Ups And Downs...

UP...

1. Tony Abbott
2. Kristina Keneally
3. Jodee Rich
4. The Pakistan Cricket chaps
5. Phil Goff (or why else would he be headline news?)
6. Immigration from NZ to Australia from people disgusted at the failure of NZ Governments to cut spending and taxes and give them a reason to stay
7. Tiger Woods (and he was not too fussy, apparently!)
8. Taxes - for people who try and better themselves (how dare they??)
9. Government spending


DOWN...

1. NZ living standards
2. Kevin Rudd
3. Nathan Rees
4. NZ Dollar
5. Zac Goldsmith (his critics wish they had inherited 200 million quid! ha ha!)
6. Amanda Knox

Sympathetic?

Andrew Moore arrived in Australia at age 11; during the next 32 years he committed and was convicted of numerous offences - including manslaughter; he was deported from Australia on the grounds he had failed the 'character test' despite very serious medical problems (liver failure, hepatitis C amongst other ailments); he arrived home in Britain with $1000 and a hotel booking; two days later he was dead.

It seems Australia deports 70 people per year (most of them are Maori troublemakers sent back to New Zealand! hahahahahaha!) who repeatedly break the law or cause trouble.

The question is whether Andrew Moore was treated fairly.

I think not because his health was so poor, he had lived in Australia for 32 years (making some sort of contribution to the place), he has a Son and other family in Australia, and due to his reduced lifespan highly unlikely to reoffend.

I know I am in a minority opinion but it just seems such a tragic case.

Friday Musings

1. Well done NSW Labor [sic]; they have sacked the pathetic Nathan Rees, whom readers of this blog will know I have been contemptuous and scathingly critical of during his 15 month disastrous tenure as Premier.

A good result although I did think Tripodi would have managed to cook something up for himself rather than Kenneally.

I wish her well.

2. The Liberal party seems headed for a substantial defeat in a February snap election.

The electoral pendulum is such that a small 2% swing to the Government - (and Labor's strong approval ratings and Menendez/Rudd's personal popularity during the last couple of years, together with Liberal ineptitude make that a distinct possibility) - would see the opposition reduced to barely 52 seats out of 150.

For all his tough talk Tony Abbott needs to realise the average elector disagrees with him on some key issues; this is rather like the UK Labour party during the 1980s when they stubbornly held to unpopular (and bizarre) policies which were never going to be popular.

Interesting times ahead!

3. I attended 'Blogger's Drinkies' last night in Auckland.

Despite the undercurrent of saddness at Anna Woolf having expired it was a successful evening, marred only by the occasional tosspot slinking around, and I am sure everyone enjoyed themselves.

One surprising incident was an attendee who was chatting with Peter Cresswell and myself, revealed himself to be a Probation Officer, and told us how he has spent his day issuing a warrant for arrest for a life parolee who had 'been naughty'.

My questioning of him "so you wish to send this chap back to a maximum security prison? you feel pleased with yourself at ruining a chap's life? you will see him locked up for 22 - 23 hours per day?" did not seem to phase him at all; that he has probably done more 'naughty' things himself this week than the parolee seemed not to register and he eventually went on his merry way safe in the knowledge of what a "good person" he is.

Disgusting (and so middle class).

Anna Woolf

Anna Woolf died yesterday after a long illness and I want to add my condolences to the vast number already stated on the Blogisphere.

I am pleased I managed to get to the Mercy Hospice on Tuesday afternoon for a final farewell.

A very sad event for all concerned.

The Emir's New Clothes

I have often described Dubai as being the 'Westport of the middle east'.

The last few years in Dubai has seen massive development along the dubious logic amongst property developers that "you build 'em and people will come"; this logic has worked well enough in Manhattan, or Sydney, or myriad of other places around the World and was meant to work in Dubai.

However my view was always no matter how many apartments, niteclubs, shopping centres and skyscrapers you build in Westport the fact remains you are in Westport.

This fundamental was entirely lost on the Emir, his advisors, millions of investors, businessmen and others as they poured time and money into Dubai.

For a long time I thought "hmmmm, perhaps this time I am wrong, perhaps this time things are different". I should have known better [that I am never wrong? *snigger*] and indeed a couple of years ago when I found out a chap I went to school with - the disgusting Andrew C - had moved to Dubai I knew the game was up and it would simply be a matter of time before things went tits up.

And tits up they went last week.

If you are going to go mad and borrow, borrow, borrow, build, build, build that is fine so long as the cashflows cover interest payments; when you are doing this in Westport and insufficient people want to go there you have a problem.

Unfortunately for many they truly believed things were different; they thought that you could create paradise in Westport; they thought that millions would flock and all would be well with the World and are in for an unpleasant shock.

Middle Class Genes

Yesterday I was at the St Lukes Mall in Auckland, NZ.

I was delighted to bump into an old friend 'ETH', a yummy young chap who used to live around the corner from me in Sandringham.
We had a cup of tea and chatted for a while, not having seen each other for a year or so, and a most pleasant afternoon it was.

One thing which struck me about ETH is how the middle class lifestyle is catching up with him very quickly; he has gone from being amazingly attractive two years ago when I first met him to being a bit 'average'; it seems alcohol, fast food, entertainment et al is working its magic and fast turning him into everyone else.

I suppose I could say he has gone from being 'yummy' to being 'very nice'.

All rather a shame how this happens to middle class people and as usual I blame the genes; you seldom see aristocratic types going to the pack in such a short timespan, but there we are.

I should point out this 'toll' is being taken on someone not yet 19 so imagine what he will be like by 30 ...eeeeekkkk!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!!

In an hilarious turn of events ASIC has to pay the legal fees for Jodee Rich.

The NSW Supreme Court made the order this morning and will be a very sobering undertaking, especially since Rich has spent $15 million [successfully] defending himself.

My hope is this will encourage various 'rogue agents' within ASIC and other agencies to act more rationally and responsibly in future.

There are those who thought they could flash a badge and succeed by intimidation, threats, winks and blackening names but instead failed miserably and now get taken to the cleaners financially (not to mention the career ending aspects of the whole affair).

Good on Jodee! This shows that if you have the balls to stand up to rogue elements of the State you can win.

I am sure Ray and Rodney from HIH must be kicking themselves for being such pussies when the going got tough and the resulting prison terms they had to endure.

Questions For Friday

1. Do you agree with the hilarious comment from a Liberal MP that "Turnbull is like Hitler in the bunker; unaware it is all over.."?

2. Is Mike Pero the victim of a grave injustice?

3. Are you pleased Phil Goff has finally gotten his act together?

4. Are you sick of John Key acting like a whore with the Maori party? (see number 3)

5. Do you really believe Russian gangsters are operating in Auckland car parking buildings? (oh please)

6. Were you delighted to see Dougal Stevenson reading the news again yesterday morning?

7. Did you bother hanging around for the Michelin man at 8:30?

8. Who will you vote for in the February Wentworth by-election? (opps, did I say that?)

9. Are you surprised at the 56,000 'poms' who migrated to Australia last year?

10. Are you sneering at the 20,000 Aussies who returned home? ("ha! knew ya couldn't make it in England ya wuss..")

My Thoughts...

1. Daniel Finklestein has written a bizarre piece in The Times about a hung Parliament and the possibility of the Queen choosing the British Prime Minister.

This problem is quite easy to avoid - the Conservatives can have a slogan "Only A Vote For The Conservatives Can Change The Government" and constantly hammer away at this theme, especially when debating Nick Clegg; reminding Lib Dem voters that they will get Brown unless they vote Tory.
Apart from this article getting into absurdities I doubt very much the Lib Dems would have failed to learn the lesson of 1924 when they did something similar and were hammered on election day

2. Andrew Veniamin's driver has been jailed for life 20 years.
Those of us who watched and enjoyed 'Underbelly' will recall 'Benji' and his underworld killing spree and this jailing relates to the murder of Victor Pierce in 2002.

Hard to believe this saga is still continuing...

3. The NZ Herald reports the Emissions Trading Scam has been passed by the NZ Parliament with the National party betraying their supporters, selling future wealth down the toilet and enriching the Maoris.

Only Mr Goff and the Labour party have acted honourably by pointing out the racist aspects of this scam.
The ACT party only opposed it because their polling showed it unpopular amongst their target demographics - so more deceitfulness from them!

4. ..and from our "we should have listened and bought products made by normal people" file, the New York Times reports Toyota, the Oriental automaker, is recalling 4 million vehicles with faulty accelerators.

You only have to look at the milk power scandal in China, or the Mattel toy scandal (et al) to twig that cheap and nasty is not always best and certain types of chaps have certain stereotypes for a very good reason.

Home For The Holidays

The Federal Parliament rises this week for a long summer break which sees MHR's and Senators trousering vast salaries whilst sunning themselves on beaches and cooking sausages on barbeques until February.

Nice work if you can get it!

Comparing the situation in Australia with other Parliaments around the World we see the following:

NZ Parliament - sits until December 22nd; returns early February (a six week break)
UK Parliament - Sits until December 16th; returns January 5th (less than three week break)
US Congress - Sits until November 30th; returns January 3rd (five weeks)

One would think the Australian politicians would feel a bit embarrassed about their distinct lack of work for around 1/4 of the year - but no; they feel 'entitled' to the long summer holiday and heaven forbid they may miss something important at the beach.

Very slack

Kevin 11

Prime Minister of Australia Robert Menendez/Kevin Rudd must be viewing the Liberal party civil war with a great sense of elation as it guarantees his re-election next year.

Whatever chance there was for a change of government (and it was always fairly remote) has now gone. Anyone watching the vicious, nasty and very, very public Liberal party behaviour of the last 30 hours must be scratching their heads as to how this group of turkeys was governing the Country for almost 12 years.

As I write this the Andrews/Turnbull leadership contest has been decided 48 - 35 (not to go ahead with a vote) but after recent events the Leadership it is not worth much and the Liberals holding the dozen most marginal seats would be very, very lucky to hang on were an election held this Saturday.

Winners And Losers

WINNERS:



1. Jodee Rich; after 8 years he has finally emerged from the One.tel debacle as the undisputed (except by James Packer) winner.

Whatever the 'moral' position the fact is he has been found not to have done anything illegal or contrary to his obligations as a Company Director.



2. Nathan Rees; he got rid of Tripodi and can now continue as the temporary Premier



3. Kevin Rudd/Robert Menendez; it seems Turnbull is once again in deep trouble with his colleagues and becoming even more unelectable by the day



4. Frogland; seemingly blind referees are quite 'handy'



5. Digital TV; that halfwit Conroy has said there is no need for local content

LOSERS:

1. Malcolm Turnbull; [see number 3 above] his foot stamping threat to sack rebels makes him look weak and his party a joke

2. Eire; they were robbed by cheating from the Frogland chaps

3. Australian TV viewers; Stephen Conroy says Digital TV does not require local content; time to serve up an endless diet of American rubbish chaps!

4. Twitter venture capitalists; these prize bunnies have valued a business turning over $4 million per year at $1 billion! hahahahahahaha!!

5. Woodside Petroleum; ....*SIGH* .. you fellows really are hopeless; now it seems Pluto is hit by cost overruns (as if no one could see that coming).
Oh how I long for those glorious days of February 2008 - buying the shares for $12 and watching it ride to $41 (before anyone woke up as to how incompetent you chaps were)

Hypocrite Writ Large

The NZ Herald reports Sir Roger Douglas has released an 'alternative budget'.

He proposes a number of measures -

1. Massive tax cuts
2. Greater choice in education
3. Massive spending cuts
4. Privatisation of many health services
5. Encouraging businessmen who are foreigners to enter and live in NZ with greater ease

However talk is cheap, as the saying goes; what is important are actions and Sir Roger has willingly voted for the following in the last year he has been an MP -

1. Massive spending increases
2. Massive tax increases
3. No privatisation
4. Spending on a socialist education system
5. Spending on a socialist health system
6. etc
7. (you get the general idea)

This means that Douglas is either -

1. A hypocrite (YES!!!)
2. A fool (perhaps he voted the wrong way in Parliament)
3. Unprincipled (YES!!!) by voting for things he does not believe in
4. A liar (YES!!)
5. All of the above

The ACT party game plan is along the lines of "oh well, we are in Government and that is better than opposition; we have to grit our teeth at times"

My view on that is that the Maori Party (who appear to be dictating ALL policy matters at the moment) are uncompromising on all their key policies and principles; are implementing all their policies and principles; will refuse to support a single ACT measure but ACT votes for all their stuff without question.

The day any ACT MP quits the Government and genuinely starts advocating such policies as those contained within the alternative budget is the day I give them credit.
Until then they are just a bunch of liars and cheats who have betrayed every person who ever voted for them.

Thoughts For The Day

1. Jodee Rich must be laughing his head off at the thought of James Packer threatening to prove 'the true financial position' of One.Tel; to utter astonishment ASIC lost its Court battle against Rich and goodness knows how Packer could do any better.

2. Anthony Sherna should receive the death penalty for being such a wimpy girly man; had he been a man and dished out a good and well deserved flogging circa. 1990 all would have been well.

3. Bye Bye Blair (hopefully for good this time!)

4. Fingers crossed for Jeff Bridges; he has been nominated for an Oscar several times and always (inexplicably) missed out; hopefully this time!

The Joke Is On You, Dickhead...

In recent times there has been a lot of handwringing and comment about my good self and the Libertarianz.

Much of this has been highly amusing to read and provided first class entertainment for me and my chums; now, however, I think it is time for a small confession...

I have been living in Sydney since February.

A number of things have evidently not occurred to various people - my prolonged absences, my declining of invitations to social events, my endless Australian posts on this blog etc.

In February my boredom with the ignorance and small minds and shallowness of NZ finally got to the point where 'enough was enough' and I decided to take advantage of the property crash in Mosman, obtaining a lovely residence for 2/3rds of its value 18 months earlier hahahahahaha!! (gotta love a financial crisis, don't you?)

I have, however, been (sort of) 'housesitting' for a couple of people in Auckland who went abroad for a few months in June. This involves me popping across the Tasman every third Saturday for a few days to open windows and get a chap in to mow the lawns and take care of some business in NZ; often this has coincided with such things as 'blogger's drinkies' and quiz nights.

But essentially I have been Sydney based since February 20th and the reason I have not mentioned it is because I do not like to inform people of what I am doing, and have learnt lessons in the past about letting 'fair weather' friends in on my activities; I find it better to say nothing.

My involvement in the Libertarianz since election day 2008 has consisted of:

1. A couple of Saturdays leading up to the Mt Albert by-election helping out (as I was still renting a house in the electorate and registered to vote there)

2. Attending a couple of 'morning tea' meetings totalling around 4 1/2 hours (and my attendence on each of those occasions was simply to make up numbers as it would be embarrassing for only 2 or 3 attendees to be there)

Hardly what anyone would consider 'activism'.

I have done nothing more than this, have not donated any money to the Libz (as a previous offer of money was greeted with refusals; and a shrug of the shoulders by me), and do not actually consider myself a member (due to a lack of any financial contributions since September 2007 which the law requires for membership of a party).

So those who are moaning and whingeing about my blog or my membership and activism of the Libz all I can say is: I am not.

This carry on is both amusing in its 'off base-ism' (due to my good self being 2000 miles away) and confirmation that some people are just idiots and troublemakers (I say red is red, they would swear it was blue simply because I said it - you know the sort of babyish people I mean)

So yes, I am enjoying the delights of the lucky country, its lifestyle, its delights, its profitmaking opportunities.... and, notwithstanding my three weekly visits to NZ, not missing anything.

The joke is on you, dickhead!

Thoughts For The Day

1. Who would have thought the Manly ferry would be so violent?

2. When will Nathan Rees 'cleanse' his government of himself?

3. The apology to former British migrant children was long overdue and a generous (albeit rather late) gesture. Well done Kevin Rudd/Robert Menendez

4. Farewell to Edward Woodward; his Equalizer programme was always splendid!

5. Are the fires out west making you nervous?

Rip Him To Pieces

There has been a lot of violin playing lately about one of the most unnecessary aspects of our justice system - the 'Victim Impact Report'.

This is when people with a minor cut on their finger inform the Judge they were brutalised, beaten, had their life destroyed and he should sentence the offender to a very long term of imprisonment.

These statements are highly exaggerated and a medieval attempt to extract revenge.

If the chaps making the statements had their way the offender would be ripped to pieces in full public view to teach him a lesson; this is their idea of 'justice'.

As I have blogged before these people do not view the 'right to life' as applying to absolutely everybody, the way I do, nor do they see the sentencing of the offender (whatever that sentence may be) as 'Justice'.

They want revenge.

It is for these reasons - revenge, exaggeration, medieval behaviour - that victim impact statements should be done away with altogether.

'Get over it' is what I say to these so called 'victims'.

I am an extremely strong person with an enormous ego instilled from an early age that I was 'born to rule'; as such some criminal type is hardly going to 'break' me, is hardly going to ruin my life or upset my balance or anything of that nature.
Therefore I find it the ulimate in feebleness that others allow such things to happen; they should grow some balls and accept that occasionally life hits a bump or two.

To cry and whinge and moan in a courtroom like a baby just seems so unthinkable to me yet the numbers engaging in this sort of carryon are, apparently, quite vast.

Wimps the lot of them.

Winners And Losers

Winners:

1. Phil Goff - Hone has given him some credibility
2. Millie Holmes/Elder - The serious charges are dropped
3. Companies involved in cycleway building - they can suck on an unnecessary waste of money
4. Hanover Directors - you conned them again

Losers:

1. Hone
2. Rodney
3. John - he seems weak
4. Joris - double standards
5. Hanover creditors - you chaps swallowed it whole

Tuesday Musings

1. Oil rising $2 per barrel, and when you have traded several thousand barrels, certainly makes getting up at 3:00am worthwhile! hahahaha!!

2. The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story about Amanda Vanstone (remember her?) giving a visa to a Mafioso.
I have often been critical of the Liberal party and their bagmen - trousering donations from anybody in return for favours without a shred of conscience or decency, and this is the proof of the pudding.

Let's just turn "Underbelly" into a reality TV show.

Just shocking!

3. Question of the day: Can Ambassador Amanda claim Diplomatic Immunity to avoid a lengthy prison sentence?

4. It seems I am in the wrong business...

A $1 million rort to promote the Broadband internet plan and Digital television, consisting of a couple of boring seminars and two guest speakers nobody has heard of, netted the organising company $381,000. Not bad for a day's pay.

Those chaps at Event Planet certainly are onto a winner and perhaps I should get into this "Organising Events No One Attends Or Cares About Whilst Trousering Vast Sums Of Taxpayer Money For Myself" business as it seems highly lucrative.

5. Unlike everybody else I am not going to bother commenting on the St Paul's College business.

Melbourne On A Monday Morning

Some stories in The Age this morning.

1. Joe Hockey gets all touchy feely with Muslims wondering why people make a fuss about the Burkha; seems Joe is serious about taking over next year after they lose the election and wants to appear all jolly hockeysticks/man of all the people.

(Ironically his speech criticises 'fakes and phonies' in politics hahahahaha!!!)

2. More about these chappies from Ceylon; I cannot see the problem with letting them enter Australia (although goodness knows why they left Ceylon as it is such a lovely country)

3. Ted talks trains with an ambitious pledge to have a guard on every train after 6pm.

I suppose if I was about to enter my 'second' decade in opposition with no end in sight I would start advocating ambitious, expensive and somewhat illogical policies, too.

4. An interview with Richard Branson where he says Australia is a great place for a holiday.

Free Markets And Fun

A few months ago I had lent an associate of mine some money and yesterday, after pressing him yet again for payment, he came to a solution.

He offered me a car load of children's books in settlement.

Needless to say I am not the greatest reader of children's books (even as a child I preferred history books, novels and Ayn Rand) but he then suggested I sell them at Avondale Markets to generate the cash.

After an indepth discussion on the matter I eventually agreed, although it did involve cancelling my Saturday night plans (sorry Maria, Peter et al but business is business).

This morning I was up betimes and made my way to the Avondale Markets with some sense of trepidation as my dealings with working class people en masse having been confined to only three or four previous occasions and two of them were when I was unfortunately and temporarily detained in...ummmmm...(nevermind).

Arriving just after 6am I was directed to an area to set up a stall and with a freezing cold wind, insufficient sleep and no great enthusiasm for the endeavour I was not in the best of moods.

Imagine my utter astonishment to find out the market for children's books is not only substantial but that many chaps cannot get enough of them! people were lining up to look through my selection and thrust $5 and $10 notes at me, which firmly ended my views of working class people being poor! ha ha!

The only bizarre incident (note to self: stop thinking in stereotypes) was when a Muslim family fought off a Samoan family for the entire set of Harry Potter novels (cannot say I had heard of this chap Potter prior to yesterday but he certainly seems a popular author) and the Father chappie then opened a backpack - an act which I greeted with absolute horror, turning white, my heart racing as I genuinely worried it would be full of explosives (well, gosh! you do hear stories about these fellows don't you?).
Fortunately, as it transpired, his wallet was in the backpack (phew!) and he willingly handed over a $50 note which was gratefully accepted.

Having sold the entire car load of books and trousering (quite literally as I thought this would be such a wasted exercise I did not have a wallet or money container with me) a sum well into four figures by 9:30am I took a wander around the market.

What surprised me was most of the other stall holders were middle eastern, chinamen, negroes and various other immigrant types with only my good self and a couple of other chappies being white folk.
It seems these chaps know the value of free markets and a work ethic; as the New Zealanders were sleeping off last nights 16 jugs of Lion Red these fellows were busy working and earning a quid; as the New Zealanders will be speeddialing Radio Live to complain about insufficient funds these chaps will have readies in their pockets; as the New Zealanders continue their 30 years of decline these fellows will make something of themselves.

As I am a great proponent of immigration this is an example of the sorts of solid, hardworking, enterprising chaps we need in this Country and the more of them here the better.

Obviously I view working class people, middle eastern types, chinamen, negroes and similar sorts of fellows as not being the sorts of people I would ever dream of 'inviting to dinner' but I say jolly good luck to them!

A highly entertaining and enjoyable experience in freemarket capitalism which was most worthwhile.

Kevin Goes Mad

Clearly with an eye on preferences from Green voters for an election due in a year's time Australian PM Kevin Rudd/Robert Menendez has launched an hysterical attack on global warming sceptics.

It seems numerous other World leaders have realised their folly and dropped proposals to return their economies to the fifteenth century and this angers Kevin/Robert.

He described them as 'holding the World to ransom' for not swallowing whole a lot of marxist idiocy and you can read all about it here in the Sydney Morning Herald...

Newspaper Headlines You Will Never Read...

1. Wellington Prostitute Shortage Sparks Surge In International Travel

2. Farrar Arrives In Bangkok

3. Harawira Shot Resisting Arrest

4. OAS Constable Awarded Police Service Medal

5. Hide Apologises To Constituents

6. Prime Minister Goff Bans MPs From Overseas Travel At Taxpayer Expense

7. Rhodes Scholarship Awarded To Maori Student

Most Effective

For the last year I have been alone amongst libertarians in my criticism of the ACT party in Government; others have preferred to take the pathetic second hander view of either silence or "at least they are in Government" line whilst presumably cringeing privately at what has been going on.

Imagine my delight at Rodney Hide's comments about John Key.

It shows how effective I am with my constant pointing out what poofy girly-men the ACT chaps are by selling out on every single thing, always without a fight, and being humiliated a couple of dozen times by being 'told' to support Maori Party policies yet getting nothing in return.

Add to this tax increases ACT vote for, spending increases ACT vote for, abolition of freedom ACT vote for and it has clearly been a failed and frustrating twelve months for them.

It seems that is starting to boil over and about time, too.

What these chaps fail to realise is that if they resigned from Government, returned to their principles and policies circa. 1996 their support would greatly increase - along with their influence.
By selling their souls for Ministerial office (and finding it is not all it is cracked up to be) they also sell out their ability to influence.

No one should forget there are 250,000 libertarian/free market electors out there - enough for 12 - 15 MPs, and all of them are frustrated with the current government and a seeming lack of voice for their concerns (apart from the Libertarianz).

Rich pickings for anyone prepared to offer such a voice and alternative.

Curious

Here is something curious for you to ponder...

Have you noticed how US Senator Robert Menendez and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd are never seen together? Could it be they are the same person?

I am starting to wonder having seen Menendez on The Daily Show last night; he has the same awkward hand movements as Kevin Rudd, the same bizarre laugh as Kevin Rudd, the same goofy smile and 1950s haircut as Kevin Rudd.

Spooky possums....

Wednesday Thoughts...

1. When a tax review group has a brief to make any changes 'Revenue Neutral', in other words the total amount of tax collected must not fall, that means the ACT/National government is not cutting taxes - and never will.

2. Feel you have had a right royal rogering? (see point 1)

3. You saw the Libertarianz party on your ballotpaper and thought you were so clever in ignoring it so no complaining now... *wink*

4. Jon Corzine to be re-elected? (voting does not stop for 5 hours as I write this)

5. Hilarious situation in Bongo-Bongoland as Simon Mann gets a pardon; seems donations to the President's favourite charity are most welcome...

So You Want To Be An MP?

So you want to be an MP?

The question is how to go about it and here are some suggestions of what I would do;

1. I would sit down and write the 20 reasons why I am a Libertarian, putting into words the various instincts and opinions I hold dearly.

2. I would write down the 20 reasons why I should be the MP for a particular electorate and the 20 reasons why the good folk living there should vote for me.

[Unless you are able to do these things there is probably no point continuing.]

3. I would get a copy of the 'Habitation Index' for the electorate; this lists each elector and their address street by street, house by house. Then I would cross reference the Habitation index with a map of the electorate to ascertain the number of 'dwellings' in each street and the total for the electorate.

4. I would divide the electorate up into 'neighbourhoods' of 1000 dwellings, starting at one corner of the electorate and when I had covered the required number of streets for 1000 dwellings that would be one neighbourhood; another 1000 a second and so on.

5. Having done this (and there is likely to be a total of 20 neighbourhoods in the electorate) I would seek out 20 'Neighbourhood Co-ordinators' - one responsible for each neighbourhood.

6. I would then compile a demographic profile of each neighbourhood, finding out who people are by occupation and likely income. This would enable me to target specific types of electors very easily and efficiently (e.g all businessmen about economic issues, all Doctors about health issues etc)

7. I would then get to work next year covering each neighbourhood; this would be done by doorknocking, introducing myself as the candidate, and inviting people to afternoon teas which I would organise preferably in every street at a supporters house.

8. When holding an afternoon tea I would give a short talk about the three lists of 20 reasons mentioned above and ask for assistance and support. The intention being to locate possible supporters, recruit new chums to join the campaign and raise my profile.

9. I would start asking people what issues are of interest to them and why; this would be in contrast to simply telling people what I think should interest them and how silly they are for not thinking as I do.

These are some of the things I would do if I was setting out on an election campaign; especially as time would be on my side (starting two years early) and there are a large pool of electors frustrated with no change since the last election seeking a principled and effective voice to vote for.

It involves a lot of work, a lot of time and much of it quite tedious; but this is how successful election campaigns are put together.

Or you could do none of these things, build no organisation, recruit no new supporters, meet no new electors, just talk "at" people ineffectively and simply file nomination papers four weeks before the next election and wonder why only 50 votes were received.

Monday Morning Musing

1. A chap in GQ Magazine describes Ayn Rand's heroes as being loons suffering from Aspergers; why am I inclined to agree with him?

2. Are you amused the ACT people are saying "I have moved on" regarding the Rodney Hide expenses scandal? (amused in the sense that used to be Helen Clark's line when caught out! HAHAHAHAHA!!!)

3. Has NSW Premier Nathan Rees finally gone mad? (he is now openly bugging offices, emails and telephones of his Cabinet Ministers)

4. Are you curious as to what is on John Della Bosca's hard drive?

5. Is the National Party really going to repeal the Foreshore and Seabed legislation as an example of 'one law for all'?

Life Means Life?

A lot of libertarians in New Zealand are enamoured with the pathetic group known as the 'Sensible Sentencing Trust'; this foolishness is somehow rationalised along the lines of being in the category of non initiation of force but I wonder about the category of having a right to life.

Virtually all the SST chaps and their supporters do not - most certainly do not, believe that everybody in New Zealand has a right to life.

Their view is that some people (usually defined by them to mean people they dislike) should happily be executed without a second thought (or trial) and let's not worry too much about red herrings of the 'innocent until proven guilty', 'due process', 'no evidence of any wrongdoing', 'freedom to live your life as you see fit' or 'mind your own business' variety.

Mr McVicar and his cohorts comprising this quasi-Nazi organisation which seeks to purify New Zealand by eliminating people who just "look" like a**holes would not mind in the least if everyone who was a bit different was also a bit...ummmmm...'absent'. Permanently.

A good example of this are the recent comments by Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws about sterilising the underclass to save money. The blog World has seen a deluge of supportive comments and usually by the supporters of the SST.

The only thing preventing unspeakable violations of vast numbers of people is a thin line of decency and this also goes for the mass murder of many within our Nation.

How on Earth anyone calling themselves a libertarian can continue to support these sorts of chaps is beyond me.

Saturday Questions

1. What will Rodney do when his girlfriend gets a new oculist?

2. Will the gangsters in the National party be for the highjump from their new anti-crime legislation?

3. Would you happily be the 'Fonterra Fall Guy' for only $2.7 million?

4. One year on are you, too, waiting for Phil Goff to suggest once - just once - he may be a future Prime Minister and voting Labour may have some sort of relevance?

5. One year on do you think Obama's numbers give Phil Goff some hope that all is not lost? (if it can happen there it can happen here)

6. Would you fly from Sydney to Invercargill? hmmmmmm

Investing In Shares

Strange as it may seem I am not a great fan of investing in shares for the long term.

I find the idea of purchasing a parcel of shares today and holding onto them for years on end with the hope of making a large capital gain to be bizarre and naive; what is even more bizarre is how widespread the activity actually is.

My company is a trader of shares, and finds it a very enjoyable and lucrative undertaking, but the reason for the success is because of the power of leverage together with a firm view on when to sell; getting sentimental about shares is foolish and a guaranteed way to lose money.

Many people this year (as I predicted) have been buying shares around the World due to their cheapness and would be well advised to cash in their chips and seek alternative uses for the windfalls which have been made.

The reason for this is simple -

As an exercise I selected at random 8 Australian companies and 8 British companies back in March, a week or so prior to the start of the eight month rally... (yes, yes I even precisely predicted the start of that! HAHAHAHAHA!) ...and I saw my investment double by July and double twice more in the last four months; for every $1 invested I have made $8 in profit.

Splendid, you may say, but you would be wrong; of those sixteen companies I had only heard of two of them (one because they used to advertise in my magazine, and the other because I was smoking one of their products at the time).

What kind of a market is it when despite the worst recession since the 1930s, a 'global financial crisis' taking place you can pull 16 names out of a hat and turn every dollar into nine?

If markets really worked that way, if it was that easy to make profits then everybody would be doing it and there would be no recession and no financial crisis (if you know what I mean!)

So I recommend the sharemarket for 'trading' of shares but caution against long term investing because of what I suspect is a fools paradise taking place at the moment; in other words the intrinsic profits have already been made (by chaps like me) and considering the piss poor levels of economic growth and productive investment taking place you are hardly likely to see a repeat performance in the next eight months.

Thought For The Day

One of my favourite films is 'The Usual Suspects'; there is a splendid line in it which goes "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making the whole world believe he didn't exist"

..and that is oh so true! ha ha!

After some interesting experiences in the last four or five years (my hilarious study in gullibility); I have a [vaguely] paraphrased line of my own...

"the futures trader became incredibly rich and successful by making everyone believe he lost all the money.."

*wink*

Questions Of The Day

1. Paula Bennett has one of the largest electorates in the Country; why therefore is her electorate office 9 metres outside of it? (150 sq miles and she couldn't find anywhere inside it for an office?!?!?!)

2. Why is Bill English getting away with a party political broadcast?

3. Will it be as successful as his previous ones in 2002?

4. Did anyone else call the ASX200 futures accurately today?

5. Are you as delighted as me at the Treasury forecasts for NZ circa. 2050?

6. Once the smoking ban is in place will the Western Bay of Plenty Council set up gas chambers? (seems an even more perfect way to keep people in line)

7. Isn't it true you are simply jealous 700 people will not swear loyalty to you? (go on, admit it)

$250 Million Per Week

The headline in the NZ Herald this morning, referring to Government borrowing from now on, says it all; the photograph on the front page of a group of children (in an unrelated story) also says it all as they will be spending their entire lives paying the interest.

One of the reasons I will never, ever vote for the National party or give them the time of day was because of the criminal debts and abuses of power of the Muldoon era; add to that the hypocrisy of large numbers of National MPs in opposition between 1984 and 1990; the hypocritical credit they took for prosperity in the 1990s and you can see why anyone with any principles would never dream of supporting this band of dishonest brigands.

We are now in a situation where they are back to their old Muldoonist tricks, proving a point I have been making to myself for over quarter of a century and I feel strangely vindicated.

As with the Muldoon era (and I include constant deficits between 1967 and 1972 which Muldoon also ran up) not a single dollar of the borrowed money is necessary.

By that I mean you could easily cut Government spending by $13 billion 'by lunchtime', balance the budget, and do so without a single person in New Zealand noticing a cut in their entitlements (assuming you believed they were entitled to anything from the State) or reduction in important Government services (assuming you believed such things were necessary).

In other words every dollar of the $13 billion is wasted.

It is either being used to bribe electors with other people's money, being wasted on infrastructure projects which private business should be doing, being wasted on the Defence force sticking its beak into parts of the World it should not, and numerous other Government programmes which have no importance or need.

Not a single dollar of the $13 billion is being used to, for example, prevent destitution, hunger, poverty, pay pensions, pay for heart operations, run schools or anything else which may affect day to day life.
All of those things could still be done, quite easily in fact, without borrowing a cent and with a balanced budget.

Questions Of The Day

1. Did you watch Bob Harvey's incoherent and bizarre behaviour on television yesterday?

2. Were you half expecting him to blame the CIA (they murdered Norman Kirk, afterall) for Aisling's death?

3. Will John Key be copying Sarkozy and appointing his son to run a major enterprise? (ACC springs to mind)

4. Heidi Klum and 'Seal' have announced the birth of their baby girl; do you care? had you heard of either of them prior to reading the NZ Herald this morning?

5. Is Melissa Lee's theft of taxpayer money a surprise considering she is a foreigner and National MP?

6. Will she be appointed Deputy Prime Minister soon? (following the tradition of another National MP thief 30 years ago)

7. Aren't you impressed at the high ethical standards of Mr Justice Rhys Harrison for recusing himself from the tax case involving Westpac when they started using arguments he himself used 15 years ago in a similar case? ...oh! ..hang on...

8. Guess who (*ahem*) predicted the collapse of the Petherick property empire 3 1/2 years ago?

Scanning The Headlines

Comments on some of the stories on the NZ Herald website...

1. Clayton Weatherston is going to appeal his conviction and length of sentence; that odd fellow certain does himself no favours.

2. John Key rules out a 'flat tax'; this means that some of us will rule out 'productive investment' in New Zealand preferring jurisdictions which are business and tax friendly.

3. A strange story about the "Young Divorcees" is in the Herald; the writer of the story interviews people who come up with various reasons for short marriages except the most obvious one - that they are too shallow and selfish for any relationship to work for more than a few months.

4. Diagnostic Medlab is being given work again by the Auckland District Health Board. The reason for no flat tax is because rich people are required to pay for this massive cockup.

5. Jacob Oram retires from test cricket. I am sorry to see his departure as he performed rather well and can feel proud of himself.

6. Bill English says there is no problem borrowing $40 billion. What a disgrace; mortgaging the country to waste money on whiskey and whores.

7. 'Cutbacks' at ACC will be announced tomorrow. Presumably those cutbacks do not include cuts to the $300,000 salaries paid to staff.

Leap Of Faith

The good folk of the American state of New Jersey elect a Governor in three weeks time and the contest is the most interesting in years.

On one side you have the incumbent Governor Jon Corzine who is deeply unpopular having cocked up virtually everything he has touched in the last four years.

On the other side you have the Republican candidate Chris Christie who was well ahead in opinion polling despite having no policies because he was not Corzine.

The third candidate is a chap Christopher Daggett, an independent who is campaigning on a massive tax cut policy and is highly critical of the other two for offering nothing of substance.

Interestingly Christie's "I am not Jon Corzine" campaign has flopped rather badly as New Jersey electors are not as gullible and stupid as New Zealand electors because they prefer a candidate to have some policies and actually stand for something.

Daggett has gained a great deal of traction pointing this out and is asking New Jersey people to take a leap of faith and elect him so they can have tax cuts and a resulting reduction in the size of the State and local government.
Recent polling shows Daggett in double figures and with both of his opponents having extremely high unfavourability ratings.

I, for one, hope that Daggett pulls it off; I hope that people are not going to let themselves be taken for granted by the Republican "I am not Jon Corzine" candidate; I hope people will vote for tax reductions and limited government.

We shall wait and see...

Sad News

Like everyone else I wish to say how sad it is the young gal Aisling Symes has been found expired in a drain.

The news came through last night and closes a very worrying week for the family.

They have my deepest sympathies at this tragic time.

Around The Blogs

1. Peter Cresswell on pc.blogspot.com wonders if the media are starting to realise global warming is nonsense.

2. Whaleoil discusses the continuing problems of labtests in Auckland; something which really should be sorted out smartly, in my opinion.

3. David Farrar at Kiwiblog seems to have had a nice weekend on Great Barrier Island; always nice when chaps from the South experience the delights of 'Civilisation'.

4. Shane Pleasance discusses a new libertarian minded political party in America.

5. Lindsay Mitchell points out the unemployment statistics are not all they appear at first glance.

In The Beginning...

...there was Gary Hart.

He realised America had changed away from an urban/ethnic Country into a more suburban and middle class one.
He proposed various policies to this end such as reducing the influence of special interest groups, fiscal responsibility, an increase in personal freedoms, sensible defence policies and a positive view of the future.

He was going well until brought down in a non-event sex scandal despite his own personal (and correct) view that the general public simply were not interested in that sort of thing.

Next came Michael Dukakis.

He wanted to make Government more effective and responsive to the needs of the general public and was blindsided by nonsense.
This nonsense consisted of prison furloughs, pollution in Boston harbour, the Pledge of Allegieance and other trivia.

He, too, doubted the general public cared particularly much about nonsense, hence his decision to ignore the nonsense.

After him came Bill Clinton.

Sex and other scandals quickly followed and Clinton would openly say no one cared much about 'trash' but were more concerned with bread and butter issues in their day to day life.

He survived. Just.

Al Gore came next. Enough said.

John Kerry followed, and if John Kerry could not see the 'Swift Boat' saga coming (something I had predicted in May 2004 would happen) he was too naive and stupid to be President.

Next came Barack Obama.

He advocated various policies such as health care reform, a stimulus package, deficit reduction over time, reducing the value of the US dollar to stimulate productive investment and manufacturing in America and a few other things which are happening as we speak.

Obama, too, has the opinion that the general public are simply not interested in nonsense (his birth certificate, the idea he is racist towards white people, 'death panels', claims he is a Muslim etc...etc) but would rather focus on bread and butter issues in their day to day life.

What angers President Obama's highly organised, loudmouthed critics is his ignoring of them; his ability to dismiss them with a raising of an eyebrow and quizzical smile as if to say "oh dear, the children are misbehaving again. Bless 'em" whilst moving onwards with this agenda.

What angers President Obama's highly organised, loudmouthed critics is that unlike what they did to Dukakis, Kerry and Clinton they are gaining little traction with Obama; they are becoming confined to what I call the 'hillbilly' demographic - and they know it.

The 'thinking Conservatives' - the people who identified with Bob Dole, George H. W Bush, and gave Ronald Reagan 49 states are, like myself, appalled at the Glen Becks and Sarah Palins of the World.

Despite all the noise, and a few polling numbers during the 'silly season' of August, it seems the bubble is bursting as there are only so many times you can yell and scream hysterically before 'normal' people realise you actually have nothing to say.

President Obama knows this and an example would be the 'gays in the military' decision [today]. Clinton had to compromise and fudge whereas Obama simply says "I am the President, I am Commander in Chief, this is an order and you chaps have to jolly well follow it. Any questions?"

Obama will survive and grow stronger because he ignores critics and just gets on with it; Obama will survive and grow stronger because the alternative is Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Sarah Palin and not Reagan or Goldwater.

One other reason Obama will survive and grow stronger is because the knee cappers have 'over-egged the pudding' in the last couple of decades; everyone realises what a confidence trick they always play which results in wars, deficits, enrichment of their friends, division and hate - not exactly 'family values'.

As I, too, have always thought the average chap in the street is just not interested in nonsense - who slept with whom, who did what when with the thing way back yonder; it does not pay the gas bill, buy the groceries, put petrol in the car and therefore of little importance.

Equal Opportunity vs Equality vs Elitism

There is a great misunderstanding about elitism and who comprises an elite.

Whenever the term is mentioned it leads to all sorts of predictable handwringing, (widows and orphans cast into the snow by the local Squire), howls of protest, shrieks that something evil has been suggested and all the other nonsense you expect.

...and this from so called 'libertarians' who should know better; I shudder to think of the reaction from left wingers! ha ha!

One of the major components of the misunderstanding is around the concept of 'equal opportunity', and people confusing that with equality.

Equal opportunity should mean that everybody has a chance to (for instance) be educated, pass examinations, to to University and then onto some profession; they should not be denied this opportunity because their parents are poor people, their parents are rich people, or their skin colour, or their religion, their belief in witchcraft, socialism, libertarianism, they live in Remuera, the live in Otara or anything else.

Using the University example, it is my view that each University should only have around 1500 undergraduates per year; that entry should be based on a difficult entrance examination and only those receiving a certain percentage in that examination (90% or above, preferably) will be offered a place.

This automatically, and by definition, means that University education becomes 'elitist' overnight.

Contrast this with the current situation, which is more a case of 'equality' than 'equal opportunity', whereby virtually everybody who applies is admitted (despite half of them being effectively illiterate and moronic), and where everybody is handed a degree at the end of it in order for the Government of the day to announce a rising percentage of University graduates in New Zealand and aren't we all a lot of clever chaps.

It would be of much greater value for there to be fewer university graduates in New Zealand; fewer degrees handed out and those that are would be for useful things; the cost of attending University could be free and a focus shifted to learning rather than drunkeness, politics and mischief making.

What is wrong with saying "University is restricted to a merit based elite"?

What is wrong with saying "You blew it, tough titties" to the vast number of teenagers who wasted time in school text messaging and posting messages on Bebo.com?

Similarly in other areas of day to day life I am a great advocate of elitism -

Successful businessmen comprise an elite, and rightly so.

Successful sportsmen comprise an elite, and rightly so.

..and I could go on and on with other examples, but I am sure you get the general idea.

It is very sad, therefore, when people criticise an advocacy of elitism because they are too ignorant to understand the difference between 'equal opportunity' and 'equality'; fail to understand when something (a BA degree, gold medal, business success due to protectionism and subsidies, Awards for this, Awards for that) is handed out with the rations (so to speak) it is socialism by the backdoor; fail to understand that when something is achieved on merit and is finite it means only an 'elite' have been successful (duh!).

What is sadder still are those who do understand the difference but prefer to nod sagely at the critics to prevent them from moaning; perhaps that is reminicent of how New Zealand has dumbed down to what it is today.

Unfortunately we live in a Country where there is an unfortunate egalitarianism and attempts at 'equality'; where for someone to say "that doesn't happen to people like us" is greeted with politicians saying "oh yes it should!" followed by a flurry of legislating which results in "that" happening to everybody as a matter of course.

I believe life should comprise winners and losers; I believe that when someone says "that doesn't happen to people like us" the correct response should be "no it jolly well does not because you are too lazy and thick".

Much better in the long run if everyone has an equal opportunity but when opportunities are passed over or blown those who fail learn to shrug their shoulders and remember their 'place' in the scheme of things.

Weekend Questions

1. Edward Rutherfurd has written the novels London, Dublin, New York; will he eventually get through enough cities in the World he writes a novel called 'Timaru'?

2. Are you expecting Winston Peters to succeed in his comeback?

3. Isn't it a delight to see so many Property Developers going bankrupt?

4. Did President Obama winning the 'Nobel Peace Prize' shock you as much as it did him?

5. Do you find it strange that 'No New Taxes' only applies when in opposition but when in Government you spend your time rationalising the need for them?

6. Are you disappointed Tom Delay broke his foot and had to drop out of the US "Dancing With The Stars"? ...(I am, actually; he was doing so well)

7. Do you think US Senator Michael (the Invisible Man) Bennett should have put Guy Cecil on his payroll considering Cecil's sole function is to get Bennett re-elected?

8. Will you buy Kathmandu shares when they are flogged off next month?

9. Will Hilary Clinton go shopping in Parnell, too, when she is here in January?

10. Do the vast numbers of people losing their jobs and wondering what to do next wish they had followed my advice and been self employed?

Scorecard

It is close enough to the first anniversary of John Key coming to power to stop talking about 'the new Government" and write a scorecard of how they have performed.

Let me ask two questions:

1. Can any National voter think of a single achievement of the National government apart from "they are not Labour"?

2. Can anyone think of any reason to vote National apart from 'they are not Labour'?

Rather a sad situation when hundreds of thousands of people are so bereft of idealism, dignity or self respect they will simply support one fellow because he is not another fellow.

Scorecard:

1. Economy: 1/10

The economy has not grown in the last year so National has failed.

2. Taxation: 2/10

They cut income taxes from 39% to 38%; a cut so small and pathetic it is not worth wasting time on.

Company tax remains at 30% (rather than 22% in Britain or 15% in Hong Kong); a substantial number of indirect taxes remain.

All in all National has failed on the taxation front, especially in view of plans to broaden the tax base and increase taxes.

3. Fiscal Responsibility: -5/10

Here has been the most dismal failure.

After 15 years of budget surpluses National was in government about 5 minutes before government accounts went into the red; not only that but the deficit is at a record amount which even Muldoon never achieved.

The unnecessary spending and borrowing is a crime against New Zealand.

4. Political Correctness: 1/10

The Maori party is in Government and they run the show behind the scenes; the race based policies National was opposed to (remember the Iwi/Kiwi billboards) have been kept and greatly extended.

Normal people still cannot call a spade a spade.

They signed the idiotic global warming agreement nonsense thingy.

5. Personal Freedoms: 1/10

Confiscation of boy racer vehicles, banning of cold and flu tablets, you still cannot cut down a tree on your property, RMA alive and kicking, still red tape when you wish to build a house, ..[etc ..etc for 1001 other matters]

Smoking cigarettes, fornicating, eating hamburgers, taking drugs, getting drunk, swearing, smearing jelly all over yourself and reading Playboy whilst sitting in a deck chair on your front lawn, driving fast, owning a gun, holding a Nazi rally, gay sex, smacking your children....(etc)...still frowned upon.

Total Score: 0/50

Anthony Dryden Marshall Verdict

Marshall was found guilty and a jolly good thing, too!

It has taken a lot of will power not to comment on the trial but now a verdict is in I will happily point out what a disgraceful, despicable fraudster this nasty piece of work was.

He deliberately took advantage of a woman, his own Mother!, when she was aged over 100 by getting her to sign documents when she was not mentally capable of understanding the contents and his sole intention was to enrich himself.

His reasons for doing so was twofold;

1. As a payback for a lifetime of imaginary slights and humiliations he believed he had suffered at her hands; even if that were true he did have numerous decades to go out and make something of himself outside of her shadow and influence.

2. His own mortality; if he had died before his Mother then his evil Wife - Miss South Carolina Trailer Trash 'Charlene'.. (yes, yes, I know...hahahahaha!!!).. would have received nothing and so they hedged their bets that 'Mommy Dearest' may live to 173.

The details of this case were distressing to read and must be one of the worst examples of 'elder abuse' ever; even more remarkable is how even an incredibly rich Woman can be a victim of this sort of thing.

Well done to the Jury in overcoming its 'difficulties' during deliberation and bringing in the correct verdict; the only surprising thing is that it took so long which possibly indicates they questioned the credibility of certain witnesses (who had no reason to lie) and gave a certain weight to Mr Marshall's version of certain events, although this also indicates the Jury was doing what it is supposed to be doing.

I am sure everybody is glad it is finally at a conclusion.

Bits And Pieces..

1. It seems John Key has been reading my blog posts!

On Tuesday I questioned who wore the pants between Key and Sharples and Key has decided that he does; Sharples will slink up to the 9th Floor and explain himself for not informing the Prime Minister about spending $3 million on the Maori Television bid for the Rugby World Cup television rights.

Well done John! ..(Sir Keith was also very good at putting certain types of people in the their place)

2. The Tony Marshall trial is getting more and more farcial with one Juror claiming to have been threatened by another and fearing for their safety; the Judge refused a Defence request for a mistrial; the Jurors are feasting on pizza as they deliberate

...only in New York

3. STATE TENANT 'OWNED TWO PROPERTIES'

...is a headline in the NZ Herald, and, astonishingly the story is not referring to Bill English.

Apparently a moocher extraordinaire named 'Alan Wilkins' was living in a state house whilst having an investment property portfolio.

Wilkins, in court facing fraud charges, is part of a growing number of people seeking to rip off the taxpayers and capitalists in a blatant and disgraceful fashion.

4. Auckland's ungrateful bus drivers are taking industrial action today.

These working class pigs do not realise the vast numbers of unemployed people who wish they had a job and are so ungrateful towards their employer and contemptuous of the customers they want more money.

No doubt a democratic vote ...("loyal union men to the right and the scabs to the left")... was undertaken and the main losers in all of this are those who use public transport to get to work.

The evils of collectivism and trade unions.

5. Isn't the value of the New Zealand dollar just splendid?

The higher it goes the higher our living standards and I was delighted to see its level against the British Pound at the highest in a generation!

For exporters and manufacturers who are whinging and moaning I have only three things to say;
firstly, why are you not better at exporting? and secondly, if the NZ dollar was worth 5 cents and renamed the peso the Manufacturers Federation would still be calling for a devaluation; thirdly, why are you not yourself engaging in currency trading to hedge your own companies future? (duh!)

Some people should stop blaming the exchange rate for their own incompetence as businessmen.

General Debate

I was going to write an indepth post on the US dollar, but have just been distracted by an absolutely YUMMY pair of teenage Jewish legs...so..ummmmmm.....have a 'general debate' in the comments section.

Back tomorrow!

Daily Commentary

1. The Jury is still deliberating in the Anthony Dryden Marshall trial; the Judge told them to stick at it earlier today despite their obvious difficulties in reaching a verdict.

2. Guess who (*ahem*) was able to 'call' the ASX200 Index futures accurately today with an 11am (NZ time) "sell" order at 4650?

3. The Queen and John Brumby met for an entire afternoon at Balmoral yesterday; God knows how the Queen manages to do it - to keep the conversation going for so long when talking to brain damaged idiots! HAHAHAHAHA!

4. Those chaps bidding the NZ dollar to mindboggling highs in the last few hours need to realise it is the Reserve Bank of Australia which is about to raise interest rates, not Reserve Bank of New Zealand...(just a wee word to the wise *wink*)

5. Will John Key ask Pita Sharples' permission when he wants to take a piss this afternoon? ..(Sharples appears to be running the show with regards to everything else)

6. Good on George Osborne for signalling raising the UK pension age to 66. In my opinion pensions should be abolished altogether, but if we have to have them I think not until 75 and then severely means tested.
Poor people who have spent decades wasting money on beer, mushy peas and chips should be taken care of by their children.

7. I wonder how many hits from Kiwiblog.co.nz will result from the 'Six Years' blog post below? (will it beat the 177 on Saturday??) .. handwringing awaits! ha ha ha! *wink*

Six Years

Philip Field, the former MP, has been jailed for six years.

An excellent result as it shows you cannot get away with this sort of thing - corrupt behaviour, and think you can get away with it.

No doubt we will hear the Field defenders engaging in the usual game of claiming racism and conspiracy... *sigh*..but thankfully we had a Judge who saw through that sort of nonsense and handed out an appropriate sentence.

Speaking of appropriate... let this be a lesson to political party selection committees; if you add Field to Melissa Lee, Hone Hariwira (acting as his own bagman), Alamein Kopu and that Tory Sikh chappie you can see what happens when seats in Parliament are given to people not suited to such responsibility.

I long for the days when our Parliament consisted of 'normal' people; rich, white, middle aged men; before Parliament was turned into a multi cultural freak show where foreign wideboys got elected and started ripping everybody off.

Myths On Investing. Pt 1

Today I shall commence a series of articles about investing with particular reference to the various myths which exist and are accepted as axiomatic.

Apart from being wrong these myths, due to their widespread acceptance, result in investors being considerably less rich than they would otherwise be.

Myth Number 1.

"Investor" not "trader".

Every accountant, investment advisor, sharebroker, real estate agent, investing 'how to' book along with your opinionated know-it-all 'Uncle Bill' goes to great lengths imploring everybody to merely be an 'investor' and avoid like the plague being a 'trader'.

This supposed axiom applies to real estate and shares and is swallowed whole by new chums to the game with some capital they wish to protect and grow.

The axiom is wrong and I shall explain why, but firstly shall explain the difference between the two categories -

1. Investor means you are seeking to invest capital for the purposes of obtaining income passively from rent on real estate or dividends from shares.

Although your intention is not to lose money you did not intend to purchase the shares or real estate with the intention of reselling them at a profit, but rather intending for the value of the real estate or shares to increase in value over time.

2. A trader is a chap who used his capital to purchase shares or real estate with the intention of reselling at a profit and who, possibly, views rents and dividends as a secondary consideration (an example may be using the rent money to meet mortgage interest payments until the property is sold, but where the focus is on selling the property)

The reason people are encouraged to be 'investors' and not 'traders' is because New Zealand does not have a capital gains tax and therefore were you to make an investment and at some point in the future sell it at a profit that profit is tax free.

Whip-de-do!

If you take an investor with, say, $100,000 in capital he could do something like this -

He buys a property for $300,000 with a $200,000 mortgage; collects the rent; pays the insurance premiums, rates and the occasional plumber.

A couple of years later he is informed the property is worth, say, $350,000 - a $50,000 capital gain, and decides he is incredibly clever (as middle class people ususally do when they achieve the most elementary of tasks which a monkey could undertake successfully).

Let us look at a 'trader' in the same situation; he has $100,000 also and instead of buying a single property he buys two of them - $600,000 in properties and $500,000 in mortgages.

He then mows the lawns and places them back in the market at, say, $340,000 each and after some haggling manages to flog them off for $325,000 each.

Our trader, being a man of action (and not being brain damaged), realises that he is quite capable of placing an advert in the newspaper and on Trademe advertising the price and times of Open Homes himself, which means he does not need to engage an estate agent to..ummmm...place an advert in the paper and on Trademe advertising the price and times of Open Homes.

After paying off the mortgages, cost of advertising, fees to his solicitor he probably has seen his capital growing to $145,000 (ie $5000 for legal fees, sundry expenses and advertising).

The whole process has probably taken our trader, say, five months; at this point he repeats the process.

After a year he has done the entire process twice and made a profit of, say, $90,000; he then (*GASP* *SHOCK* *HORROR*) files a tax return and pays tax! at 38 cents in the dollar!

At this point all the investors, investment advisors, real estate agents, avid readers of investing 'How To' books and not forgetting loud mouthed 'Uncle Bill' are laughing their heads off at our trader for being a trader and having to pay tax on his profits..... until they find his after tax profit is $56,000 and he currently has three properties which he recently purchased and has on the market to repeat the process yet again.

The trader is fast becoming considerably richer than the investor and in a much shorter time.

A decade down the track our trader has bought and sold around 50 properties and increased his capital from $100,000 to probably $1.5 million (and that is after all the foreign holidays and monthly payments on the Bentley).

During the same decade our smug 'investor' has seen the value of his first property double, and after gaining that promotion at work to 'assistant' regional manager.. ("Yes Doris, you heard me right, I am now his assistant! I am really going places up the ladder heh heh heh!) ..he used his equity in the first property to buy a second one; although the newspapers say he did so at the top of the boom and, gee, the council valuation says it has actually dropped in price a bit since then but he still has $400,000 in equity over these two investment properties.

(Or $350,000 if you believe the newspapers)

So at this juncture I wish to make a couple of points;

1.You should ignore all the nonsense about 'investing' and concentrate on trading as you get to where you are going considerably quicker, even after paying tax at 38%.

2. This does not mean, of course, that a 'trader' does not also build a portfolio; after a while he may buy one property to 'hold' and one to on sell, one to hold one to on sell (etc) and get two bites of the cherry.

For those who take the view that if you buy 50 properties and hang on to them for long enough you become extremely rich you are, of course, correct; but you are also incredibly old which means unable to enjoy your riches and making the entire half a century exercise utterly pointless.

In any event a trader is almost certainly richer still.

Moochers and Looters

It seems that looting is widespread in Samoa in recent days after the Tsunami.

I am not in the least bit surprised due to the instrinsic nature of working class people to scramble over each other like pigs to get their hands on something for nothing.

Regarding the Samoans themselves - considering various 'cousins' have been doing this sort of thing.. (helping yourself to that which you are not entitled and which belongs to someone else).. to the New Zealand taxpayer for years, I view it as simply keeping up family traditions; much the same thing happened in New Orleans after Katrina (and yes, little of it by white anglo saxons).

Anyone following the Tsunami handwringing would think there had never been a natural disaster before; that this is the first time in history.

An earthquake hit. A Tsunami occured. A few people died. These things happen.

My view is that life goes on and I fail to see why others are somehow expected to bail people out of their problems, and by spending someone else's money to do so.

I think it is up to the Samoans themselves to rebuild their own country and no other Country has any sort of obligation or 'duty' to assist and to use taxpayer money to assist.

If there are people who wish to volunteer their labour, money, time or anything else that is their decision; I am sure they are only doing so in order to 'prove' to their friends what a good person they are (the situation with all charity), but at least it is voluntary and not looted.

Just An Employee

The Dairy Workers Union is complaining about the lock out of employees at Open Country Cheeses.

As a former shareholder of Open Country Cheeses who made a killing on the shares when Talleys purchased it (thank you Wyatt Creech!) I am astounded at the attitude of the unionists.

It was people like me who created the company by purchasing shares, people like me who took a risk on the company, and therefore it should only be people like me who reap benefits from its success.

The employees are simply that - employees; they chipped in no money to get things going, and are engaged for the sole purpose of doing a job there for which they are paid.
Employees are not shareholders, are not there to be consulted, are not automatically entitled to 'share' in anything.

These ungrateful working class people are a disgrace; were it up to me I would sack the lot of them until they learnt gratitude and servility.

That there is such a thing as 'employee rights' is pathetic; a situation whereby wealth of the productive ends up in the hands of the undeserving unproductive to the detriment of everybody (especially the shareholders).

All employees should realise they are just employees and do not matter in the scheme of things, are easily replaceable and should feel loyalty and gratitude to their employer and never cause trouble.

The Week Ahead..

1. Anyone have a wager on the verdict in the Anthony Dryden Marshall trial in New York?

2. What will John and Bill be discussing tomorrow?

3. Will Chris Carter stay in Samoa? (yes please!)

4. What will President Obama cock up next?

5. Will Malcolm Turbull survive until Friday? (the TAB in Australia has cut odds on him doing so! hahahaha!!)

6. Will Nathan Rees survive the week?

7. Why does the IRD have it in for property developers called 'Dave Henderson'?!?!!

Around The World..

1. Tony Blair is looking like becoming President of Europe by the end of the month and I think he will do well; certainly not having electors to placate may lead to a reduction in 'spin' - but who knows?

2. I was mentioning to nightcitytrader readers details about the Michael McGurk murder several WEEKS ago. The NZ Herald has only found out about it today. As usual I am miles ahead of the pack.

3. The 2016 Olympic Games is heading off somewhere 'foreign' for the first time.

In a surprise decision the International Olympic Committee rejected Chicago and instead they have chosen Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; by all accounts Rio is full of vagrants, kidnappers, tarts, alcoholics, shanty towns, lepers and other lazy foreigners seeking handouts, and world traveller extraordinaire Sir Robert Jones described it as 'nasty' in one of his books.

No doubt we will soon be saying "the 31st (and final) Olympiad, to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016..."

4. Persia has agreed to allow United Nations inspectors to view their nuclear plants in a major concession to ease a considerable amount of tension in recent days.

All I can say is "phew!"

5. Who would have guessed David Letterman was such a swinger...

6. Speaking of swingers, this story in the Sydney Morning Herald is amusing for the 'Rudd Island' typo.. ha ha!

Bloggerati cont...

I once made the observation that the people who do not attend the monthly Blogger Drinkies in Auckland, where they get to rub shoulders with those of us comprising the elite of the Blogging world, do not attend out of fear.

A comment made yesterday by 'Ruth' tends to sum that up.

So many of these fellows do not 'really' believe what they say, do not 'really' have any intellectual basis for their opinions, know they are monstrous frauds and fools, and therefore feel intimidated whenever they meet the 'real thing'.

An example of that was shown last Thursday night (you will notice that although I have mentioned the event I have not named the particular chappie involved).

So you can dress it up however you like - too busy, another appointment, do not want to spend time with libertarian fanatics (etc) - the fact remains you are 'afraid'; I scare the s**t out of you; and you are accepting that a couple of hours with 'normal' people will result in you realising you are wrong.

Our only crime is that we do not agree with you....(and can explain very clearly and unarguably as to 'why')

Friday Musing

1. Some of us find anti Jewish comments quite hilarious; others get their knickers in a twist and storm off; some people fail to realise some anti Jewish comments are made deliberately to get them to take umbrage and storm off to give everybody else some peace... *wink*

2. Do you feel Tom Delay is a considerably better dancer than you expected?

3. So Mark Bryers is now bankrupt.

It appears his creditors will not even recover enough money to cover parking meter money for the time they were in Court to see the bankruptcy take place which is probably more of a sad indictment on the creditors for being such bunnies than on Bryers being a hopeless businessman.

4. If a chap could see the Iraq war coming a mile off; if that chap could see that Dick Cheney would continue a lifetime of taking care of his friends and therefore purchased Haliburton shares at an average price of $9-08 before the War and then sold them for $35 once Haliburton got all the 'no bid' contracts does that make him a savvy investor or a 'war profiteer'?

5. "Back me or sack me!!!" cries Malcolm Turnbull.
"Ummmm...okay, Malcolm we will sack you" should be the Liberal party response.

6. "Mirror Mirror on the wall which of us looks the youngest..."

Which trio were all born within the same month yet anyone guessing their ages would say some of them look considerably older?

7. Seems Peter Cresswell has FINALLY realised why I have always suggested Theatre and Opera should be reserved for a rich elite and the grubby, working class masses kept well away... *wink* ha ha ha!

Bloggerati

Last night was just spendid with the Auckland 'Bloggerati' assembling at Galbraith's pub for the monthly drinkies.

In attendance were Not PC, Whaleoil, Cactus Kate (yes, in person!), My good self, Woar, Annie Fox, MandM (both of them) and a large number of other splendid chaps who are avid followers of blogs.

Notwithstanding some heated discussions earlier on leading to an unnecessary walkout.. (and as a polite 'word in your ear' if you disagree with a chap you can at least 'listen' when a chap is talking to you and not try and shout them down).. a large number of useful matters were discussed by the group.

I offered, and wish to do so again here publically, an apology to Philu/Woar; I mistook him yesterday afternoon on Kiwiblog for somebody else - a friend of mine, and my strongly worded post on kiwiblog was a bit too strongly worded (thinking of course I was replying to my friend Tony) and, yes, gosh, apologies to Philu for suggesting he is 'out of the stoneage'.

For those nightcitytrader readers not in attendance all I can say is you chappies missed a splendid evening and make a note in your diary for next month.

Ron Paul

I enjoyed watching Ron Paul on 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' last night where he was promoting his latest book 'End the Fed'.

Ron Paul is a splendid chap who certainly says all the correct things and his voting record in the House of Representatives has been impressive, especially against the Patriot Act nonsense, showing he also 'walks the walk'.

The problem with Ron Paul, alas, is the same problem there was with George McGovern four decades ago and that he is not the right chap to lead a revolution.

Contrary to what historians and revisionists may say McGovern in 1972 was simpy talking 'traditional' New Deal Liberal Democrat policies (slightly updated for the 1970s) but there were two slight problems.

Firstly he greatly annoyed and incurred the jealousy of 'power brokers' within the Democratic party by both 'winning' the nomination and by simply ignoring them (and guess who wrote the revisionist history about how bad McGovern was?)

Secondly if you were to say "George McGovern and Franklin Roosevelt are the same with the same policies" you would be met with a response of "wtf???"

If you just 'looked at' Roosevelt and McGovern you can 'see' (in this shallow World) that McGovern did not quite cut the mustard despite the fact he had identical policies and objectives.

In short George McGovern was not the chap to create an epoch.

So it is with Ron Paul.

His Presidential bid last year was advocating traditional libertarian/Goldwater style policies; he spoke exactly the same language, said exactly the same things (minus things military) and more or less ticked all the correct boxes yet lost.

The reason, alas, is Ron Paul does not have a 'Reaganesque' presence, does not dominate the room, has a voice which often rises an octave when making a point (something which makes many of us cringe who listen to him) and despite everything he has said and done Mr Paul is also not the chap to lead a libertarian revolution or oversee the creation of an epoch.

The shallowness of the average elector simply does not allow the most suitable chap to come through and win.

Bad news for him, bad news for America and the World.

Wednesday Observations

1. Why is a New South Wales Parliamentary inquiry, and not the Police, investigating the murder of Michael McGurk?

2. Will they drag absolutely everybody Mr McGurk has ever met before the Inquiry and ask "Did you murder him?"

3. When you invite an opponent to have a drink [see post below about Blogger's Drinkies] with you; meet you in person, explain his 'problems' in person, look you in the eye (like a man), and he declines, does that make you or he the 'coward'?

4. Isn't the Tsunami warning rather exciting?

5. Will Gordon Brown's crackdown (the 1001st such 'crackdown') on "Anti Social Behaviour" extend to Labour MPs who engage in drunkeness, foul language, stealing from taxpayers, murdering thousands of teenaged soldiers and assisting with the creation of single parent families?

6. Now that Meridian Energy is paying a $300 million dividend to the Government do you get the feeling they are biting off more than they can chew?

7. Why is Meridian Energy not for sale? (can anybody think of a single reason it needs to be owned by the State?)

8. Will the 30th Anniversary commemorations of the Erebus disaster include a Government apology to the late Justice Mahon?

9. Why did the Government not go through with plans to sack 770 school masters and mistresses? (it is not as if they do anything in view of the moronic and illiterate children they churn out)

10. Be honest - you have no idea if a high dollar is a good or bad thing, do you? (*wink*)

It's All Over, Comrade

The end for the Labour party is upon us.

Assuming for a moment these fellows had some legitimacy [I don't btw] and there was some overwelming need to have them in Government engaging in well meaning 'good work' [I don't think so, btw] evolution has reached a point where their time has passed.


During the last century there has been a redistribution of wealth, holiday pay, health and safety in the workplace, trades unions, a public health system, a welfare state, pensions, ACC, public education, State housing and 1001 other measures of a similar nature have come to pass.


Many of these policies came about during the time of Labour governments and others because National governments narrowly won elections and engaged in pragmatism; but now the 'shopping list' of social democratic policies has been fully implemented.

In short - there is no longer any need for a Labour party or future Labour government.


The point when their 'shopping list' was fully ticked off was, in my opinion, when the 'Working For Families' scheme started; at that moment - when it was guaranteed that living standards for middle class families would never fall, and consequent to that a 'Nicholas Nickleby scenario' (where a middle class family unexpectedly finds things going tits up) would never occur again, the Labour party reached the end of the road.


If you look at the complete absence of legislative or policy substance of the last Labour government post 'Working For Families' I am inclined to think they, too, realised their 90 year shelf life had ended.


The Labour government in the second half of its 9 year lifespan seemed adrift, seemed like a bored clerk at 3:20 on a Friday afternoon desperately trying to fill in time until the weekend can commence.


If you were a Labour MP at the moment can you honestly say you have anything to offer? can you honestly say things in New Zealand are going in the wrong direction? honestly say the Labour party has 1001 improvements it needs to implement to make New Zealand a much better place?


I think not.


Evidence of this would be the time spent on personality politics by Labour MPs - digging up dirt on opponents as they have nothing else to do.


They are much like the British Liberal party of a century ago; having (inexplicably) abandoned Gladstonian Liberalism [free trade, low taxes, limited government, reforming institutions to break down barriers to success, personal responsibility for your own actions in life] for cheap grandstanding and populism, the Liberal party engaged in a whirlwind of populist activity - creating the 'Welfare State', changes to Anglican Church run schools (to appease their Welsh Methodist supporters), taxing a few Dukes and Landowners, votes for Women and all men and...and... suddenly ran out of things to do; suddenly ran out of a reason for existing.


The Liberal tide had already gone out in the two 1910 elections, and completely disappeared in the 1918 election, before their embarrassing decline in the four elections in the 1920s becoming a rump dependent on nostalgic history (and even that didn't work when anyone who could actually remember it started dying of old age).


I suspect the NZ Labour party will go the same way.


Curiously, I think the decline will be hastened by changing the electoral system; they can perhaps 'fake it' with MMP (whereby the handful of Labour supporters in places like Ranfurly have their votes 'counting' and it all adds up after a while) but under an FFP voting system Labour candidate after Labour candidate just misses out as 400 or 500 floating voters in provincial centres simply cannot think of a reason to vote Labour; a couple of dismal election results showing Labour winning increasingly fewer seats, hyped up in the media to create an impression that voting Labour is more and more futile, and relegation to minority status will eventuate with just the faithful and a few memories.

And so, like Pooh Bear, the NZ Labour party will disappear because Christopher Robin/New Zealanders do not need them anymore...

Clinic Conversation..

Here is a conversation which took place yesterday at a certain National MP's electorate office when they were conducting a clinic.

The poor, unfortunate prize bunny did not realise they were being set up as a 'mark' (which makes it even funnier)..

Constituent: "Poor old Bill English is certainly copping it from the media
National MP: "yes, I know what you mean"
Constituent: "I suppose you would know Bill pretty well - .."
National MP: "oh yes know him quite well - "
Constituent: " - working with him and all.."
National MP: "oh yes we are great friends"
Constituent: "great friends eh? tell me -"
National MP: "yes, very good friends with Bill"
Constituent: " - tell me, are you as honest as Bill?"

Silence

National MP turns the colour of crimson with embarrassment.

If Gold Rust What Will Iron Do?

One of the insideous problems with New Zealand is endless Government spending; Ronald Reagan summed it up well that the best example of eternal life on earth is a government programme!

There are two ways a libertarian minded Government could achieve a substantial reduction in spending.

1. Simply cut spending (but this invites the left to plant in the public mind Dickensian images of widows and orphans cast into the snow).

2. Win the argument intellectually and then cut spending.

The more sensible (politically, and for the long term) way is option 2.

What I propose is to set up Parliamentary committees to investigate each Government department and its spending.

The remit of the Committees would be:

1. To see if the Department needs to exist
2. To get each Department to list the 'Top 20' reasons why it should continue existing
3. In order to continue existing each Department must be able to show New Zealand would somehow be worse off by its elimination [as if such a thing were possible!]
4. To get each Department to list the 'Top 20' reasons why New Zealand would be better off by its elimination [sit them in the electric chair and then get them to flick the switch, so to speak]
5. What cost savings would result by abolishing the Department.
6. A comparison of living standards of the general public prior to the Department being established when compared to today [a brilliant way of showing that back in the 1950s when we were a rich country we did not need Nanny State, yet we are poorer now after billions being spent]

There also would need to be 'relevancy exclusions' to each submission (things which even if they were to occur by the abolition of a particular Government department are not to be relevant in considering whether that should happen):

1. Unemployment by Public Servants which would occur
2. Loss of business by suppliers to a particular Government department
3. Historical considerations ("but we have always had a Ministry of Consumer Affairs")
4. Harm to the general public without the Department (e.g No longer having social workers is not a valid reason for 'not' abolishing the Ministry of Social Destruction)

I think that open, widely publicised hearings whereby Department heads (because they cannot use 'Sir Humphrey' arguments) have to admit publically 20 reasons why NZ will be better off without them, admitting New Zealand was a richer country before the department was established (and therefore it has failed to achieve a positive outcome), the enormous cost savings and tax cuts resulting from no longer having the department and a lot of other amunition will be a very successful exercise.

Whenever the left screams in indignation as each department is wound down the relevant Minister can point to officials having admitted there is no valid argument to not doing so.

This proposal will be a giant leap towards freeing the New Zealand people from the yoke of Nanny State; freeing New Zealanders from the evils of high taxation; freeing New Zealand from the dangers of fascism (which is what Nanny State amounts to) and finally returning to being a rich and successful country.

Blogger's Drinkies

This Thursday at 6:30pm there is a social event known as 'Blogger's Drinks'.

A splendid opportunity for bloggers to meet each other in person and have a chat and solve the problems of the World.
Those likely to be in attendence are Not PC, Annie Fox, MandM and various other splendid chaps.

The venue is Galbraith's Pub at the Symonds St/Mt Eden Rd intersection in Auckland.

All readers of nightcitytrader are most welcome to attend.

You Cannot Be Serious...

Here is a scenario for you to ponder; ponder in the sense that a certain person genuinely believes he will get away with this nonsense....

Last year I was back home in Southland for a couple of days visiting some friends; lovely visit, nice to catch up.
On the Saturday night I was invited to a dinner party at a place called Grove Bush, just outside Invercargill, where there were four other guests (I, naturally, proclaimed myself 'Guest of Honour' as I was the only one wearing a Dinner Jacket, but I digress).

It was a splendid evening of dining, intelligent conversation, drinkies, photographs taken and my friend (after 20 years of me asking) Ben even allowed me to put my hand on... (ummmmm...nevermind) ...and all attendees greatly enjoyed themselves.

Anyway, despite my plane tickets, taxi receipt, photographs, accounts from other guests all indicating without a shadow of a doubt the date and time the dinner party took place there are those who are claiming that Ben was not there; according to them he was in Sydney that night.

It gets worse as they have accused him of being responsible for committing a crime in Sydney that night, made statements to the NSW Police to that effect and even (dangerous territory here) have sworn Court testimony to that effect.

Evidently I did not see what I saw; evidently Ben is capable of being in two places at once; evidently the person in the photographs is some sort of clone...

...evidently the NSW Police and Courts are filled with prize bunnies?

An Auckland Oddity

Today it is pouring with rain in Auckland.

Today the Auckland roads are clogged with traffic.

An oddity I have found since living in Auckland is that when it rains, when it starts to absolutely pour down, Aucklanders get in their cars and take to the roads.

This bizarre behaviour at a time when the roads are slippery and conditions most favour a crash has always intrigued me.

My firm view of the reason is because if it was raining 'middle class' people would be unable to go outside and do anything; and because middle class people are filled with self loathing (at their mediocrity, pathetic values and behaviour, lack of success in life) they cannot stand their own company and rush to their cars to go out driving.

The alternatives - reading a book, listening to the nice music, engaging in 'thought' - these are concepts unknown to middle class people and because such activities are not shallow and mindless they see no reason to ever engage in them, leaving such exciting and rewarding tasks to their aristocratic betters (ie= ME! ha ha!)

No doubt we shall be seeing on the news about "..an horrific crash on the motorway injuring five people with two dead.." and this will result in a variety of head shaking and comments about how terrible it is.

"...they never think to wonder why.."

Highly Amusing Aside Of The Day

"..after 80 years of free and compulsory education we have a [population] who is illiterate and only understands things in the simplest language.."

Who said this? Was it said this week? Today?

No, it was written by Harold Macmillan in his diary back in 1951.

Nothing much changes, does it? ha ha!

The Good People..

...do not need to hide.

There has been a lot of talk in the last day on the blogishere (is that the correct word?) about naming names; this is in response to Peter Cresswell at pc.blogspot.com revealing that 'Redbaiter'/'Rodbeater' has a working class name and is called 'Russell Fletcher'.

I have always taken the view that if you have nothing to hide you will willingly reveal your name when stating an opinion on a blog comment.
If you are dishonest, sneaky, a troll, or otherwise devious you will seek to hide in the shadows and use a nom-de-plume.

Perhaps at this juncture I should point out to Adolf Fink[whatever], and others engaging in mass hysteria over this issue, that they are simply not important enough to incur the attentions of a stalker.

Sorry to burst your bubble, chaps, but no one actually cares who you are because you never say anything of interest or importance; even if you were to start painting your name in huge letters on the side of tall buildings, or on billboards at intersections no one would care because all you chaps do is simply repeat unoriginal comments already made by others and by the time anyone gets to your post their eyes are glazing over as they have just read it a dozen times before.

So in conclusion I say that if you are going to comment or post online you should use your own name; if you have nothing to hide you should use your own name; and if you are posting on someone else's blog I think they should not hesitate to reveal your name if they so desire.

Sad State of the Libz

Ahhhhhh... Just been having a cup of tea with yet another good chap from the Libertarianz who is shrugging his shoulders and wondering what the point of it is.

Third person in the last month to express such sentiments and is a dreadful shame.

The trouble with the Libz is there is a veto in place over party activities; this veto his held by Richard Goode in Wellington and has been extremely destructive.

There are those who feel that if Mr Goode dislikes something he will rustle up 4 or 5 of his brain damaged cohorts to moan about it; it is (inexplicably) viewed as an imperative to prevent these people flouncing and so nothing is ever said or done to upset them.

What this has led to is an emasculated Libertarianz party.

Those playing the appeasement game should weigh up the loss of a handful of irrelevant lunatics on the one hand with the loss of a couple of dozen 'splendid chaps' on the other; we still have the irrelevant lunatics but are fast losing the 'splendid chaps' and I gather that even Lindsay Perigo himself left the Libertarianz because of Mr Goode (which should have sent a warning signal of his destructiveness).

We now have a Libertarianz party which is very 'negative', always 'against' things rather than as in days gone by being 'for' a long list of iealistic imperatives; we now have a Libertarianz devoid of enthusiasm, devoid of highlighting important issues, focusing on niche matters of little importance and where the ACT and National parties have been able to claim the high ground.

This has happened with a whimper, and our own 'militant tendency' has been highly successful in destroying a once great party.

Bill English: MIA

Bill English has been rorting the good folk of Southland for nearly two decades and it seems things are finally catching up with him.

It may surprise many to learn the 'Farmer from Dipton' routine is a sham as Bill has lived in Wellington (on and off) since he was a schoolboy - nearly four decades, so imagine my disgust when English tried, earlier this week, to suggest his primary residence is in Dipton in Northern Southland.

Bill English is the worst constituency MP in the Parliament by far.

He visits his electorate no more than one or two days per month, on average; when you deduct time spent on the farm during the Christmas/New Year period, time spent at the local National party branch AGMs, you are left with Mr English spending about ONE DAY PER YEAR in Gore, Balclutha, Queenstown and other towns on electorate business.

He never holds constituent clinics, never personally deals with constituent mail or email, never turns up at the local RSA or sports club to actually meet any constituents in person and in this respect he is unique in the New Zealand Parliament.

I suspect his lack of contact with people outside of the National party members in his electorate, or the 'Beltway Bubble' may explain his incredibly thin skin when criticised as other MPs because they meet people everyday are used to getting an earfull!

I find it astounding the good folk of the Deep South unhesitatingly keep re-electing an MP who is 'absentee' (to put it mildly), but each to their own.

Some Questions

1. Did you notice how empty the UN General Assembly was when Gordon Brown was speaking?

2. Will you watch John Key on Letterman tonight?

3. Will you miss Sue Bradford?

4. Will you miss Sir Howard Morrison?

5. Do you know what palm oil is yet?

6. Was I correct to short the NZD/USD at 0.7283/88?

7. How long before the 'Usual Suspects' start hand wringing and protesting about the Fertiliser plant in Southland?

8. Have you ever heard of Dave Clendon MP?

9. Am I still the only person in the World yet to visit the Twitter website?

10. Are you curious to see if the 'red dust' hits Auckland today?

Ice Melting Beneath His Feet

Mark Bryers, the chap involved in the Blue Chip debacle, has been landed with a $285000 bill by Sir Robert Jones for unpaid rent on Qantas House in Queen Street Auckland.

Blue Chip abandoned its offices in the building last year despite three years remaining on the lease and Sir Robert has gone to great lengths to recover money owed to him.

He bankrupted another Director of Blue Chip earlier this year and now has had the Courts accept his claim against Bryers.

Things seem to go from bad to worse for Bryers with a myriad of legal problems, debts and loss of reputation (such as it ever was).

In my opinion he is a classic example of so many property 'true believers'; so many people lose a sense of reality with property investments and feel the next one will be the big one to make their fortune.
Invariably that is not the case as they are applying the wrong set of activities to the wrong product; by that I mean success in the property game comes over the long term whereas too many people seek to 'buy and flick' properties in a short period of time. That works well on, say, the sharemarket but is not really suited for real estate.

Due to the nature of property true believers they are immune to warnings of this nature, take a carefree attitude to debt, feel no responsibility to the creditors left in their wake and tend to show a lack of morality when things go wrong (as they often do).

Bryers seems a fellow incapable of understanding his talents could be transferable to some other activity outside of the property sector, which could arguably bail him out of his current difficulties, due to the blindness which afflicts true believers.

"..Before the election.."

One of the things I like about President Obama is his dignity in the face of hysterical rantings from his opponents.

I am inclined to think that is the Harvard education in him coming through; Harvard University being a bastion of people who are intelligent, 'thinkers' not screamers, well meaning and 'normal' - an elite, in other words, and a jolly good thing in my opinion.

Since Jimmy Carter made his unnecessary statement the other day that criticism of President Obama is due to racism there has been a flurry of comment and [yesterday] the President appeared on the David Letterman show where he pointed out that people knew he was a black man before the election.

Splendid comment!

I may disagree with the President on a public option for healthcare, a trillion dollar deficit and military action in Afganistan, but by gosh that sort of easy going dignity in the face of irrational opponents really lifts his standing.

I know that many New Zealand libertarians feast on Fox News and oppose the President on everything and this is curious; I prefer to judge things on a case by case basis rather than a 'Obama = Bad' one.

When I see these Americans - 'narrow bloodlines' (a polite way of saying inbred), wearing plaid shirts and John Deere caps, NRA membership card proudly in their pocket screaming in hysteria whilst having their views prominently aired by Glenn Beck and others it makes me pause.

A chap such as myself is hardly going to view these sorts of oafish types as 'my people', as the sorts of chaps I would wish to be aligned with and the conclusion I draw is that perhaps the President cannot be all bad! ha ha!

As someone who believes in elitism, good breeding, good manners, politeness and intellectual argument (rather than screaming) it is difficult to see such ignorant, bad behaviour taking place in Harvard yard (where you are more likely to find 'my kind of people')

One Party State?

Something often mentioned in American politics is the supposed existence of 'one party states', this is where the State tends to elect only Democrats or Republicans and seems an absurdity to me, so much so I decided to do some research on the matter.

Apart from the obvious - that those decrying a supposed 'one party state' tend to be the losers, it is something which does not exist in the age of contested elections.

A word about supposed 'One Party States':

1. Prior to about 1920 elections were not 'contested' in the way they are now; there was little in the way of fundraising (as we know it today), there were fewer outlets to deseminate news to electors, Women were not electors and elections prior to this are not entirely comparable to the post 1920 period.

2. Ballot splitting, whereby an elector goes through a ballot voting for specific candidates and where his vote for President may be for a Republican, he then votes for his local State Legislature member - a Democrat, his Senator - a Republican and so on down the list, was not common prior to the 1950s although widespread today.

In most States if you look at the vote totals for, say, 1948, you find the number of votes President Truman (a Democrat) received Statewide tends to be very close to the votes received by the Democrat candidate for Senator (also elected Statewide), or Governor, or whomever.

Breaking it down into Congressional districts you find much the same thing whereby all Democrats received a fairly similar number of votes, all Republicans received a fairly similar number of votes in a particular district and there was not much ballot splitting taking place.

As an aside to that - many electors may have abstained from voting for a candidate from a particular party (for instance they voted for Republicans down the line but had a personal dislike of their local Republican Governor, so they would simply abstain from filling in the Governor part on their ballot paper) - but few people switched sides so they had voted for several Democrats and Republicans depending on the Office and Candidate.

3. Whenever a State was admitted into the Union there tended to be a very curious situation whereby at the first election, when electors had to vote for both Senate seats for the first time, vast numbers of people appear to have voted for a Democrat for one seat and a Republican for the other to perhaps 'even it up'.

4. There is no State in America which has not, since 1920 and universal voting, elected at least one Senator or House member from each party; furthermore there is no State which has not been won by Presidential candidates from each party at some point.

The only States which 'may' somehow qualify for being a "one party State" are not what you expect...

For the Democrats it is Hawaii, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, arguably Arkasas (having only elected a single Republican Senator, ever) and (curiously) North Dakota.
Hardly the sorts of places to get the stomach churning due to their power and influence (if you know what I mean?)

New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maryland, Illinois and elsewhere that see sour-grapes Republicans claiming 'One Party Statehood' are nowhere near that category.

For the Republicans it is Utah, Kansas (no Democrat elected to the Senate since 1932), Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska.

Also not the sorts of places which exactly carry much weight.
Contrary to a popular perception, the 'Deep South' is not dominated by Republicans, nor are the farming or south western States as sour grape Democrats would claim.

That's How It Goes, eh

When talking with a working class person yesterday ..(yes, yes I know).. I was struck by this person's ready acceptance of anything the State proposes or does which would curtail his personal freedoms.

Obviously a chap like that is a 'salt of the earth' type, of which there are many in New Zealand, but hardly an intellectual and his response to various matters is a shrug of the shoulders and a comment of "I guess that's how it goes, eh".

It struck me that he, and hundreds of thousands of people like him, have no limit; there is nothing the State could do which would be too far and he would simply accept anything as being his lot in life and a price you pay in life.

Rather than stand up against anything they prefer to accept whatever happens without so much as a whimper; they delude themselves that scrambling to pay the gas bill or buy groceries is a better use of their time, whilst the State encroaches on their life piece by piece, step by step.

Whenever an unnecessary new law reducing personal freedoms is proposed our chap, and millions like him, watch CloseUp or Campbell Live to hear the relevant Minister using the traditional line of "we are only seeking to crack down on law breakers, the average law abiding person has nothing to fear from this legislation.." and our chap finds himself nodding in agreement "I guess that's how it goes, eh" as he becomes more and more a slave to the State.

1. The State tells him how to raise his children.... "I guess that's how it goes, eh"

2. The State tells him what to eat, drink, smoke, learn at school ... "I guess that's how it goes, eh"

3. The State decides what will be in a hamburger he wants to eat ... "I guess that's how it goes, eh"

4. The State tells him what to drive, where to drive, in what direction and in what vehicle... "I guess that's how it goes, eh"

5. The State tells him what sort of a house he can live in, where it will be situated, and what he can do or not do with his property.... "I guess that's how it goes, eh"

6. The State decides to issue ID cards to everyone, meaning he is photographed, finger printed and his DNA collected for a database ... "I guess that's how it goes, eh"

7. The State decides it has had enough of people like him; he is arrested, stripped naked and marched with a dozen other people towards a gas chamber... "ummmmm..I guess that's how it...s**t! hang on a f**kin' minute..."

I'm Not Racist But..

The Labour party wants to have 'advisory boards' for Chinamen and Pacific Islanders reporting to the Auckland City Council when it becomes a super city and is...ummmmm...the Auckland City Council.

What Phil Tywford and his comrades fail to understand is that what they are proposing is racist.

Their attitude is that Pacific Islanders are 'inferior' beings.. "oh they are nice people but, ya know, not like us Comrade, bet they have no idea about Chardonnay or could name a good restaurant in the Capital.." and require "protection" affording them by benevolent Labour masters.

This is reminicent of the hysterical claims about "Women's Rights", "Gay Rights", "Workers Rights", "[add anyone engaging in permanent victimhood here] Rights" which used to go on ad nauseum; by doing so you effectively admit you are pathetic, weak, feeble, easy to exploit, ineffectual, inferior, not quite human, and somehow require protecting with a special category of 'Rights'.

This also admits that certain groups of people - white men, for instance, are superior in an instrinsic way; as if you are saying "I am a Woman/Homosexual/Factory Worker/Chinaman [etc] and I know that white men are superior beings, and that being the case I respectfully ask my masters for some help because I am no match for any white man picked at random".

It also perpetuates various stereotypes, indeed it entrenches them by accepting certain groups of people need special help and protection.

This is hardly an example of upward mobility, hardly an example of inclusiveness, hardly an example of equality but instead a giant leap backwards.

Bizarre.

The Game Is Up For Acorn

ACORN, which stands for Association of Community for Reform Now, has had its funding cut off by the US Congress after a vote of 345 - 75 in the House, and similar measures in the Senate, turned off the tap.

This comes about after (highly amusing) undercover video recorded last week which saw ACORN employees suggesting to a prostitute and her pimp (actually Hanna Giles and James O'Keefe) she engage in tax evasion along with suggestions how to rort taxpayer funds.

ACORN is one of these self appointed "we speak for poor people" organisations given considerably more airtime and credibility than they ever deserved, especially in view of their position that poor people should simply receive larger handouts of other people's money, rather than take steps to no longer be in poverty.

So it is highly possible this loud mouthed organisation may wither and die fairly soon without its funding, and not before time.
Any poor and needy people following the ACORN line will have had their circumstances perpetuated and entrenched and so it is difficult to see ACORN has been of any benefit whatsoever, and difficult to suggest they are not responsible for greater poverty.

Maori Supremacy?

The New Zealand Geographic Board has decided Wanganui, my beloved Wanganui, will have to have a spelling change and become 'Whanganui'.

They are doing this to pander to Maori Communists and troublemakers whilst ignorning the 77% of Wanganui residents who voted to retain the status quo in a referendum.

Any illusions which may have existed about the implicit supremacy of Maoris and gangmembers in Wanganui, at the expense of decent, law abiding, non-troublemaking, non-loudmouthed 'normal people, are now dashed.

This decision is a disgrace.

The only hope for common sense is that the ultimate decision now rests with Maurice Williamson, the Minister of Land Information; fingers crossed but he has regularly shown himself to be a wimp in the past.

Some Questions...

1. When Phil Goff was asked on Sunday's "Q and A" programme what his future would hold after the next election, why did he not immediately come back with a firm "I will be the Prime Minister after the election"? ....(if that is not his objective and intention - why is he bothering???)

2. Why do the media suggest Clayton Cosgrove...opps..I mean 'Weatherston' ...will be paroled immediately he becomes eligble to do so? ...(everybody knows convicted murderers need to apply 3 or 4 times before it is granted, so his 18 years is effectively 22)

3. Is it just me or are the stereotypical "Meadowbank Jews" the most boring b*ggers in the World??!?!?! ...(okay, my shoulder was killing me so I was in a foul mood, ha ha!)

4. Did Richard Aborn seriously think he was going to win the Manhattan District Attorney primary?!?! ...(the man was delusional!)

After A Break

Apologies for not blogging for over a week but I have not been all that well; my haemophilia has been playing up with seemingly endless bleeding in my left shoulder, dammit! ...and the halfwit South African physician, Doctor van Legover (or whatever his name is), instead of saying "I don't know" simply kept coming up with increasingly futile suggestions and courses of action..and...yes...left me rather annoyed! gosh!

Anyway, back in the land of the living now...

Finally! Some Common Sense!

The MMP electoral system will be put to a referendum next year and I am in wholehearted agreement with dumping it and returning to more democratic general elections.

One of the hysterical shrieks against MMP is that NZ will be governed by 'rich, white men'.

What a splendid thought!

The alternatives - Government by females backed up by a motley crew of Maoris, transvestites, lesbians, trade unionists, socialists, lunatics and Alamein Kopu has been an abysmal failure in recent years resulting in New Zealand missing several golden opportunities because it did not fit with Green/Maori/Socialist ideology.

The sooner we have 'normal' people in charge, and policy which is sensible and not subject to a lunatic-veto - the better!

In the good old days, when New Zealand was a rich country, we were governed by rich white men and it worked very well; not only that but the decline of New Zealand can be dated from the time Parliament (thanks to the Kirk government) started to fill up with misfits, nerds, university lecturers and other failures in life.

Back to the future with haste, I say!

Omnipresent Leader - Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn in the National Review has written a scathing piece about President Obama and his cynical diversionary tactic of beaming himself into schools around America.

Steyn likens it to the 'Omnipresent Leader' you find in the Third World (Gaddaffi, Saddam etc).

A number of valid points are made in the article.

Firstly, an 'Obama Pledge' is unnecessary and somewhat 'creepy' on young, impressionable minds.

Secondly, getting children to write letters to themselves suggesting ways they can help the President was unnecessary, creepy and fortunately did not take place.

Thirdly, if the President was not losing the debate on Healthcare would such an obvious diversion be undertaken? I doubt it.

President Obama should be able to rest on his achievements, rather than creating a personality cult, to get re-elected and if his focus was on doing something productive and beneficial (such as a balanced budget) his approval ratings would be considerably higher.

Thoughts For Sunday

Headlines in the Herald On Sunday -

"Owners Flee Country Owing Millions..."

"Kiwi Conned By Alleged Crook"

"Strumming His Fate With His Fingers"

And just take a look at the Sunday News -

"Mike's Cocaine Hell"

add all this to the chap who stole $10 million from Westpac, the owners of Blue Chip, gang members and other ne'er do wells...

Why am I never surprised to find these fellows are either brown or foreign?

You never seem to find a 'normal' person - a white/anglo-saxon, decent New Zealander doing any of this sort of thing, do you?

(Never used to happen in the days of Keith Holyoake....I wonder why?)

Maia Campbell

Here is an example of a true hero...

Nicholas Winton, a former London Stockbroker, organised what was called 'Kindertransport', a scheme to rescue children from the Nazi regime in the leadup to World War 2.

On holiday in Prague in 1938 Mr Winton was so shocked at what he saw that he immediately set up his organisation to evacuate Jewish children and find homes for them in Britain.

These efforts saw a total of 669 children saved from certain death (as, alas, happened to many of their parents) and shows Mr Winton to be a genuine hero.

Not for him sitting back and allowing others to do the work, not for him a view that it was not his problem, not for him the glare of the World media to show everybody what a good person he is (a la Bono), but rather just silently (his efforts did not come to light until some decades later) got on with it and did what he knew to be right.

The story in the Washington Times is about a reunion between Mr Winton and these children yesterday.

All Blacks Tickets

There is a fuss in the NZ Herald today about a group of New Zealand soldiers in Afganistan.

It seems our chaps posed beside a bomb for a photograph, later including a caption "Dear Taleban, enjoy this" and a Demon Drink poster.

For the life of me I cannot understand what the 'totally inappropriate' behaviour, as described by some fellow at Defence HQ, actually is.

I find the whole thing rather amusing and it is better to give our boys support in a warzone rather than treating them like children and giving them a telling off; however it appears I am in a minority and this is yet another example of the decline of New Zealand.

Global Economic Crisis

A conversation between two neighbours, Kevin and Graham, about a sharemarket crash...

Graham: Hi Kevin, I am so annoyed, I invested $16 million with _________ and it has all gone tits up and I have lost the lot!

Kevin: Well, Graham, if you had given me the $16 million I would have given you back half and you would be $8 million better off.

Witchcraft In Japan

For those wondering why the electors in Japan kept one party in Government for 55 years this may provide an explanation -

The lady Wife of the new Japanese Prime Minister is, well, ummmmm...mad.

She claims to have been abducted by aliens and taken to the planet Venus "..while my body was alseep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus.." she says in her book ...(soon to be a maxim amongst the Japanese population at large)... " Very Strange Things I've Encountered".

A further comment, regarding her husband vis-a-vis her irrational witchcraft beliefs "..My current husband has a different way of thinking. He would surely say "that's great'..." is somewhat chilling.

These revelations, hilarious as they are, may have sobered many Japanese up from their attack of drunken madness last weekend when they changed their Government; if these sorts of lunatics are in charge it explains why they spent generations safely in opposition and out of harm's way.

Opes Prime Continued..

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that charges loom for Opes Prime Directors.

This relates to the disgraceful transaction in March last year where the prize bunnies at the ANZ bank, not content with blowing the best part of $1 billion of other peope's money on Opes Prime, granted a $95 million [additional] credit facility, which occured a very short time before their collapse.

As readers of this and my previous blog will know I have been a very strong critic of the entire debacle, especially the role of the ANZ bank in throwing away its shareholders money on what amounted to a series of unsecured loans.

What particularly annoys me is the misleading of investors, who were unaware they did not possess ownership of shares bought with loans provided by Opes Prime; the fact ANZ employs people so gullible they approve unsecured loans to people wining and dining them on the Sydney social scene and the slowness of prosecutions to result.

It should be remembered that many people were buying shares, being provided with credit facilities to do so, paying interest on these loans and doing absolutely nothing wrong - only to have the carpet pulled from under them by a petulant ANZ bank when the realisation they, too, had been played for fools, sunk in.

That Julian Smith was able to ponce about Sydney like a visiting Monarch and get away with such an extensive fraud shows the level of 'Colonial Cringe' still existing in Australia today; no one would question such a chap, his credentials, his credit worthiness, his business acumen when he wears a Savile Row suit, has a certain accent and has servile 'colonials' in banks and business circles tugging forlocks and feeling they had 'made it' because such a chap was conducting business with them.

I shall not even bother commenting on the other fellow, Emini; the story as to how some wog immigrant from Albania (for Christ's sake!) manages call himself 'Laurie' (to get all matey with the half wits) and raise a billion dollars in business loans is too stomach churning to dwell on - except to point out Albania is not known for either its successful business tycoons, or its 'Laurie's', for a very good reason...(there aren't any).

We Started It

One of the [very] few amusing things about World War Two is that New Zealand started it.

The declaration of War by Britain and the Empire was dated 1st September 1939, and because of the time zones it means the New Zealand Government technically declared war first! - (typical bloody Labour government! dammit!) - followed a couple of hours later by those war mongering Australians.

Neville Chamberlain and the British Government seemed almost 'Johnny-come-lately's' by comparison; dragging the chain and simply following our lead nearly a day later.

"No Words Could Even Describe..."

...the suffering caused by this War and the holecaust. I bow before the victims..."

So said the Chancellor of Kraut-land, Angela Merkel, earlier today in a ceremony commemorating the beginning of World War Two 70 years ago.

Merkel's comments border on an apology unprecedented by leaders of Kraut-land governments' during the last few decades and she must be given credit where it is due.
However, I am sure "words [which can] describe the suffering.." may go something like this -

"if our Granddad's were not sociopathic mass murderers neither the war, the holecaust, nor the sixty million victims, the abolition of rights and the enslavement of hundreds of millions would have occurred".

It is not actually all that difficult, Angela, to express such sentiments, is it?

Please Sign The Visitor Register

Events within the New South Wales government get increasingly incomprehensible after the resignation of John Della Bosca late last night.

Apparently he engaged in adulterous assignations for months, confessed all last night, and tendered his resignation [to an elated?] Nathan Rees.

Apart from an obvious query as to the female's lack of taste due to Della Bosca being repulsively ugly, one highly amusing aspect of the matter was the following comment in the Sydney Morning Herald - "..he had taken the woman to a parliamentary office to have sex without signing the visitor roll.."

Question 1: Is signing a 'Visitor Register' a usual requirement for females having sex with Della Bosca?!?!

Question 2: Did he get Belinda to do this?

Question 3: Would you agree this explains a lot about Belinda Neal?

Question 4: Do Carmen and Anthony have massive hangovers this morning? (due to a late night campagne party)

Question 5: Will Anthony commence measuring up for new curtains, hosting teas, ironing and other 'First Lady' duties now?

Strange days...

Questions For Monday

1. Which candidate - Anthony Albanese or Belinda Neal, do you prefer as next 'First Lady' of New South Wales?

2. At what juncture will their elevation occur? (I favour next week)

3. Has anyone queried why most Americans preferred lotto results to the Kennedy funeral yesterday?

4. Is there a manifest likelihood of an assassin, wearing a 'I Love Capitalism' t-shirt, running amok in the Parliament and exterminating Sue Bradford?

5. Has any Republican managed to explain why they oppose President Obama's healthcare proposals?

6. A landslide election victory for the Opposition in Japan, one of the largest countries in the World. Why is it 'not the same' when the country is 'foreign'?

Freedom Of Speech Defined

If there was ever a subject matter where endless discourse ensued, and where such discourse has produced wide variations with regards to a coherent definition, it must be freedom of speech.

I often listen to chaps expounding a strongly held tenet that freedom of speech has its place, mainly with regards to their own sentiments where it should be inviolate, but curbs must be enacted for the extirpation of any comments which bring about umbrage or hurt (real or imaginary) to any individual or cluster of people.

Government, in particular, has become particulary adept in efforts to constrain free speech by a variant of peer pressure, the result being any errant speaker or thinker feels obligated to abrogate more controversial opinions in favour of updated Government mandated axioms which often bare scant resemblence to fact, history or reality.

The State, presumably, finds greater success and serenity in frequent reinvention of axioms than the alternative requirement of frequent attempts at interdiction to end debate or offensive comments with which the State disagrees.

As mentioned above finding a coherent or consistent definition of freedom of speech borders on the impossible, and I shall therefore now undertake to achieve the impossible!

The Definition of 'Freedom Of Speech'

"Freedom of speech should exist in any and all situations but with two exceptions; one of which is civil (whereby no criminal penalty would result) and the other legal (where criminal penalty would result)"

The Civil Exception.

Examining the civil side of the argument I hold it to a straightforward test to determine whether an individual has a right to freedom of speech; that of someone deliberately and falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre.

The significant aspects resulting from this action include:

1. You are physically present on private property, and the theatre owner possesses rights, too.
2. The individuals present, in addition to yourself, also possess rights.
3. The falsehood of your purport with regards to a fire.
4. Any consternation, however temporary, which may be experienced due to your falsehood (which has interrupted another individual's right to the pursuit of happiness)

Analysis of these collective aspects must be undertaken so establish whether an individuals right to free speech is outweighed by rights enjoyed by other people, and I come to the inescapable conclusion that in this situation there is no right to free speech.

For someone to shout "fire" in this situation is unacceptable and furthermore it is justified for others to prevent his free speech expression, or result in a civil penalty of some description if such prevention is unable to be manifested.

Reasons for reaching this conclusion include:

1. Individuals (those not childishly shouting 'fire', in this instance) have a right to the pursuit of happiness which is being deliberately upset by someone else.
2. Individuals should not be unexpectedly frightened by another in an infantile and false way.
3. A property owner, in this instance a theatre owner, should not be unfairly subjected to apprehension or tyranny on his own property.
4. Individuals should not be subjected to unfair imperiousness.

The Legal Exception.

With regards to the legal exception to freedom of speech I accept the US Supreme Court definition, with every expectation the New Zealand Supreme Court would concur in the event such a matter came before them, which requires a scenario of "imminent lawless action" to exist before freedom of speech can be prevented [by the State].

This would require someone to verbally encourage his listeners to "[burn down a building] [start rioting] [brandish a weapon with the intention of murder][murder Maoris/Jews/Asians/write anyone you hate here][march on parliament and storm the building to overthrow the Government][immediately engage in criminal, and understood to be illegal, activity not already given above as an example] ..." (etc).

Having verbalised in this manner there subsequently requires the following three criteria to be met;

1. A widely held view by those listening that the speaker was earnest his in exhortations.
2. A belief, which can subsequently be undeniably justified, the listeners/crowd actually intend to engage in activity described by their interlocutor.
3. That the Constabulary have insufficient time or opportunity to prevent such an undertaking.

In no other circumstances other than the two - civil and legal, that I have described and defined, should freedom of speech be curtailed or any action taken in an effort to achieve such a result.

Changes In The US Senate.

It has been a year of changes in the US Senate.

The early part of the year saw vast numbers of Senators resigning to join the Obama administration - Biden, Clinton, Salazar and the President himself, of course; a disputed election in Minnesota not decided until June, several people hinting their retirements were imminent and now the death of Edward Kennedy.

This has led to the unusual and unprecedented situation of the Senator ranked as senior as ninety three in seniority (if I can put it like that) not having been elected in November.

Equally unusual for the US Senate, where long Senate careers are the norm due to six year terms, half the Senate has only been in office since 2000 and less than a quarter pre-date the Clinton administration.

The soon to be 99th in seniority (there is a vacancy in Massachusetts) is a chap called George LeMieux who will replace Mel Martinez as a Senator from Florida.

Mr LeMieux is, by all accounts, a successful 'insider' and power broker in Florida politics, a sort of provincial Rahm Emmanuel, and at the young(ish) age of 40 had achieved a great deal - Chief of Staff to the Florida Governor, Chairman of a major law firm, Chairman of the Broward County Republicans, Chairman of the re-election committee for Governor Bush (no, the other one - Jeb) along with many other strings to his bow.

It appears his appointment to the Senate is a temporary measure on behalf of his patron Governor Crist who is seeking the seat next year when it comes up for election; and so you have a young, ambitious, 'out for the main chance' fellow plucked out of thin air who intends to be a mere 'seat warmer' before standing aside and throwing away a long and glittering career in national politics.

Yeah right!

Something tells me Charlie Crist is in for the shock of his life in a few months and made a grave error in not appointing himself to the seat (which he was fully able to do) if he had Senatorial ambitions.

Shall be an interesting situation to keep an eye on.

A Death Worth Mourning...[UPDATE]

The author Dominick Dunne has died.

I was sorry to read that in the New York Times [this morning] as I have always enjoyed his novels and other writings.

Dunne wrote a number of novels highlighting how rich people can often get away with murder; titles such as 'The Two Mrs Grenvilles" (although Truman Capote's version of the same event is considerably funnier), 'An Inconvenient Woman', 'A Season In Purgatory' (about the family of another recently deceased chap) and others were always excellent and enjoyable.

I did not feel "Another City Not My Own" was particularly good, especially as Dunne stars in the book himself - as himself, and constantly reminds readers what an excellent and famous author he is.

The only drawback Dunne had was his habit of being very quick to pronounce someone (Claus Von Bulow, OJ Simpson, the Menendez brothers, William Kennedy Smith etc) guilty, usually of murder, and in the case of OJ Simpson a Jury thought otherwise; I, as my friends and readers of this blog will know, prefer guilt to be left to a Jury to decide rather than the media.

The only occasion I think Dunne missed his mark very badly was about Gary Condit, his 'quick to condemn' articles about Condit, implying he was a murderer, were unfair and presumably unfounded as 8 years later Condit has not been charged with any crime.

So after a very successful life of novels and writing for Vanity Fair magazine, activities which brought entertainment, information and joy to millions of people with his intelligent and often irreverent style, Dominick Dunne has died and will be sorely missed.

Unlike Edward Kennedy.

UPDATE:
In response to a couple of emails from readers - the content of this blog is my personal opinion, I have at no time expressed an opinion on the guilt or innocence of anyone mentioned above.

With regards to Mr Dunne's articles about Gary Condit, as a reader of the articles at the time they were written and published, my view was Dunne was implying Condit was guilty of murder.
In my personal opinion (at the time of first reading them) that was the impression I formed, and it was my further personal opinion that such claims were unfair and possibly unfounded.

Don't Confuse Stubborn...

...with strength

1. John Key has announced John Boscowen's private members bill will not be supported by the Government when it comes before Parliament next month.

2. Some lunatic, and soon to be dead, protester is undertaking an 'Anti-1080' protest on Mt Tongariro.

3. Nathan Rees, Premier of New South Wales, announces he intends remaining in the job for the foreseeable future.

4. The amusing boardroom bunfight between James and Kerry which has been dragging on for weeks...

5. Ben Bernanke keeps his job for another four years

No Surprises

For those who had any doubt about my post yesterday on Conservatives being anti-Freedom at times, they should read this news story where former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, opposes a Bill of Rights!

You heard it here first, folks!

Edward M. Kennedy

He died a few minutes ago...

Good riddance!

Conservatives Are In Favour Of Freedom?

Conservatives in America claim to be the defenders of freedom.

Oh really?

Peter Cresswell at Not PC inadvertantly started a discussion on this issue last week which resulted in a great deal of comment.

Conservatives in America tend to believe that freedom only applies to them and the issues they care about, and it is this hypocrisy which is both annoying and proof they are in fact enemies of freedom.

Oh yes, they are great advocates of the important matters - low taxation, guns, free association (etc) but will willingly seek to ban other people from enjoying freedom.

Pornography, gay sex, prostitution, immigration, gay marriage, atheism, junk food, gambling, devil worshipping, witchcraft, swearing, Islam, violent films, abortions; these are just some of the things Conservatives wish to ban or severely curtail.

To then claim to be a defender of freedom is astonishing and hypocritical.

What these chaps fail to realise is that to be a true defender of freedom you need to support the other fellow when he seeks to engage in activities you, yourself, disagree with.
This does in no way mean you have to pretend to be in favour of what the other fellow is doing, or even approve of it, but you need to respect his right to do it and not to try and ban him.

What is even worse about American Conservatives is their ignorance by not realising that advocating guns and free speech whilst seeking to ban abortions or gay marriage is actually anti-Freedom, not defending freedom.

As a libertarian there are 1001 things I dislike and many of them I strongly dislike; however I respect the rights of other people to do them and feel no need to ban them.
I do, however, take every opportunity to express my disapproval and often engage in 'education' to explain why the other fellow is wrong, (albeit invariably meeting other so called libertarians seeking to ban or curtail my freedom of speech when expressing disapproval, which perhaps proves I am in a very, very small minority comprising 'the real thing').

This is a far better way of doing things than to go around banning that which I dislike.

Australian Politics

An interesting day in Australian politics.

Brendan Nelson has resigned from Parliament and I am sorry to see him go; I felt he was a good chap but was never going to make any impact against Kevin Rudd's 75% approval ratings and his colleagues should have given him a fairer go.

If the by-election results in a swing away from the Liberal party, and that is a possibility, it may signal the end of the dreadful and odious Malcolm Turnbull; so Liberal supporters in Bradfield do not forget to vote for an independent! ha ha!

In another bizarre story it is alleged the temporary MP for Bass, Jodie Campbell has been assaulted by her partner, punching her in the eye, twisting her fingers and punching her in the stomach.

Prime Minister Rudd, who should know better, decided to comment on the matter rather than leaving it up to the Jury to decide guilt or innocence.

Strange days indeed....

Values Collide

Something about the 21st Century I find very, very bizarre is the inexlicable reverence given to people who are nothing more than glorified servants.

I simply cannot understand the cult of celebrity chefs such as Gordon Ramsay, and the seemingly endless television programmes about their cooking.

Prime time television is devoted to Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White, that girl flogging Watties tomato sauce, Master Chef, Jamie Oliver and other tiresome programmes and the masses lap it up as they put ingredients in an oven and...ummmmm....cook it.

At this point I suppose I should make a confession and say, due to many years of experience of such people, that I find it impossible to view servants/hospitality people as being 'fully human'; that someone would want to serve others as an occupation simply does not compute with me.

Presumably this is a clash of values in that I place no value on anyone serving me, whereas the vast majority of the population who do not know any better seem to revere these fellows, something which no doubt stems from the vast majority of the population having to do these sorts of things themselves whereas some of us have not cooked a meal in many, many years, let alone having done 'domestic' activities.

Sometimes I really do not understand other people.

Just bizarre.

Democracy Means...

..whatever some people want it to mean.

There used to be a view, ignorant and silly in retrospect, that democracy meant you had an election and the chap with the most votes won.

This idea of democracy used to be popular in certain circles up until the time the chap with the most votes started losing and then the rules got changed.

A few case studies...

1. US Democrats. (laughable name!)

(1) George W. Bush wins 51% of the votes in 2004 and is somehow 'illegitimate' whereas 43% voted for Bill Clinton and he was the 'Second Coming' in liberal circles.

(2) Florida 2000 saw President Bush win the most votes in the State and then Al Gore decided to sue him in the US Supreme Court and demand a recount (a recount of Gore votes, that is), and fortunately the US Supreme Court sent him packing.

(3) George McGovern wins a single state out of 50 and has spent the last 36 years claiming Richard Nixon was not a legitimate President and he, McGovern, was somehow 'robbed' (wtf?!?)

2. Gough Whitlam in 1974.

Whitlam called an unnecessary Federal election in Australia asking voters for a mandate in the Senate.

During the election campaign this theme was done to death so that by election day no one in Australia was in any doubt about their Senate vote being in many ways more important than their House of Representatives vote; on election day Whitlam failed as the Senate remained controlled by the oppostion.

He then immediately held a 'joint session' of Parliament to override his minority position in the Senate (and the wishes of the electors).

3. A referendum on Compulsory Superannuation in 1997.

This saw some 90% of people voting 'NO' (although, curiously, I was one of the few people to vote 'YES', but that is another story) and so Compulsory Super died on the vine within minutes.

4. A referendum on the Anti Smacking law in 2009.

This saw another 90% or so of people voting 'NO' and like previous resounding election results immediate steps were taken to...ummmmmm...oh...hang on...

5. A proposal for separate Maori seats for the Auckland City Council

This proposal would have meant an undemocratic gerrymander existed for Maori in Auckland and votes of non Maori would have been worth less.

As soon as this undemocratic gerrymander was rejected the Maori party immediately described not having Maori seats as...ummmmm...'undemocratic'.

6. The British Labour Party.

They spent the 1983 and 1987 elections in Britain decrying the supposed gerrymander of their opponents and claiming Mrs Thatcher had a lack of mandate because most votes in Scotland and Wales favoured them and not her.

Fast forward to 2005 when their opponents won the most votes in England and what happened? the Labour party forgot all about their own claims two decades earlier and did whatever they wanted despite a minority vote position themselves.

Referendum

The 'real' New Zealanders have spoken; an overwelming 87.6% of electors voted NO in the referendum.

A resounding victory for freedom and common sense.

Why I Am An Atheist.

Because I cannot stand people talking about this other God who is invisible...

Opps..Healthcare Reforms are doomed...(now what?)

It seems the Obama healthcare reforms are doomed, according to the latest head counts in the US Senate and House of Representatives.

The President is wobbling on a 'Public Option' (the socialist health insurance option) being included in the legislation.

This means that the 'liberal' (ie Socialist) Democrats are annoyed and will not vote for a bill which excludes a public option; however, there are (on the latest head count) insufficient votes in either the House or the Senate to pass legislation with a public option included.

Inevitably such an impasse will mean defeat for the Administration and freedom lovers can exhale a collective (*ha ha ha*) 'Phew!'

The remaining Town Hall meeting grandstanding is all theatre and comedy; what it all comes down to are votes and they simply are not there.

Further proof that the left in politics have no legitimacy and are actually forbidden from implementing their polices.

Joe Biden For President?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a programme I enjoy watching each night.

Stewart is irreverent and always good humoured, and what I particularly like is the non partisan aspect of the show; Stewart willingly gets stuck into Democrats as well as Republicans which is virtually unique in America today.

One recent story on The Daily Show has been the astonishing situation of people with handguns and assault weapons turning up to President Obama's Town Hall meetings in New Hampshire and Arizona.

These people talk about their rights (to bear arms, free speech, free association etc), but as I was watching I could not help thinking they were actually hardcore Joe Biden supporters.

Visualise the scene...

11pm, the sofa in the drawing room at the Naval Observatory.

An elated Vice President tunes into The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; as the story begins Biden starts praying for someone at an Obama Town Hall meeting to pull out a .44 magnum and splatter the President all over the stage! ha ha!

One way to achieve your life's ambition I suppose.

Foreigners Are Funny Chaps, Aren't They? (Pt 1)

Laos, a Communist Dictatorship in South East Asia, has virtually no economic or personal freedoms.

The Laos people, generally speaking, live in poverty, squalor and amount to little more than a slave population dominated by their Communist masters.

Despite this the Laos Communists have as the National motto: "Peace, Independence, Democracy, Unity, Prosperity"

(Yet another example of the left hoodwinking vast numbers of people)

I Read The News Today, oh boy

1. Geoff Palmer wants to make it illegal to be drunk in a public place.

This wet proposal is yet another socialist attempt to prevent people from enjoying themselves and suggested by those who clearly have never been drunk themselves.
It would appear to be the role of the State to decide when, where and how much alcohol a chap can consume.

2. Rodney Hide claims he will resign if there are Maori seats on the Auckland City Council.

Yeah right!

3. The smacking referendum is like to be overwelmingly in favour of repealing the evil anti-smacking law when voting closes on Friday.

This news story claims its supporters are divided on how to proceed; the answer is fairly simple - get an MP to repeal that law and dare his colleagues to fly in the face of an overwelming public vote.

4. Andrew Tink, former New South Wales MP, has written this confusing article in the Sydney Morning Herald; it talks about some history associations between New Zealand and Australia in advance of the meeting tomorrow between John Key and Kevin Rudd.

Worth a read, although his knowledge of NZ history is somewhat inaccurate.

5. The very 'innocent' (*cough* *splutter*) British MP, Damian Green has successfully argued to have his DNA removed from the Police database.

This is an excellent move and Green is to be congratulated in his stand for personal freedoms; now we just need to see if such things are extended to the rest of the 'innocent' population when the Tories are in Government next year.

Thoughts And Questions For The Day...

1. Notice how it is only National MPs who are 'foreign' ..(Melissa Lee, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi etc)..you need to keep a close eye on?

2. Why is a dairy 149.97 square metres unsuitable for selling alchol, but one 150.01 square metres is fine?

3. Which chap from the rugby brawl at the weekend is the cutest?

4. Would you 'try it on' with the provocation defence if you were in the dock?

5. Are you sick of Dan Carter yet?

6. Joe Hockey to be Australian Liberal leader by October 1st?

7. Should public libraries ban smelly vagrants?

8. Does anyone actually want to buy Chalmers Properties sites in Dunedin?!?!

Limited Partherships

The sole achievement of the Clark Labour government was the Limited Partnership Act of last year which, after several years of delays (gosh, it took them long enough!), made it possible to create this most beneficial and important of entities.

I have never been much of a fan of private Companies as an investment vehicle as companies can get rather complicated.

The dividend structure is complicated with imputation tax credits, companies retain capital within the company (which often frustrates shareholders), the names and addresses of the shareholders are plastered all over the Companies Office website, and tax losses must remain within the company with the exception of a Loss Attributing Qualifying Company (see what I mean about how complicated it gets?!?!), and there is a great deal of compliance and other headaches which frustrate so many Directors and shareholders.

With limited partnerships, however, you have the following straightforward and beneficial attributes:

1. A 'General' partner or partners, this is the chap in charge who runs the partnership activities on a day to day basis and has unlimited liability.

2. Everyone else is a 'Limited' partner. These fellows have limited liability and take no part in day to day management.

3. Limited partners have anonymity, which means their name is not pastered all over the internet (on the companies office website, for instance), and is one of the most important aspects of the legislation.

4. Income and Capital and (*ahem*) tax losses have a 'flow through' to individual partners, which means your capital is not tied up in a company which you can only gain access to if the company is liquidated.

5. Limited Partnerships have other attributes, too, such as a registered office and address for service and other bumflufferies.

The passing of the Limited Partnership act has meant that New Zealand has become much more adult about certain matters and I feel it will be excellent as a way of pooling investor capital in a discreet and enthusiastic way.

As a word to the wise anyone planning a business or investment undertaking would be well advised to use a limited partnership in preference to a company, trust or other entity.

All we need now is a large reduction in the 38% tax rate...

A Synonym For 'Un-American'.

The conservative, libertarian, freedom loving faction of American politics has had enormous success in the last few decades.

Apart from their policies one of the largest weapons in their arsenal against the liberals and Democrats has been to create the impression that such people are in some way 'un-American'; that there is something suspicious, treacherous, fifth column and 'not quite right' with those chaps, as if they had just married their sister or were uncircumcised or had Bin Laden's number on their contacts list or something equally revolting.

This has meant chaps such as George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry never stood a chance, and Presidents' Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were treated as interlopers with no legitimacy.

(Indeed Bill Clinton would be the greatest victim in all of this; I am sure there are still millions of people who seriously think there was some validity to the Whitewater/Travelgate/Vince Foster/Campaign Fundraising scandals when in fact he was quite innocent and simply against ruthless opponents on television every night for some years saying their was, and it became true due to repetition.)

Now President Obama is being mauled by opponents who are, with some success, painting him as: a socialist, a muslim, un-American, literally un-American with a claim he was born abroad, and several other damaging campaigns to undermine him.

Although I oppose the policies of President Obama without exception I cannot help raising an eyebrow or two at the hypocrisy of some of his opponents, but I digress.

What would be splendid is to have a similar thing happen here against the Green/Labour parties; for us to have a term which catches on to create an impression their is something illegitimate and 'not quite right' about having socialists in Government.

Unfortunately 'Un-New Zealander' seems a very clumsy term, (gosh the chaps who named our Country have a lot to answer for!), but it is worth putting our heads together and coming up with something.

How splendid it would be in 20 years time to have vast numbers of people thinking the average Labour politician is a traitor committed to destroying our Country, way of life, wealth and children's future, in the same way elderly Americans talk of their youthful votes for George McGovern with a sense of embarrassment and shame, not to mention the inherent memory loss regarding votes for Mondale and Dukakis! ha ha!

All suggetions most welcome....

There Is Nothing More Dangerous...

...than an oil company awash with profits.

The SundayStar Times has a story about how we are likely to have high oil prices for years to come (yes, yes, I know - the SundayStar Times has taken a while to discover this news) and when reading the story I could not help laughing to myself.

Oil companies are excellent at their core business - the discovery and subsequent supply of oil; an activity which is considerably more difficult to be a success at than it appears.

Of all the industries in the World you really have to congratulate the Oil industry for its efficiency, seat of the pants risk taking and provision of an almost universal product.

I delight in reading the histories of the legendary 'Texas Oilman', or men, such as Sid Richardson, HL Hunt, Boone Pickens and so many others.
These are the sorts of capitalists I admire; rugged individualists who get stuck in against the odds and achieve something worthwhile.

However there is a downside to that success.

Every oil company (almost without exception) when it becomes successful and awash with cash, seems to go mad; this sees them diversifying into other activities and (also without exception) that tends to result in disastrous cockups and inevitable losses for the shareholders.

Shell and Gulf oil getting involved in Nuclear power and coal, Chevon's foray into alternative energy, the Hunt brothers attempt to dominate the silver industry being some of the more notable examples.

Add to that the acquisition of private jets, super yachts, football teams, art collections, private islands and other seemingly necessary expenditure items of the average oil company, none of which actually produces a single dollar in income yet costs millions to run.

All in all around half a trillion dollars has been pissed up against a wall by Oil companies with plenty of readies run by people so drunk on success they blow years of hard work in record time.

If high oil prices do become a fact of life over the next decade or so one only hopes that lessons have been learnt and shareholders will not be treated in such a cavalier fashion again; that more responsible Directors and Management will simply stick to their core activities rather than engaging in money losing activities they know little or nothing about.

Thoughts On Taxation

One of the great myths deseminated to the New Zealand population since 1984, mainly by the ACT people, is how high tax rates were prior to Sir Roger coming along and supposedly saving the World singlehandedly.

Needless to say this claim is not quite what it seems yet has taken on an axiomatic life of its own and I was rather surprised to conduct some research and found the tax burden today is similar, or even higher, than 35 years ago.

I took as an arbitary figure $100,000 per year and took a random year of 1975, deep in the heart of a socialist Labour Government, and compared it with today.

In 1975 on an equivalent income of $100,000 (which in those days was $12,000) the income tax was 35%

In 2009 the income tax is 29%.

HOWEVER....

In 1975 there were a myriad of tax deductions which are no longer available.

In 2009 there is GST to be paid on top of the 29% as you spend the 71% you are 'allowed' to keep.

With regards to Company tax the rates in 1975 were 20% and 45% which means a total tax rate on that amount of money of 34%

In 2009 the Company tax rate is 30%, barely less than in 1975, and needless to say, back then Companies had a myriad of tax deductions which are unavailable today.

My findings were somewhat of a surprise as we have all been taught to believe that taxation in the past was at seemingly confiscatory levels and we should be so grateful to have had the ACT/National warriors for capitalism slashing and burning tax rates during the last 25 years.

As with much to do with ACT it is a false assertion.

In the words of Peter Cresswell - "Where are our tax cuts you bastards?"

If You Wait Long Enough...

...you will eventually see what should have been 'urgent' investigations initiated.

Former Babcock and Brown head, Phil Green, is now (ie: a year or so late) to be investigated to see if he breached his duties as a Director in relation to the bailout of Tricom.

In a patently bogie transaction Babcock and Brown lent Tricom $40 million early last year and security for the loan was...wait for it...a parcel of Babcock and Brown's own shares.

*Blink*

I remember at the time expressing my utter astonishment at the transaction to Anna Woolf/Annie Fox and wondering if the devious behaviour of Tricom knew any limits; my view being that it had always been a question of when, not if, Tricom's behaviour came back to haunt them.

Eventally it (predictably) all ended in tears with the ANZ bank and investors losing vast amounts of money and now the liquidator is going to delve a bit deeper.

Question of the day: Was Mr Green a prize bunny?

Racism Alive And Well In New Zealand

Five Maoris who caused the death and were rightly convicted of the manslaughter of Janet Moses whilst engaging in some exorcism/witchcraft ceremony have avoided being sent to prison.

The reason for the very light sentences of community service is because they are Maoris and the Judge was too scared.

This is a shocking case, and the sentence was even more shocking and shows that not all people are equal in New Zealand.

Even the circus at the sentencing itself was a farce and unlikely to be allowed for White people about to be sentenced; can you really imagine this sort of wank fest for Clayton Weatherston?!
I hope the Crown decide to appeal this nonsense (they won't, of course, because they, too, are too scared) and we get some actual justice for the victim in this matter.

Questions Of The Day

1. Why has the Times newspaper gotten so left wing lately?

2. Are you impressed with the 40 million pound jewel heist in London?

3. Will you obey the no cellular telephone talking or text messaging law?

4. If they passed a law requiring you to engage in beastiality would you obey that too?

5. Why are you such a poofy girly-man you do as you are told all the time?

6. Would you give Margaret Shields a Dame-hood?

7. Is there anybody who did not see this coming?

8. Are members of Solopassion.com Howard Roark style geniuses an ignorant World has yet to discover, or is their complete absence of any success in life whatsoever due to the (slightly more plausible) reason that...ummmm... well, because they are no bloody good?

Illogical Busybody-ism

West Auckland licensing trust (in itself a communist, anti competitive organisation) member, Linda Cooper, has called for a ban on alcohol sales for 18 year olds.

Apart from the lack of originality of such a call I find the lack of logic rather strange; does this Linda Cooper female believe it makes some sort of difference selling beer to someone born on August 13th 1991 but not doing so to someone born on August 15th 1991?!?!

She goes on to mention that a ban on such sales (ie a ban on someone born 18 years ago tomorrow, but not on someone born 18 years ago yesterday) will "cut the ability of under 18 year olds to pre load - getting tanked on alcohol bought from an off licence and then going to a bar or cruising in a car or hanging out in parks.."

Illogical nonsense.

Australian Evil Pt 1

It is not only here in New Zealand that evil lurks in the open.

Here are some examples of Australian evil.

1. Commonwealth Bank (who owns the ASB in New Zealand) spent much of yesterday APOLOGISING for making a $4.4 billion profit.

Chief Executive Ralph Norris virtually slunk into the press conference and instead of crowing at how successful they have been in very difficult conditions, said they were 'sensitive to public opinion' and very, very sorry for being successful.

How pathetic.

2. Comrade McClelland, the Attorney General, has announced plans to abolish freedoms in the lucky country under the guise of strenthening the anti terror laws.

His socialist attack on the 'Boss Class' capitalists will now mean the Police will not require a warrant to enter and search a property and will be able to hold suspects for seven days.

Needless to say the concern about terrorism is a red herring and the real intention is socialist aims to increase the power of the State and the reduction in rights of the population, I can just hear McClelland announcing this at the caucus meeting - "Brothers, this will hit the boss class capitalists where it hurts. This will show those Melbourne Club wankers the workers are in charge. Obviously we will dress it up with the usual line about innocent people having nothing to fear..." [*deafening sniggers around the caucus room*] "...but this is important for our working class socialist ideals, Comrades"

Just pure evil.

3. The convenience food industry has shown itself to be weak and girly in the face of a socialist attack on this industry.

Nicola Roxon, the health minister, had proposals to 'crack down' on junk food advertising and instead of the industry shrugging their shoulders and saying "we sell hamburgers, chips and soft drinks and people can choose either to eat them or not" they have wimpily decided to 'self regulate'.

What a lack of balls in the face of evil.

How pathetic.

Question Of The Day

Do you scratch your head at these expatriate New Zealanders who break speed records seeking greener glass abroad, find out things are worse (oh yes you do *wink*) and stay glued to the news in New Zealand and fill their blog posts with New Zealand stories?!?!

Examples Of Evil Pt 1

Unfortunately the New Zealand Herald is full of evil today; 'evil' being defined as money stolen from capitalists and other taxpayers being handed out to 'special interests' for no better reason than their 'sense of entitlement'.

1. Ex Members of Parliament want to keep their travel discounts.

Graham Kelly, the invisible former MP for Porirua, who is president of the 'Association Of Former Members Of Parliament", claims to abolish the discounts would be breaking a contract between the Government and ex MPs.

As someone who has seldom travelled by aeroplane, much preferring trains and boats, this desire to be airborne by politicians has always seemed a bit odd, but then the Middle Class has always bewildered me.

In these days of $100 airfares I think the discounts are unnecessary especially for MPs who retired many years ago.

2. Dunedin City Council has purchased the Carisbrook sports complex for a figure of about $7 million of ratepayer's money.
If ever there was a corrupt, unnecessary, nest feathering at everyone else's expense situation it is the Carisbrook debacle.

3. Environment Canterbury is spending $34 million on a flood protection scheme along the Waimakariri river north of Christchurch.

This amount of money seems extortionate, especially as any flood protection measures will only be in use on the odd occasion, and needless to say people living some considerable distance away will be expected to chip in and pay for it.

What these chappies at Environment Canterbury need to understand is this - it is a river, occasionally a river floods, after a few hours the flooded parts subside and things return to normal, it is all part of nature and there is no reason to bother trying to do anything about it.

4. The Bank of New Zealand is appealing the $654 tax demand they received a couple of weeks back.

(It is the tax, not the appeal, which is evil! ha ha!)

What horrifies me about this article is the news the Inland Revenue has spent $38.5 million attempting to collect the money! a $38.5 million fishing expedition (oh yes it was Mr Taxman) where nobbled Judges knew what was expected of them when the case arrived in Court.

I cannot for the life of me see any justification for any entity paying taxes of that amount (or any amount) and find this the worst example of evil in the newspaper today.

First Catch The Rabbit.

Section 4 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act reads:

No court shall, in relation to any enactment (whether passed or made before or after the commencement of this Bill of Rights), -

(a) Hold any provision of the enactment to be impliedly repealed or revoked, or in any way to be invalid or ineffective; or

(b) Decline to apply any provision of the enactment -
by reason only that the provision is inconsistent with any provision of this Bill of Rights

Putting it bluntly: this is a Clayton's Bill of Rights Act.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer, he who so regularly engaged in the 6 o'clock swill (*snigger*), passed this Bill of Rights Act when Prime Minister, presumably with the intention of making himself a champion of the rights of the population, yet ensured it had no teeth and the power of the State reigned supreme.

This insidious section should be top of the agenda for libertarians in New Zealand because once this is repealed it means the rest of the Act becomes a supreme document regarding the rights of the population and the protections against the State which would immediately follow.

It is often frustrating when New Zealand libertarians waste time with endless discussions on perepheral nonsense, conflicts in the Middle East, red tape, taxation, political correctness when all attention should be focused on what is really important.

To quote Mrs Beaton "first catch the rabbit".

In other words do the important thing first and the rest will follow much more easily.

Necessities Of Life

During the weekend TV3 held a Telethon where it raised a lot of money for children living in poverty.

Whatever the admirable qualities of this intention there are a couple of problems which arise and these mean that distribution of Telethon funds should not occur in the way intended.

The law states that the necessities of life for a minor must be paid for and provided by parents out of their regular income (or the State for orphans).

As such I always get rather annoyed when various do-gooders provide handouts to minors which constitute the 'necessities of life' - food, clothing, footwear, shelter (etc).

Food, clothing and other necessities of life handed out to school children is a particular concern to me because apart from allowing many parents to opt out of their responsibilities it always is technically illegal.

Schools are trusts, as are various other organisations which dole out charity.

The law states that a trust (whether a discretionary or 'family' trust, charitable trust or whatever) cannot pay for necessities of life to a minor as that is the responsibility of parents and the only exception to this is where the income of a parent is a distribution from a trust fund.

Other exceptions to this would be a situation whereby a family trust pays for a family holiday in Australia, or fees to a private school because such expenditure is not considered 'necessities of life'.

However, the bank account of a family trust should not be paying for groceries at New World, paying the electricity to Contact Energy, or clothes at Hallensteins; the correct situation being the trust paying the parent (if they are a beneficiary) income into their personal bank account and that bank account being used to pay these day to day espenses.

Boards of Trustees of schools and other trusts (such as the trust which will hand out the telethon money) are not supposed to be providing food, raincoats and other clothing or anything else which parents should be doing.

As someone with a great deal of experience as a trustee for six different trusts covering a couple of dozen beneficiaries (and all the resulting bun fights and suing that has occasionally led to! ha ha!) I get annoyed at other trustees of other trusts who ignore the law, ignore their legal obligations with a shrug of the shoulders and a "but I am doing the right thing, ya know?"

The fact is it does matter.

The fact is you cannot just ignore the law because you are 'doing the right thing', because, well - you are not.

"Get a job ya bums"

That wonderful quotation from former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating sprang to mind as I was walking down Queen Street earlier today and witnessed a march by the striking Telecom engineers.

These ungrateful, collectivist, evil socialist chappies are annoyed because Telecom wants them to become self employed contractors.

Needless to say such a move reduces, or eliminates, the power of the EPM Union and hence is being strongly resisted; no more would they be able to say "loyal union men over here to the right and scabs to the left. Now let's take a vote" and hold their members under a kind of peer pressured slavery.

This strike is unnecessary.

This strike is simply about a Union wanting to retain its power.

This strike is disruptive to vast numbers of people, particularly those who had to witness an ignorant, noisy rabble earlier today, and has no justification whatsoever.

These fellows should feel grateful they are gainfully employed and is a good example of the working class adopting a sense of entitlement and losing their values.

Were it up to me I would sack the lot of them and engage the services of other self employed contractors who want to work, want to earn a living, want to take pride in their work and want to avoid the socialist traps which a spiteful union leads them into.

Somewhere In The City...

James lay in his bed.

He was in his $1.5 million apartment overlooking the Auckland skyline.
Somewhere down below the city was beginning to stir for the day as hundreds of thousands of people emerged to go about their daily activities.

As he lay in bed awaiting breakfast to be brought to him by his dutiful manservant James was in an unusually reflective mood.

He thought about the great business empire he had created in recent years and the by products of success such as his Bentley, his weekend country estate, his antiques and other works of art and felt pleased at how things had turned out.

It had not been a bed of roses but with hard work, deviousness, single minded determination and a manifestation of the self help ethic meant James was able to succeed and prosper as others fell by the wayside.

He thought about his family.
His main thought about them is what utter failures in life they all were; each of them still living in grinding poverty somewhere on the West Coast.
Understandably, due to the embarrassment which would result were any of his rich friends to discover he was related to such people, it had been such a long time since he had seen any of them.

He thought about contacting them and helping them leave their poverty stricken existence by sharing his great wealth with them. Many would say it would be the correct thing to do.

Then he thought 'fuck it', rolled over and went back to sleep.

Question Of The Day

Which MP was once an honest, upright, ethical sort of fellow who felt you could win an election simply by stating your case to the electors and they would respond favourably?

(seems things have changed, the politics of personal destruction are here and the days of "we are bigger than that" are long gone, eh ****?)

Except When You Do It?

This week has seen a great deal of handwringing, sanctimonious outrage and unnecessary fuss about the expenses of Members of Parliament.

Personally I see no problem with MPs receiving free travel between their electorates and Parliament, accomodation in Wellington; free postage, telephone calls, an office, secretary and subsidised meals.

Such things are quite common for employees who are required to travel as part of their job, and a free office and all that comes with it is a normal part of anyone's employment.

The fuss about Members of Parliament is just the usual ignorant anti-MP lambasting from Radio Live callers and other lunatics.

What disappoints me is the overseas travel and some rorts which have clearly been undertaken by MPs with regards to that; the perverbial "factfinding mission to the Bahamas in the winter months", so to speak.

However, one wonders how many people engaging in sanctimony are in fact engaging in hypocritical sanctimony over this issue?

How many people have rorted their employer?

How many School principals, postmasters, railways employees (etc) live[d] in houses provided by their employer for a peppercorn rental whilst renting out their own house? A substantial number is the answer. 90% (and the rest)

How many people have turned down a work related trip abroad because of the expense to the company?

"Oh no, Mr Smith, I could not possibly go to the Gold Coast for a conference as it will cost XYZ Limited $2899 plus gst; much better if I stay here in the office"

Such conversations simply do not happen.

"Oh!" I hear you exclaim; "but MPs are different"

Actually, no, they are not; anyone receiving a salary as an employee of someone else is in the same boat and are able to receive expenses for work related matters just like anyone else.
Afterall 250,000 people are employed by the State and vast numbers of them receive expenses for conferences, housing (as mentioned above), postage, telephone calls, petrol, clothing and numerous other things.

In their ignorance most people do not understand that most MPs are hardworking, diligent, want to make a sincere (albeit misguided at times) contribution to New Zealand, do not hesitate to undertake time consuming and tiresome constituent matters without fear or favour and all in all provide good value for money.

If only all employees were the same.

Hardly A Folk Hero

Ronnie Biggs has been released from prison on compassionate grounds as, evidently, his death is not far away.

For those unaware, Biggs had a minor role in the Great Train Robbery back in 1963, was caught along with the others, escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965, was on the run in Australia (!) and Brazil until 2001 when he returned to Britain to complete his sentence.

What disappoints me is what a folk hero he has become; the number of people who fail to see Biggs as a career criminal more than happy to steal a vast amount of money belonging to other people, not to mention the viscious assault on the train driver.

Biggs is no hero.

Biggs is a criminal. A thug. A moocher.

Biggs has no remorse for his crime (apart from getting caught) and would do it all again tomorrow were he able to get away with it.

Biggs would happily steal your money, your property, your valuables and not give it a second thought as he sells it in some South London pub for 1/10th its value; he would not care about your sense of loss, of violation, of being an unnecessary victim of crime (unnecessary in the sense it is not necessary for thieves to steal), oh no these things would not feature in his thinking as all he would care about is profiting at someone else's expense.

Biggs should be ignored, not revered; he should not be viewed as some sort of Robin Hood folk hero.

How Long Can Three Years Be?

Ever ask yourself how long three years can be? I tend to do that whenever I see or hear about an ACT MP.

This story in the NZ Herald just shows how awful these ACT chappies really are with the odious David Garrett challenging Clayton Cosgrove to step outside and engage in violence.
Now, I cannot think of anyone more deserving of a good thrashing then Cosgrove, who is one of the (very) few people I genuinely dislike, but find this behaviour in the Parliament to be outrageous.

Needless to say this is another example of ACT hypocrisy and seems to be part of an increasingly long list.

1. Three Strikes for violent crime would not seem to apply to ACT MPs

2. Sir Roger Douglas rorting travel and expenses despite three decades of railing against 'privilege' and public spending (except when it applies to him)

3. Rodney Hide spending years criticising red tape and then creating more of it with the new Auckland city.

4. Spending for departments run by ACT Ministers are at their highest ever.

...and you could go on and on.

It saddens me and many others of a libertarian persuasion the ACT people have turned out to be 'full of it'; as deceitful as even the worst socialist.

No tax cuts, no spending cuts, no reduction in regulations, no increase in freedom, no property rights; these are the legacies of ACT in Government and one can only speculate at the number of broken hearts around the Country of freedom loving 'true believers' who had every right to expect the ACT people were genuine.

The expectation was one thing, but the reality is so appallingly bad one sits here wondering how long three years can possibly be....