General Debate 6 September 2011

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Viking2

Its nice day made better.

Chris Carter bids farewell to Parliament
7:31 AM Tuesday Sep 6, 2011

Te Atatu MP Chris Carter will make his valedictory speech to Parliament today. Photo / Natalie Slade

One of Parliament’s more controversial characters bids the place farewell today.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10749704

The Trougher slougher is almost gone. BUT we will be supporting him for a longwhile.

Good ridance to Bad rubbish.
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September 6, 2011 8:02am
flipper

HUBBARD….
So DPF… usually well informed that you are … what do your sources now say on Hubbard finances and the Statutory Management. I have known Tur Borren for some 25 years and back judgement ahead of Neville Harris, Simon Power, and Thornton et al. $50m to sort out the mess ? But what about Crown costs on top of that?
Then there is Kerry Grass: “Harris told decision makers (aka The Cabinet?) that he (Hubbard) was taking money for personal benefit ( from Aorangi Securities) when it was the other way round – he was transferring assets into Aorangi….”.
Someone is dumb DPF. Doubt it is either (or both) Borren or Grass!
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September 6, 2011 8:04am
Inventory2

@ Viking2; just blogged about this as well. I wonder if more than SEVENTEEN Labour MP’s will support Carter as he gets the last word…
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September 6, 2011 8:12am
Longknives

I wonder if Carter’s valedictory ‘speech’ will be one last splash-out at the poor old taxpayer’s expense?? I’m thinking bands, dancers, kapu haka groups, lunch and booze for all his chums followed by one last taxpayer funded jaunt to Mykonos or somewhere similar to ‘unwind’ before starting his gruelling new position with the UN…
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September 6, 2011 8:13am
Whafe

Amusing to see Goff making a cock of himself yet AGAIN….

Re Mr Hubbards funeral costs….
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September 6, 2011 8:22am
Elaycee

I very much doubt that Carter will use his valedictory speech as an opportunity to lob some grenades at his former Labour colleagues. He hasn’t got the guts….

Instead, I suspect he’ll talk about the ‘contribution’ he has made as an MP / as a Minister and the wonderful things he has achieved – all the stuff that has the same effect as an emetic.

Carter should be remembered for what he was (is) – a serial trougher who thought it was his right to enjoy a nice lifestyle courtesy of the taxpayer whilst contributing SFA to the workings of Parliament. He won’t be missed one bit by this Kiwi – in fact, Afghanistan seems to me to be an ideal place for this parasite to reside…. en route to another taxpayer funded role at the UN in New York.

Good riddance.
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September 6, 2011 8:27am
Murray

And meanwhile Auckland unis VC has pussied up and is hiding behind “free speech” to protect his pet racist.

Sweet, does that mean white folk can talk shit like that now?
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September 6, 2011 8:27am
Viking2

High jewellery prices drive theft increase
MICHAEL FOX
Last updated 05:00 06/09/2011

There’s been a big jump in burglaries in Auckland, driven by high prices for jewellery and scrap metal, and the popularity of electronic goods like iPads.

The city’s top cop says police believe complicit scrap metal and jewellery buyers are providing burglars with access to easy cash, while goods are also being traded for drugs.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/5568207/High-jewellery-prices-drive-theft-increase

How about 25 sections of fencing that goes around construction sites.Been there 1 day and they also attempted to jack up the site portacom and take that as well.

Thusands of dollars of eqipment taken or sabotaged.

Where? Right here in the sunny bay of theives on the new Eastern link project.

Down a rural rd with two farms.

Thats why we pay so much Tax for roading.
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September 6, 2011 8:28am
Viking2

Murray (8,151) Says:
September 6th, 2011 at 8:27 am

And meanwhile Auckland unis VC has pussied up and is hiding behind “free speech” to protect his pet racist.

Sweet, does that mean white folk can talk shit like that now?

Well if precedent is anything the answer is yes. and of course we have always been able to, except that one tended to get their heads chopped off. Freedom of speech is vital. Like DPF says the best answer is the rebuttal of the tripe she talks.
Watched her for a few minutes last night with that slobbering Sainsbury. Her grasp of real history is distorted by her mania.

BUT,if you are white and talking about brown????????????????????
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September 6, 2011 8:34am
Murray

Just looking for a single standard to apllied to all Viking.
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September 6, 2011 8:45am
Pete George

Looking for a UFO in Dunedin.

The city has become alienated from politics thanks to out of this city MPs.
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September 6, 2011 8:46am
Griff

Te treaty says that MAORI can have their own rules.
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September 6, 2011 8:49am
Elaycee

@Murray says: “Just looking for a single standard to applied to all Viking”.

You’d get better odds on Romania winning the RWC….
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September 6, 2011 8:53am
Murray

Just said looking for, didn’t say I expected to find.
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September 6, 2011 9:01am
adze

None of the prominent left leaning blogs I checked last night even made mention of Mutu’s comments Murray. Either people choose their battles very carefully or there’s a lot of cognitive dissonnance in the blogosphere.
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September 6, 2011 9:12am
Murray

She was interviewed by ABC Australia yesterday and she was adament Maori cannot be racist, only white people are racist.

Theres your cognitive dissonnance adze.
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September 6, 2011 9:14am
mikenmild

adze
That’s perhaps what one would expect, just as racist comments in the other direction on Kiwiblog often go unremarked. Racism is racism and deserves condemnation no matter who it is from and at whom it is directed.
Murray
As I understand it, Mutu’s definition of racism includes reference to a power element so, according to her, raxcism can only be directed ‘downwards’ ie, towards minorities or poor people.
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September 6, 2011 9:14am
Nookin

Tell me, Flipper. When you posted your comment did you specifically choose to time it so that any response would be seen as a churlish and reprehensible attack on a family in mourning. Same with the Borren and Grass reports (whoever released them). There is no way that the government and statutory managers can respond to that. And they cite “fairness’ as a criterion to be applied! Goff is equally contemptible.
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September 6, 2011 9:18am
Scott Chris

“Looking for a UFO in Dunedin.”

Aliens take over body of veteran Kblogger and change his personality.

Kbloggers:

“Give us the real Pete back!”
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September 6, 2011 9:22am
tristanb

As I understand it, Mutu’s definition of racism includes reference to a power element so, according to her, raxcism can only be directed ‘downwards’ ie, towards minorities or poor people.

I checked by bank account this morning. You know what I didn’t find?

I didn’t find a dividend from a fishing company, I didn’t find ground rent from land I’ve got in the central city, I didn’t find money from a scholarship I got from being white.

Any power I have is power that I have worked for. And it doesn’t make me a racist.
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September 6, 2011 9:32am
nasska

Scott Chris

I think you’re on to it! I’ve noticed recently that PG has been far more forthright & far removed from his normal waffly, fence sitting self & put it down to his political nascency. After reading your comment it is now obvious that the UFO was indeed on a mission & our affable southern correspondent has had his mind reprogrammed.

I add my voice to those crying for the return of the true PG.
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September 6, 2011 9:46am
Odakyu-sen

Ah, the old “power element” of “racism.” So, if you are a member of a white minority in a low-decile school in Auckland, can you be the recipient of racism?
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September 6, 2011 9:53am
Pete George

Scott Chris – if you ever have to try and attract attention, especially with a media obsessed with trivia, you will understand.

My “normal waffly, fence sitting” was testing ideas, I’m now focussed on what I think can make a difference. I honed my fighting skills on Redbaiter and KrisK, now I’m ready to rumble. All I have to overcome the media and political pundit exclusion and public political apathy, plus RWC obsession. Then next week I’ll look for a real challenge.

My voice is crying for people being true to what the keep moaning about – and to actually do something to change how it works.
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September 6, 2011 9:57am
adze

Yes mike mild but such a definition is incoherent, as others have alluded; when I was attacked in town by a young thug surrounded by his mates several years ago because I was white and alone, ask yourself who held the power in that situation? Yet people like Mutu claim that non-white people CANNOT be racist because of the “power element”. Are we talking power as an aggregate value here? At best it doesn’t sound like a very useful definition, at worst it is simply self-serving cognitive dissonance.
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September 6, 2011 10:10am
jcuk

What a crazy hopeless country the United States is with their right wing individualism running rampant at the expense of what is good and proper. The latest example … the USPO is in danger of being shut down for the sake of 5.5 million bucks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/business/in-internet-age-postal-service-struggles-to-stay-solvent-and-relevant.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

No doubt the idealistically stupid Republicans will take it to the wire yet again …God help America and the World, the Elephants and Donkeys won’t.

Pete .. you should check what your fingers miss before clicking the send button ….they not the 🙂
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September 6, 2011 10:16am
mikenmild

adze
I don’t agree with Mutu – just pointing out her rationale.
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September 6, 2011 10:17am
jcuk

“This is about one of America’s oldest institutions. It survived the telegraph, it survived the telephone, and we have to do everything we can to preserve it and adapt.”
FREDRIC V. ROLANDO, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, on the United States Postal Service. [NYT today]
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September 6, 2011 10:21am
tom hunter

… she was adament Maori cannot be racist, only white people are racist.

Ah – the standard post-modernist definition of racism (shrugs shoulders), which has been around for at least 30 years. At least I can remember reading this trope in the old Waikato University student rag, Nexus and thinking WTF? You can’t be a racist unless you have the power to employ it.

This is what modern “humanities” students and professors were dining out on, so it’s not surprising to see it’s risen through the ranks to the level of professor and lecturer. Fantastically convenient of course, especially when you’re a professor overseeing the education and grades of classes of students. Presumably that’s not real power, and if she were dictator of NZ it still would not be real power – she’d could always claim that mysterious forces were out there, beyond her control, subverting her visions to their own twisted ends of power and control.

Amazing how well it fits with various shades of socialism run amok, all of whom have claimed that their horrific actions were justified in the fight against these unseen forces, which are somehow never eliminated.
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September 6, 2011 10:23am
KiwiGreg

@ jcuk its $5.5 BILLION and that’s just what they are short of next month. The USPS is completely fucked, caught between the unions and the politicians.
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September 6, 2011 10:29am
Scott Chris

Pete George

My guess is that you have embraced the idea that if you wish to effect change, then the only way to do so is from within the system. Problem is, it tends to work the other way round.

The other thing, is that you have chosen UF as your platform, a party which is socially conservative, so as far as I’m concerned, you have joined an movement which seeks to preserve the status quo and as a result, I’m sure you’ll understand that your soliciting won’t go unchallenged.
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September 6, 2011 10:35am
Scott Chris

Mikenmild – “I don’t agree with Mutu – just pointing out her rationale.”

My idea of what constitutes and ‘apologist’, is one who points out the rationale of one extreme, but not of the other.

To be fair then, what do you think makes Starboard tick?
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September 6, 2011 10:40am
tom hunter

What a crazy hopeless country the United States is with their right wing individualism running rampant at the expense of what is good and proper

Heh, heh, heh. I’d like to think this is just trolling but I have this awful feeling that jcuk really does believe this.

That makes the comment a pitch perfect example of a couple of things. First, left wing stupidity when it comes to business and economic matters. Second, the utter inability to learn from the past.

By that I mean that the US Post Office is a great example of how screwed things get when the government has such direct control, irrespective of whether it’s being run by the “left” or the “right” – in this case courtesy of decisions made 200 years ago by people who could not be defined as socialists:

The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The cabinet-level Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin’s operation and transformed into its current form in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act.

Hence the problems. The USPS is explicitly written into the US Constitution. You can read about it all here.

In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts…

At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

From a different site that’s linked comes this comment:

No layoff clauses?!?! No wonder they can’t adapt to the changing marketplace. There will always be a market for parcel delivery, but the union and politicians are keeping the Postal Service from doing what’s necessary to stay viable. I wonder how long it will be before we the taxpayers bail them out.

In short, like most government bureaucracies – and note that they’re “technically” an independent branch of government not directly funded by tax dollars – they have no flexibility. Unlike the privatised Canadian Post Office, or even our government-owned one here in NZ. That’s what’s hopeless rather than all this rubbish about “right wing individualism”.

But don’t expect the likes of jcuk to learn this lesson, any more than they learned from all the government-owned crap that built up over the decades here (I’ll bet jcuk cheered Cullen’s buyback of the railways, that fabulous “asset”). For left-wingers like this it’s always about the catastrophe of the fixes that follow, not the disasters that led to them.
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September 6, 2011 11:04am
KiwiGreg

I’ve thought for some time our own post could significantly lower its costs but just delivering every second day and halving the delivery workforce.. Hell they could deliver once a week for all I cared, let’s face it if your sending stuff by post timeliness is the least of your concerns.
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September 6, 2011 11:09am
mikenmild

tom
I tend to think that it’s horses for courses. An enterprise won’t necessarily fail just because of government ownership. Your comment about ‘all the government-owned crap that built up over the decades here’ doesn’t distinguish useful assets or services from things that were (or are) unnecessarily owned by the government. For much of New Zealand’s history only public ownership was able to provide the capital for essential infrastructure development, such as roads, rail, electricity and water.
NZ Post continues to operate reasonably successfully in government ownership, although it faces significant challenges (but nothing like the scale of USPS). We don’t tend to see enterprises here as failures just because of their state ownership, although that ownership should be periodically examined to consider whether the rationale continues to be persuasive.
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September 6, 2011 11:25am
KiwiGreg

“An enterprise won’t necessarily fail just because of government ownership.”

An enterprise WONT fail under government ownership. That’s one of the problems.

“only public ownership was able to provide the capital”

Bollocks. The state was certainly able to crowd out private capital through taxation and acceptance of suboptimal returns.
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September 6, 2011 11:34am
Scott Chris

Mikenmild – I take it you admit to being a Maori apologist.

Tony Blair Godfather to Rupert Murdoch’s Child:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/5570676/Blair-godfather-to-Murdochs-child-Vogue

Reid will be interested in this.
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September 6, 2011 11:41am
mikenmild

Scott
I have no idea what you are on about, let alone what a ‘Maori apologist’ might be.
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September 6, 2011 11:44am
Lance

Charges against Uruwera 18 dropped according to NZ Herald

Bullshit to follow
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September 6, 2011 11:45am
mikenmild

The Supreme Court have ruled some evidence is inadmissable, forcing the Crown to drop the charges…
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September 6, 2011 11:52am
Ed Snack

Yes, jcuk must be on a “troll”. Once you read the (very sympathetic, but hey, that’s the NYT) article and read that the major problem is that although the business environment has changed enormously, the organization has a labour contract that prevents it from adapting. It also pays superior benefits. So this bloated dinosaur of an agency can’t survive unless it is propped up with taxpayer $$$. Great lurk if you can get in on the gravy train, far too many workers, not enough work, great benefits, and you can squeal that it’s the “nasty republicans” who are causing the problem !

Yep, no wonder the US is in the strife it’s in when that sort of attitude is prevalent, and votes Democrat all the way. Eventually though, eventually, they will run out of other peoples money to feast upon.
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September 6, 2011 11:54am
nasska

KiwiGreg

Public capital was essential to develop NZ. Take the railways for example…work on constructing rail lines under provincial governments started in 1863 & were taken over by central government when the provinces were abolished in 1876. Whether railways are necessary nowadays could be the subject of a long debate but the point is that for 100 years they were the key to developing NZ’s agricultural base. No rail equaled no fertiliser, no timber sales to fund land clearance & no way to send meat & wool to the markets.

You don’t surely think that private companies could have attracted the development capital for what was then marginal returns. If by some miracle it had been available we would have had a mishmash of gauges similar to the USA or Australia instead of a national network.

Hydro electricity, the road network, even airports required government involvement to come into being & without this involvement NZ would be a backward place indeed.

Where your argument has merit is asking the hard questions of whether government still needs to be the owner of these assets. Time & technology has devalued some such as railways but private ownership of near monopolies doesn’t serve NZ well.
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September 6, 2011 12:04pm
backster

JCUK:…Don’t worry Americans are very versatile people if the Post Office closes down they can still rely on Wells Fargo and the Pony Express service.,..

How pathetic was the Walrus last night as he withstood the verbiage from that nasty half caste pakeha hag spouting the racist policy of her taxpayer funded university. With Professors such as her it is little wonder that New Zealand Universities are sliding in status alongside such institutions around the globe. Time for the Walrus to exchange jobs with whoever now does the kiddies programmes.
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September 6, 2011 12:04pm
Scott Chris

Mikenmild – Oh, well perhaps you missed my 10.40 post. Here it is:

Scott Chris (771) Says:
September 6th, 2011 at 10:40 am
Mikenmild – “I don’t agree with Mutu – just pointing out her rationale.”

My idea of what constitutes and ‘apologist’, is one who points out the rationale of one extreme, but not of the other.

To be fair then, what do you think makes Starboard tick?
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September 6, 2011 12:09pm
Elaycee

Another piece of shit is sentenced to life (minimum 17 years without parole) for murder.

This is the third custodial sentence for this prick – all offences relate to beating up women!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/5571381/Man-gets-life-for-murdering-Wellington-woman
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September 6, 2011 12:11pm
Viking2

Gun charges against Urewera accused dropped
Last updated 11:57 06/09/2011

POLICE RESPONSE: Armed police man a roadblock in Ruatoki Valley during the 2007 ‘terror’ raids.

The Crown has dropped charges against 11 of the Urewera 15 who were charged following the 2007 “terror raids”.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5572235/Gun-charges-against-Urewera-accused-dropped
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September 6, 2011 12:21pm
Rat

I just found out that there will be games played outside Auckland for the international gathering of men playing with odd-shaped balls.

Thats just fucking wrong
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September 6, 2011 12:29pm
Viking2

Complaint laid over Mutu ‘racism’
10:41 AM Tuesday Sep 6, 2011

Dr Margaret Mutu’s comments have been labelled ‘racist’ by Ngapuhi leader David Rankin. Photo / NZ Herald
Expand
Dr Margaret Mutu’s comments have been labelled ‘racist’ by Ngapuhi leader David Rankin. Photo / NZ Herald

A formal complaint has been laid to the Race Relations Commissioner over comments made by academic Margaret Mutu about the need to restrict “white” immigration.

Now Joris will have toshow his two face
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10749746
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September 6, 2011 12:30pm
Viking2

Climate change laps at our feet – UN head
By Audrey Young
Updated 12:00 PM Tuesday Sep 6, 2011

U.N secretary general Ban ki-Moon, seen here in Paris on September 1, says climate change is real – just look at Kiribati. Photo / AP

Climate change is real and is quite literally lapping at our feet, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in his first engagement in New Zealand at Auckland University.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10749749

someone needs to tell this prick to fuck off back whence he came. Maybe he’s one of Mutu’s allowed immigrants.

what the hell is this trougher doing in anti trougher country? Hasn’t he been told yet to leave.
Oh that’s right its rugby game time.
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September 6, 2011 12:33pm
Lee01

Scott,

MM is an apologist for many things, Maori racial supremacists, Jewhaters, lying Israel bashers. As you pointed out, his tactic is to pretend to be reasonable and “objective” while always defending the racial bigots of the Left by carefully soft soaping their extreme rhetoric. Its an obvious tactic and it surprises me that he believes any here is fooled by it.
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September 6, 2011 12:38pm
Griff

Stupid police. stupid courts. stupid sheepies.
Bet we will see lots of bleating from the left over the terrorists being let off.
Poor little Maori boys they were only training to take over from you racist white M>>>> F>>>>’s
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September 6, 2011 12:40pm
Pete George

Scott Chris at 10:35 am
My guess is that you have embraced the idea that if you wish to effect change, then the only way to do so is from within the system. Problem is, it tends to work the other way round.

A bit of both. From within the campaign I will have a better opportunity than anyone to push other candidates and likely MPs.

The best way of effecting change is to have connections within the system but to have the freedom to operate outside the confines of the system. UnitedFuture are letting candidates do this, you’ll find the party has changed it’s approach substantially, it has a sound platform but on top of that we can promote our own special or regional interests.

How much can you change from a blog? Maybe you would be listened to more if a fellow blogger was an MP.
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September 6, 2011 1:07pm
leftyliberal

PG: When can we expect the UF list to be published?
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September 6, 2011 1:11pm
Pete George

Likely to be October as it was in 2008.
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September 6, 2011 1:25pm
kowtow

Climate change and the Pacific Islands

Yeterdays post on Backbencgers alerted me to the fact that this drum would be being beaten.
Last night on Native Affairs thet featured Nauru,raped by the colonials. Became one of the richest countries in the world and is now a basket case with climate change problems.
How did it become so poor post indepenence? CORRUPTION and MISMANAGEMENT.
Evidence of climate change? None.

This morning on TVNZ Barbara Dreaver tells us climate change is real for Kiribatti. Evidence she used to live there and says so.
Ban Ki Moon says so too.

The ecology of these atols is incredibly fragile and the locals have done a lot to stuff em up. Those places provide great footage of seeping tides and wallowing natives ,but no evidence of AGW.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/02/tuvalu-and-many-other-south-pacific-islands-are-not-sinking-claims-they-are-due-to-global-warming-driven-sea-level-rise-are-opportunistic/
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September 6, 2011 1:27pm
KiwiGreg

@ nasska – you cant look back and say “BECAUSE the government built it (and therfore prevented anyone else from doing so) proves that this was the only way it could have happened”.

It used to be illegal to even try and generate your own power, for example. That doesnt mean the failure of the private sector to build power generation meant that only the government could solve the problem.
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September 6, 2011 1:34pm
DJP6-25

Lee01 12:38pm. I’m not fooled by it. I scroll right past his comments.

cheers

David Prosser
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September 6, 2011 1:42pm
RightNow

How do we find out the truth about sea level rise in Kiribati?
I did some research and found “A SEAFRAME gauge was installed in Betio, Tarawa, Kiribati, in December 1992.”
This was as part of South Pacific Sea Level & Climate Monitoring Project, now hosted on Australia’s BOM website:
http://www.bom.gov.au/pacificsealevel/index.shtml
Note that their last report for Kiribati is dated 2009.

The data: between installation in 1992 and a report in 2006, sea level rise averaged 5.3mm/year. Assume 14 years, that makes 74.2mm. http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60024/IDO60024.2006.pdf

Then between installation in 1992 and a report in 2009, sea level rise averaged 3.9mm/year. Assume 17 years, that makes 66.3mm. http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60024/IDO60024.2009.pdf

Conclusion: between 2006 and 2009 sea level at Kiribati dropped by 7.9mm.
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September 6, 2011 1:48pm
nasska

KiwiGreg

It may not have been the ONLY way but in a small geographically fragmented country it worked reasonably well. Any developed country can borrow at better terms than any corporate because of the former’s power of taxation. Also as you mentioned a government can dictate the amount of competition its enterprises have to face eg your instance of power generation or the forty mile protection rail cartage enjoyed.

As the investment matures there may be no need for a government to own these ventures & it is well possible that private enterprise can manage them better. I have no theoretical bias against private enterprise but experience shows that if government ownership of a monopoly trading organisation encourages featherbedding then private ownership guarantees extortionate pricing & reduction of services.

My comments apply only to monopolies or near monopolies. My position is, no effective competition…..no private control.
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September 6, 2011 1:51pm
KiwiGreg

Monopolies need to be regulated, it doesn’t follow that state ownership is the answer. Rail wasn’t a monopoly, provided other forms of transport were permitted to compete (which they weren’t; with limited exceptions NZ is very poorly suited to rail); power generation is obviously not a monopoly needing either regulation or government ownership, nor is post, banking, internet service provision, television and radio broadcasting, rental accomodation, provision of education and health services, the list goes on….
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September 6, 2011 2:01pm
Lazybum

I see BARKING AT THE MOON (aka Ban Ki Moon) has arrived in NZ and telling us about Climate Change and intimating that tax is the answer.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10749749
On sentence, fuck off back to the third world hole you came from and make sure your country people get out of the third world instead of telling us how to become third world, arsehole.
Rant of the day over, now to deal with the National Bank about the $5 fees just hoisted upon me, thieving pricks.
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September 6, 2011 2:22pm
kowtow

Here’s more about those islands.
Even Mike Field isn’t convinced they’re going to disappear.And interesting stuff about the tidal gauges too.

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=1
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September 6, 2011 2:31pm
mikenmild

Um, Ban Ki Moon is from South Korea, not exactly part of the third world. Still he has a foreign name, so how would Lazybum know any better?
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September 6, 2011 2:31pm
nasska

KiwiGreg

Two points remain:

1) “Monopolies need to be regulated”. How can this be done without disadvantaging the consumer? Two examples spring to mind because of the way they stuff up my life. Our local power lines company (Powerco) is owned by overseas interests & going by the frequent outages we experience they are running the infrastructure into the ground probably in order to justify a massive price increase further down the track. Second would be the refusal of Telecom to repair never mind replace their aging copper network. Try convincing someone in a call centre that there is a fault…they are highly trained to fob you off & make complaining such a trial that you will hopefully go away. In both cases it seems that there is no higher authority to appeal to than an Indian call centre so on this account monopolies, regulated or not, are anti consumer.

2) At least in NZ, Government ownership of even a small part of a business sector keeps the bastards at least semi honest. Witness the gouging Aussie banks & their criminally high fees which suddenly lowered when Kiwibank was up & running.

It’s not quite as black & white as you may see it.
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September 6, 2011 2:32pm
KiwiGreg

Well it was thinking like that that left us with Think Big and the massive capital destruction caused when the government (mis) allocated capital on our behalf.

In terms of line companies they are of course local monopolies and subject to regulation. I’m not aware of any evidence that those in commercial and/or foreign ownership perform differently. There is no reason for them to undermaintain the network because if they don’t deliver power they don’t get paid.

You have alternatives to telecom, I wouldn’t use them to clean my car.

Kiwibank represents a colossal misuse of scarce capital and any rational government would sell it as soon as possible.
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September 6, 2011 3:00pm
Rich Prick

Joris will need all the double-think he can muster to excuse Mutu, which he will.
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September 6, 2011 3:40pm
mikenmild

Especially seeing he has already attacked Mutu’s views.
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September 6, 2011 3:49pm
kiwisimplexity

Touching boobs for political statement
We know those Russians are a bit weird, but we also know they have some fine looking women over there.
http://kiwisimplexity.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/touching-boobs-for-political-statement/

Kiwi universities in shambles
Universities in New Zealand have no hope. Brain draining from our shores will continue.
http://kiwisimplexity.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/kiwi-universities-in-shambles/

Blog: http://kiwisimplexity.wordpress.com
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September 6, 2011 3:50pm
Rich Prick

So the complaint has been dealt with mikenmild. That was bloody quick.
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September 6, 2011 4:06pm
mikenmild

No, his comments were reported on Stuff yesterday. I should expect a formal complaint would take some time to resolve.
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September 6, 2011 4:11pm
kowtow

If Ban Ki Moon and co want to be taken seriously they need to get their shit together and do something about the real man made disaster that is Somalia. Instead they can pretend they care about the world by doing the impossible ,trying to change the weather!

Ban benefitted from an honest robust UN that stood up to Mao,Stalin their North Korean puppets that now oversee the worlds largest prison.

Isn’t the modern UN great,they sat there through the Rwandan genocide and are witnessing anoter in Somalia. But hey they’ll sort out Afghan corruption with a clapped out has been from NewZealand!
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September 6, 2011 4:17pm
Rich Prick

Mike, do you mean where he said:

“there is no justification for anybody to discriminate on the basis of colour, race or nationality.”?

He does not say Mutu is in breach of section 61 of the Human Rights Act and will be dealt with accordingly. And I bet we never hear these words.

There is a difference between a general comment that applies to everyone (and which only by a long stretch of inference could be regarded as an “attack” on Mutu) and a comment specifically on Mutu’s behaviour, which so far as I can see he has not made.
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September 6, 2011 4:25pm
mikenmild

Rick Prick
In the original SST article he was quoted:
“We should not stop people coming on the basis on their skin. It’s racial prejudice and racial discrimination.” He cautioned that racist views were not limited to one ethnic group.
De Bres said he recently attended a celebration at the Maori King’s residence where different migrant communities were welcomed onto the marae, proving many Maori are welcoming.
“The positive thing to do is for Maori and migrants to engage more to understand each other.”
I don’t know if he feels constrained at all in referring to individuals, possibly that might make resolving a complaint more difficult.
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September 6, 2011 4:38pm
tom hunter

At least these comments are more thoughtful than jcuk’s. But…

An enterprise won’t necessarily fail just because of government ownership.

I think KiwiGreg has already provided the most eloquent rebuttal of that claim, but let me explain a little further, with the USPS as the example.

They’re demonstrably failing in keeping pace with a changing world, even in keeping pace with competitors like FedEx and UPS, who should never have been able to get such a head start within the same industry. It’s not like USPS did not already ship packages, it’s just that the two private sector companies figured out better ways of doing it. Even when the cost is taken into account I know who I trust to ship something around the US or the world, and it’s not USPS.

Yet they won’t be allowed to really fail – which means going out of business. Like NZ Rail they’ll have their debts effectively written off by the government, probably multiple times. The zombie will live on.

Government ownership means that a “business” cannot be allowed to fail – even when they’re failing.

Your comment about ‘all the government-owned crap that built up over the decades here’ doesn’t distinguish useful assets or services from things that were (or are) unnecessarily owned by the government.

True – but governments don’t either, especially once they end up owning the crap, which is why the crap builds up . When one has a seemingly endless supply of cheap money the need to distinguish usefulness rapidly degrades. Useful translates from a context of money to the context of votes (which the left think is proper anyhow – profit is grubby). Which is why the USPS (and GOP members of Congress) will suddenly find a lot of voters upset about closing their little post offices.

NZ Post continues to operate reasonably successfully in government ownership, although it faces significant challenges (but nothing like the scale of USPS). We don’t tend to see enterprises here as failures just because of their state ownership,

NZ Post works to the degree it does because it was re-structured by right-wing ideologues to operate like a private business, and not just in terms of installing accrual accounting and other private sector controls, but in terms of being allowed (largely) to make business decisions like closing post offices or reducing over-staffing – things a more traditional type of government “business” like USPS cannot do. They’re more like our old State Services Commission or MOW.

Similarly with almost all other government-owned businesses today, which is why we don’t see them as USPS-type failures. The 1980’s reforms at least fixed that. But if the Jim Anderton’s of the world had had their way we’d still be stuck in the situation where votes beat “profit” – and again, that’s how the left think it should be, if only reality could be ignored.

But even these businesses are still failures from an economic standpoint. NZ Rail is far better run than the Department of Railways – but it’s still not a going economic concern nationwide in the 21st century, which is why its “investments” will be backed forever by government. Kiwibank was Anderton’s effort to bring back the little Post Offices/Postbanks to small towns. In the end it’s just another bank, propping up the Postal Service and catering to small customers who don’t generate the returns needed: so more government “investment” will be needed there too – forever.

although that ownership should be periodically examined to consider whether the rationale continues to be persuasive.

Sure – and that happens how often with state-owned enterprises – and it’s not a left vs. right thing? In a private sector world they would be (and are) so examined. But even there one finds examples of companies that held on to assets and businesses far beyond their use-by date. In the end reality bites them on the bum because they have competition and they can’t borrow as cheaply (let alone print their own money).

But for government ownership it almost never happens unless in extremis. Look at TVNZ: it could have been sold for a billion in the late 1990’s: it certainly would not have produced any less lowbrow crap than it has. But it was an “asset”, even a “treasure” for those who’d grown up looking the staid B&W sobriety of the NZBC. Now it’s just a wasting asset, with the Internet world of NetFlix and iTunes bearing down on it – not to mention that slightly more modern dinosaur SKYTV. It’s so bad I’ve even heard left-wingers saying it should just be flogged off. But we still own it, and I suspect we will until the day when it’s not even worth selling anymore.

In the great contest between votes-emotion and money, votes-emotion will win every time – at least up to the point where the whole edifice collapses, as it did in the communist countries, now in Greece and almost in NZ in 1984. As I said to jcuk above, when that point is reached lots of bad things happen, but that’s almost always blamed on the current decision makers, not the ones who created the situation.
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September 6, 2011 6:14pm
Lee01

Tom,

I posted this in response to a similar debate, but it got lost in the tide of DPF’s valiant work ethic. So, as my opinion is so very very important to the world 😉 here it is again.

A REAL third way alternative to corporate capitalism and socialism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism

And if your interested in looking further:

Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More.
http://www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=eb565cff-c3d4-44ed-8029-bd74a87f2a2b&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Here is a short interview with the author to get a feel for what I’m talking about.

Interview with John C. Médaille, author of
Toward a Truly Free Market

What is “distributism”?

Distributism seeks to correct a grave error in modern economic science, namely the idea that economics can be divorced from justice, especially distributive justice. Economics, since the end of the 19th century, sought to do away with the idea of justice, and hence lost the ability to accurately describe any actual economy. Therefore, no one should be surprised to learn that 90% of economists missed the warning signs of the current meltdown. The same was true during the last meltdown, and the one before that, etc. You cannot accurately predict the course of a system if you cannot accurately describe that system.

But isn’t economics a science? Can science allow terms like “justice”?

Physical sciences can dispense with notions of justice, but the humane sciences are different. Every humane science depends on some idea of what is “right” or “normative.” For example, a doctor cannot diagnose illness unless he has some notion of “health.” Now, just as human health depends on a certain balance of forces within the body, so too does the health of the economy depend on the balance of certain forces in society, forces generally known as supply and demand, and these forces cannot be balanced economically unless there is justice, particularly in the wage system.

“Just wages”? But isn’t labor itself just a commodity whose price is set by the market?

That is the theory behind modern economics, namely that the market left to itself will give the worker a fair share of what he produces. But Adam Smith debunked this theory long before the modern economists proposed it. He noted that in any wage negotiation, the owners could hold out much longer than the workers, and hence the resulting wage contract would reflect not productivity, but power. A CEO gets 500 times more than the line worker not because he is 500 times more productive, but because he is more powerful; he has more friends on the board of directors than does the seamstress in his sweatshop.

But who is to say what constitutes a “just wage”?

In any particular case, it is certainly difficult, and largely a matter of reasonable judgment. But it is fairly easy to determine when overall median wages are too low: the economy cannot balance itself and must rely on taxes and government spending to make up the shortage in demand. That is why we have the level of government intrusion into the economy that we do, and have had it since the 1930’s. Capitalism was simply unable to balance supply and demand, so much so that in the 80 years before the Great Depression, the economy was in recession fully 40% of the time. Government stepped in to prevent collapse, and has been dominant ever since.

Isn’t the solution just to get rid of big government?

Yes, but more accurately the solution is to get rid of the cause of big government. And the cause of big government is big business, that is, the concentration of economic power. Big corporations and big government grow together and feed off each other. Where wealth is concentrated, you will always see a concentration of political power with the result that the government grows in size, expense, and power. Big business and big government always go hand in hand, and there are no exceptions to this rule.

So, how do we get to an economy of “just wages”?

So long as capital, in the form of tools or land, is highly concentrated, you will not be able to get there. Wages depend on the bargaining power of the worker, and without some ownership of productive property, the worker doesn’t really have any bargaining power. The key to just wages is, therefore, a just distribution of productive property. For example, companies that are truly employee-owned have a much better track record both of fairness and productivity.

A redistribution of property? Wouldn’t that require a government of tyrannical powers?

Actually, it is not so much a question of what the government should do as what it should stop doing. In truth, the accumulation of property depends on government power. The higher the piles of capital, the thicker the walls of government necessary to protect them. There are, of course, positive things that government can do, with tax policy, for example, or simply by enforcing its own laws against monopoly and oligopoly. And there are cases where the title to land or other resources is questionable to begin with. But in general, a distributive society requires a smaller government with powers properly distributed throughout all levels of society.

Isn’t this just another utopian scheme?

On the contrary, it is capitalism and socialism which are utopian, in the sense of there being no actual examples. Capitalism has always been imposed through, and sustained by, government power, while socialism has had to allow some freedom in the market in order to function at all. Distributism, on the other hand, can display any number of working models, both on large and small scales. There is the worker-owned Mondragón Cooperative Corporation of Spain, which does $25 billion in sales; there is the cooperative economy of Emilia-Romagna, where 40% of the GDP is from cooperatives. And there are thousands of ESOPs, cooperatives, mutual insurance companies, and credit unions.

Can such firms really compete in the global economy?

Can and do. Both Mondragón and the Emilian companies derive a large portion of their sales from foreign trade. Experience is always the real test of a system, and distributism passes that test. Capitalism, on the other hand, seems to have some problems in balancing its trade, even after giving high subsidies to exporters. In thinking about these things, there is one principle we need to follow: No theory without practice; no practice with practical examples. Distributism passes all the real-world tests, and does it without government help.

Isn’t distributism just a form of socialism?

It is the opposite of both socialism and capitalism: it is the free market. Capitalism tends to concentrate property in the hands of a few, thereby choking off the market, and socialism continues this by concentrating ownership in the hands of the state. In practice both end up with control of the most important resources of the nation in the hands of a few bureaucrats, über-managers, who claim to represent the interests of the nominal owners, be they the shareholders or the general public, but who actually control these resources for their own benefit. Distributism, on the other hand, seeks to build an ownership society of free men and women, conscious of their rights and able to defend them.

Can distributism really offer practical solutions to the problems we face today, such as health-care or the budget deficits?

Yes, in fact that is why I wrote the book. Distributism, being a more complete economic theory, offers a range of tools for economic analysis which can give practical answers on a wide range of questions, such as how to build a truly free-market health care system, how to balance the budget, how to maintain our failing infrastructure, and many other such questions besides.
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September 6, 2011 6:23pm
Pauleastbay

I thought I had logged on to a Kindle
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September 6, 2011 6:27pm
tom hunter

Achhh – missed the comment markups. This was MM’s comment:

NZ Post continues to operate reasonably successfully in government ownership, although it faces significant challenges (but nothing like the scale of USPS). We don’t tend to see enterprises here as failures just because of their state ownership,

Lee01 – I’ll take a look at it later. I must say I’m reminded of my eldest son’s recent school speech, where he explained his new method of goverment – “Governism”.
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September 6, 2011 6:39pm
nasska

SCHOOL — 1961 vs. 2011

Scenario:
Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after school.
1961
– Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.
2011 – Police called, arrest Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario:
Jeffrey won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.
1961
– Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal. Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2011 – Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbour’s car and his Dad gives him a hiding with his belt.
1961 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college, and becomes a successful businessman.
2011 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care and joins a gang. Billy’s sister tells school psychologist that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mum has affair with psychologist.

Scenario:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to comfort him.
1961 – In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2011 – Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.
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September 6, 2011 7:00pm
Pauleastbay

Three Irishmen are sitting in the pub window seat, watching the front door of the brothel over the road. The local Methodist minister appears and quickly goes inside.

“Would you look at that!” says the first Irishman. “Didn’t I always say what a bunch of hypocrites they are!”

No sooner are the words out of his mouth than a rabbi appears at the door, knocks and goes inside.

“Another one trying to fool everyone with pious preaching and stupid hats!” says the second.

They continue drinking their beer roundly condemning the minister and the rabbi when they see their own Catholic priest knock on the door.

“Ah, now dat’s sad.” says the third Irishman. “One of the girls must have died.”
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September 6, 2011 7:02pm
nasska

A blonde finds herself in serious trouble. Her business
has gone bust and shes in dire financial straits. Shes
so desperate that she decides to ask God for help. She
begins to pray¦ God, please help me. Ive lost my
business and if I don’t get some money, I’m going to lose
my house as well. Please let me win the lotto.
Lotto night comes, and somebody else wins it.
She again prays¦ God, please let me win the lotto!
Ive lost my business, my house and I’m going to lose my
car as well. The Lotto night comes and she still has no
luck.
Once again, she prays¦ My God, why have You forsaken me?
Ive lost my business, my house, and my car. My children
are starving. I don’t often ask You for help, and I have
always been a good servant to You.
Please let me win the lotto just this one time so I can get
my life back in order.
Suddenly there is a blinding flash of light as the heavens
open. The blonde is overwhelmed by the Voice of God Himself
Sweetheart, work with Me on this¦ Buy a ticket.
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September 6, 2011 7:12pm
mikenmild

tom
I don’t disagree too wildly with most of your points, but stand by mine. If restructuring, accrual accounting etc was enough, as you come close to suggesting, is ownership the problem, or management of the enterprise?

The introduction of SOEs, and the privatisation of some, was long overdue, but there has been a tendency to assume that the way the Post Office, Railways etc were by the 1980s was the way they had always been. State ownership in NZ really came from clear situations of market failure, where only the government was prepared to invest in developing infrastructure. Much of this investment was spectacularly successful, such as electricity generation and reticulation. Many of the enterprises came to suffer from conflicting objectives – boosting employment and ‘regional development’, etc at the expense of commercial success.

We still seem to want to rely on state capital to some extent – broadband for instance, and I’m not sure why we don’t privatise NZ Post, but I think we are nowadays more likely to look at things a bit more pragmatically.
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September 6, 2011 7:26pm
tom hunter

If restructuring, accrual accounting etc was enough, as you come close to suggesting, is ownership the problem, or management of the enterprise?

It’s enough to fix the management problem, not the ownership problem. As I said, the SOE’s were better than their predecessors, but still economic failures in the context of the wider economy. Just to clarify – you can have a well-run investment property business that still represents an awful misallocation of investment and resources – a malinvestment. We seem to be willing enough to talk about incorrect government involvement there when the issue is a lack of a capital gains tax, but not if there are other government factors driving the whole mess.

When there are malinvestments inside the enterprise that’s a result of management problems. When the whole damn thing is a malinvestment that’s a problem of ownership – and failure of the business is the only way to clear it out. But when the government is the owner that almost can never happen, unless by a direct decision or near financial failure of the government. Absent that, the combination of vote-buying and cheap money will win the day. Which rather leads to the next point.

State ownership in NZ really came from clear situations of market failure, where only the government was prepared to invest in developing infrastructure.

When there’s a market failure it might pay to ask whether it’s actually a “failure”. The marketplace may actually be telling you something. The Osbourne Portable and Apple Lisa were market failures, but nobody would expect their creators to throw more resources at them.

I’m not sure how many things you would regard as having been market failures that therefore required government investment in NZ’s past. But regarding railways I would say the transport marketplace has been giving us the same message for 40 years – that railways are a failure in NZ in the late 20th and early 21st century. They work in other places for certain types of freight, but they work here (if at all) in very localised settings. How much more blunt can the message be when they’re not producing enough money to cover both operating expenses and asset replacement costs; it means that there are not enough people willing to pay enough money for what they supply. But that market message has been stubbornly treated as a market failure by many governments (and activists) who insist that somehow, someway, it’ll work. New business models, new equipment, something – and lots more spending – will fix the unfixable problem.

Much of this investment was spectacularly successful, such as electricity generation and reticulation.

When we’re talking about a technology as fundamentally transforming as electricity was 80-120 years ago then I might agree that perhaps a societal-level effort should be made to spread it far and wide.

But even here I think there have been studies that showed the NZ Electricity Department poured far more resources into dam building than could be justified by the income from the power they generated. Given that government made non-market decisions about those prices, and given that they could build all that infrastructure with cheaper money than the private sector could obtain, that should not be a surprise. And who does not like cheap power, even if leads to it being used in things it should not have been. Cheap petrol would have the same effect. Not to mention dams increasingly being built in places that could not have been justified otherwise.

Many of the enterprises came to suffer from conflicting objectives – boosting employment and ‘regional development’, etc at the expense of commercial success.

Yes – because they were government owned, which brought votes into play. The SOE model has probably brought that to an end, but never say never.

We still seem to want to rely on state capital to some extent – broadband for instance, and I’m not sure why we don’t privatise NZ Post, but I think we are nowadays more likely to look at things a bit more pragmatically.

Indeed, and that “investment” is simply the latest in a long line of such arguments, and the same caveats apply. If the private sector is not willing to invest sufficient money to build this system we should be asking for precise economic reasons why, rather than just dismissing the decision as that of “greedy” corporates who can’t make enough money. Why is it not enough? Why aren’t the prospective returns sufficient to justify the risk and the cost?

Answer those questions and one might conclude that nobody should be making such an investment. But what we’ve got in place of cold, hard NPV calculations is a lot of hand-waving about what “might” eventuate from the broadband: core infrastructure “investment”. The same old commanding heights argument when what we may be building is the NZ equivalent of Minitel.
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September 6, 2011 9:15pm
jcuk

Of course I am a troll as I occasionally make my comments as a result of my despair at the foolish antics of both left and right.
We need government owned businesses to provide services that the private sector couldn’t provide without googuing the ordinary person. At the same time we need watchdogs to stop public sector organisations rorting the public the way we need to watch the private sector … humans are humans and self interest guides both left and right at the expense of the geneeral good. The extremists of both sides are not the solution and are akin to the terrorists who are so frustrated and misguided they blow things up whereas the extremist simply sabotage the system by their blinkered thinking.
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September 7, 2011 8:45am
jcuk

I am influenced in my thinking by what happened when I purchased a small item from the States. The firm charged me US$65 to send it to me by UPS. UPS billed me NZ$190 to release the package to me. NZ$135 of that was GST. So UPS slugged me NZ$55 on top of the US$65. No wonder I don’t have much confidence in the private sector. The privatisation of the past 15 to 20 years since Sir Roger Douglas put it in motion has largely been a disaster for the ordinary person while a few have made millions out of it.
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September 7, 2011 8:57am
tom hunter

Of course I am a troll as I occasionally make my comments as a result of my despair at the foolish antics of both left and right.

Naaah – and I say that with regret, in that it actually would be better if you were a troll. But it’s clear that you truly believe, as the following comment witnessed:

humans are humans and self interest guides both left and right at the expense of the geneeral good.

Good god. You really just don’t have a clue beyond gut instincts do you? Even to the extent of having kidded yourself that you’re not a left-winger. Who’s to your left with failed systems? Communists?

The difference between left and right, between capitalism and socialism, is that the former actually harnesses self-interest by setting up systems where people compete. Adam Smith did not theorise this out of thin air; it was what he observed happening in practice:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

But just in case you think he was unaware of how this self-interest could turn bad he also issued this statement:

“…in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public…
The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.

Laws and regulations coming from the business people themselves. A tale oft repeated, right up to today’s Goldman Sach’s. Not that left-wingers ever listen to this. They just gleefully promote the idea that…

At the same time we need watchdogs to stop public sector organisations rorting the public the way we need to watch the private sector.

Yeah – we do need watchdogs, But they suffer from regulatory capture, and it screws things up for the “ordinary person” even when it’s not overtly corrupt, and it sure as hell is not helped by…

… government owned businesses to provide services that the private sector couldn’t provide without googuing the ordinary person.

Translated: services that can’t be provided for what they cost, either in raw materials, labour or all the infrastructure needed to deliver them, or the risk taken. Of course that gap can be filled with other peoples money – at least until it runs out.

Until it does – hello Europe (or NZ 1984) – people like you won’t change. And clearly even when reality forces you to change you still won’t learn, which means you’ll do it all again given half a chance.

Personally speaking I’m not one of the few who’ve “made millions” out of Rogernomics, I’m just an ordinary person whose life is a hell of a lot better than it was in the early 1980’s when people who thought like you (e.g Muldoon) had the run of the country.
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September 7, 2011 9:56am
Lee01

Tom,

“I must say I’m reminded of my eldest son’s recent school speech, where he explained his new method of goverment – “Governism”.

Ah..a politician in the making? 🙂
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September 7, 2011 1:03pm
jcuk

I am a troll becuase I deliberately made my comments knowing it would raise the ire of those who responded to it … to remind them that there is a positive opposition to their foolish ideas …a disgust at their arguments coming not from book learning but from seeing life for nearly eighty years. I was one of the founders of the ACT party but experience has shown me the foolishness of that approach in its extremism … like the curate egg there is good and bad behind both left and right and the only way to progress is a meld of both … that is better than two steps forward and one step backwards that the L&R purists advocate and put into practice as the general public gets sick of one and goes for the other.
I am sure the country is better off without Muldoon but for a lot of people they are considerably worse off … you and I are two of the lucky ones.
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September 9, 2011 8:23am

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