itching to be mayor of an Auckland “supercity” and has tried, unsuccessfully, to remain above the fray. But he is at odds with the leftist minority on his council and certainly with his North Shore counterpart, who has an idiosyncratic approach to local governance.

Heh that is a euphemism.

The Government has announced terms of reference for the Defence Review. I have a proposal which I think will result in a better Defence Force. It is:

To abolish the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a seperate section of the the New Zealand Defence Force

I propose this with a sense of sadness. I think it was an appallingly bad decision for Labour to unilaterally (it was not in their policy and they did not consult on it) abolish the strike capability. If National had won in 2002 then it would have been possible to reverse that decision, but ny 2008 it is no longer possible – the pilots have all gone overseas etc.

So my point is that without the RNZAF having a strike capability, it is unnecessary to preserve it as a seperate section. The existing aircraft and helicopters should be transferred to the Army and Navy as appropriate.

It costs a lot to have your own section. I just don’t think you need all the costs and bureaucracy of a section whose job has sadly been downgraded to mainly transport. Are we going to one day have an Air Marshall and Air Vice Marshalls whose only experience was flying a Hercules?

This is not to denigrate any of the great officers of the RNZAF. I think moving them into the Army and Navy will result in better and mroe integrated opportunities for them. So what would I do with the current aircraft:

• Six Orions go to Navy as already used for maritime patrols – No 5 Squadron
• Five Seasprites also go to Navy, as they are used from frigates – No 6 Squadrom
• 14 Iroquois and Five Sioux (and future NH90 choppers) to Army – No 3 Squadron
• Five Hercules and Two 757s to Army – No 40 Squadron
• Five King Airs to Army – No 42 Squadron

Now I’m not a military expert and welcome feedback on the idea. The bottom line for me is that without a combat or strike capability, the Air Force has become more of a support role for the other sections, so it is best to recognise that reality.

Some people advocate not just going to two sections, but one. The idea is it would stop the infighting between the services. I’m not convinced we should go that far.

A must read article by Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finalyson in the Herald:

Treaty settlements are not about one group of people being unequal under the law. This country has one law for all – the Treaty guaranteed that. The settlements process is about recognising those instances – regrettably common – where the Crown did not treat all the people of New Zealand equally – where people in New Zealand under the Crown’s protection were stripped of land they owned, or deprived of the right to be treated fairly, despite its undertaking to stop that from happening.

And an example:

Anyone who thinks the Treaty settlement process is about securing privileges for Maori need only familiarise themselves with the recent Waitangi Tribunal report on the history of the Urewera region. It does not make pleasant reading.

It presents the detailed history of the Urewera region for the first time. The tribunal describes the Crown’s confiscation of 24,280ha of Tuhoe land on its first real contact with that tribe.

It details the attacks on the tribe in the Bay of Plenty to apprehend Te Kooti – raids that started as justified military action, but led to the intentional slaughter of civilians and prisoners, and were described by one senior military officer at the time as “extermination”.

Tame Iti may be an attention seeking idiot, but Tuhoe do have some legitimate grievances.

Within days of signing the Treaty in 1840, the Crown bought 1214ha of downtown Auckland for 281.

Within six months it resold just 36ha of that for 24,500. It is pointless to feel guilt about this. For one thing, none of us alive today was responsible for what happened then. However, those who hold the levers of power in the Crown must take action to redress these wrongs, because it was the Crown that caused these grievances.

So purchase price was 23c (converting to dollars) a hectare and sale price six months later was $681 a hectare.

We cannot give back all that was taken, and to their credit no claimants have demanded that the Crown do so. The cost of settlements is around 5 per cent of the value of what iwi lost. According to some estimates, it is much less.

There is no way of knowing what the real figure is, and it does not matter. The Treaty settlement process is as much about recognition and healing as it is about recompense.

Sir Douglas Graham often made the same point.

It’s why other parts of settlements – like restoring traditional names, or co-management of culturally significant land with the Government – may not have any monetary value. They are important to iwi and the way they relate to the country.

Yep.

Treaty settlements are good for the whole country. There has been much talk of economic stimulus recently. Treaty settlements help unlock the economic development potential which exists in the regions and in the Maori community.

This is true, and Ngai Tahu are good examples of this. However it is worth remembering what Don Brash said – the gains for Maori from lifting educational and economic achievement are a magnitude higher than any gain from Treaty settlements. The settlements are at best a catalyst.

Settlements address our past and invest in a common future. The wrongs of history are real. Failure to address genuine grievance creates a new grievance.

But by providing an end point for the injustices and reaching durable and just settlements, we can move forward as a country – together.

I’m looking forward to most of the outstandinghistorical  claims being settled in the next six years.

The Herald reports:

Labour MP Phil Twyford will not seek nomination for the Mt Albert by-election, resolving the party’s Tizard dilemma. …

This “Vote Twyford, get Tizard” scenario was portrayed as a problem for Labour, particularly by right-wing blogs.

Labour leader Phil Goff was initially reticent when asked if he wanted Ms Tizard back and the party used a polling company to test voter feelings on her re-entering Parliament.

Mr Twyford has lived in Kingsland for 20 years, and was favoured to take over the seat from Helen Clark until the Tizard dilemma was raised.

There is a view that Labour’s party hierarchy placed too much emphasis on the effect of Mrs Tizard’s return, to the detriment of Mr Twyford.

Labour leader Phil Goff said the party had not panicked, but rather was unsure how the electorate would react to voting for someone who was already in Parliament and getting someone else.

I first blogged on their “Tizard problem” on 16 December 2008. I said:

So you see the problem for Labour. Either Helen has to stay on for the full term, or someone other than Twyford is the candidate, or they risk the public working out voting for Labour will bring a plonker back in on the list and losing your predecessor’s seat in a byelection would see Goff rolled.

Goff could not risk that possibility.

The Dominion Post predicted on 1 January that Clark would go off overseas in 2009, and that Twyford would be her replacement. It took a few months for thr media to start to pick up the issue.

The Herald on 11 February stated Twyford was the likely sucessor.

On 14 February in the Dom Post was the first mention of Tizard after Clark’s candidacy for the UND job went public (also first covered on Kiwiblog). It was more factual than stating it was an “issue”. On 25 February the Dom Post still reported Twyford as the favourite.

On 25 March Newstalk ZB was also picking Twyford.

That night on TV, was the first real mention in the media of the Tizard dilemma, following leaks from Labour that they were working on keeping her out.

So you read it here first three months early! And of course repeated a few times since to remind people. I never really thought Labour would blink, but they did! T be fair to Labour, it may not just have been fear of losing the seat (it is their safest seat after all), but equally fear of how having Judith return would lead to merciless teasing in the House.

Over on Whale Oil, he has a screenshot of a Facebook discussion where Peter Dunne comments to Mark Unsworth (who was exressing sorrow that Twyford misses out because of someone else’s face not fitting) that the problem was not just Tizard but also Burton, Okeroa, Gallagher, Hereora, Wall and Soper being next on the list!

Now Tizard may still end up an MP. It just needs a Labour List MP to die or resign. Let us hope they all get their flu injections!

The Geographic Board is looking to give the North Island and South Island official names in English and Maori.

The likely Maori names are Te Ika a Maui for the North Island and Te Wai Pounamu for the South Island. Te Ika a Maui translated as “the fish of Maui”, based on the Maori myth that the island was formed by Maui’s gigantic catch, and Te Wai Pounamu as “the place of greenstone”.

Can’t say I have a problem with that. The current names are staying (in fact being made official) but they are very boring and over time the Maori versions may become more popular.

I don’t think you legislate these things, you let society move at its own pace. The Maori version of the National Anthem has become hugely popular over time (even if the words challenge some people). And certain Maori words such as whanau have become absolutely mainstream.

It is good that Labour has said it was wrong to legislate to remove the ability of Iwi to seek title in court for parts of the Foreshore & Seabed. Access to the courts should not be removed at whim by a panicked Government.

It is bad that once again they try to rewrite history about why they did so. Here is what Dr Cullen says:

“Labour believed at the time of the Ngati Apa decision that it would have been unacceptable not to respond to the Court of Appeal ruling in a definitive way. The finding created widespread uncertainty that a responsible Government needed to address.

“We responded with the best solution possible at the time. But I have always regretted the fact that National and other parties refused to enter into proper discussions on this issue, so that a broad political consensus – as has been established with the Treaty settlement process – could be reached.

Labour made their key decision before there was any attempt to get consensus. Within just a few days of the Court of Appeal ruling, Clark and Wilson announced they would legislate to over-turn the decision.

“The matter must be resolved once and for all. Now that National claims to have disavowed its previous ‘Iwi vs Kiwi’ stance and a review has been established, the potential for that broad consensus to be reached appears possible.

Labour are trying to rewrite history to portray their decision to legislate to remove access to the courts, as being the result of National’s Iwi/Kiwi campaign.  Again – the truth is Labour made the key decision to legislate within a few days of the Court decision – which was around two years or more before the Iwi/Kiwi billboard.

The sensible and principled thing to do would have been to appeal the Court of Appeal decision to the Privy Council. Labour did not want to do that as they had announced they wished to abolish such appeals, so rather than follow the law, they unilaterally changed it.

Chris Finlayson has resisted the urge to score cheap points at Labour’s expense (a lesson they could learn) and is reported as saying:

Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson last night welcomed Labour’s move.

“I agree completely with Dr Cullen’s sentiment that the review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act needs to be approached in a non-partisan way, and that the issue should not be used as a political football.

“I welcome his assurance that the Labour Party will engage constructively with the review. Our goal is to reach the best possible outcome for Maori and all the people of New Zealand, and it is important that the voices of all parties in Parliament are heard.”

Of course the details of what the review panel proposes will be crucial.

The Dom Post reports:

Porirua Deputy Mayor Litea Ah Hoi claims her council is trying to gag her – and has offered to quit after being told to “tone down” her language by Mayor Jenny Brash.

Ms Ah Hoi offered to resign as deputy mayor during a two-hour meeting this week after Mrs Brash reprimanded her for comments in a Dominion Post article about the death of three-year-old Cherishsiliala Tahuri-Wright.

Ms Ah Hoi, speaking on behalf of the allegedly murdered toddler’s father, criticised a delay in getting her to hospital and said: “It really pisses me off to think they dicked around for a couple of hours while a little girl was dying.”

Mrs Brash said she had asked Ms Ah Hoi to tone down her “colourful” language – and not to speak as the deputy mayor when commenting in a personal capacity.

Well I think showing some colour and emotion in your comments is fine – especially when talking about failures that led to a three year old dying.

Mrs Brash raised the issue after receiving three letters of complaint about Ms Ah Hoi’s comments and an email from the council’s senior communications manager, Barbara Bercic, asking her to ask Ms Ah Hoi to tone down her language.

This is the part that atsonishes me. If I was the Mayor and received an e-mail from a staffer asking me to act as language censor for the Deputy Mayor, I’d politely tell the staffer that it is not the job of staff to tell Councillors what sort of language they can use. Councillors are elected by the public, and if the public don’t like their lanuguage they can not re-elect them.

Meghan McCain is the bloging daughter of John McCain. She gave a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans recently which I quite liked:

But the experience did reinforce what I learned on the campaign trail in some major ways. I’ll summarize them in three points:

1. Most of our nation wants our nation to succeed;
2. Most people are ready to move on to the future, not live in the past; and
3. Most of the old-school Republicans are scared shitless of that future.

Harsh but with a fair degree of truth.

I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past. I believe most people are ready to move on to that future.

Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn’t going to miraculously make people think we’re cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don’t divide our nation further WILL.

I know many Republicans. The vast majority of them are not highly religious and care far more about a balanced budget and lower taxes than stem cell research or civil unions. However a small segment of the Republican Party has got to set too much of the agenda.

So tonight, I am proud to join you in challenging the mold and the notions of what being a Republican means. I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people’s lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.

Not a bad proclamation. For the Republicans to be able to win back the House, Senate and Presidency, more people under40 need to be able to say they are a Republican.

Since I blogged this morning that Dr Cullen may have said “We won, they lost, let’s do lunch” instead of “We won, you lot, eat that”I have been buried in texts and emails from journalists, former MPs, staffers all sure he had. But none of them knew exactly when – in fact some said it was during tax increase law, others re ACC, others some other time.

But finally we have an answer. We have a quote from Hansard on 9 August 2000 (a week before the let’s do lunch one I blogged earlier). It is:

“Eat that! You lost, we won, it [the ECA] goes! It is as simple as that!”

So there has been a minor mangling with the “Eat that” being at the beginning, not the end, but otherwise it is confirmed Dr Cullen did say that. My thanks to AG and all the others who have been at work on this.

Interestingly, one wonders then why Dr Cullen told the SST:

On “We won, you lost, eat that!” No, he says, he never said that to National. “It’s a wonderful piece of historic myth.”

Hardly a myth it seems. I don’t think a minor re-ordering which doesn’t affect the intent or arrogance qualifies Dr Cullen to call it a historic myth.

I’m glad someone finally dug up the actual quote. I was close to e-mailing Dr Cullen himself asking for what he thinks he said!

Phil Twyford has just announced he will not stand for Mt Albert for Labour.

This is a huge call, and shows how worried Labour were by the thought of the by-election turning into a referendum on Judith Tizard returning to Parliament.

I suspect Phil Goff will be pleased with the outcome. Goff’s leadership would have been fatally undermined if Labour lost Mt Albert due to voters not liking who would enter Parliament for Labour.

It is a tough break for Twyford. He is well regarded and respected, and in different circumstances would have won the nomination and very probably the seat.

He may need to wait a while to get a safe seat in Auckland. Mt Roskill may come up in 2014. I suspect Manurewa and Manukau East will come up in 2011 also. Te Atatu could also come up in 2011 or 2014 arguably.

So who will be the candidate? Nominations close tomorrow. At this stage I would say it is between Helen White and Meg Bates.

Jackson Wood, who is also the Editor of Salient, has declared his candidacy for Mt Albert. His release:

Crowds numbering into the hundreds assembled in the Victoria University quad today for the declaration of candidacy of Jackson James Wood in the Mt. Albert by-election.

Wood, student journalist and part-time philatelist, energised the crowd with a speech attacking the air of complacency surrounding the by-election.

“Too long have the people of Mt. Albert not been taken seriously by the major parties” Wood said.

“A string of low-profile nobodies have been stood by both Labour and National in Mt. Albert in the last twenty-eight years and it is time for this to change.”

To screams of appreciation and wails of lust, Wood announced the central platform of his candidacy.

“I’ve had enough of Auckland being unofficially run by MP’s whose interests truly lay in Wellington – it is time to make it official.”

In a question and answer session following his speech, Wood acknowledged the unconventional nature of campaigning for an electorate he had never visited.

“While it is true I have never visited Mt. Albert, I do in fact live in Mt. Victoria – and anyone who knows their history will accept that is close enough”.

A by-election wouldn’t be the same without the fringe candidates.

Hopefully though Jackson can get his staff to stop spamming before he starts campaigning.

A very good blog post from Peter Dunne:

Politics and public discourse today have become dominated by passions and feelings, rather than rational analysis of the issues involved. Evidence and the facts have long been overtaken by interpretation. For their part, politicians increasingly take electoral success to mean not only endorsement for their policies but also their personal prejudices. Funnily enough, when we observe such trends in the Muslim world, we decry them as “fundamentalist”, but when the same thing happens in our world we tend to admire it as “principled”.

To my way of thinking, both are as bad as each other. There used to be a classic slogan from the old radio crime dramas of “the facts ma’am, just the facts” which is worth remembering here. How refreshing would factually based public debate be!

It is sadly often lacking.

Take a couple of contemporary New Zealand examples. The Auckland supercity debate is being completely sidetracked by “feelings” – the perhaps understandable upset of a handful of Mayors who see themselves being put out of a job, and the “outrage” of some tangata whenua that they will have to compete for electoral preference on the same basis as everyone else. Both blame the ideology of the Minister of Local Government for their predicament (a highly superficial assessment at best), and invoke all sorts of emotion in support of their respective cause. Neither seem interested in a rational and critical assessment of what is best for Auckland.

I have yet to see any serious analysis about how six local Councils would be better for local communities than 20 to 30 local counnity boards.

Then there is the matter of a separate penal institution for Maori. Again, the argument is focused on the emotion rather than the facts. The Labour Party screams “separatism” (somewhat ironic I would have thought given its record) while the Minister of Maori Affairs defends it as “good for Maori.” Where is the analysis about whether such institutions work, by helping rehabilitate offenders and reduce recidivism? That is the criterion on which or otherwise of this proposal should be judged.

Indeed. Will it work is a key question? If it leads to fewer people being beat up, killed or raped by lowering reoffending, then it is worth doing I would say.

As a liberal, I believe very strongly in the primacy of reason, where decisions are based on the evidence not the prejudice, and where we do things because they work, not because they look or feel good. That is why as Associate Minister of Health I want to see more collaboration between the public and private surgical sectors to reduce elective surgery waiting lists, not because of an ideological view that private is better than public, but simply because it strikes me as dumb to have surplus private sector surgical capacity while the public system is hopelessly overloaded and waiting lists are growing.

I couldn’t agree more.

It is why I want see our alcohol and problem gambling policies focus on dealing with those adversely affected by abuse of those products, and not curtailing the opportunities of the overwhelming majority of people who enjoy them, and will never suffer any problems.

Again – absolutely agree. Target those who have a problem, and support them. Don’t punish the vast majority who do not.

Homepaddock is getting spammed. She writes:

Dear Andrew Willliams,

You’ve emailed me again and given I wasn’t impressed with your first two missives I was going to ignore these two, too.

But I was at a National Party regional meeting in Dunedin on Friday and one of the electorate chairs mentioned that she’d got a couple of emails from you and wasn’t impressed either.

She was even less impressed after her polite response requesting you stop sending her unsolicited emails was met by a return message saying something like great to hear from you, we’ve had so much repsonse we’ll deal with yours when we have time.

We’ve worked out you must have got our addresses from the National Party website.

It’s public so any of us whose addresses are there might expect the odd unsolicited email. But our contact details are there because we’re volunteer office holders who members and supporters might wish to contact, not as an invitation for lobby groups to bombarb us with unwanted propaganda.

If you’re going to send us spam the least you can do is include an unsubscribe option so our requests to be removed from your mailing list aren’t met with another unwanted message.

Yours sincerely

Ele

Luckily for Mayor Williams, he can only be prosecuted for commercial spam.  However it does breach the terms and conditions of North Shore City’s ISP, as Whale points out.

I spoke to the Young Labour conference on Sunday about blogging, and whether it is entertainment or citizen journalism (I say both). I was on a panel with Keith Ng and Robyn Gallagher and I thought the session went well. There was some great questions and discussion with the audience. I quipped at the beginning that I wanted to swap water glasses with Keith in case of poison but had nothing to worry about – it was a very good natured session.

That leads me to this blog entry a blog I read had linked to, about ten journalism rules you can and should break on your blog:

1. Use partial or fake names
2. Tell part of the story
3. Insert opinion
4. Link to a report rather than rewrite it
5. Link to background rather than repeat it
6. Link to the enemy
7. Use second person or even first person
8. Get personal
9. Answer your critics or supporters
10. Fix your mistakes rather than just publish a correction

At the conference I did a comparison of NZ blogs to UK newspapers. The UK is lucky enough to have ten or so daily newspapers, and each has their own niche. They are best summed up in this Yes Minister scene (which I played at the conference).

So my local comparisons were:

• Daily Telegraph – Kiwiblog
• Financial Times – Bernard Hickey
• The Times – Public Address
• The Guardian – No Right Turn
• The Independent – Tumeke!
• Daily Express – No Minister
• Daily Mail – Winston Peters
• Daily Mirror – The Standard
• The Sun – Whale Oil

People can make their own additional suggestions I am sure!

Oh I am loving the celebrity roasts on Comedy Central. Last week they had one for William Shatner, who rose in on a horse. This led to a great quote at the end by George Takei who played Sulu who said “Fuck you William Shatner, and fuck the horse you rode in on”. They had had a feud for some decades, but finally were over it.

The funniest part for me was the roast by Betty White. She was just as coarse and rude as the other roasters. This is despite the fact she is 86 years old (she played Catherine Piper on Boston Legal).

It would be good to have celebrity roasts in New Zealand.

A friend sent me this, from the msn.co.nz website today. I think it was a brief hack, as when I tried it I got their normal page.

A reader has e-mailed me regarding the infamous Cullen quote of “We won, you lost, eat that” and it does appear that in fact the quote has got mangled over the years.

At the time Cullen announced his retirement, there was a lot of searching for the quote. I even had a couple of calls asking me if I could recall where and when. I said I was pretty sure it was during the Employment Relations Bill debate as I was pretty much in Parliament from 9 am to midnight every day for a week as the main analyst on that law. I think I wrote over 1,000 amendments!

Anyway I recall Cullen saying it after one of the mammoth fillybustering sessions came to an end. And it was indeed at that time, but not quite as legend now reports it. My reader has seen the original video footage:

it was the day of 16 August 2000. Parliament has just finished the 7th and final day of the Employment Relations Bill second debate. The Clerk has just announced there will be a debate for the 3rd reading of the ERB.

Speaker Hunt calls for a meal break as both sides stand after what must have been a long morning.

Cullen is heard on the camera mic as he stands saying in a loud voice to his front bench colleagues, “We won, they lost, let’s do lunch”.

It seems the original quote has been through Chinese whispers since then, and the “eat that” part is not accurate. The first media reports of it were some days later.

So as a farewell present to Dr Cullen, Kiwiblog is pleased to set the record straight!

Yay. Stuff now has a mobile version of their site. These are optmised for viewing on cellphones and are great. I often use these sites. There is also a mobile version of Wikipedia – wapedia.mobi.

In the not to distant future there will be a mobile version of Kiwiblog – at m.kiwiblog.co.nz.  We’ll announce when this is ready.

The Stuff site renders well on my Blackberry, so have added it to favourites.

The Dom Post reports:

A Palmerston North motel with its own “Basil Fawlty” has banished an entire town from its doorstep.

The 16,000 residents of the Lower Hutt suburb of Wainuiomata were slapped with a blanket ban by Palmerston North’s Supreme Motor Lodge this week, after a series of misdemeanours by visiting sports teams.

Supreme’s owner, Steve Donnelly-an Australian- said guests from Wainuiomata were more trouble than they were worth.

“Having had about a hundred people from there over the last couple of years and maybe one that we liked … it is not worth it and we would do the same to anyone who causes us that level of stress.”

Heh.

Accommodation providers are subject to anti-discrimination laws under the Human Rights Act, but geographical area is not a prohibited ground of discrimination.

As it should be. Otherwise my jokes about Palmerston North may become illegal.

Labour MP Trevor Mallard, born and bred in Wainuiomata, said the move was absolutely outrageou”It’s stupid and very, very unfair. It shows the sort of blind prejudice I thought we didn’t have in New Zealand anymore. I’m not surprised the [owner's] Australian.”

The famous Mallard diplomacy

Wainuiomata rugby league stalwart and sports commentator Ken Laban said the whole thing was a joke but the hotel owners were cutting themselves out of a market of 16,000 persons.

“Give me their number and I’ll go and book myself in for a week. I’ll be recommending to all my friends that they go and stay there.

“There are some people I know in Wainuiomata I wouldn’t have over to stay, but there are more in Khandallah and Ngaio. Wainui is just the tip of the iceberg, you’ve got dodgy types like Bill English in Karori.”

Oh dear – a battle of the suburbs.

The Herald reports that the battle over the Pirate Bay file sharing site has gone from the courts to politics:

Regardless of the final outcome after the dust has cleared from any remaining legal wrangles, The Pirate Bay verdict appears to be achieving the opposite to the outcome intended by the copyright advocates with support for the site and its political offshoot, the Pirate Party reportedly going from strength to strength.

Since the verdict, support for the Swedish Pirate Party has surpassed that of the Swedish Green Party and it now appears that almost half of all Swedish males under the age of 30 are considering voting for the Pirate Party in the 2009 European Parliament elections. In the first 24 hours since the verdict, over 3000 people joined the Pirate Party, raising its membership from under 15,000 to over 18,000, making it the 5th largest, and the most popular political party within the youth demographic. The Pirate Party will however require at least 100,000 votes to gain a seat in the European Parliament.

It would be very amusing to have a Pirate Party MEP. Just hope no-one thinks they are from Somalia

I did find it a bit ironic reading the following:

A jealous prostitute killed her lover in a “deliberate and brutal” knife attack after he admitted cheating on her with other escorts, a court has heard.

I doubt she will be able to get off by claiming provocation!

This shows the extremism of the fanatics.  Caroline Lucas is an MEP and the Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. Unlike NZ Greens, they do not require one of the co-leaders to have a penis.

Anyway Lucas was debating climate change with someone from the UKIP. The UKIP have a video of the exchange here. The key part is at 14 minutes through.

Lucas was arguing that people should be stopped from traveling so much. Her opponent said it was people’s right to travel (he suppoted them paying for externalities such as noise and pollution). Lucas said that rights are limited, and said that for example you can’t wonder down the street and stab someone.

It was put to Lucas that stabbing someone is not the same as taking a plane trip to Spain, and she responded that yes it was, because people are dying from climate change. The Mail on Sunday reports:

Ms Lucas, who is also a Member of the European Parliament, made the controversial comment during a televised ITV debate about plans for a proposed third runway at Heathrow. She also hit out ‘binge flying’ and people who have second homes abroad.

When asked if flying to Spain was as bad as knifing a person in the street, Ms Lucas said: ‘Yes – because they are dying from climate change.’

This is the problem with the whole extreme Green philosphy.  They want to remove choice from everyone, once they have decided something is bad. They really think flying away on holiday, is as bad as stabbing someone. In fact they probably think it is worse, so why wouldn’t the state step in and ban it. They have no appreciation that there should be limits to state power. In fact they want the state to only have increased powers.

John Key has just announced the key dates:

1. Writ Day – Mon 11 May
2. Nominations Open – Tue 12 May
3. Nominations Day – Tue 19 May
4. Advance Voting start – Wed 27 May
5. Election – Sat 13 June
6. Official Results – Thu 25 June
7. Returns of Writs – Tue 30 June

Labour selects late April and National early May. Let the contest begin!