Kiwiblog

An interesting article on the NZ Computer Society website on what we need to do to increase our innovation potential.

The summary:

1. Finish fixing ICT education in schools
2. Government needs to understand the potential of technology
3. Significantly increase the number of R&D Internships available
4. Excite kids (and their parents!) about IT as a career
5. Activate student communities to drive a change in culture
6. Support and change the mindset of our entrepreneurs
7. Act professionally
8. Internationally align ICT degrees and link them closer to industry
9. Help grow professionals through mentoring and development
10. Get Ultra-fast Broadband in place

Sounds a pretty good list to me.

An exclusive op ed by Luke Malpass and Peter Saunders:

When Prophecy Fails: The Spirit Level and the Illusion of Scientific Socialism

By Luke Malpass and Peter Saunders

A couple of Sunday’s ago, on TV One’s Q&A programme, there was a substantial interview followed by a panel discussion about a new book called The Spirit Level by British academics Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. The book claims to ‘prove’ that more equal societies perform better than less equal ones on a range of social indicators including crime, life expectancy, social cohesion, drugs, literacy and obesity.  It concludes that a radical redistribution of incomes would improve the quality of life for everyone, rich as well as poor.

This followed a forum held at Victoria University, Wellington last November to discuss the controversial book, and numerous glowing reports about the book and its authors in the New Zealand Press.

This book has been welcomed by many on the left. In New Zealand, a number of Labour politicians are pedalling it, while in Britain Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee even describes Richard Wilkinson as the 21^st century’s equivalent of Charles Darwin!  The left loves the book because it seems to provide scientific backing for their political instincts, ‘proving’ that income inequality is ‘a bad thing.’  But in reality, the book is seriously flawed, and serious left-leaning academics have begun distancing themselves from its claims.

One problem is that the income statistics are faulty.  As reported in the press, the book says Japan is the most equal country in the world.  This is crucial, for Japan performs very well on nearly every social indicator.  But the income data for Japan exclude single-person households and the self-employed, such as farmers.  More complete data supplied by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows Japan is actually the 13^th most unequal of the 30 OECD nations.  This alone is enough to undermine most of the statistical claims made in the book.

A further difficulty is that the authors ignore some key countries which don’t fit their hypothesis.  They claim to include all the rich nations, but they leave out affluent but unequal countries like Hong Kong and South Korea, and Singapore is missing from many of their graphs as well.  These countries all perform well on the social indicators yet have high income inequality.  If they were included, as they should have been, the authors would struggle to maintain many of their claims.

Their book also ignores social indicators where equal countries tend to perform badly.  They compare homicide rates, but not suicides; teenage births but not divorce rates; government foreign aid budgets but not private charitable donations; drug abuse but not alcohol consumption.  Taking these alternative measures, it could easily be ‘proved’ that equal countries perform much worse than unequal ones.       

Perhaps the worst aspect of the book is the analysis of comparative statistics.  The authors present a series of graphs plotting the income distribution in each country against selected social indicators, and in each case they claim to show problems getting worse as we move from less to more unequal countries.  In fact, however, most of their graphs show no such thing.

One plots the homicide rates of 23 countries against their income distribution.  In 22 of the countries, the homicide rate is very similar (indeed, more unequal countries, like Singapore, Britain and New Zealand, actually have lower rates than more equal countries like Sweden and Finland).  One country, however, stands out: the USA has a murder rate three times higher than the others – and the USA is a relatively unequal country. 

Wilkinson and Pickett allow this one case (what statisticians call an ‘extreme outlier’) to distort their whole graph.  Even though there is no association between income inequality and homicide rates across 22 countries, they conclude from this one case that there is.  They even suggest that Britain could reduce its murder rate by three-quarters if it had Swedish levels of income inequality, yet Sweden’s homicide rate is higher than Britain’s!  

Many of their graphs are skewed in this way, and the problem is compounded by their failure to look for the possible influence of third variables.  For example, they compare infant mortality rates across 50 US states and find those with the greatest income inequality have the higher rates.  But the more unequal states are also those with bigger African-American populations, so is it income distribution or ethnicity that is causing the problem?  When one of us looked into this, we found that ethnicity is 18 times more powerful than income distribution in predicting a state’s infant mortality rate.  When we published this finding, Wilkinson accused us in The Guardian of being a ‘racist’!

It is true that, on the indicators they select, the Scandinavian countries tend to perform better than the Anglo countries.  But this is not because the Scandinavians have a more compressed income distribution.  Rather, it reflects deep historical and cultural differences between the two sets of nations.  We know this because when we look at other countries outside these two blocs, there is no association between social outcomes and income inequality.  Countries like Austria, France, Greece, South Korea and Singapore vary widely on their income distributions but show no pattern on the social indicators.  The claim that inequality causes social pathology is a red herring.

While the recent Q&A panel were sceptical, Professor Jonathan Boston, who chaired the Victoria University forum on the book, was quoted last year as saying: ‘We can have some confidence that more equal societies – other things being equal – have better social outcomes across a range of measures. It may not be absolutely conclusive, but I think it’s reasonably persuasive.’  He’s wrong.

Left academics and politicians have long flirted with the idea that socialism can be made to look ‘scientific,’ and that is why they are drawn to this book.  But all the book really does is dress up political dogma in the garb of science.  Arguments about redistribution are moral, not scientific ones, and this book does nothing to change that.  Don’t let any academic tell you otherwise. 

Luke Malpass is Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent studies. Professor Peter Saunders is Senior Fellow at the CIS and is author of the book When Prophecy Fails: A Critique of the Spirit Level.

I’ve started reading the book and it is one of the most complete demolitions I have ever seen. The book specifically responds to the latest claims from the authors of the Spirit Level in defending their work.

You can purchase the book at the CIS website. The Spirit Level has become the bible for socialists, and to be blunt we need more people who can point out how flawed the cherry-picked research that makes it up is. Remember all the Eastern European states (before the Soviet empire collapsed) had little income inequality, but were hardly prosperous paradises.

Also of interest may be this op ed which appeared in the Australian last week.

Phil Quinn has an amusing take on the fictional press conference:

I would like to extend my heartfelt apologies to the members of the Australian Rugby Union contingent for my behavior at the corporate facilities at North Harbour Stadium during the Wallabies’ frankly unconvincing win against Italy on Sunday.

My conduct was unbecoming a government minister, let alone one charged with the duty of hosting overseas guests even if those overseas guests happen to be Australian.

The barrage of abuse I hurled against not only the playing fifteen, but the very character of Australia and Australians — while at times hilarious and often technically accurate — was not acceptable, and for that I sincerely apologize.

“Cheating convict scum” is not an expression I should have used.  If I had my time over again, I would allude to Australia’s past as a convict colony, along with its historical propensity to violate the rules and spirit of rugby, in a more dignified fashion.

I have called James O’Connor — who I can confirm is absolutely not Justin Bieber’s gay twin — to apologise directly.  Similarly, I tweeted an apology to Quade Cooper — whose name is spelled Q-U-A-D-E  and not Q-U-N-T as I may have implied a few dozen times on Sunday.

Heh.

Peter Luke writes in The Press:

Perhaps the most awkward moment in my now extinct career at The Press concerned 9/11, the 10th anniversary of which is tomorrow.

Peter was in the press gallery for my first few years in Parliament. He was, and is, a top bloke. He was also a excellent journalist who had a real flair for political reporting. It was a sad day when he moved back to Christchurch to be their leader writer.

Journalism inevitably has its moments of embarrassment. I recall in my first year in the job in 1986 covering, well into the evening, an industrial dispute involving local bus drivers.

As we went to print, it was clear that the next day there would be a drivers’ strike. Whether I had downed a few drinks at the Media Club before crawling home I can’t recall.

But that might explain why passing motorists the next morning gave me puzzled stares as I sat at the bus stop for the bus which was never going to come.

Heh.

Having followed politics for so many years, it has often been asked of me who were the MPs that I most respected. So, in my final column, here is my assessment.

Michael Cullen. Simply the wittiest and smartest politician in recent history.

Jim Bolger. The most under- estimated prime minister I have come across. He made up for his lack of education by having an innate ability to relate to the aspirations of ordinary Kiwis. And, as many civil servants discovered to their cost, his image of being a simple King Country farmer did not mean that he would not understand their reports and unfailingly point to the flaws in them.

Rod Donald. His ability to combine his Green politics with political pragmatism was uncanny. We used to meet up weekly for a drink, initially at the Font Bar at the Heritage Hotel. Younger reporters would be puzzled when they took a message from Rod asking if we would be celebrating “communion” that afternoon.

Jim Anderton. One of the hardest politicians to interview (he can talk non-stop). But in the years of Rogernomics he had the courage of his convictions which must be admired.

Then there is the enigma which is Mike Moore. Just before heading overseas to campaign for the top World Trade Organisation job Mike summoned me to his Parliamentary office.

Mate, he said, in winter you’re officially having to go out into the cold for a smoke. But Mike told me I would be free to use his office, against the rules, for a smoke, to the point where he said where his cigarettes and ashtrays were stored, not to mention where the booze was.

I hope Peter enjoys his retirement.

Gordon Campbell at Werewolf writes:

If the yet to fully mature brain of the average 16 or 17 year old really did justify withholding the vote until 18, then arguably….the same exclusionary logic should apply at the other end of the age spectrum as well. Yet there is no groundswell for excluding people from voting on cognitive grounds, as their brain function begin to decay. …

None of this directly addresses the question of senile dementia – and here, Barrett offers some sobering statistics. “ A person over 80 has a 20 % likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. It is estimated that by 2050, some 147,000 New Zealanders of a projected population of 4.6 million will suffer from dementia (mostly Alzheimer’s.) ” That is almost the double the projection of 75,000 similar sufferers in 2026, and 3.5 times the 41,000 (in a population of 4.3 million) in 2008.

That marks a significant shift, to numbers that could be politically decisive.

I think this is already a significant issue.

Early research indicates that at the last election, 4.067107% of voters were affected by senile dementia.

Stuff reports:

The Government will use special powers under Rugby World Cup legislation to take control of the Auckland waterfront set aside for the celebrations during the tournament.

Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully will this afternoon outline his intention to tomorrow call up reserve powers available to him under the Rugby World Cup Empowerment Bill.

It has been revealed, ahead of the announcement, that McCully has ordered Government officials to write a new plan to manage the waterfront beyond its own Fan Zone at Queen’s Wharf.

The plan, which turns responsibility from the Auckland City Council over to the Government, will expand management measures and create more space for partying.

“Some of my critics have been suggesting I should take responsibility, well I am. I am stepping in to a space that the Government has not previously occupied,” McCully told Stuff.

“We’re getting on the front foot here and showing a determination to provide a larger footprint and a wider range of measures to assist with the management of crowds and the delivery of amenities.”

About 200,000 turned out to the Auckland waterfront for the opening of the Rugby World Cup on Friday night. Only about 12,000 were allowed in the Queen’s Wharf fan zone, where there were no problems.

McCully said he felt the preparations for outside of the Queen’s Wharf area – made by the Auckland City Council’s responsible group – were “thoroughly inadequate in respect of the crowd control and amenities”.

“It would be fair to say there was not adequate provision made for toilets and for other amenities and that was a significant contributing factor to the problems,” McCully said.

“Neither were there proper arrangements for the flow and management of people which led to difficulties.”

The new Government plan was being finalised this afternoon and McCully had been advised the only way to give the new plan legal effect was via special reserve measures in the RWC Empowering Bill.

So as I understand it the Government was managing the Queen’s Wharf fan zone and the Council the rest of the waterfront, and as with any split responsibility things fall through the cracks.

I imagine the thinking of the Minister is that if the Government is going to be held responsible for what happens on the waterfront, they want to be able to manage it. Who wants to be held accountable for something they do not control?

Of course the risk is that if problems continue, the accountability will clearly be with the Government. So it is quite a ballsy move.

Hopefully any problems will be minimal, so as many fans as possible have as great a time as possible.

In the debate on the Alcohol Reform Bill, Lianne Dalziel has just said that it is outrageous that you can buy a bottle of wine for less than $2/standard drinks.

So this is a sure sign that Labour, if Government, will legislate to ensure wine costs at least $16 a bottle.

First of all Phil Goff attacks John Key for not speaking te reo at the World Cup Opening Ceremony. For fucks sake, how politically correct can you get. I loved the ceremony and thought it was stunning and made me proud to be a Kiwi. But I think it is fair to say the Maori culture was not under-represented in the ceremony, so really why get obsessed over such tokenism over whether or not John Key said kia ora.

But I think Goff has managed to get even more stupid, with his claim that whomever was the Minister for bad manners has committed a sackable offence.

So according to Phil Goff, heckling the Australian rugby team is a sackable offence. Let’s contrast that to the list of what Phil Goff and Labour have said are not sackable offences, helpfully compiled by Whale Oil:

• Watch­ing porn on tax­pay­ers ticket
• Tiling your house with immi­grant labour
• Per­vert­ing the course of jus­tice and corruption
• Tak­ing home a drunk teenager who sub­se­quently runs naked from your house.
• Los­ing your lug­gage three times so you can get a new suit each time
• Tak­ing ille­gal dona­tions and lying about it
• Forg­ing paintings
• Speed­ing through the coun­try­side like an African dictator
• Buy­ing a set of golf clubs and a bike on the taxpayer
• For­get­ting you were briefed by the SIS and then lying about it
•  Steal­ing $840,000 from the tax­payer to fund your re-election campaign
• Con­tin­u­ally break­ing elec­toral law
• Claim­ing you had sold the sky­hawks when you had done no such thing
• Hid­ing ACC blowout from PREFU

There are probably many more than this that readers can add to that list.

Goff would do well to reflect that it is sometimes better to not comment on a story. The Minister for Bad Manners story was already getting massive media and blog coverage. He achieved nothing  by sticking in his 2c worth, except to make himself look stupid and hypocritical.

The same goes for the te reo story. How many votes does Goff thing he will win by whining that the PM didn’t speak in Maori. It just reinforces all the negative attributes the public sees in him.

Some lobby groups are issue driven, and legitimately criticise the Government for things they disagree with. There are other groups that become so partisan than no matter what, they just attack the Government.

Alcohol Action has just shown today that it is now obsessed with attacking the Government, regardless of the situation.

They put out two press releases today.  The first was at 11.01 am:

Government in urgency, set to bury their weak Alcohol NON-Reform Bill by the end of the week

 Is the Government trying to bury its impotent response to New Zealand’s heavy drinking culture by quickly and quietly passing the Alcohol Reform Bill under cover of the Rugby World Cup?

 “It looks as if the Government wants the Alcohol Reform Bill done and dusted by Friday,” says Alcohol Action spokesperson Prof Doug Sellman.

So in this press release, Alcohol Action attacks the Government for trying to pass the alcohol reform bill this week. They incidentally got their facts wrong – all the Government has done is schedule the second reading for today – there is no urgency planned for this week for the bill.

Then a second press release at 12.46 pm:

Government working hard, but not to pass their weak Alcohol NON-Reform Bill by the end of the week, or by the end of the year …

“The situation is worse than we originally thought and it now looks as if the Government will leave the Alcohol Reform Bill still hanging at the end of this current Parliament,” says Alcohol Action spokesperson Prof Doug Sellman.

So now in this press release, they attack the Government for not getting the law rammed through in the dying stages of Parliament.

They stand exposed as a lobby group who will attack the Government, no matter what the Government does. So why should they be listened to, when the Government knows that nothing they do will please them.

Just had monster hail storm in Wellington. The noise was amazing, and within minutes turned Wellington white.

The roofs and roads are all white.

This is my outdoor balcony. The hail is close to an inch thick on it.

Another view out to the left of the stadium.

And this is the roof of the indoor balcony.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

Australian media have dubbed an unnamed Government minister as the “New Zealand Minister for Bad Manners” after he allegedly made a scene in the official Australian box during the Wallabies opening Rugby World Cup game. …

The newspaper quotes insider “Jeeves” as saying “He booed and abused the Wallabies all game”.

“He was yelling out, ‘f–ing cheats’ and other offensive remarks, and then when the Wallabies started to get on top, he suddenly left.”

The Australian Rugby Union representatives and their partners in the box were “gobsmacked”, the newspaper said.

One of the Australians had asked a local government official who the man was, saying his behaviour was “right over the top”.

“The local suit replied: ‘Sorry. I can’t do much about it. He’s a government minister,’” the newspaper said.

iPredict have stocks on who will be identified as the Minister. Current probabilities are:

• Jonathan Coleman 65%
• Other/None 35%
• Wayne Mapp 2%
• Steven Joyce 2%
• Phil Heatley 2%
• Murray McCully 2%
• Craig Foss 2%
• Gerry Brownlee 0%
• Tim Groser 0%
• Bill English 0%

UPDATE: Ministers Coleman, Mapp and Williamson have all categorically denied it was them, and said they think the story is made up. This may be right, as it was an anonymous second hand story.

Derek Cheng in the NZ Herald reports:

The Government’s stalled reforms of the justice sector have been given an unusual lifeline with a proposal to take the controversial issue of the right to silence out of Parliament’s hands and leave it to a group of legal experts.

The Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill is likely to have its second reading this week, having spent a month on the order paper while Justice Minister Simon Power sought the numbers to pass it.

The bill is a shake-up of the criminal justice system and includes the removal of an accused’s right to remain silent and not have that held against them.

As it stands, the bill would require the defence to disclose to the prosecution before a trial all issues in dispute. Failure to do so would enable a judge or jury to infer that the accused is more likely to be guilty.

At present, a defendant can say nothing, leaving the case to the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt.

The Labour, Green and Maori parties are strongly against the bill in its present form, but the Herald understands Mr Power has won the support of United Future leader Peter Dunne and Act MPs Hilary Calvert, Heather Roy and Sir Roger Douglas by removing the disclosure regime from the bill (Act MPs are not “whipped” to vote as a caucus).

The ability of a judge or jury to infer a greater likelihood of guilt from non-compliance would also be removed.

A new clause would allow the Rules Committee, a panel of legal experts chaired by Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, to decide if a disclosure regime should be enforced, and if so, how.

I understand there is considerable tension in ACT over this bill.  If Calvert, Roy and Douglas vote for the the bill, they will be effectively crossing the floor against their party as the ACT Board has voted to oppose the bill, and it is also opposed by Leader Don Brash, former Leader Rodney Hide and Parliamentary Leader John Boscawen.

It raises one of the criticisms of MMP, where you have List MPs voting against the wishes of their party.

Now I have to say that by referring the disclosure regime to the Rules Committee, it almost guarantees it will not proceed as Dame Sian submitted on behalf of the high court, appeal court and supreme court judges against the disclosure regime. Interestingly the District Court Judges (who actually hear most of the trials) were in favour of a disclosure regime.

But even though it is unlikely to proceed, there are valid constitutional issues about whether something as fundamental as the right to silence should be decided by the High Court Rules Committee, rather than by Parliament itself. You normally delegate technical non-controversial issues to outside bodies – not issues affecting the Bill of Rights!

The other issue is about these changes being negotiated outside the select committee process, rather than through the select committee. Substantive changes at the committee of the whole stage are best avoided if possible.

The Dom Post reports:

Labour Party member and former Parliamentary staffer Sonny Thomas has admitted taking $4183.90 from his boss Phil Twyford and his wife, stealing a cash machine card to withdraw money and racking up food and drink bills in his name.

Thomas, 24, was Mr Twyford’s executive assistant and would buy food for him when he was unable to get his own.

Thomas bought over $877 of food and drink for himself while getting things for Mr Twyford.

He also went into Mr Twyford’s office while he was at meetings and took a credit card.

Using knowledge of Mr Twyford’s personal details and access numbers he guessed his PIN and withdrew $3560 over several months.

Thomas was asked about some extra transactions over the food and drink and said a mistake had been made and paid back $254.

He pleaded guilty to theft and fraudulently obtaining a financial advantage and Wellington District Court judge Michael Turner sentenced him to 250 hours community work and ordered him to pay back the money within a month.

Judge Turner said initially Thomas did not admit his wrongdoing when asked about the extra food and drink charges.

He said Thomas explained he had done it because he was helping an ill family member which was stretching his own financial means.

”You are a talented young man with a promising career in public service and politics which has been brought to an abrupt end,” he told Thomas.

Outside court Thomas apologised.

”I have made an enormous mistake under trying personal circumstances for which I am very sorry. No justifications can be made to excuse my actions,” Thomas said.

There are many great things about working in Parliament, but one of the not so great things is if you do something wrong, it is far more likely to be news worthy.

I’ve always got on fine with Sonny, and admired his commitment to politics. It is a shame he let himself down, as well as his boss and colleagues.

However there is a very good saying about let he who is without sin, cast the first stone. I basically divide people up into three categories:

1. Saints
2. Bad people
3. Good people who sometimes do a bad thing

I’ve yet to meet any of (1). Maybe that is just the circles I hang in

For my 2c, I think Sonny is very much in category (3). He’s a good person who did a bad thing. But that shouldn’t go on to define him.

At Stuff I blog on the train blame game.

THIS WEEK ON BACK BENCHES: Watch Wallace Chapman, Damian Christie, the Back Benches Panel and special guests discuss the week’s hottest topics!

ON THE TRAIN TO NOWHERE: Was the opening night of the Rugby World Cup marred by public transport problems? At least 2,000 people missed the opening ceremony due to train delays. Does that warrant compensation? Do we need more trains? Is the failure due to anti-train bias? And what about the riders who kept pushing the emergency stop buttons? Can this be cleared up before the end of the cup? And do we really need to look at how we get around town?

ARE WE SAFER? This week the world commemorates the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The terror attacks may have been on American soil but the reverberations spread far wider. 9/11 saw law changes in New Zealand, changes in aviation, changes the way we see each other. Ten years on—are we any safer? And if you were to look ahead ten years—where will we be?

Join us for a night of LIVE pub politics from the Backbencher Pub: Wednesday, 14th of September. Our Panel: Green Party Co-Leader Metiria Turei, Labour MP Phil Twyford and National MP David Bennett.

Photo from The Press.

I wonder how much Air New Zealand paid for the advertising!

A song for Christchurch. Nice.

Ryan Malone blogs on the MMP referendum:

Is the MMP referendum shaping up to be a big fat non-event?

Electoral reform was a big deal back in the early 90s when the two referenda were held. The protagonists argued their case in the media and waged extensive advertising campaigns. It was an old school fight, with threats and personal insults. Those were the days.

With the indicative 2011 referendum fast approaching, we’re yet to see anything remotely close to those lofty heights. Why?

One explanation is that people just don’t care. For some, this is no doubt true. They couldn’t give a toss one way or the other. But this is too simple (and boring) an explanation.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that the anti-MMP campaign just hasn’t turned up to the fight. As an objective observer with no connection to either camp, in my view the pro-MMP group (fronted by Sandra Grey) has made all the running in terms of media and advertising, while the anti-MMP group (fronted by Jordan Williams) is badly lagging. To give but one example, in the Wairarapa (where I live), the pro-MMP group has been running a weekly column in the local newspapers for some time. There is a prominent sign on State Highway 2 urging people to retain MMP. And from the anti-MMP group? Nothing as far as I can see. Not a peep.

There is a significant mismatch of resources, combined with a near total lack of coverage by the media.

The Vote for Change group is the only group I know of advocating for change. Those lined up to advocate for MMP are:

1. Greens
2. CTU
3. NZDWU
4. SFWU
5. NZEI
6. NZNO
7. NDU
8. Campaign for MMP
9. NZ Aged Care Assn
10. Labour
11. RMTU
12. MUNZ

No business group has lined up to register, and no political party that supports change. So the only voice for change is a one small incorporated society against eight unions, two political parties, one lobby group and the dedicated Campaign for MMP.

Now this wouldn’t be so much of an issue, if the media were doing full or half page stories on the five electoral systems, and the pros and cons of each. But they are not. And the broadcasters have done nothing much to date as far as I can see.

This referendum is probably the last one for 50+ years on the  basic electoral system. It will be a shame if it is a decision by default, rather than informed choice.

Why has National decided to keep to the sidelines in the referendum? Probably for the same reason, business groups have. They know that opponents of change will often play the man, not the ball, and call them undemocratic and power mad etc.

My hope is that coverage of the referendum will improve in the days ahead. But I suspect it is too late. After the RWC, most attention in the next five weeks will be on the election rather than the referendum. I think the debates and the media coverage should have started around January of this year.

A nice profile of Wellington in the New York Times:

IT was a Saturday night in Wellington, New Zealand, and the denizens of Cuba Street were proving that the ’80s aren’t dead. A performance group decked out in unitards, Lycra G-strings, leg warmers and fluorescent wigs was dancing almost in rhythm to tunes like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and “Like a Virgin,” occasionally inspiring the crowd to join in. Farther down Cuba Street, clutches of the young and restless spilled out along the pedestrian mall on their way from bar to restaurant to cafe, many ending up at nightspots like the Matterhorn to catch the latest hot D.J. from Ireland or Ethiopia. In the middle of the mall, one of the city’s signature landmarks, the Bucket Fountain, dropped water from one bucket to another and onto passers-by, causing them to shriek and jump into one another’s arms to dodge the spray.  …

Back on Cuba Street while the dance troupe was still shaking those leg warmers, we struck up a conversation with a truck driver who paints and a construction worker who makes films. (In the less-modest United States, they’d be a painter who drives a truck and a filmmaker who works construction.) Both avowed that Wellington was by far the most avant-garde city in all of New Zealand, and to prove it, they decided to find us the kind of cool bar that could be found only here.

First, they tried Havana Bar off a side street in two connected colorful, Cuban-style shacks, but despite its lively atmosphere and available tables our friends immediately pronounced it “dead.” We finally ended up at a place called Mighty Mighty, where the band was playing psychobilly rock. We perused the drinks menu, which was hidden in a vintage record sleeve, and observed the wildly decked-out patrons, some dressed in afro wigs and others in lederhosen.

My wife and I looked at each other, and then at our impromptu guides, their point well and truly made: Wellington is cool. We get it now.

It is indeed the coolest little capital city in the world.

In terms of other capitals, I do love Washington DC. Canberra is probably the most boring. London is cool also.

No matches until Wednesday but some great games yesterday.

• Australia 32 v Italy 6
• Ireland 22 v USA 10
• South Africa 17 v Wales 16

The US are only the 18th ranked team in the world, and I thought they played a great game. Credit to Ireland for the win though.

And oh we were all Welsh last night. They came so close. James Hook almost won it for them.

An interesting 2004 essay on income inequality, sent in by a reader. Worth taking time to read the whole thing. Some extracts:

When people care enough about something to do it well, those who do it best tend to be far better than everyone else. There’s a huge gap between Leonardo and second-rate contemporaries like Borgognone. You see the same gap between Raymond Chandler and the average writer of detective novels. A top-ranked professional chess player could play ten thousand games against an ordinary club player without losing once.

Like chess or painting or writing novels, making money is a very specialized skill. But for some reason we treat this skill differently. No one complains when a few people surpass all the rest at playing chess or writing novels, but when a few people make more money than the rest, we get editorials saying this is wrong.

Also we only treat it as wrong when people earn their wealth through business.  We celebrate someone who gains a million dollars through Lotto, but denounce the CEO paid a million dollar salary.

It may seem unlikely in principle that one individual could really generate so much more wealth than another. The key to this mystery is to revisit that question, are they really worth 100 of us? Would a basketball team trade one of their players for 100 random people? What would Apple’s next product look like if you replaced Steve Jobs with a committee of 100 random people? [6] These things don’t scale linearly. Perhaps the CEO or the professional athlete has only ten times (whatever that means) the skill and determination of an ordinary person. But it makes all the difference that it’s concentrated in one individual.

Rob Fyfe is a local example of a CEO who is easily worth more than a million dollars a year to Air New Zealand. Ralph Norris was another.

I remember very vividly when in 1985 improved technology made it possible for me to buy a computer of my own. Within months I was using it to make money as a freelance programmer. A few years before, I couldn’t have done this. A few years before, there was no such thing as a freelance programmer. But Apple created wealth, in the form of powerful, inexpensive computers, and programmers immediately set to work using it to create more.

As this example suggests, the rate at which technology increases our productive capacity is probably polynomial, rather than linear. So we should expect to see ever-increasing variation in individual productivity as time goes on. Will that increase the gap between rich and the poor? Depends which gap you mean.

Technology should increase the gap in income, but it seems to decrease other gaps. A hundred years ago, the rich led a different kind of life from ordinary people. They lived in houses full of servants, wore elaborately uncomfortable clothes, and travelled about in carriages drawn by teams of horses which themselves required their own houses and servants. Now, thanks to technology, the rich live more like the average person.

Would you rather have people with the incomes of 100 years ago, even if they were more equal?

 One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would increase the income gap between rich and poor. As if it were an axiom that this would be bad. It might be true that increased variation in income would be bad, but I don’t see how we can say it’s axiomatic.

Indeed, it may even be false, in industrial democracies. In a society of serfs and warlords, certainly, variation in income is a sign of an underlying problem. But serfdom is not the only cause of variation in income. A 747 pilot doesn’t make 40 times as much as a checkout clerk because he is a warlord who somehow holds her in thrall. His skills are simply much more valuable.

I’d like to propose an alternative idea: that in a modern society, increasing variation in income is a sign of health. Technology seems to increase the variation in productivity at faster than linear rates. If we don’t see corresponding variation in income, there are three possible explanations: (a) that technical innovation has stopped, (b) that the people who would create the most wealth aren’t doing it, or (c) that they aren’t getting paid for it.

We should be very careful with what we wish for.

Certain lobby groups and MPs would have you believe that since the alcohol purchase age was lowered in 1999, many more young people are drinking alcohol.

But an Auckland University study of 9,000 high school students has found the following changes from 2001 to 2007:

• Students who have never drunk alcohol increased from 18% to 28%
• Students who do not currently drink alcohol increased from 30% to 39%
• Of students who currently drink alcohol, those who have not had a drink in the last four weeks went from 22% to 24%
• Of students who drink alcohol, the proportion saying friends gave it to them dropped from 62% to 53%
• Those asked for ID when purchasing rose from 44% to 61%
• Those who were a passenger with a driver who has had over two drinks dropped from 29% to 24%

So remind me again why MPs are lining up like lemmings to increase the purchase age to 20?

The survey does show some negative increases, such as the proportion who binge drink, but that reinforces why the approach should be to target problem drinkers, not criminalise every 18 and 19 year old in the country.