At 10pm British Daylight Time on May 7^th, seconds after the polls closed, the various media outlets covering the UK General Election unveiled the results of the giant exit poll commission by a consortium of British polling companies. Anyone who watched this coverage will never forget the barely suppressed shock that the Conservatives were estimated to win 316 seats some 25 seats more than the most optimistic opinion polls published days before the ballot.  Lord Ashdown (a former Liberal Democrat MP and leader in the Commons) expressed such disbelief at the veracity of the exit poll that he said if he was wrong, he’d eat his hat! Ashdown’s disbelief in the exit poll’s numbers was vindicated but not the way he’d hoped because it too underestimated the scale of the Tories’ success. Cameron was to retain the premiership with an absolute majority and 331 seats actually increasing the Conservatives’ percentage of the vote – a result dramatically different than the one anticipated by virtually all observers of the campaign.

The English media have been awash with hand wringing analyses as to why the polls were so wrong and why Labour lost so badly. Almost all pre-election commentary revolved around likely coalition negotiations with many pundits picking a Labour/SNP/Green coalition. Milliband, on the strength of some one-eyed reports from polling stations, reportedly told his front bench late in the day to be humble in victory when interviewed by the media so convinced was he, despite the predicted Scottish SNP landslide, that Nicola Sturgeon would join him in the governing coalition.

The failure of the mainstream pollsters to pick this win (only an 18,000 strong on-line Spider Monkey survey had picked the eventual 37/31 Conservative/Labour split) has been put down to the behaviour of the  so-called ‘shy Tory’. This term was first coined by John Heyward (now a Conservative MP) when he was John Major’s pollster in the 1992 election to explain why pre-election polls pointing to a Kinnock led Labour victory were wrong. Essentially Tory leaning voters lied to the pollsters.

In recent years, this underestimating of actual voter turnout of centre-right parties by reputable polling companies has become a recent global phenomenon. On top of the UK Election of May 2015 we can add similar polling failures in the:

• Israel Election March 2015 (Likud got 29 seats versus a predicted 19 enabling Netanyahu to form another Likud-led coalition)
• US mid-term elections November 2014 (most polls underestimated the size of the GOP gains in the Senate, House, Governor’s Mansions and state legislative races)
• Scottish Referendum September 2014 (the ‘No’ vote got 55% versus the last polls predicting a narrow ‘Yes’ win)
• NZ Election September 2014 (almost all polls pointed to NZ First holding the balance of power whereas the Key led Nats managed an election night absolute majority. Even though this was clawed back by special votes and the Northland by-election, Key, like Cameron, managed to increase National’s share of the vote from the previous election)
• EU Elections May 2014 (polls missed the sizable swing to UKIP in the UK portion of the EU Parliament Elections)

David gave some reasons for these polling failures in his post
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2015/05/why_the_uk_polls_were_wrong.html#comments

Some of the reasons why Tories (or supporters of right leaning parties) have become so shy with indicating their voting intentions to pollsters are:

The Left’s vitriol means conservatives are more likely to stay mum
The left believe they have the moral high ground and to oppose their policies is at best bad and inhumane and at worst, downright evil. More on the left see politics and legislative action as the most important force for good in the world – the power of the state to ensure good outcomes as they see it. More on the right see the state as far from a benign force for good and derive satisfaction outside of politics from family activity, humanitarian efforts in the community and organized religious involvements. This moral superiority the left feel they have infuses their political debating with self-righteous indignation sometimes propelling them to more nasty and personal attacks on their opponents. Opponents are more likely to be labeled with extreme epithets to discount and shut down their views (e.g. homophobe, racist, heartless, greedy, uncaring).

Many on the right quickly tire of these abusive ad hominem attacks. When you add that the left has a core of activists who are driven to the political theatre almost 24/7 and for whom warfare with the right is an article of faith and a rite of passage, it makes for a palpable ‘take no prisoners’ approach to debating their opponents. Ordinary right leaning voters who engage on social media on the issues of the day in the run up to elections are routinely subjected to vitriolic attacks often in an almost coordinated way from a myriad of well-armed and argumentative left leaning activists such that they withdraw from the battlefield and learn to keep their opinions to themselves. Fearing further opprobrium for supporting a right leaning party when asked by a pollster, voters from the right often will either lie as to their party leaning or that they are undecided when they are already a committed Tory voter. The left’s aggressive approach to political debate is one of the biggest reasons for shy Tories.

Labour in the UK claimed to have won the Twitter campaign and the social media battle but ended up losing the war that counts – the actual election not realising that the Twittersphere is not the same as swing voter land. The young are disproportionately represented on Twitter and social media debates and they are more likely to tilt left and be vocal about it BUT less likely to vote. The left have rendered open discussion in favour of a number of contentious issues such as immigration reform or against gay marriage and Islamic extremism as not appropriate opinions for citizens to hold in a modern progressive society. They have effectively driven a significant minority of the electorate out of the public square and off the debating stage. The left’s bullying has a number of perverse effects on approved speech thus silencing public dissent. These attempts don’t sway voter opinion in their favour but merely strengthen the resolve of the un-listened-to voters to get out and vote for the leaders and parties the left so despise.

The notion of what is appropriate discourse even effects the pollsters. One admitted to deciding not to poll on contentious issues of concern to right leaning voters like on excessive Muslim immigration or welfare reform for fear of the public backlash from the vocal left.

Elite opinion makers have become more disconnected from median voters
The chattering classes overwhelmingly tilt to the left. Even right leaning public commentators often hold more socially liberal views than floating voters and can be more sensitive to elite opinion when it turns on them for their more conservative views. Because the commentariat tend to mostly talk to each other, they become cut off from median voter opinion which is more right leaning and conservative. They are then shocked when majority opinion votes the opposite to them. This disconnect is manifest in a number of ways:

* Rise of militant Islam is ignored by the chattering classes but is of more concern to centrist swing voters but is a topic rarely canvassed in media panel discussions or debates for fear of offending Muslims. This sort of political correctness reached absurdity when Milliband proposed to ban Islamophobia. Where are moderate centrist voters to turn if their reasonable concerns are blatantly ignored by a major opposition party seeking power? The rise of UKIP saw the Conservatives trying to engage more on these contentious issues and thus were seen to be more likely to respond to voter concerns.

* Beltway types look past the deficiencies of the left’s standard bearer in their desperate quest to get their man across the line. Milliband was a nerdy policy wonk who came across as awkward and goofy, who decried business, refused to disavow the profligate spending of the Labour government he was a minister in and banked on dissatisfaction with the austerity measures to propel centrist voters to his more leftist vision for Britain in much the same way a more left leaning Cunliffe hoped NZ Labour would get out the so-called missing million.

* Euroscepticism is a subject that brings out the most dismissive and arrogant tut tutting from elites who have frequently disdained the rise of UKIP and the popularity of Nigel Farrage in his call for an EU referendum. Cameron successfully neutralised the electoral fallout for the Conservatives from UKIP by promising the In/Out referendum. Shy Tories who favour Brexit again felt shouted at and ignored by beltway commentators and Labour.

New media allows those on the right to break the MSM’s monopoly on reporting
Whilst Britain has sported an ideologically varied print media for some decades now, the commentariat on TV, radio, the political scientist and the political reporting class reliably tilt to the left. The internet has shattered that monopoly and, along with You Tube and other user driven broadcast sites, enabled the growth of right wing blogs and right wing on line magazines and newspapers. This has enabled shy Tories to read more about politics from a perspective they understand and sympathise with. It reinforces their suspicion of the commenting class and of the mainstream media and journalists and adds to their shyness with pollsters.

Other factors that helped Cameron: Voter preference for stability
Incumbency often provides some advantage to the ruling party. In the UK, voters less familiar with coalition government even after five years of the Lib Dems deal with the Tories, were genuinely spooked by what the polls were pointing to – a Labour Party that would get fewer seats than the Conservatives but be able to govern with the help of the resurgent Scottish National Party. Not only would the harder left SNP tail wag Labour’s dog, the very state of the United Kingdom would be at stake a mere six months after the Scottish voted reasonably decisively to stay with England. However ambivalent voters may have felt about Cameron, they saw a Conservative led government as more stable and more likely to fight for the union.

“It’s the economy stupid”
The left made much of the Tory’s austerity programme fuelled by media stories of those effected. Middle class Brits with jobs saw an improving job market, falling unemployment, rising incomes and property values as helping their own personal financial stability and, like their Kiwi counterparts in 2014, voted for a continuation of the government that was perceived to be fiscally sounder and whose fiscal rectitude through tough times saw better economic times return. Like Cunliffe’s ‘true red Labour’ shift, Milliband was seen as appealing more to the Hampstead Fabian Society by attacking big business and seeking a return to the spendthrift days of other more left leaning Labour governments than the more successful centrist approach adopted by Blair to New Labour’s electoral advantage.

The NZ Herald editorial:

The Labour Party has floated the idea of withholding state support such as Working for Families tax credits from people who are not enrolled to vote. Its general secretary, Tim Barnett, has told a parliamentary select committee this would tackle “pretty compelling evidence that there is a continuing pattern of people not enrolling”. To that most hollow of nuts he would take a sledgehammer. Labour is normally the last party to advocate withholding benefits for any purpose, let alone an electoral one. …

Labour has often railed against plans to make state support conditional on compliance with other social programmes, such as requiring beneficiaries to take pre-employment drug tests or threatening to cut benefits if parents do not have children in early childhood education. Yet those sort of conditions address real and obvious problems. To use benefits as leverage for electoral enrolment is more like tilting at windmills.

So it is wrong to require beneficiaries to be available for work and have their kids in ECE, but it is a good idea to cut off their benefits if they don’t enrol, because the most important thing in society is that beneficiaries are enrolled, so they can vote Labour.

This graphic from the Herald shows Commonwealth flags 50 years ago, and flags today. It tells a strong story.

For the first time in our history we’re going to get to actually vote ourselves on what our flag should be. That is a good thing.

The NZ Herald reports:

Television New Zealand says it should be allowed to drop some of its election coverage because of terrible ratings.

The broadcaster has long been required by law to broadcast political parties’ opening and closing election addresses.

But it says viewing patterns have changed and a sharp fall in ratings during the presentations – once central campaign events – justifies a change.

During the last election the opening addresses had ratings that were 38 per cent lower than the average for the six previous Saturday evenings.

Who watches them? People now have a choice of channels and they wisely choose to change the channel when they come on.

Rather than require TVNZ to broadcast them, just have the parties release them on You Tube, and those who want to watch them, can do so.

The rise of the internet and social media has diluted television’s role as the key method of communication with voters, TVNZ notes, and audiences are increasingly uninterested in the opening and closing statements, the spokeswoman said.

Yep. And taxpayers have to pay TVNZ for the statements. Let’s save money and scrap the requirement.

Labour leader Andrew Little said TVNZ’s position confirmed the need for a genuine public service broadcast channel.

Television still carried a large audience and the addresses were part of a healthy democracy, Mr Little said.

By health democracy, Andrew means taxpayers should be forced to fund and broadcast propaganda for his party!

However, Steven Joyce, campaign manager for National during the last election, said he would be open to the addresses being scrapped.

There was a significant production cost, Mr Joyce said, and perhaps parties could be given additional advertising if the addresses were to go.

Or one could save money and get back into surplus quicker.

UPDATE: Corrected by AG that taxpayers do not reimburse TVNZ for the opening statement. However I guess we still pay for it, as the get reduced advertising revenue which impacts overall government revenue.

Stuff reports:

The size of Christchurch City Council could be increased by more than a third because of concerns councillors are spread too thinly across the city.

The elected arm of the council consists of the mayor and 13 councillors but a working party set up to review representation arrangements in Christchurch is concerned that is not enough for the size of the city’s population.

Based on the current size, there is only one councillor for every 26,000 people in Christchurch, which is far below the ratio in other metropolitan cities where there is, on average, one councillor for every 16,500 people.

Other cities (except Auckland) have smaller population and inevitably a higher ratio. Look at the data:

Christchurch – 13 councillors (one per 26,000 residents)

Hamilton – 12 councillors (one per 12,512 residents)

Wellington City – 14 councillors (one per 14,102 residents)

Dunedin – 14 councillors (one per 8823 residents)

Nelson – 12 councillors (one per 4058 residents)

Auckland – 20 councillors (one per 74,645 residents)

What I read from this is that all major cities except Auckland have 12 to 14 Councillors. So Christchurch is not unusual.

With each councillor entitled to a salary of close to $100,000, increasing the size of the council to 19 will add at least $600,000 to the cash-strapped council’s operating costs.

But worse than that, a large Council becomes a worse decision maker. There is a wealth of literature on optimal sizes for councils and boards to function well. It tends to be between five and nine. As Councils do have a need to be representative, they are often a bit larger at 10 to 12. But you never really want to go beyond 12.

If there is extra workload from the earthquakes, then a better solution than more Councillors would be more resources for Councillors.

The Herald reports:

A former teacher of a leading Auckland school has been found to have been masturbating in a classroom while watching pornography.

However, the ruling was only a “finding of fact” and the man is yet to be found formally guilty as he disputes the classroom was a public place.

The man, in his late 40s, was on trial at the Auckland District Court charged with committing an indecent act in a place the public have access to in June 2013.

He denied masturbating, but had conceded watching pornography in an empty classroom at lunchtime.

The incident came to light after a student wanting to speak to him about a timetable change viewed him through a window, after a friend lifted him up to look inside the classroom.

It goes without saying that teachers should not be masturbating at school, and that he should not be a teacher. Generally it is a bad idea for anyone to relieve themselves in their workplace, and even more so if your workplace is a school. So no sympathy for him losing his job.

But should he receive a criminal conviction? Was he deliberately exposing himself?

I think of the couple having sex in the insurance office in Christchurch. They stripped naked and had sex in public view. Like the teacher it was unintentional that anyone saw them. They lost their jobs, but no one cried out for them to be prosecuted for public indecency.  So why so in this case?

David Seymour sent a letter into the Herald complaining about an incredibly misleading story they ran on funding of charter and state schools. They published his letter, but edited it to be more favourable to them!

Newspapers will edit their own content, but not a good look to edit a letter of complaint! Good on David for publicising the changes they made.

Hat tip: Whale Oil

One News reported:

Auckland Council is under fire over plans to build a new chamber just half a kilometre from where the old one is.

The move comes in the same week the mayor and a majority of councillors voted for an average rates increase of 9.9% for households.

Auckland Council has just spent $157 million shifting some of its super city workers to new offices in downtown Auckland but ONE News can reveal that the spending doesn’t end there.

Documents leaked to the Auckland Ratepayer Alliance show plans for a new council chamber on site, saving councillors and staff a four minute, 445 metre walk.

Options include a new mezzanine floor extension over a public walkway, glazed walls, a new civic lounge and a catering kitchen – all with the aim of creating “democracy at street level”.

“This is completely surplus to requirements,” councillor Cameron Brewer says. “We’ve got eight existing fit for purpose council chambers in Auckland and to build a ninth one is just frankly crazy.”

The Auckland Ratepayers Alliance claims the cost of the new complex will be between $4.5 and $10 million.

The fiscal incontinence gets worse. How they could even be considering this at a time they’ve put rates up by 9.9% is staggering.

“When the government spends more, the public spends less. Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.”

– Ludwig von Mises

The quote of the week is brought to you by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. To support the Union’s campaign for lower taxes and less government waste, click here.

Nikki Kaye has announced:

Budget 2015 will signal ACC is on track to provide further levy cuts of around $375 million in 2016/17 and $120 million in 2017/18, says ACC Minister Nikki Kaye.

“These indicative levy cuts represent a total saving for New Zealanders of around $500 million, and will be spread across the motor vehicle, work and earners accounts,” says Ms Kaye. …

“The indicative reductions, if confirmed, will take total levy cuts since 2012 to around $2 billion, benefitting businesses, workers and motor vehicle owners alike.

“As an example, this year the average ACC motor vehicle levy, including the annual licence levy and petrol levy, will fall from around $330 to $195 a year.

“On current projections, this is likely to fall further to around $120 next year, making the average motor vehicle levy around one third of what it is right now.

You can’t complain about a reduction by two thirds.

“These levy cuts are possible because of ACC’s sound financial performance under the current government, which means the scheme is now essentially fully funded. In other words, it now has enough money invested to meet the future costs of all current claims.

“This is a far cry from six years ago, when we inherited a scheme that saw the gap between its assets and liabilities grow by $4.8 billion in one year alone.”

The levies will always, over time, reflect expected expenditure. Labour constantly increased ACC coverage which sent expenditure out of control. National has managed to get expenditure under control, which is why the levies can now reduce.

Ms Kaye is also introducing legislation, developed over the past year, to put in place a new ACC levy-setting framework, which will take effect in 2016/17. …

“The legislation I’m introducing will bring the levy setting process into line with the kind of accountability and transparency requirements that already apply to the operation of the government’s core budget under the Public Finance Act.

“New binding principles will be introduced to ensure the scheme is adequately funded to withstand economic volatilities, while ensuring levies are kept as low as possible and stable over time.

Greater transparency in the levy setting process will also be a good thing.

Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey writes:

Now we don’t need a national day of mourning over here, but we do need to look at how New Zealand has been able to put in place structural reforms that will promote ­future growth in their economy.

New Zealand has been busy making the difficult decisions for their future. As a result they have falling unemployment, rising living standards and a Budget that is coming into surplus.

And near zero inflation.

In contrast, Australia has a ­Budget that is still operating on the presumption of a never-ending ­mining boom.

Previous governments locked in spending that didn’t consider that there might be a fall in revenue from declining mining investment and much lower global commodity ­prices.

As a result of falling revenue and ever-increasing expenditure, we are currently spending $100 million a day more than we collect.

NZ took decisions to reduce the deficits, and head back to surplus. If Australia continues to borrow $100 million a day, then the interest on their debt will make it even harder to balance the books one day.

With that money we could build 40 kilometres of new road, or two brand new high schools, every day and in a week, you would get a brand new major teaching hospital. Instead, we are borrowing this money just to pay our day-to-day bills.

The opportunity cost of not getting spending under control.

The NZ Herald reports:

Spark has started a new lobbying campaign in an effort to stop the Commerce Commission setting a big wholesale price rise that will raise copper broadband prices for internet providers.

The campaign is lobbying members of the Commerce Commission rather than politicians.

Called becounted.org.nz it is the second public relations campaign by the company on the issue and is collecting views from the public over a Commerce Commission draft proposal that will mean big price rises for the wholesale charges.

It is a decision for the Commerce Commission, not the Government. I certainly want lower access prices for copper and good to see Spark advocating this. But I also think that the Commerce Commission has to decide based on the law and the evidence as to what the actual cost is.

Stuff reports:

Major changes to the rules around assessing buildings means the number of structures needing inspection has dropped from 500,000 to 30,000.

The Government was revising its policy on managing earthquake risk by better targeting regulations on buildings which posed the greatest risk to life, Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith announced on. 

The policy’s priority was public safety and minimising future fatalities, he said. 

The timeframe for assessing and strengthening buildings that posed a risk would be varied from the current assessment period of five years and require any strengthening work be carried out within 15 years.

The country would be split into low, medium and high risk seismic risk zones with respective timeframes for assessment of five, 10 and 15 years, and strengthening to be carried out within 15, 25 and 35 years.

Linking the timeframes to risk is much more sensible than the same requirements over the whole country.

Smith said the more targeted approach would reduce the estimated cost from $1.360 billion to $777m while retaining the safety gains. 

The policy would result in an estimated 330 fewer deaths and 360 fewer serious injuries from earthquakes over the next century, he said. 

So cost less, and be more effective. Good.

Stuff reports:

Palmerston North is being challenged to be the first city in New Zealand to licence tobacco retailers, and ban sales at dairies, supermarkets and liquor stores within 1 kilometre of schools.

Heart Foundation Manawatu heart health advocate Sally Darragh told a city council submissions hearing on Tuesday it could introduce a bylaw.

She believed it was empowered to do so under the Local Government Act in the interests of protecting public health.

It is not the job of local government to decide that tobacco retailers need licencing. That’s a decision for central Government. Local government would do a lot better if they focused on their core responsibilities of water, roads, libraries, parks, sewers etc.

The ODT reports:

The Ministry of Education is being asked to step up and take responsibility for finding a solution to the city’s declining secondary school rolls, rather than asking the schools’ leaders to solve the problem. …

Solutions proposed by school leaders so far include closing one or more secondary schools in the city, establishing enrolment zones or implementing roll caps.

But what is the problem?

The ministry has encouraged the discussions because the latest March roll overall figures show Dunedin secondary school rolls have dropped by 743 pupils between 2005 and 2015, equivalent to the size of a secondary school.

Adding to concerns is the imbalance in pupil enrolments, where pupils are flooding into a select few schools, such as King’s High School, at the expense of other schools.

I don’t regard that as a problem. That is families and students exercising choice.

Bayfield High School principal Judith Forbes said it was great the ministry had asked schools to contribute to the discussion, but she, too, believed it was unlikely schools would agree on a solution.

She said her ideal solution would be a cap on all Dunedin secondary rolls.

In other words punish the schools that are succeeding, reward the schools that are doing less well, and remove choice from students and parents.

Wouldn’t a better discussion be to determine why so many students are wanting to attend King’s High School, and try to emulate that elsewhere?

It may be coincidence, but in almost all the countries we take a big interest in, the centre-right has been winning election after election. Let’s look at each of them:

• Canada – Stephen Harper won in 2006, 2008 and 2011 – increasing his seats each time to go from minority to majority
• New Zealand – John Key won in 2008, 2011 and 2014 – increasing his seats each time
• UK – David Cameron won in 2010 and 2015, increasing his seats to go from minority to majority
• Australia – Tony Abbott won in 2010
• Germany – Angela Merkel won in 2005, 2009 and 2013 – increasing her seats each time to go from minority to majority
• US – in 2014 Republicans got largest majority in House since 1929, the largest mid-term Senate gain since 1958, now hold 31 of the 50 Governorships and the highest number of state legislatures since 1928. The Democrats last held so few state legislatures in 1860. Only the presidency remains for them.
• Israel – Bibi Netanyahu won in 2009, 2013 and 2015, increasing his majority in 2015
• France – lost the presidency in 2012, but highly likely to regain in 2017 with polls showing Hollande in third place.

What is interesting isn’t just that so many countries have centre-right governments, but that in Canada, NZ, the UK, and Germany the incumbent Governments have increased their seats. It used to be the case that governments lose seats and oppositions win them. but no longer.

An interesting observation I saw about the UK election is that the last time Labour won an election in the UK without Tony Blair was in 1974 – 41 years ago. The importance of this observation is not about who was leader, but how he positioned the party. Blair won as “New Labour” and he moved Labour towards the centre. Miliband moved it to the left and made income inequality the focus of his campaign, and lost.

Likewise in NZ Labour, since they lost office, have moved to the left of Helen Clark. Goff,  Shearer and Cunliffe all advocated old left policies – many of which were rejected by Helen Clark when she was PM. Will Little continue with the shift to the left, or try to compete in the centre?

I heard from a reliable source last week that in the voting to date, James Shaw has a narrow lead for the Green Party male co-leadership.

The actual election takes places at their conference at the end of May, but the delegates from each electorate get instructed how to vote at their electorate AGMs, which have started.

I’ve commented on the four leaders here:

• Kevin Hague
• Gareth Hughes
• James Shaw
• Vernon Tava

With no disrespect to Gareth or Vernon, but it appears to be a two horse race between Kevin and James.

The good thing for the Greens is both Kevin and James have considerable strengths, and both should be more successful than their predecessor. It’s a great thing for a party to have a positive choice of leadership candidates.

Danyl McLauchlan blogs:

I’ve been helping James Shaw out with his campaign. Up until now its been impossible to tell how things are going, but now that the branches are voting we have a rough idea and I am cautiously optimistic. It’s going to be close but James could win. My reason for supporting him over Kevin Hague – who I have a huge amount of respect for – is pretty simple. The key role of a leader in a modern political party is to be the public face of that party, to front to the media and the public, and to win new voters. Maybe I’m just blinded by partisan bias, but I think James is going to be a lot better in that core role than the other candidates.

That doesn’t mean he’ll win. Kevin Hague also has a lot of great qualities, and they make him one of the most beloved guys inside the Green Party – which gives him a big advantage in a contest to become leader of it. But being the leader is about connecting with the public, not just the party’s own membership. The best thing for the future of the Green Party is to elect a leader who can grow it.

I agree with this analysis. Kevin is very respected and popular with the members – and with many other MPs. I regard Kevin as a good guy, who would be a good Minister of Health and a good co-leader for the Greens.

However the Greens seem to be stuck at a 10% vote ceiling. James Shaw does represent the best opportunity for the Greens to break through that 10% ceiling, and if I was a Green party member I’d vote for him.

If Shaw wins the male co-leadership and Julie-Anne Genter becomes (in time) female co-leader, then I think the Greens would have a real possibility of shaking off the past, and grow support and votes for the Greens.

But as I said, I think Kevin will do a solid job also. Again the Greens are fortunate to have a positive choice.

Educational unions, with help from some media friends, have tried to make it look like charter schools get extra funding because they compare the cost of a new school with the average cost of established schools.

This is not apples and apples.

A fair comparison would be comparing start-up costs of the charter schools with start-up costs of new state schools.

Nine charter schools have been created, and they have combined start-up costs of $9.43 million. They have capacity for 1,680 students.  So the cost per 200 students is around $1.1 million.

Let’s look at costs (data from Alwyn Poole) of new state schools of a similar capacity

• Mission Heights $60 million for 1,500 roll
• Rolleston High School $53 million for 1,040 roll
• Ormiston High School $50 million for 1,000 roll

The average cost per 200 students to set up a new state school is $9.4 million compared to $1.1 million for charter schools.

So new charter schools cost less than new state schools. Yes they cost more initially than an existing state school, but that is not the valid comparison.

Congratulations to Patrick Brown who has won the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. He has a more than good chance of becoming Premier of Ontario at their next elections.

Ontario is the largest province of Canada, with 13 million people and 38% of the population.

I backgrounded Patrick’s bid here, and how he started as a under-dog. He won despite little support from the establishment.

The membership in Ontario has grown from 11,000 to almost 80,000. Brown’s campaign signed up most of them.

Brown won 62% of the vote. A few months he was polling under 10%.

Winners

• David Cameron. Got a majority against all expectations. Had been constantly criticised for not getting a majority in 2010, but has laid that to rest, and will be a conquering hero to his party. Set to be Prime Minister for at least nine years.
• David Miliband. May now seek to return to Parliament to seek the leadership, in line with the constant claim that the wrong Miliband won. He only lost because the unions backed Ed over him.
• Nicola Sturgeon and Alec Salmond – the SNP now dominate Scotland. And having the Conservatives remain in Goverment probably helps them, as they can blame them for everything.
• Mhairi Black – the youngest MP (age 20) since 19 year old Charles Fox in 1768 had his father but him a seat.
• Boris Johnson – back in Parliament and if he doesn’t offend more than half a dozen foreign countries, or sleep with more than half a dozen women, could become the next Conservative Leader and Prime Minister. Or resign in scandal.
• Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor – their legend grows

Losers

• Ed Miliband. Had a generally good campaign and was favoured to become PM on election night, but within hours he had led Labour to its worst result since 1987, and inevitably is now out of the leadership.
• Ed Balls. Went from on the verge of being the Chancellor, to out of Parliament
• Jim Murphy- led Labour in Scotland to a defeat so bad that the meme is Scotland now has more Pandas (2) than Labour MPs (1)
• Vince Cable, Simon Hughes, Danny Alexander, Ed Davey – Lib Dem Ministers who all lost their seats
• Nick Clegg – kept his seat but lost his party
• Douglas Alexander – the only thing worse than being the campaign chief for such a bad result is losing your seat to a 20 year old
• The pollsters
• Natalie Bennett – an embarrassing campaign from the Green Leader who failed to win a seat
• Nigel Farage – failed to win his seat, and they lost one of their two defectors from the Conservatives. Has promised to resign, but is not ruling out standing again as leader (doing a Cunliffe)
• George Galloway – the loathsome one is gone and buried. Not even close. He lost by 11,000 votes and only got 21%. Last time he won by 10,000 votes. One of the most vile people in UK politics who ran a disgusting campaign against Labour’s Naz Shah.

The Greens (and Labour) go on about how NZ must become 100% renewable energy, even though we are already over 80% renewable. They want subsidies on wind and solar power.

Well how did this go in Ontario:

Ontario’s Green Energy Act offered so-called “feed-in rates” almost four times existing electricity rates for wind and more than 10 times for solar power. Like bees to honey, wind and solar companies rushed in. By the time the government realized that these subsidies were driving Ontario from one of the lowest to one of the highest power cost jurisdictions in North America, the province had signed myriad 20-year-locked-in-rate-guaranteed contracts that will drive power rates up a further 40 per cent to 50 per cent in coming years.

And it gets worse:

Adding salt to this self-inflicted wound is the reality that much of the green power comes on stream when it isn’t needed. This unneeded electricity is dumped into the United States at bargain-basement prices that Ontario’s Auditor-General found has already cost Ontario power consumers billions of dollars, with much bigger losses yet to come before those 20-year contracts expire.

So Ontario consumers are paying more for their power so US consumers can get cheap renewable energy!

The US National Bureau of Economic Research has found:

The poor diets of many consumers are often attributed to limited access to healthy foods.

In this paper, we use detailed data describing the healthfulness of household food purchases and the retail landscapes in which these consumers are making these decisions to study the role of access in explaining why some people in the United States eat more nutritious foods than others.

We first confirm that households with lower income and education purchase less healthful foods. We then measure the spatial variation in the average nutritional quality of available food products across local markets, revealing that healthy foods are less likely to be available in low-income neighborhoods. Though significant, spatial differences in access are small and explain only a fraction of the variation that we observe in the nutritional content of household purchases. Systematic socioeconomic disparities in household purchases persist after controlling for access: even in the same store, more educated households purchase more healthful foods. Consistent with this result, we further find that the nutritional quality of purchases made by households with low levels of income and education respond very little when new stores enter or when existing stores change their product offerings.

Together, our results indicate that policies aimed at improving access to healthy foods in underserved areas will leave most of the socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption intact.

So banning certain stores doesn’t work. People who like unhealthy food will still buy it.