Kiwiblog

WCC is looking at whether to impose an entry charge for overseas visitors to facilities such as the Cable Car Museum, City Gallery, Capital E! and the Plimmer’s Ark conservation project on Queens Wharf.

I’m certainly in favour of user pays for overseas visitors, so long as the costs of collection were not too high. I also support Charles Finny:

Wellington Chamber of Commerce chief executive Charles Finny said he favoured an amalgamation of local bodies in the Wellington region “rather have that than some sort of discriminatory pricing”.

“We think that having nine councils for a population of 450,000 people is absurd.”

If an amalgamation happened, funding problems would “just go away”.

Indeed Wellington does not need four city councils and five district councils.

Charles Finny has some questions on Kyoto. They are not questions about the basic science that if emissions increase, temperatures will increase. It is about the details behind Kyoto:

Several aspects of the Kyoto Protocol really annoy me.  For a start how can we solve this problem if major emitting economies have not taken on any obligations?  It looks as though the US will take on commitments to whatever replaces Kyoto but there seems no chance off China, India and Brazil etc taking on commitments.

If China and Inida especially do not come on board, it is all a waste of time and money. China has replaced the US as the world’s biggest emitter.

Why is there such inconsistency over points of obligation?  Why are consumers held responsible to the release of GHGs from oil, gas and coal and not the producing countries, when the country that cuts down a tree is held responsible for emitting the full amount of carbon stored in that tree from the time that it is cut down?  An importing country faces the full liability for emissions from gas, oil and coal, but exporting country faces the full liability for wood.  And why does the exporting country face the full liability for its agricultural emissions as opposed to the country that is going to actually consume the product that was produced as a result of all those emissions having been made?  So New Zealand imports oil from country x and bears the full costs of releasing the GHGs from burning that oil in New Zealand.  We export meat to country x, but also face the full cost of producing all the GHGs released while producing this meat.

Kyoto was a very flawed response to climate change. Even if fully implemented, it will only lower average mean temperature by 0.07 degrees by 2050.

Charles also raises some fascinating points over stock and methane. Would be good to see a point by point response to his questions by someone who can.

Wellington Chamber of Commerce CEO Charles Finny blogs:

Many thanks to the Sunday Star Times for telling me something about myself which I did not know.  In his column today (page A11) Chris Trotter advises us all that there is a right wing conspiracy about to re-launch the privatisation agenda (a vehicle for ensuring that the right maintains control – apparently) by cunningly opening a new front – on local Government.  These right wingers are going to use a shadowy front organisation called the Local Government Forum to deliver this evil agenda.

Well it so happens that I know a little bit about the Local Government Forum.  I have been a participant in its work for a couple of years and last week was elected its Chair.  So apparently I am chairing a group that  has an agenda that I don’t know about.  Thanks Chris and thanks Sunday Star Times for conveying this news to me.

I thought the Local Government Forum was about promoting more efficient local government etc. Is the SST saying that the only way to do that is by privatisation? How very defeatist.

Winston Peters demanded the media grovel and apologise for the report that Phil Goff had described Peters’ attack on the free trade deal as Bullshit.

The Government then conceded that Goff has used the term “bullshit” but only in relation to criticism of the FTA, but somehow mytically this excludes Winston’s criticism.

Today the NZ Herald reports a business leader on the record confirming that Goff did indeed use the word “bullshit” about Peters’ criticisms of the deal.