Kerry McBride at Stuff reports:

Wellington city centre bar owners are looking at legal action to fight plans they say could kill Wellington’s nightlife.

Wellington City Council officers have presented a briefing to councillors on the draft local alcohol policy, suggesting a precinct approach to trading hours, with different hours allowed for different areas.

Three “entertainment precincts” in Courtenay Place, Cuba St and the waterfront would be allowed licences until 5am, while other inner-city bars would have to shut at 2am.

Suburban venues and a “high risk” zone around Newtown would be restricted to midnight closing.

At present, 3am licences are standard for inner-city bars, with some “best practice” owners able to apply for later licences.

A group of 14 bar owners, representing more than 30 venues, is now investigating an injunction to stop the proposal reaching the council table.

Matt McLaughlin, who owns three bars, said the industry was sick of being pushed around by the council when off-licences and people drinking at home then going out were the real issue.

“It’s not fair because we are not the main problem. We’ve had a gutsful.”

Bryce Mason, owner of Sandwiches in Kent Tce, said the policy would be the death of his bar, which would fall outside the main entertainment zone, restricting him to a 2am licence.

Sandwiches closing at 2 am would be ridiculous. The concept of different times for different zones is not a bad one, but the areas can’t be arbitrary. To have Sandwiches close at 2 am and bars 50 metres up the road closing at 5 am is nuts.

Steve Drummond, from The Green Man pub, said kicking people out of bars at 2am would create huge problems in the streets, and force more people into fewer venues.

It would destroy some businesses, but “we are not going to stand by and let that happen”.

if some bars close at 2 am, it won’t mean their customers will go home. They will go up the road.

Councillor John Morrison said the restrictive hours would completely change the bar scene of Wellington and make events such as the rugby sevens impossible to host effectively.

“The hospitality industry is vital here, it’s our lifeblood. It’s completely contrary to the economic goals of the city to shut things down like this.”

A 2 am closing after the Sevens would be nuts.

The whole CBD should be treated as one area. May be very sensible to have some suburbs on different hours, but bars that are within walking distance of each other should be treated the same.

The Dom Post editorial:

If Russel Norman’s purpose in likening John Key to former prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon was to demonstrate that the Green Party is now as eager to make personal attacks as other political parties, his speech to the Green Party’s annual conference in Christchurch should be judged a triumph.

And their problem is one you lose a brand attribute, it is very hard to get it back. If the Greens ever again proclaim they don’t do personal attacks, people will and should laugh.

If, on the other hand, the Australian-born and educated co-leader of the environmental party was attempting to convince voters he shares their experiences, it was an abysmal failure.

When Muldoon was Prime Minister, Norman was running around Australia promoting Marxism.

However, to suggest Mr Key’s personal style is akin to that of Sir Robert is to do nothing but betray ignorance.

The two could not be more different. Sir Robert was a micro-manager; Mr Key delegates. Sir Robert snarled; Mr Key smiles. Sir Robert banned journalists from press conferences, insulted foreign leaders and once punched a demonstrator outside a meeting. Mr Key occasionally gets a little tetchy.

“Divisive and corrosive” Sir Robert certainly was, although, ironically, his command and control approach to running the economy was probably closer to Green Party policy than anything seen since he was voted out of office in 1984.

That’s a good point. Many of the economic policies of the Greens are Muldoonist.

The curious thing about Dr Norman’s attack is that it is he who has resorted to the Muldoonist tactic of attacking the man and Mr Key who has responded by playing the issue.

The Press editorial is similar:

The strident personal attack by the co-leader of the Greens, Russel Norman, on Prime Minister John Key at the weekend may have gone down well with the 100 or so faithful he was addressing at a party conference in Christchurch.

But to most others, even those on the Left, it will have seemed strikingly ill-judged. It introduced an unpleasant personal note not heard since the days, oddly enough, of Robert Muldoon, the man whose name he invoked to make an invidious comparison with the present prime minister.

Both editorials have concluded that it was Norman, not Key, who was exhibiting Muldoon type qualities. That’s some political genius to achieve that.

Norman can perhaps be forgiven for not understanding the truly corrosive nature of many of Muldoon’s actions – the nasty personal attacks on political opponents, the shatteringly divisive Springbok tour, the disastrous economic policies, the final unwillingness to relinquish power after political defeat. Norman did not come to New Zealand until five years after Muldoon’s death and 23 years after he fell from power. But the memory of the toxic nature of much of what happened under Muldoon is still strong to those who lived through it, and to many who heard of it later. And they know perfectly well that nothing done by the present Government can remotely be compared.

So why did he do it? Desperation?

It suggests, too, that Norman is not entirely confident that he can make electoral headway on policies alone. The Greens in recent months have made a lot of the running on Opposition policy, particularly economic policy, so much so that a pollster asked a question suggesting that Norman was Bill English’s opposite number on finance rather than Labour’s finance spokesman, David Parker. Much of this (a radical loosening of monetary policy, a government-run electricity market) along with Labour’s own policies (government housing projects), has been seen by many analysts as taking the Opposition on a lurch to the Left.

The latest opinion polls, which showed little reaction to the policies, disappointed the Opposition. The answer to that disappointment should not, however, be a resort to personal attack. That really would be an undesirable step down the slippery track toward Muldoonism.

Imagine what he would be like if he got to be Finance Minister!

Olivia Wannan at Stuff reports:

It’s not just Bilbo journeying there and back again through Middle-earth – almost one in 10 international visitors are here for the same reason.

Tourism New Zealand figures published yesterday show overseas tourist arrivals were up 10 per cent from 2012 for the first four months of the year.

Of the one million international visitors in those months, 8.5 per cent said The Hobbit was a factor in their choice.

For one in eight tourists, a Middle-earth experience, such as visiting Hobbiton, near Matamata, was high on the to-do list.

Yet it almost all didn’t happen thanks to the Australian Hobbit Hater and his mates. And even today they attack the Government for keeping the film in New Zealand, after the Australian union initiated a global boycott of the film.

Now let us try to estimate how much money NZ has made from tourism, associated with the film (and it may increase once the DVDs go fully out with NZ tourism segments on them). 1,000,000 over four months is 3,000,000 over a year. 8.5% of that is 255,000 extra tourists.

That average spend by an international tourist is $2,697 so the direct extra spend is around $687 million a year. Recall that every time someone attacks the Government for saving the film. And no doubt if the Government had done nothing, and if the films had gone overseas, they’d blame the Government for that also.

A speech by US Federal reserve Chair Ben Bernanke:

Since I have covered what I know about sociology, I might as well say something about political science as well. In regard to politics, I have always liked Lily Tomlin’s line, in paraphrase: “I try to be cynical, but I just can’t keep up.” We all feel that way sometime. Actually, having been in Washington now for almost 11 years, as I mentioned, I feel that way quite a bit. Ultimately, though, cynicism is a poor substitute for critical thought and constructive action. Sure, interests and money and ideology all matter, as you learned in political science. But my experience is that most of our politicians and policymakers are trying to do the right thing, according to their own views and consciences, most of the time. If you think that the bad or indifferent results that too often come out of Washington are due to base motives and bad intentions, you are giving politicians and policymakers way too much credit for being effective. Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives. For these reasons, the greatest forces in Washington are ideas, and people prepared to act on those ideas. Public service isn’t easy. But, in the end, if you are inclined in that direction, it is a worthy and challenging pursuit. 

There are a few bad eggs, but most politicians genuinely want to improve their country.

Early morning mist near Fox Glacier. West Coast, South Island New Zealand. Photography by Todd Sisson.

Morning mist and mellowness is the tone of today’s wallpaper. This was made somewhere on the Fox Glacier flats, near Lake Matheson – if you look closely, the Southern Alps are visible in the top right.

Cheers – Todd

Free Wallpaper Download

You may download the large version of today’s image from this link:   Password = wwp

See you next week!

Cheers – Todd [www.sisson.co.nz] 

Just published Curia’s monthly polling newsletter. The executive summary is:

May saw five political polls published in New Zealand – a Colmar Brunton, a Reid Research, an Ipsos and two Roy Morgan polls.

The average of the public polls has National 13% ahead of Labour – 1% more than in April. The seat projection is centre-right 60 seats, centre-left 58.

Australia sees Labor slip to 12% behind the Coalition with 90 days to go. Current forecasts are for Labor to get fewer than half the seats of the Coalition.

In the United States little change this month with the Democrats and Republicans now tied on the generic congressional poll average.

In the UK the Labour leads the Conservatives by 4% and the UKIP are stable on 16%.

In Canada the Liberals continue to soar and are up 5% to 40% under the new leadership of Justin Trudeau.

The normal two tables are provided comparing the country direction sentiment and head of government approval sentiment for the five countries. Every head of government drops in the polls this month, except in New Zealand.

We also carry details of polls in New Zealand on NCEA, electricity, waka jumping, food in schools and affordable housing plus the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://listserver.actrix.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/polling-newsletter to subscribe yourself.

Also of interest may be the comparison between the head of government approval ratings in the five main countries. They are, from worst to best:

1. Steven Harper, Canada -35% (29% approve to 64% disapprove)
2. Julia Gillard, Australia -29% (31% to 59%)
3. David Cameron, UK -26% (35% to 61%)
4. Barack Obama, USA -1% (47% to 48%)
5. John Key, NZ +25% (55% to 30%)

Fed Farmers have said:

Federated Farmers Taranaki is concerned the Green Party’s scaremongering over rehabilitated landfarms is putting at risk New Zealand’s number one merchandise export.

“Politicians and political parties have a higher duty when it comes to what they say or do,” says Harvey Leach, Federated Farmers Taranaki provincial president.

“The Green Party media release I saw is like going into a packed theatre and yelling fire. I think we are hitting new lows in politics when the sum total of a political party’s research effort is a television news segment.”

We see this scaremongering all too often.

“Unlike that party, Federated Farmers has asked questions and knows there is a double testing regime in place for rock cuttings and clays.”

“Taranaki Regional Council is incredibly rigorous in what it does. The Council tests ground conditions to ensure things are as they should be. Fonterra further tests for contaminants when it collects milk to ensure integrity of the entire milk supply chain.”

“The science is clear; there is no issue here. Of course you don’t want the truth to get in the way of a bad story.”

The anti-science party strikes again.

“Politicians misrepresenting the truth is low-ball stuff.  They are calling into question the integrity of a major regional council which is the most experienced we have in dealing with oil and gas.”

“It also puts at risk our $12 billion dairy export industry by questioning the integrity of our major dairy exporters. We are being ankle-tapped by politicians who get paid by our hard work and that of other hard working kiwis.  We deserve much better.”

“Farmers will be predictably disappointed in the Green Party because they seem willing to throw decent hard working people under a bus to get a cheap headline.  It is nasty politics spun at its worst,” Mr Leach concluded. 

Strong words. But they are the ones who suffer from the scaremongering.

Also Stuff reports:

The Green Party is calling on Fonterra to stop taking milk from Taranaki landfarms where oil and fracking waste has been spread and covered in Taranaki.

“People don’t want to drink milk from cows grazed on pasture with petroleum industry waste beneath it,” Green Party Co-leader Russel Norman said.

But regional council spokesman Gary Bedford said the claims made in the TV3 coverage appeared to be either confused or deliberately misleading.

“I’m not sure what technical competence Russel Norman has to challenge agricultural guidelines and say they are not up to it.”

He said landfarms were quarantined and then underwent extensive testing before cattle were put back on them to graze for milking.

Cattle were never grazed on a landfarm that was still in use, he said.

I can answer that question. Dr Norman has a PhD. His PhD was on the Alliance Party.

As I blogged a few weeks ago, I ended up getting another Sony Vaio instead of a Mac. All good. I’ve been using Windows laptops since around 1996.

It came with Windows 8. I figured it would be a bit different to Windows 7, just as Windows 7 was a bit different to Windows Vista and XP.

I turned it on, and I had no idea what to do. Everything I was used to had gone. No start menu. No x boxes to close many windows.

If Microsoft put together a focus group to deliberately design an operating system that would confuse all its current customers, they could not have done better than Windows 8.

The idea behind it is that it would operate like a tablet operating system. And it does. Which is good if you are on a tablet. Not so good, if you are on a laptop or PC!

So I cursed Microsoft loudly, just as I had cursed Apple the previous day for having such crap stores.

But all was not lost. There were a few sites which had good hints about how to set things up so you could avoid the tablet like startup screen, unless you wanted it. And after a while the ability to group apps together so easily became actually quite good. I hate to say it, but after a week or two Windows 8 started to grow on me.

I’d never recommend it for users like my parents. Users who can’t handle fairly radical change will no cope well.

But I have grown to like how it works. It is super fast. The Sky Drive works well. The save and share options are good. Once you get past the totally different look and feel, it is not bad.

I note the Herald reports:

Microsoft is trying to fix what it got wrong with its radical makeover of Windows. It’s making the operating system easier to navigate and enabling users to set up the software so it starts in a more familiar format designed for personal computers.

The revisions to Windows 8 will be released this year. The free update, called Windows 8.1, represents Microsoft’s concessions to long-time customers taken aback by the dramatic changes to an operating system that had become a staple in households and offices around the world during the past 20 years.

Research group IDC has blamed Windows 8 for accelerating a decline in PC sales.

With the release of Windows 8 seven months ago, Microsoft introduced a startup screen displaying applications in a mosaic of interactive tiles instead of static icons. The shift agitated many users who wanted the option to launch the operating system in a mode that resembled the old setup. That choice will be provided in Windows 8.1.

 That is sensible. Such a radical change was a very bad commercial decision. Users such as myself cope fine after a while, but it would be so offputting for many. I can only assume Microsoft didn’t do any user acceptability testing with regular users before deciding to do what they did.

I’ve also gone from Microsoft Office 2007 to Microsoft Office 365, and I have to say I really like the business model here. rather than buy software and have to purchase new software every so often, this is a licence version You pay around $100 a year for Office 365 or $200 a year per user for business versions. Not only does that seem to be cheaper than purchasing, it means you always have the latest software.

What is really good for me as a small business owner, is no more compatibility issues between different PCs. I can licence my home and work PCs so we all are on Office 365, and have a shared Sky Drive for our many huge files.

How have others found Windows 8 and Office 365?

I thought this press release was a parody, but it seems it was genuinely put out by David Shearer. The key extract:

“Labour will campaign relentlessly to once again earn the trust of the people of Ikaroa-Rawhiti. We will organise, mobilise and terrorise our political opponents. …

“Let the games begin,” says David Shearer.

The Mana Party and Maori Party are not impressed.

How on earth did Shearer and his staff think that sentence was a good idea.

Bob Jones writes in the NZ Herald:

The Dom, as it’s colloquially known, plumbed the depths last year with a ridiculously over-the-top full-page photograph of a Queen’s Counsel caught driving over the limit; justifiable treatment only if he’d won the Nobel Prize or climbed Everest naked.

But it topped all previous idiocies recently when it devoted 90 per cent of the front page to a mind-blowingly non-story relating to a mortgagee house sale. Across the top it ran three photographs of a weeping Mrs Fesuiai.

Underneath, the bold-type lie, “An $800 debt spirals into $79,000”. I say “lie” because it transpired the original $800 car tyres loan back in 2003 was subsequently added to by further borrowings “to cover family events, gifts and other expenses”, in Mrs Fesuiai’s words. The interest rate quoted is the standard one for hire purchase, credit cards and the like.

I blogged on this story at the time.

But back to Mrs Fesuiai. It transpires, despite the lender’s overtures to accommodate her and her husband, both in full-time employment with their children grown up and gone, she remains obstinate, refusing to make payments, thus forcing the lender to pursue a mortgagee sale.

Their house has a valuation of $250,000 and they have equity in it of $120,000.

I researched the lender, Finance Now, and discovered it’s owned by one of our most respected and oldest banks, the Southland Building Society, formed in 1869. Last year, it was awarded the Financial Institution of the Year honour at the Roy Morgan Research Customer Satisfaction Awards. That’s quite a tribute, hardly suggesting usury.

Indeed.

All of this raises two issues. First, the incompetence of the Dom in insulting its readers with such front-page rubbish, a classic case of a newspaper creating the “news”. But it also highlights the mindset of many of our citizens with an unjustified sense of entitlement, an attitude the Dom promoted in presenting Mrs Fesuiai as a victim, which she most certainly is not.

Some media delight in finding and promoting victims. Campbell Live has turned it into a daily art.

Consider the account in this newspaper recently regarding the Avondale College ball. The school wants to prevent pupils attending whose parents haven’t paid the annual “donation” of $175, despite paying $110 for the ball ticket.

The Herald ran a photo of a Mr Tony Hunt and his crestfallen daughter. “This is extortion,” Mr Hunt complained.

In response, the board of trustees chairman correctly pointed out that the ball was an extra-curricular activity, thus they could set their own terms but “in the case of hardship the school would come to the party”.

The account did not detail Mr Hunt’s financial circumstances; still, one questions his priorities if he forks out $110 for a ball ticket but won’t chip in a tax-deductible mere $3.50 a week to aid his daughter’s education, as the parents of all but three of the college’s 2700 pupils have done.

Only three out of 2,700. That’s pretty good. No surprise the school doesn’t want to reward those who don’t.

State schools are substantially funded by the wider taxpaying community but across the land parents chip in a further $100 million annually in donations. But not Mr Hunt, because in his mind he is entitled to an education for his daughter at everyone else’s expense and to expect him to contribute is extortion.

How have we descended to this situation where so many citizens feel no moral qualms in living off their fellow citizens’ toil? Our welfare society’s excesses are morally bankrupt and we all know it.

Sir Bob on the mark.

Steve Joyce has released the report of the Ministerial Inquiry into Novopay. Major findings:

• The problems with Novopay have affected public trust and confidence in the Ministry of Education, and also the wider public sector
• Weaknesses in project governance and project leadership allowed Novopay to go live with a number of significant risks which the Ministry of Education and its vendors, including Talent2, were over-confident of managing
• These risks resulted in service issues and the Ministry and Talent2 were unprepared and overwhelmed by their nature and scale
• The School payroll is overly complex due to an accumulation of historical changes
• There was extensive customisation of the Novopay software
• There was a failure to involve the users of the Novopay system in the schools and appreciate their requirements
• There was no overall accountabilityfor Independent Quality Assurance
• The project has cost $23.9 million more than estimated for a total cost to date of $56.8 million
• Ministers were not well served by the information they were given on the project. Reporting to Ministers was inconsistent, unduly optimistic and sometimes misrepresented the situation.

Joyce comments:

“This report makes for sober reading and, while it confirms the view that there is a lot of blame to go around for the problems with Novopay, it provides a greater understanding of the level of fault between the organisations involved,” Mr Joyce says.

“There are substantial lessons to be learned by the Ministry of Education in a number of areas which the Acting Secretary of Education is taking steps to address.

“There are also lessons to be learned by the public service and the wider State Sector on the design, delivery and oversight of major ICT projects.

“As the report notes, these problems are not unique with issues identified in the Ministerial Inquiry into the police computer system INCIS 13 years ago also evident here.

“The Government will be carefully considering the findings of the Ministerial Inquiry into Novopay. It intends to act on all the recommendations. It is critical these problems are not repeated again.

In the report itself:

Work commenced on the requirements for the schools payroll project in October 2008. This  process was lengthy, and was never actually completed. Even after Go Live, new requirements  were being discovered. There was little direct customer (boards of trustees) or user (principals  and school administrators) involvement in the definition of the requirements, and Datacom’s involvement was minimal.

And that’s where it would all have started to go wrong. You must finalise the requirement and have customer input into them.

Also:

A 5 June 2012 paper, which invited Ministers English, Parata and Foss to approve the continuation of the project following Confidence Point Two, misrepresented its state.

In more detail:

We were particularly concerned about the 5 June 2012 document, which invited Ministers to approve the Ministry’s Go Live decision. This report misrepresented the situation in two significant ways. It suggested that the Go Live decision was supported by three members of the ICT Council, which was not the case; and it stated that Confidence Point Two criteria had been met, when in fact a number either had not been met or were “deemed” to have been met (a lower criterion). These factors overrepresented project readiness and its chances of success.

The report is very interesting reading. There are even questions over the original selection decision.

On Facebook yesterday:

AM: David farrar is though..Herman Goebles of the National patti.

DPF: If you’re going to compare someone whose relatives were killed by the Nazis to a Nazi, could you at least spell their name right – it is Goebells! And his first name was (Paul) Joseph. Hermann was Goering. He was the plane guy, not the propaganda guy. How depressing that I get compared to a composite Nazi instead of a real one. I blame the education system.

AM: And you are a spelling fascist as well. Just great…you know what you do..use msm to peddle your fascist friends views…

No further comment needed.

One of the lies that has been repeated a lot lately is that the Government has banned protest at sea. It has of course done no such thing. It has banned protests within 500 metres of a mining or drilling operation. That is an area of one quarter of a square kilometre.

The NZ EEZ is approx 4.3 million square kms. So the area where you can not protest is 0.0000058%, or one part in 17.2 million.

So to put it another way, you can protest in 99.9999942% of the NZ EEZ.

Why has protest been banned in the 500 metres around a mining or drilling operation. Because inevitably they are trying to actually interfere or sabotage the company’s legal operations.

Compare it to a land based mine. Are you allowed to enter the mine’s property and protest at the entrance to the mine? No. it is private property.

Now on water it is not quite the same, as you have a licence to use, not to own. but all that has happened is that Parliament has effectively said the licence to mine or drill in an area includes an area of 0.25 square kms from the drilling. Within that area, you can’t enter without permission.

So there is nothing stopping scores and scores of ships heading out to sea and protesting mining and drilling. They can display whatever banners they want. They can say whatever they want. They can invite along all the media they want.

All they can’t do is come within quarter of a square kilometre of the actual drilling operation. Now you can have a view that they should be able to. You can have a view that a smaller limit would be more appropriate. but what you can’t do is lie and say protest at sea has been banned.

[DPF: Update – it is around 0.79 of a square km, not 0.25. For some reason I was thinking squares not circles. The overall point remains, but it is around one part in five to six million]

One of the reasons we have an excise tax on tobacco is because as taxpayers we have to fund the healthcare of those who smoke, and the rationale is they should pay for the costs of their choice – not us. And as it happens the level of tobacco excise tax is well above the level needed to cover the estimated costs associated with smoking.

This got me wondering about how the costs are calculated in countries where people generally pay for their own healthcare, such as the US.

So my question is, does anyone know what the difference is in premiums in the US for health insurance for a smoker and non-smoker?

Also does anyone know what the difference is in NZ for life insurance premiums between a smoker and non-smoker of the same age?

Readers will recall the Nisbet cartoon of last week. A few people called for it to be banned as racist. The PM responded to the suggestion of a law change to allow this with the very mild statement that the Govt has no plans to change the law to ban racist cartoons, as racism is very subjective and hard to define.

The current law makes illegal statements or publications that vilify a racial group, which is a far tougher criteria.

Now I would have thought the statement that what is racist is very subjective was almost beyond argument. Almost every day I see people call other people racist. Some people say the Maori seats are racist. Some people say the Police are racist. I can’t think of something that is more subjective.

So the PM’s comments on not changing the law to ban cartoons that offend were hardly controversial I would have thought.

But to some demented extremists on the left, it seems actually it is akin to lynching blacks in the KKK. They’ve been facebooking the cartoon below.

This just shows the demented extreme world view of those who promote this.

Incidentally National’s caucus has three Asian MPs, two Pacific MPs and eight MPs of Maori descent.

But this is how some people think. If you do not agree with them that the law should be changed to ban cartoons like Al Nisbet’s, then you are akin to a KKK member who lynches blacks.

Recall how Labour and Greens have modeled their electricity policy on California. Well read this Financial Times article on how people are betting on blackouts there:

This summer may also be when the California grid’s stability finally goes off the cliff operators have been dreading for years. According to my transmission engineering contacts, what had been a bad situation, in terms of the ability of the state’s electricity network to recover from isolated equipment failures, became chronically worse with the federal regulators’ decisions to not allow the giant, 2,000 megawatt San Onofre nuclear plant to reopen. The feds may have done the right thing, but there are not now sufficient resources to take its place.

If California does manage to miss a major series of blackouts (or load-shedding, as they say) this year, through luck and the creative use of Scotch tape, there is little optimism among the operations-level people that those can be avoided in 2014 and 2015. It just takes too long to build the required fixes.

That is the problem once you fuck up the supply of electricity. It’s not like a commodity where you can just order some more. It can takes years to fix the problems caused by a monopoly situation where the Government decides who get to supply electricity and for what price,

The transmission and generation planners and engineers are much less forward in putting out their warnings. They are careful, often rather shy, and don’t like getting into public arguments. If regulators and politicians were to take the recommended actions, rates would be going up, even faster than they are. That’s not a vote winner. At least not until rolling blackouts make the alternative look worse.

Sound familiar?

It’s all right to price power at just the momentary marginal cost of energy, which, effectively, California, Texas and Germany do. That is, if there aren’t mandated requirements, or subsidies, for intermittent renewable laid on to the system. If those are in place, the full costs of transmission and back-up must be paid for somehow. Or utilities will be decapitalised and you get power failures.

And that is exactly what they plan for NZ. targets for 100% renewables, along with pricing for marginal instead of replacement cost.

Which prominent blogger has been on the parliamentary payroll for the last 18 months to two years as a parliamentary communications advisor to a political party?

Would not a failure to publicly disclose this be a shocking breach of ethics?

Will the media ask party leaders the names of all their communications advisors, and see which one fesses up?

UPDATE: David Fisher has worked it out.

Trans-Tasman have published their 2013 report on Government Departments. A panel of 18 people (note I am one of them) rate the various agencies on different criteria, plus there is lengthy commentary on the challenges, budgets and work plans for each agency.

The five agencies who scored top overall marks were:

1. Reserve Bank 5.07 (on a 1 to 7 scale)
2. Inland Revenue 5.00
3. Stats NZ 4.88
4. Dept of Corrections 4.87
5. Dept of Conservation 4.81

The overall pick as agency of the year was the Department of Corrections. It’s gone from always being in the news for the wrong reasons, to making significant progress on reducing re-offending rates,

There was a new category this year on the ability to implement the Minister’s policy agenda. The top five there are:

1. Reserve Bank (English)
2. Treasury (English)
3. Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (Joyce)
4. Ministry of Health (Ryall)
5. NZ Police (Tolley)

The top five ranked CEOs were:

1. Dept of Conservation (Al Morrison)
2. Dept of Corrections (Ray Smith)
3. Reserve Bank (Graeme Wheeler)
4. Stats NZ (Geoff Bascand)
5. Ministry of Business, Innovation, Employment (David Smol)

The overall pick for CEO of the Year was David Smol for overseeing the merger of several ministries into the new super-ministry with few problems.

The Dom Post has an article on the report also.

Andrea Vance writes at Stuff:

Norman had a comprehensive list of examples to back his assertion that “something in rotten in the state of New Zealand politics…something is rotting in the Beehive.”

He cited: the SkyCity deal; Hobbit employment law changes; the sacking of Environment Canterbury councillors; dumping of proposed MMP changes; a ban on deep sea drilling protests at the behest of oil companies; and recent disabled carers’ legislation.

Let’s be very clear. It is absolutely appropriate opposition parties attack the Government for decisions they don’t like. I do wish they would stop lying about deep see protests being banned. They are not. All that is banned is protests within 500 metres of a commercial operation, as the right to protest doesn’t trump the right to do your lawful business.

Anyway absolutely legitimate to attack the Govt and the PM for decisions you dislike.

But the 20-minute address marked a departure from the Green’s particular brand of play-the-ball-not-the-man-politics. Norman launched a personal attack on Key, painting him as a Muldoon-style bully. There was also a snide reference to Key’s personal wealth: he is “irritated if we are not all grateful for him generously agreeing to be PM.” And he trashed Key’s trademark genial disposition.

“The next time you see John Key smiling, …he’s smiling because he’s giving favours to his mates while undermining your democracy,” he said.

What Norman is doing here is trying to paint Key as an evil person. He’s trying to make people think that Key actually hates ordinary New Zealanders and just pretends to be friendly when he is smiling.

It is ridiculous, as anyone who knows John Key would testify. John Armstrong writes:

Muldoonist? John Key? Russel Norman cannot be serious.

The Green Party co-leader’s assertion that the “divisive and corrosive” behaviour exhibited by the leader of the National Party is akin to that of his most notorious of predecessors is certainly headline-grabbing. It also verges on the ludicrous. Sir Robert Muldoon was without question our most belligerent, abrasive, polarising, dictatorial and vindictive politician.

The fear and loathing he was capable of generating within his own ranks – let alone in the wider world of politics – was summed up by a caucus colleague who said he went to Muldoon’s funeral only so he could be assured the lid on the coffin had been nailed down properly.

I knew Muldoon, unlike Norman. Norman only moved to New Zealand five years after Muldoon died. I can’t think of an MP who is more different to Muldoon in personality, than John Key.

This is shown in Key’s response to Norman:

Prime Minister John Key was remarkably restrained in his response to Greens co-leader Russel Norman’s personal attack on Saturday. Dr Norman called Mr Key corrosive and said he is ”irritated if we are not all grateful for him generously agreeing to be PM”. Through a spokeswoman, Mr Key said the Government is ”focused on the things that matter – like building a strong and stable economy with more, better paying jobs to help New Zealand families”.

I can’t recall the last time John Key did a nasty personal attack in a set speech. Making a joking reference to Labour and Greens as the devil-beast is not a personal attack. It is a political one.

Here’s a challenge. What”s the worst thing John Key ever said about Helen Clark? To the best of my memory he attacked her Government, not her. In fact once he beat her, he helped get her a job at the UN.

I think people can decide for themselves who has decided to be corrosive. Now I’m not complaining about it. I think it is good that people are now able to see what the Greens are prepared to do, in order to get into power.

UPDATE: Karl du Fresne, who was a journalist under Muldoon blogs:

Russel Norman’s speech to the annual conference of the Greens, in which he compared John Key with Robert Muldoon, rated a 10 for desperation and a zero for credibility. …

Norman arrived in New Zealand from Australia in 1997, and on the basis of his speech I would guess that’s about as far back as his knowledge of our political history extends.None of the prime ministers we’ve had since Muldoon could be compared with him, for which we should be grateful. He was a vindictive bully who cleverly exploited the politics of fear and division, and never more so than during the 1981 Springbok tour.

In fact I would suggest that in terms of personality, Key is the least like Muldoon. Anyone old enough to remember the political unpleasantness of the late 1970s and early 80s – which probably excludes a lot of Green voters – would have reacted with astonishment to Norman’s bizarre attempt to compare the two men.

Muldoon’s default facial expression was a snarl. Key’s is a grin (or if you want to be harsh, a smirk).

Arguably, the politician who most closely resembles Muldoon, and who served his apprenticeship under him, is Winston Peters. Like Muldoon, Peters has a penchant for demagoguery. But even the New Zealand First leader falls far short of Muldoon’s menacing intolerance of dissent, though it might have been a different story had he ever won power.

That’s the Winston Peters that the Greens are preparing to go into Government with?

There are only two possible explanations for Norman’s attack on Key. The first is that, as postulated above, he knows nothing about our modern political history (not that that stops him from promoting himself as a credible alternative leader). The second, which is even more worrying, is that he knows the comparison between Key and Muldoon is absurd but ran with it anyway. Perhaps he senses the Greens’ momentum is slipping and is prepared to resort to extreme measures to get some traction.

I think it is the second.

A fascinating article at the Economist:

Young Britons are classical liberals: as well as prizing social freedom, they believe in low taxes, limited welfare and personal responsibility. In America they would be called libertarians.

More than two-thirds of people born before 1939 consider the welfare state “one of Britain’s proudest achievements”. Less than one-third of those born after 1979 say the same. According to the BSA, members of Generation Y are not just half as likely as older people to consider it the state’s responsibility to cover the costs of residential care in old age. …

“Every successive generation is less collectivist than the last,” says Ben Page of Ipsos MORI, a pollster. All age groups are becoming more socially and economically liberal. But the young are ahead of the general trend. They have a more sceptical view of state transfers, even allowing for the general shift in attitudes (see first chart).

Polling by YouGov shows that those aged 18 to 24 are also more likely than older people to consider social problems the responsibility of individuals rather than government. They are deficit hawks (see second chart). They care about the environment, but are also keen on commerce: more supportive of the privatisation of utilities, more likely to reject government attempts to ban branding on cigarette packets and more likely to agree that Tesco, Britain’s supermarket giant, “has only become so large by offering customers what they want”.

A belief in economic and social liberalism is only sensible. Keep the Government out of both business and the bedroom.

Young Britons’ broad liberalism, their suspicion of state interventions of most varieties, not only contrasts with the views of their elders. It also makes them unusual internationally. Britons between 15 and 35 are more relaxed about the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis than are young people in the EU as a whole. Another Eurobarometer study conducted in 2011 showed that Britons in that age group were more likely to have set up their own business than their counterparts in any other large European country.

Setting up your own business is one of the best things you can do. Of course you may fail, but there is no reward without risk.

As yet, there is little sign any of this is permeating mainstream politics. The two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, broadly adhere to the conventional right-left divide (with economic liberalism on one side and social liberalism on the other).

So who can appeal to the growing number of young Britons?

A mainstream politician could yet tap into it. Speaking to young people from different backgrounds and parts of the country, from the engaged to the apathetic, your correspondent often asked if any politicians appealed to them. The reaction was strikingly uniform: silence, then contemplation, then a one-word answer—“Boris”—before a flood of agreement: “Oh yeah, I’d vote for Boris Johnson.” The chaotic, colourful mayor of London, a rare politician who transcends his Tory identity by melding social and economic liberalism, appears to have Britain’s libertarian youth in the bag. The 2020 election beckons.

Boris does transcend the normal divide. People like him, for being human.

Stuff reports:

A group of Spring Hill prisoners narrowly escaped being burnt to death after a burning roof caved in, just as prison officers herded them to safety.

The Waikato Times understands many of the 29 prisoners involved in Saturday’s riot at the prison’s high security wing were lucky to escape with their lives.

More than 115 prisoners have been relocated to other North Island prisons, including the 29 involved in the riot.

If those who nearly burned to death were those doing the rioting, it may have been Darwin’s Law in operation.

Would it not be sensible to split up those involved in the riot? Generally they like to have you near your family for rehabilitation reasons, but I think when you instigate riots, then there is a good case for moving some of them to say Dunedin and Christchurch prisons.

Cleaning products were used to light fires while sports equipment was broken down and used as weapons by raging prisoners – understood to be gang members.

The end result may be other prisoners lose access to sports equipment.

She confirmed those involved in starting the riots were gang members.

“There are significant numbers of one particular gang at Spring Hill, which is the Killer Beez”.

Prison staff had no indication trouble was brewing before Saturday’s riot.

How can this be? The Greens say it was because of the two year old smoking ban and the three year old double bunking policy? Nothing to do with being gang members I am sure.

Yahoo reports:

Dubai is being promoted as a luxury high-class paradise in the desert, but the reality is brutally different, as Australian Alicia Gali discovered. Gali took a job in the UAE with one of the world’s biggest hotel chains, Starwood. What happened next makes this story a must-watch for every Australian planning on travelling through the region.

Gali was using her laptop in the hotel’s staff bar when her drink was spiked. She awoke to a nightmare beyond belief: she had been savagely raped by three of her colleagues. Alone and frightened, she took herself to hospital. What Alicia didn’t know is that under the UAE’s strict sharia laws, if the perpetrator does not confess, a rape cannot be convicted without four adult Muslim male witnesses. She was charged with having illicit sex outside marriage, and thrown in a filthy jail cell for eight months.

That is beyond appalling. It should offend the sensibility of every right thinking man and woman. Maybe the UN could condemn situations like this as loudly as possible, if it does not take time away from tut tutting that only 33% of NZ’s Parliament are female.