Jamie Whyte writes in the NZ Herald:

On these pages late last year, Linda Mitchell, an education lecturer at Waikato University

I tend to stop reading when I see the phrase “education lecturer at Waikato”! But Jamie did read it.

She claimed the quest for profits damages the service provided. Or, as she put it, an interest “in making profits for owners or shareholders positions Evolve Education Group at odds with more community spirited aims to invest fully in the service itself”.

That profits injure consumers is a familiar idea. But this should not blind readers to its absurdity.

Kindergartens, like most enterprises, need capital and labour. The capital pays for the buildings, equipment and so on, and provides cover for “rainy days” when costs exceed revenue. The labour at a kindergarten is mainly teaching but people also work on administration, cleaning and maintenance.

Ms Mitchell is right that if the people who contributed capital were not paid for it then more could be spent on educating the children.

Yet the same is true of those who provide labour. Imagine a kindergarten with four teachers. If they all took a 20 per cent pay cut, they could hire a fifth teacher on the same pay and give more attention to each child. If they worked for nothing, they could hire even more extra teachers and pay for all sorts of other services that might benefit the children.

Why does Ms Mitchell not lament the fact that teachers are paid for supplying labour? Why is paying teachers not also “at odds with more community spirited aims to invest fully in the service itself”?

Excellent points by Dr Whyte.  Why do they argue against a return on capital, yet for a return on labour.

Second, eliminating profit harms the intended beneficiaries: in this case, children receiving preschool education. A kindergarten that gets its capital from profit-seeking investors must provide a good service. If it doesn’t, parents will take their children elsewhere and profits will decline. If the kindergarten performs very poorly, it may even go out of business and lose its shareholders the money they invested. A privately owned kindergarten, like any privately owned enterprise, has a powerful commercial incentive to provide a good product or service.

Yep. Unlike at school level, pupils are not forced into their nearest school.

Ms Mitchell pointed to the insolvency of ABC, an Australian preschool company, as evidence against private ownership. This is the crowning glory of her confusion. That underperforming private firms are subject to insolvency is a virtue of private ownership, not a vice.

The same applies to charter schools. A charter school that fails will be closed down. State schools that fail get given more money.

Stuff reports:

A pilot is being praised for his quick thinking which ensured 12 skydivers escaped virtually unscathed when their light plane plunged into Lake Taupo today.

About 12.15pm the bright pink aircraft crashed 200 metres from shore at Rotongaio Bay, on State Highway 1 south of Taupo, sinking in 3.5m of water.

Remarkably, none of the 13 onboard who were forced to leap for their lives – the pilot, six crew members and six passengers – were injured.

“Where the pilot is concerned I can’t praise the guy enough,” Skydive Taupo chief executive Roy Clements told SunLive.

“He had to deal with the worst nightmare really for a pilot, what appears to be an engine failure. As a result he’s told everyone to get out of the plane, and he’s followed his own advice.”

Remarkable. Could have been a massive tragedy, but by good luck they were all skydivers, and everyone parachuted out before it crashed.

A reader reminded me of this release by Russel Norman in 2008:

Predictions from prestigious Australian research institute CSIRO that petrol could cost up to AUS$8 – about NZ$10 – per litre within a decade means we need to rapidly change course to avoid serious economic disarray, Green Party Co-Leader Russel Norman says.

“Petrol at that price would make the Government’s entire motorway building project a white elephant – modern day Easter Island statues. Our new motorways would be monuments to short sightedness and profligate waste of resources.

“Governments even contemplating building motorways like the billion dollar-plus Transmission Gully project in Wellington or the $2 billion Waterview tunnel project in Auckland are seriously out of touch with reality,” Dr Norman says.

The economic disarray would have come if we had followed Dr Norman’s advice and did our transport planning on an assumption of $10/litre petrol.

If the Greens had intellectual consistency, they would now come out and say that Waterview was justified, as the cost of petrol is now under $2/litre and likely to stay there for years.

“We have no choice but to move to a far less oil-dependent economy, because rising prices will give us no choice.

The Green movement have a history of predicting massive shortages and associated price rises of natural resources, and being basically wrong every time.

Stuff reports:

The year ahead will be one of “pure economic expansion” for New Zealand, says ANZ chief economist Cameron Bagrie.

He cites falling unemployment, strong net migration, steady salary growth and the strong NZD.

“New Zealand’s economic model basically blew up in 2008.

“It was a big wake-up call.”

Businesses got back to basics, focusing on reducing debt, improving productivity and collaborating more within industries, he said.

Two years ago the biggest problem facing many businesses was a lack of customer demand but now the biggest problem was trying to meet demand which required the right skilled labour to do so, he said. …

Australia’s economy is in a very different place to New Zealand’s, he said.

“They’re looking for plan B and they can’t find plan B. New Zealand had to find plan B after the GFC and I’ll tell you what we found plan B, C, D and E.”

It should indeed be a good year.

Stuff reports:

Two masked gunmen wielding assault rifles have stormed a French satirical magazine on Wednesday (Thursday NZT), shot 12 people dead and injured 10 more, five of them critically.

The killers fled the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, near the Bastille, in a hijacked car.

According to unconfirmed reports on Twitter the gunmen had been shouting “Allahu Akbar” outside the offices, and were later involved in a shootout with police.

At the time of the attack the magazine was said to be holding an editorial meeting on an Islam-themed special edition titled ‘Sharia Hebdo’.

Police said the gunmen shouted “we have avenged the Prophet” after their attack.

This is basically religious fascism – killing people who do not subscribe to their religious tenets. These killings will have a chilling impact on media around the world – who will self-censor in fear of similar executions.

A firebomb attack gutted the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a publication that has always courted controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders, in November 2011 after it put an image of the Prophet Mohammad on its cover.

What would be a great response is for every media outlet in the western world to publish images of Mohammad, to send a signal that the more you use terror to try and create censorship, the more it will backfire.

The New York Times reports that Professors at Harvard University seem to be unhappy that Obamacare has found its way to their august institution. David M. Culter a health economist at the university was an advisor to Obama during the 2008 election campaign.

For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.

Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.

Welcome to the real world. Unfortunately for them the vote was too late to stop the increases.

In Harvard’s health care enrollment guide for 2015, the university said it “must respond to the national trend of rising health care costs, including some driven by health care reform,” in the form of the Affordable Care Act. The guide said that Harvard faced “added costs” because of provisions in the health care law that extend coverage for children up to age 26, offer free preventive services like mammograms and colonoscopies and, starting in 2018, add a tax on high-cost insurance, known as the Cadillac tax.

The reaction from the professors has been swift with the Harvard scholar on Virgil being very scathing and their expert on things French isn’t happy either.

Richard F. Thomas, a Harvard professor of classics and one of the world’s leading authorities on Virgil, called the changes “deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.”

Mary D. Lewis, a professor who specializes in the history of modern France and has led opposition to the benefit changes, said they were tantamount to a pay cut. “Moreover,” she said, “this pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.”

Some of the Harvard mathematicians and economists have been analysing the data and aren’t convinced by the universities data.

In addition, some ideas that looked good to academia in theory are now causing consternation. In 2009, while Congress was considering the health care legislation, Dr. Alan M. Garber — then a Stanford professor and now the provost of Harvard — led a group of economists who sent an open letter to Mr. Obama endorsing cost-control features of the bill. They praised the Cadillac tax as a way to rein in health costs and premiums.

Did Garber and friends talk to Dr Gruber from MIT before endorsing the bill?

The last word from of all people a sociologist.

“It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” said Mary C. Waters, a professor of sociology. “I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”

This is a story that has definitely left egg on the faces of some at Harvard. Certainly it is ironical that the law they championed has now come back to bite them.

An interesting research report from Pew on the religious composition of the US Congress. While 20% of the US don’t have a religious affiliation (atheist or agnostic) only one out of 535 Congresspersons and Senators is an atheist.

The most popular congressional religions (with US population percentage in brackets) are:

1. Christian 92% (73%)
2. Protestant 57% (49%)
3. Catholic 31% (22%)
4. Baptist 15% (17%)
5. Methodist 8% (6%)
6. Anglican 8% (2%)
7. Presbyterian 7% (3%)
8. Jewish 5% (2%)
9. Lutheran 5% (5%)
10. Mormon 3% (2%)
11. Buddhist 0.4% (1%)
12. Muslim 0.4% (1%)
13. Unaffiliated 0.2% (20%)

The only member of congress who says she is not religious is Kyrsten Sinema, from Arizona. It is near impossible to get elected to any office on the US, if you say you do not believe in God.

That’s such a dramatic drop in the last six months. Long may it continue.

Alexander Bisley interviews Anthony Bourdain (US chef, and CNN show host) about his trip to Iran and Lebanon. An extract:

“What makes Iran special is the sheer difficulty of experiencing it as an American– and of understanding the complexities, the history, the context, the contradictions–and the ever changing political realities. It is a beautiful country, with an ancient and very rich culture that seems often to be at odds with its religious leadership. The people you meet in the street are overwhelmingly welcoming.

“Nowhere else I’ve been has the disconnect been so extreme between what one sees and feels from the people and what one sees and hears from the government.

This was my experience also. If they could get rid of their theocracy, they’s be one of the best countries on  Earth.

“Iran is deeply conflicted, exhilarating, heartbreaking. One of the exhilarations is Iranians’ eagerness to communicate, to express themselves, to show the world more about themselves than what we see on the news. An eagerness to be proud, to have fun is something you feel palpably in Tehran. The hospitality from strangers is extraordinary.

“I asked one host what he thought Americans would think of the episode. “They will start coming,” he laughed. I think simply seeing a few ordinary Iranians, doing ordinary things, is a departure from the usual footage of angry ayatollahs.  That alone will shock many. Shamefully, many, many people labour under the most simplistic of misimpressions: Iranians are not Arabs. Iran is not a desert. Not everyone is a fundamentalist. Iran even looks much different than how it does in films.

I’ve holidayed in Iran, and can’t wait to go back. It is a fabulous country.

The NZ Herald editorial:

Speed, however, has remained a vexed issue. Hence there has been a progressive lowering of the police’s tolerance, culminating in the zero tolerance policy. This has been criticised by many motorists. Some of their complaints are lame. Those who say it has resulted in them spending too much time with their eyes on their speedometers betray a fundamental lack of driving ability. Nonetheless, it is clear that the police must re-examine where they are enforcing the policy.

The Automobile Association is right when it suggests a focus on drivers doing just over the limit on safe urban motorways is not the best strategy. The scrutiny, it said, should be on speeding in higher-risk areas. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, motorways are, by and large, relatively safe, so much so that the speed limit may soon be raised to 110km/h on some of them. Secondly, there is no point in alienating generally good motorists who are caught slightly over the speed limit in such areas.

Absolutely.

The Automobile Association was also on the right track when it suggested there should be an increased number of median barriers on highways. These, whether concrete, semi-rigid or cable, are not cheap. But they appeal as a means of curtailing the number of head-on crashes involving overseas tourists. The outcome of these impacts is generally more serious than other types of collisions. Improving the country’s roads in this manner offers the most rational response to what has become a notable problem.

I wonder what the impact on road safety would be if say 90% of the money that went on speed cameras and policing of the roads, was redirected to improving our current roads?

What the US Govt is doing reminds me of what I learned in school about Nazi Germany. Ironic, Hollywood is run by mostly Jewish entrepreneurs

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) January 6, 2015

This was at the end of a series of tweets complaining about the Department of Justice seizing a car he gave to his mother, and freezing his assets  etc.

He complains there has been no trial, yet that is because he has done everything possible to stop the trial from occurring.

But considering Dotcom is known to have a signed copy of Mein Kamph, and has kept or worn other Nazi memorabilia, it is rather sickening to have him try and compare what has happened to him, to what the Nazis did to the Jews. And for good taste he points out Jews run Hollywood.

This is the guy Laila Harre and scores of others on the left were working for.

In the responses to his tweet, he has been heavily criticized by many people who said they used to support him.

Stuff reports:

Xiou Ping Lu knows the true meaning of hard work.

In her 50 years of life she has been a cleaner, a farmer, a hairdresser, a factory worker, a fruit picker, a business owner, a seamstress, a wife and mother.

”I use my hands to make money.

”I would never ask for help from any government,” she says.

A great attitude.

For Ping, everything she does is to provide for her children, a 17-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son who both attend Burnisde High School.

”My daughter wants to go to Otago University next year to study medicine,” she says from her Avonhead shop.

Ping has owned the Avonhead Chinese Takeaway and Catering shop in Staveley St for about four months now and says the business is thriving thanks to her ”good cooking and friendly smile”. …

Ping loves Christchurch and thinks New Zealand is ”the most beautiful country”. The only time she feels disheartened is when she hears stories of people resenting Chinese migrants for ”taking jobs”.

”It’s our culture to work hard . . . and make our contribution.”

We need more migrants like Ping, with such an attitude.

by John Stringer (https://conzervative.wordpress.com)

I pretty much like anything Marvel, except this stupid comic (1969- ; self-title 1990). I have a pretty good collection of early 1960s Silver Age Marvel comics to prove it and DaughterofAwesome (aka Cypher) has met Stan Lee (so she’s on the quirky Xmas card and presents list). Comics can be a great investment. See here: $100k Comic Found in Wall.

The recent comic-to-movie transitions have been mostly successful following the travesties of the earliest Spiderman movies (1977). Iron Man, Cap. America, Thor, The Avengers, the two parallel Spiderman franchises (Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi from 2002) are all pretty good interpretations propelling Marvel to a whole new level and empowering a completely new genre and creating a new audience. These reboots will replace the comics over the next generation, along with computer games and new media. Comics will become vestiges of collectible nostalgia for Baby Boomers and Gen. X and historic oddities for Gen. Y.  Who reads comics anymore, apart from the video store guy in The Simpsons or the Fatso pony-tail guy?

And so, having recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy on dvd at the insistence of WifeofAwesome and wondering WHY this Marvel comic was ever made in to a movie, I present the Guardians of the Galaxy Honesty Trailer. Because we need this. (I actually really enjoyed this 2014 movie, it was extremely watchable and really entertaining. I just hated the Racoon. Too Disney!). But, let the Honesty Video speak…

Guardians of the Galaxy. was one of the biggest (unexpected) movie successes of 2014, snobbed by reviewers, loved by fans at the box office. Of more interest, was that it was a genius departure from the Marvel cinematic universe. And the give-away about what was really going on with this movie, was the final scene, after the credits, when Howard Duck makes a cameo appearance (heralding a forthcoming movie? Please, no!).

Howard was a socially satirical cigar-smoking anthropomorphic duck from New Stork City on the planet Duckworld. He was a 1970s Marvel anti-hero superhero, a tongue-and-cheek lampoon of Marvel itself by Marvel.  A mash of Donald Duck, Daffy Duck and Marvel all-in-one, demonstrating that Stan Lee (and creators Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik) have great self-awareness and a robust sense of humour.

Guardians Of the Galaxy is pretty different from Captain America: The Winter Soldier and is perhaps ‘high’ on its own power but has the same tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and self-deprecating in-house jokes. In Guardians, one critic says Marvel is trolling its own world and “doles out middle fingers to the audience they know they have in the palm of their hands.” I’d agree with that. But the spaceships and vacuum of space wars are awesome.

You like superheroes? Well how about a movie that stars a stupid raccoon and a one-word speaking tree called Groot? (a rip-off of Tolkien’s Ent). Yup, that’ll work. The critic concludes, “And here’s the one finger salute, ‘the raccoon, the tree, the many-colored people and the white guy –who brings them together– made a metric crapton of money for Marvel.’ To which I say,

“People, it’s a movie based on a comic.  Just enjoy it. I did.  Immensely. A great holiday watch if you’re bored with the cricket.”

~John Stringer, Christchurch.

The ODT editorial:

The Ombudsman’s opinion on the Department of Conservation decision to allow an increase in numbers of overnight guided walkers on the Routeburn Track is a breath of fresh air, which should have much wider implications than just the specific case.

Prof Ron Paterson does not beat about the forest.

He says the decision ”drives a horse and cart through” the Mt Aspiring National Park Plan and Doc’s explanation for granting the concession based on ”exceptional circumstances” is ”nonsense on stilts”.

Prof Paterson also says he has significant reservations about the legality of the decision.

He agrees with complainant Chas Tanner, of Dunedin, that the decision makes a ”mockery” of the process of public consultation (there were hundreds of submissions) in the development of the plan and undermines public participation.

The decision is here – Ombudsman decision Routeburn Walks Ltd. Basically the concession contradicted the limits set in the Mt Aspiring Plan. The issue isn’t so much how many guided trampers should be allowed on the Routeburn – it is that DOC just ignored the Park Plan when granting the concession.

CNN reports:

Google and Microsoft have joined a growing chorus of businesses that oppose Marriott’s attempt to block guests’ Wi-Fi hotspots in their hotel rooms.

Marriott (MAR) and the hotel lobby American Hospitality & Lodging Association asked the FCC this summer to allow hotels to deploy equipment that prevents people from turning their phones into Wi-Fi hotspots.

In order to avoid pricey hotel Wi-Fi charges, many guests opt to use their data allotment from their cell phone provider, connecting their laptops to the Internet via their smartphones.

At Marriott connection rates start at $14.95 per day. For $19.95, guests get “enhanced high speed Internet” which includes video chatting, downloading large files and streaming video.

In its petition to the FCC, Marriott and the hotel lobby argued that guests can use their smartphones or Mi-Fi devices to launch an attack against a hotel’s Wi-Fi network or threaten other guests’ privacy (by stealing their credit card data or other personal information). They also said that those gadgets can interfere with the hotel’s Wi-Fi, slowing down speeds for other customers.

What a load of duplicitous crap. They just want to force people to pay them huge amounts of money to access the Internet.  I would never ever ever stay at a hotel that blocked me being able to tether my laptop to my phone.

Marriott do not control the airwaves around their hotel. They have no more right to block external Internet access by guests, than they do to block oxygen, so guests have to pay for their own oxygen from Marriott.

An interesting poll in the UK on lifestyle or sin taxes. They polled over 4,000 adults and found:

• Only 29% agree the Government should influence behaviour by regulating and taxing high calorie food and drink
• 28% say the Govt interferes too much in trying to make people adopt healthy lifestyles, 21% say they should regulate more and 27% say the level of intervention is about right
• 37% support a tax on fizzy drinks and 49% oppose
• 27% say the Govt should offer financial incentives for those trying to lose weight and 61% oppose

Nick Cohen writes in the Guardian:

The future Charles III expects to be heeded, not scrutinised, and above all he expects to intervene in politics with a regularity and partisanship his mother never dared imitate or, as far as we know, ever wanted to imitate either.

There’s no secret. His aides have announced that King Charles will “reshape the monarch’s role” and make “heartfelt interventions”. I can’t see him moderating his stance when his mother dies. He’s 66 and has waited for the throne all his life. Unlike Prince Andrew, he can move out of the gossip columns and into the history books. Old men in a hurry don’t change when a prize like that is in sight. More to the point, no one is making him change. A by no means exhaustive list of his political interventions includes: health – he forced ministers to listen to his gormless support for homeopathic treatments and every other variety of charlatanism and quackery; defence – he protested against cuts in the armed forces; justice – he complained about ordinary people’s access to law, or as he put it: “I dread the very real and growing prospect of an American-style personal injury culture”; political correctness – he opposes equality as I suppose a true royal must; GM foods – he thinks they’re dangerous, regardless of evidence; modern architecture – he’s against; and eco-towns – he’s for, as long as he has a say in their design.

Charles could well live to be 100, so might be King of New Zealand until 2050 or so, unless we decide to make a change.

BBC reports:

This year people in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and plenty of other nations will mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. The document will be lauded for establishing one vital principle.

A new book about Magna Carta is published today which claims to offer new insights into one of the most famous documents in British history.

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the charter’s first signing on 15 June 1215 at Runnymede on the banks of the Thames between Windsor and Staines.

I’ve been to Runnymede. Lovely place.

• Magna Carta outlined basic rights with the principle that no-one was above the law, including the king
• It charted the right to a fair trial, and limits on taxation without representation
• It inspired a number of other documents, including the US Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Only three clauses are still valid – the one guaranteeing the liberties of the English Church; the clause confirming the privileges of the City of London and other towns; and the clause that states that no free man shall be imprisoned without the lawful judgement of his equals

Few documents have been more influential in world history.

It also led indirectly to the development of a new kind of state, in which the money to govern the country came from taxation agreed by parliament by preventing the king from extracting money from his subjects in arbitrary ways. Magna Carta laid down that the king could not levy taxes “save by the common counsel of our kingdom” and set out how that counsel was to be obtained. Fifty years later England’s first parliament was called.

And to this day in NZ, the Government needs the permission of Parliament to levy taxes.

Nicola Young writes in the Dom Post:

Wellington needs cheap, reliable public transport to arrest its declining use and get more cars off our congested roads.

Instead, the Greater Wellington Regional Council plans to spend more to get less; and not for the first time.

Those wretchedly inaccurate Real Time Information Boards cost $13 million, when a smart phone app would have cost less than $100,000.

$13 million for info boards? God.

The regional council has also spent more than $500m upgrading the trains, with no increase in patronage.

Now the regional council has its sights on Snapper.

They want to adopt Auckland’s integrated HOP card ticketing system at a cost of up to $50m next year and $5m each following year.

It’s hard to understand the reason; clearly its vision for public transport doesn’t seem to involve the public as the Snapper has become part of the capital’s DNA, even though it’s only been around since 2008.

The regional council’s preference for Auckland’s notorious HOP card is yet another incomprehensible addition to its track record of bad public transport investments that have driven up fares while driving down patronage.

I use Snapper all the time. It’s great. To spend $50 million on a new system is nuts.

Snapper captured Wellingtonians’ imaginations, but it’s also a great deal for both ratepayers and taxpayers as it costs us nothing.

The bus operator absorbs Snapper’s costs, just like the cost of fuel and drivers’ wages.

There are significant differences between the Snapper and HOP cards, none of which make HOP more appealing.

It’s been so hopeless that many consider Auckland’s decision to buy it akin to buying a pig in a poke. Snapper operates an open platform, so it can be easily adapted to changing customer needs and rapidly changing technology – important when so many are using smartphones.

Snapper can be used on the bus, taxi, to pay for car parks, and even a flat white; some businesses now use Snapper as an ID or access card. It’s just been selected as the engine room behind Dublin’s public transport Leap Card.

And the HOP card? It has only one use: paying a fare.

So a worse system for more money.

Rather than talking of mind-numbing figures in the millions, think of it this way: switching to the HOP card will cost about $100,000 per bus, train and ferry in the Greater Wellington region, plus another $10,000 for every vehicle in Wellington’s public transport fleet, including trains, buses and the two harbour ferries. A new diesel bus costs about $400,000.

Sigh.

Stuff reports:

Critics have labelled a zero-speed-tolerance campaign a failure as the holiday road toll is more than double last year’s.

A crash in Christchurch this morning brought the number of the people to die on our roads this holiday period to 17. …

Throughout the holiday period police had a zero-tolerance campaign on speeding and also targeted drink-driving after lower limits were introduced last month.

But police were left dismayed at the role speed and alcohol played in the high toll.

“This is more than disappointing. It’s devastating that so many people have lost their lives these holidays and due to the same common factors,” road policing assistant commissioner Dave Cliff said.

“It is a bad decision to drive after drinking. It’s that simple.

“No-one can afford to not intervene and stop their family member or friend from getting behind the wheel after drinking.

“You may think it’s OK, we’ll be right and it won’t happen to them. But crashes are happening, people are getting seriously injured and people are dying.”

NZ First police spokesman Ron Mark said the toll was evidence the zero-tolerance speed campaign was a “failed experiment” and accused the police and the Government of “stealth taxation” via speeding fines.

“It has precious police resources sucked up making good drivers feel like criminals instead of focusing on those driving too fast, too slowly or too badly,” he said.

Drivers were anxious about being caught just over the limit, Mark said: “People are saying to me that instead of driving to the conditions, their eyes are darting from the speedo to road and back again and that every time they see a police car, they instinctively brake despite being well within the speed limit.”

Road-safety campaigner Clive Matthew-Wilson, editor of The Dog and Lemon Guide, said the idea that heavy speed-limit enforcement would lower the road toll was “nonsense”.

He said 80 per cent of road deaths happened under the speed limit.

The remaining 20 per cent of fatalities were caused by high-risk drivers who were “almost exclusively yobbos, impaired drivers or motorcyclists – all of whom are basically immune to road safety messages”.

The zero tolerance policy just punished thousands of motorists for driving at 102 km/hr on a motorway. It made it impossible to legally pass a car doing 90 km/hr, so effectively slowed down all single lane roads.

The tolerance policy is an operational decision for Police, not the Government. However the Minister can tell the Police that he thinks it is a bad idea, and hopefully they will listen.

Radio NZ reports:

The State Services Commission has delivered a scathing report on the performance of the government’s ‘super ministry’ two years after it was created by merging four government departments.

The commission’s first performance review of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says the ministry has significant external and internal problems.

It says the ministry needs work, its human resources (HR) systems are an irritant to progress and it has weak leadership and governance.

Out of 32 areas of review, the commission dished out 27 ratings of ‘weak’ or ‘needing development’. …

The review said MBIE’s policy creation was not coherent, that its advice was not consistently meeting ministers’ expectations, that its Senior Leadership Team struggled to be the “sum of its parts”, and there was a high level of frustration among managers.

The review’s authors stressed that MBIE’s performance was adequate but said there were “concerns for future performance”.

One of the core functions of MBIE is to provide cohesive and future-focused policy advice to the Government.

The average rating ministers gave to its policy advice was 7.1 out of a possible 10 and the report’s authors expressed concern about the “variable service across ministerial portfolios”.

They said ministers were having to chase MBIE to find out who to speak with about their own portfolio.

“This is evidenced by a perception that the responsibility for manoeuvring across different parts of MBIE is now the responsibility of Ministers, rather than MBIE presenting with a senior leader who can deliver all of the relevant parts of MBIE to each portfolio Minister.

This report comes as little surprise to those in the beltway who have been hearing grumbles about MBIE for some time. There are some very good staff there, but it is far from functioning as one unified ministry, rather than a series of silos.