tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47394327541937050032024-02-20T05:12:41.532-08:00ancientdanUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-10181540115634810182015-08-23T14:02:00.000-07:002015-08-23T14:02:07.065-07:00<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Petrol taxes were first levied in New Zealand in the
1920’s. It seemed a sensible idea at the time. Why not tax the motorist, the
obvious “user” of the roads, to pay for them. In the 1920’s not everyone owned
a car. It seemed right that the small minority who did should pay for the
privilege of using the roads. The large majority of New Zealanders were not
affected by fuel and road taxes. Most freight went by rail. Rail was powered by
coal. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Circumstances have changed dramatically since the
1920’s. Car ownership is no longer the privilege of the few. The nature of
modern society and the growth of large cities mean that for all income groups a
car is a necessity not a luxury. Road taxes are regressive. They have a higher
impact on lower income earners. Compounding the problem lower income earners
face long commutes due to high prices for central suburbs. Paying high levels
of petrol taxes depresses their ability to pay for the necessities of life.
Petrol tax contributes to increased levels of hardship. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Paying for the transport system by using petrol taxes
increases the cost of doing business. Good tax policy should not unnecessarily
add to the cost of production. It should if possible avoid harm the productive portion
of the economy. The part of the economic process where wealth and prosperity is
generated. Petrol tax increases the cost of doing business and those unneeded
costs flow on to the wider population in higher prices for goods and services. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The worst culprit is road user charges. This tax is
based on the thinking that trucks cause the most damage to roads. They do.
Therefore goes the thinking a system that taxes heavier users relative to their
use is the most fair. This is misguided. It is a mistaken view of who the real
users of the roads are. It assumes that the physical users of the roads are the
real users of the roads. It doesn’t take account of whose shoulders the tax
actually falls on. Truck owners pass the taxes down the logistics chain to
everyone. Transportation is at the heart of the productive economy. Everyone in
the wider economy including those who do not produce goods and services and
wealth is a user of the roads. Even the most reclusive pensioner who walks to
the supermarket and seldom ventures on a public road save on a pedestrian
crossing is a user of the roads. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The goods and services delivered to her supermarket
come by road. The “real” “road users “ are every single person who buys
anything which is carried in a truck. 80% of all freight is moved by diesel.
Every item in a supermarket, a retail shop, and a coffee bar, every business in
New Zealand one way or another get their supplies using trucks and delivery
vans. Fuel taxes imposed on the transport industry for “their” use of the roads
are “cascading” taxes. They cascade down through the cost chain unnecessarily
adding millions to the price of goods and services. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Since everyone is a road user then everyone should
pay. The best way to pay for road </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">maintenance </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">is therefore through general forms of taxation which applies to
everyone. Paying for road maintenance by way of income tax is a far more
sensible strategy than throwing it into the cost of production and laying an
unfair burden by way of a regressive tax on the economically weaker members of
society. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Paying for </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">new roading and transport infrastructure </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">is
another matter. New roads, bridges and motorways are long term assets that last
lifetimes. They are not only used by the generation alive in the year of the budget
but by generations yet unborn. Paying for them through fuel and road taxes from
current income and short term undesignated government debt is like paying for a
house in the year it is built.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A road or a
bridge will add to productivity and prosperity for at least three generations.
It is sensible to spread the cost of transport assets across the lifetimes of
those three generations. New roads and transportation assets should be
purchased through long-term government Road Bonds with the cost spread over 75
years. This would remove the cost of new roads from this vital sector of the
productive economy. Generations of taxpayers would shoulder their fair share.
New taxpayers yet unborn coming into the road using population in 40 years time
will have the opportunity to pay for the infrastructure they inherited. Older taxpayers
will not pay now for roads and bridges that they will not be using in forty
years’ time. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Spreading payment for essential roading infrastructure
across generations would allow New Zealand to upgrade some of the appalling
roads that pass for state highways. On the Desert Road there are four or five corners
that indicate you should negotiate them at 25 k to 35 k. (You should). When
winter ice and snow comes along they are impassable particularly to trucks.
Four or five large four lane viaducts and bridges would solve the problem.
These are commonplace in Sweden, France, Italy, Spain built across the ravines and
mountainous terrain of those countries. Building a modern all weather highway
across the Desert road may well be beyond the taxable resources of the current
generation. But it is well within the capacity of the next three. If the cost
of those viaducts was spread over 75 years then they could be built now and the
benefits accrue to us and our descendents. The countries number one state
highway would not need to be closed every other day in the winter for a few centimetres
of snow. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The same applies to the road over the Rimutakas from
Wellington. This road unbelievably purports to be the second state highway of
the country. A few whiffs of sleet and the entire east coast is cut off from
the capital. Fortunes are being spent making a mountainous narrow sheep track
of a road straighter. The simple answer is to build a tunnel through the
mountains with three lanes each side. This is no big engineering feat. The existing
railway tunnel was dug by hand in the 1930’s and today’s large tunnelling machines
would find it easy going. The Swiss built 70 kilometres of tunnels in the last
few decades through basalt. Again the tunnel may not be affordable by one
generation but it is by three. It goes without saying that a six lane tunnel
from Wellington to the Wairarapa would bring increased access and prosperity to
both regions. One benefit of changing the funding of new roads from current
spending to long term bond financing is that it will to provide a capital
market in a new kind of Government debt. Quality bonds for productive assets
are worthwhile assets for savers. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The point is that there are many benefits to changing
the tax mode and mix in raising government revenue. The </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Benefits of removing Fuel taxes and Road user charges.
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The lowering of the costs of goods through changing
the method of paying for better roads will lower the costs of goods in the
stores and put more discretionary income into the pockets of all New
Zealanders. New Zealand has the most expensive grocery and food items in the
entire world. Ask anyone. Transport costs are a large factor. A large element
of high transport costs are cascading taxes such as fuel and road user charges.
</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Removing all petrol diesel and road charges will have
a large positive impact in rural areas. It might be possible for places like
Whanganui, Levin and Rawene to have profitable industries when transport to Wellington,
Auckland and the ports gets cheaper. Small towns and provincial cities will
have a chance to compete in the economy and not increasingly lose their
populations and become ghost towns hollowed out by high road costs. If the tax
on transport is removed our main exports can move from the factories to the
ports without a cascading tax adding to the final cost. Removing fuel taxes
will give New Zealand exporters an advantage over countries who misguidedly add
a tax to the productive sector of their economy. Lower income suburbs will have
a boost to their spending capacity. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The spread of suburbs in the last 50 years has imposed
long commutes on those who live there. Why should their costs be added to
unnecessarily while those who were earlier settlers and who tend to be more
prosperous and live in the inner city escape these costs. Remove road use taxes
and a segment of the population who do not generally benefit from tax cuts
would. They would have an increase in their disposable and discretionary
income. This would bring increased prosperity to a group that has not seen much
in a while. The poor travel from necessity the better off for leisure. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Removing road taxes will make taxis an affordable part
of more peoples transport options. Taxis are an overlooked part of Public transport
system. More use of taxis would help traffic congestion and make more effective
use of the country’s car fleet. Overseas tourists would find New Zealand more
affordable and therefore a more desirable destination than the alternatives on
offer.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lower road
travel costs would see tourists travel more widely and spend their money at
more locations. We would attract more of them. Some of the money they save on
fuel and road taxes would be spent elsewhere in the economy to the benefit of
New Zealand businesses and employees. New Zealand is a high cost tourist
destination. It costs a lot to get here from anywhere. Imagine the number of
Australians that would visit if petrol was $1 a litre and the price of goods
was 20% lower. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">It will help internal tourism. Removing petrol taxes
will allow New Zealanders to travel in their own country, go to the beach, to
visit friends more often. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">There will be savings in bureaucratic costs spent
filling in form to buy diesel mileage. Some will say in a begrudging fashion that
removing road charges will put more money in the pockets of people with higher
incomes. It won’t. It would take a small adjustment to income tax rates to pay
for the road maintenance. Those affected would find little change in the amount
of tax they pay. Instead of paying at the service station they would pay for it
through their income taxes. Like all citizens they would benefit from the lower
price of goods. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Road charges and fuel taxes illustrate a circumstance
where the Minister of Finance thinks he is doing one thing but the reality of
the changes in society and the economic processes mean he is actually doing
another. In this case unnecessarily adding a cascading tax increasing the price
of goods and depressing a number of income sectors in the economy to no useful
purpose. It is preferable for the manner of taxation to reflect the reality of
today and for Road building to be paid from long term bonds and road
maintenance costs should be taken from income tax and general revenue.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-2687580666235681852015-08-23T01:09:00.003-07:002015-08-23T01:09:52.879-07:00A quote from a commentator on Wattsupwiththat<br />
- M Seward I think.<br />
Couldn't have said it better my self<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br /></blockquote>
<div class="comment-content">
<blockquote>
A lot of us think we live in a rational,
science dominated world with the dividends from the Reformation, the
Renaissance and the Age of Reason flowing into our lives. There are
however an awful lot of people out there whose education was not really
sufficient to bring them up to speed with enough maths, science and the
rationality of scientific method who simply do not see. hear or feel in
that same part of the intellectual spectrum. They still take their life
cues from the sorts of emotionally targetted thinking and rhetoric that
has been the signature of the shamans, the priests, the mythmakers and
the secular spruikers who have always been there in the irrational
shadows. Climatologists are just a recent iteration of the doomsayer
strand of humanity’s manipulator class who can make a buck spruiking
their schlok and form alliances of convenience with political and
commercial interests who see their work as just the latest brand of
useful idiocy.<br />
This is an old problem wearing some new ’emperor’s’ clothes.<br />
I just wish they would all find their Jim Jones and a supertanker full of Kool Ade.</blockquote>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-48544040910637321662015-08-20T20:44:00.001-07:002015-08-20T20:44:55.784-07:00Just venting my spleen on the madness of models. The world is too complex for present day computers and human knowledge to think they can model multi multi multi (to the 900th variable) variable models of immensely complex systems. Economic/social/physical availibilty systems for a streat. <br />
<br />
<div class="edit-comment" id="edit-comment1571435" style="background: none;">
Because I am so old I remember the world before the madness of models began<br />
Like the model which in 2007 said that the chance of a crash in the
derivatives and credit debt swops was a one in a 50 year chance. MR Xi’s
little bit of graphery. Honestly they bought the model and issued
triple AAA credit worthy certificates to financial instruments they did
not understand. That cost a few trillion and we have not really
recovered from the problems when that model did not work out.<br />
Then there’s the IPCC climate change model that has never been
verified by past climate and never validated against current climate. So
what happens. The temperature stopped climbing for the last 18 years
whilst CO2 went up. Australia wastes billions on desalination plants
that were mothballed on completion. Tim Flannerys little model said it
was not going to rain. The seven year drought would continue forever.<br />
South Australia, UK Ontario and Germany instituted insane wind farm
construction on the basis of the climate model that does not work.
Probably about a trillion down the gurgler on that model before its
over. <br />
So along comes these characters with their tax effects on smoking
addiction conjectures in a cute little easily graphed model that has no
connection with real life.<br />
They keep getting out their slide rules and making stuff up. It has to
be verified and validated. It hasn’t been tested in either direction.<br />
Ireland still has high rates of smoking and high rates of tax. Sweden
has the lowest rate of smoking in Europe and its not the tax. Spain has
low tax and ordinary rates of smoking.<br />
The tax governs smoking behaviour model is a dud.<br />
Get over it. Start working on practical on the ground real programs
like E cigarettes that have been proven to work in real life not in
models.<br />
Reminds me of the model where this bloke claimed that scientific socialism would make the world a workers paradise.<br />
What was his name again.<br />
How did that one work out.<br />
How many trillions of effort, lives hopes and dreams were wasted on that model of society.<br />
Intellectual model makers and graph fiddlers should be kept under leash and away
from the lives of real people and most especially kept away from their
wallets.<br />
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-74697027386588069072015-08-20T15:34:00.000-07:002015-08-20T15:34:20.235-07:00<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">An excerpt from my book. Must finish it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Politicians
are not a socially loved lot. There are many tempters pleading at the
parliamentary gates more than willing to lead humble aspiring politicians into
the temptations of spending taxpayers hard earned cash. “If you spend just a
few million they say or pass this vital law it will repair the ills of our
chequered humanity. The bonus is that the cost of their philanthropy will fall
on the taxpayers. It will not cost the petitioner or the politician a penny. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For
all the maligning of politicians they enter the parliament with the best of
intentions to do what they can for their fellow citizens and their country. This
means the temptation to save the world is constantly present. Lets look at an
ongoing example. The latest petitioners for political and fiscal solutions for
the repair of the human condition is the medical profession, particularly its
public health branch. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Public
health is a legitimate concern of government. There are many great achievements
by the state sector by way of clean water, research into diseases which we can
all applaud and take great pride in. Politicians have been presented with a new
statistically based form of health improvement proposed by epidemiologists.
Some earnest well meaning doctors have entered the public domain with political
solutions for the “improvement” of the New Zealand population. The conclusions
the health professionals proffer are derived from data mining. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">They
look a lot like the livestock improvement schemes that raised milk production so
much in the 1960’s The good doctors champion a view that a number of medical
conditions are caused by “unhealthy life styles.” The advocates of these
nostrums assemble collections of data and infer correlations between the
consumption of substances, sugar, salt, tobacco, alcohol and rising incidences
of obesity, heart condition, lung cancers and liver damage in percentages of
the group. The correlations are sound statistics. You would think therefore
that the medical community would apply funds and efforts in a medical way. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">To
take a normal medical approach and round up the culprits in the statistically
significant groups and invite them into hospitals and clinics and offer them
treatment for their afflictions. The treatment would include stern advice one
assumes to stop certain behaviours, cease or minimize their use of the
offending substances or face the medical consequences. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Instead
they propose using tax to cure these medical conditions caused by “unhealthy
life styles”. It’s an extraordinary idea. The medical profession have come to
the conclusion that somehow tax can be rubbed on the wound, ingested into the
system and the illness will be cured.The thing is taxes affect all the group including those who might suffer health effects and those who will not. All are treated as "guilty" all are to be punished. It is most extraordinary. The poor suffer most from the tax the better off can behave as they wish. The tax will not inconvenience them at all </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Sin
taxes are not a known medical solution to anything. It is very well established
they do not change people’s behaviours. All that taxes do is allow the better
off to practice the “bad” behaviour at a small marginal cost. The poor may
continue to practice their “dreadfulness” but with less money in their pocket
to feed their children, buy school lunches, shoes for their children, petrol
for the car and other necessities of modern life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The
doctors instead of using their medical competence to cure the problem have
fallen in love with fiscal remedies for health problems. They have decided that
prophylactic prescriptions are too hard so they are resorting to using the
mandatory edicts of politics. </span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This
is group therapy through taxes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I
think their adoption of collective curing through taxation comes from the fact
that their knowledge of the problem comes in part from the grouping of
statistical results. </span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There
is a danger that while the doctors are playing politics and setting up new
taxes they take away the energy that they could devote to offer <b>actual </b>solutions for the conditions
they consider unhealthy. Theirs is a new powerful role as expert counsellors to
the politicians as the arbiters of state prescribed ‘normality’. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">They
ask for a political solution for a health problem. It’s tempting. They become
public celebrities lobbying politicians to cease their heartless resistance to
their solution. New taxes on substances that everyone consumes most with bo
adverse health outcomes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Politicians
are getting tempted. The statistics of dreadfulness are lobbied through the
media. It ill behoves politicians if they are not seen to be doing something
about these new dreadful threats to society uncovered by statistics of the
medical lobby. The blackmailing line goes “Impose this tax or you are being
negligent about our fellow citizen’s health.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Politicians
like the rest of us are undoubtedly sincere in their quest to cure the
unhealthy. The “tax improves your health option “offers politicians a bonus. If
they cure the deviant unhealthy life styles of the population of their vile
habits it will save the public health system a bunch of money. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And
as a bonus they could swipe a bit of extra tax money on the way by. A win win
win proposition indeed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The
fact is taxing say sugar to curb obesity does not work. Denmark tried it for a
year. Taxing tobacco, alcohol, salt, sugar does absolutely nothing to cure
individuals who have come to medical grief by their use of these things. It is
preposterous to think a tax can cure. Some governments are stalling on the
“increased taxes cure the sick” proposition. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Particularly
in the idea that taxing alcohol improves your health. Smokers have been turned
into the hated and despised of society so taxing them is a political pleasure
and it’s likely they don’t vote. Drinking remains respectable, just. Some
drinkers unlike the smokers are powerful members of society. They vote. Likely
it is all that will save them from further incursions of the Inland Revenue
into their wine cupboards. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The
arrival of the medicos with tax solutions is a challenge for citizens wishing
to protect their freedom and the contents of their pockets from preposterous
proposals. It will require confidence on the part of people that
they are the experts on how they can and should live their lives. They will
have to dispute with government, the academic community and the political
elites just who has personal sovereignty of their persons, themselves or the
government. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">They
have no power to resist taxes and laws directed at correcting their behaviour.
Laws and taxes which are futile and damagingly corrosive of self respect and
their ability to conduct their lives can easily be imposed on them. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It
should be possible to convince a group so intelligent as doctors to stick to
medicine and continue to treat people as individuals and not cop out with a
group guilt tax solution.<span lang="EN-NZ"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-8792649399958215302015-08-19T16:55:00.000-07:002015-08-19T16:55:01.458-07:00I think the official permission to kill birds which are protected by other statutes is a form of "noble cause corruption"<br />
<br />
Those charged with enforcing the law are corrupted by a noble cause. <br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Under the Clean Power Plan, the Energy Department projects that
wind-generation capacity will surge from 66 gigawatts in 2014 to some
200 gigawatts in 2030. But for that expansion to happen, the federal
government will have to give wind companies formal permission to kill
some of our most iconic wildlife. And that’s where the raptor meets the
turbine blade.</blockquote>
How do you break through this kind of corruption.<br />
<br />
You have to insist that either the original law be repealed or amended in light of the new and noble cause. Or you must enforce it.<br />Arbitrary suspension for a "noble" cause is corrupt.<br />
<br />
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2015/08/wsj-obamas-wind-energy-lobby-gets-blown.html<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-20366756373099293922015-08-19T16:27:00.001-07:002015-08-19T16:27:17.060-07:00It is sadly reminiscent of Pravda.<br />
A particular ideological line has to be supported at all costs.<br />
The ice is melting, the world is warming.<br />Facts contradict that<br />In this piece there is another reason for the calving of the Ice Berg the build up of ice. <br />It contradicts the ideological line.<br />
Simple choice for the editor.<br />
Leave out the actual reason for the calving of the Iceberg and stick to the "party" line. <br />The ice is melting the world is warming<br />All together now repeat "The world is warming the ice is melting."<br />
The trouble with this is twofold.<br />It masks reality. The reason given for the calving is not the real reason that it happened.<br />
The world has not warmed for 18 years. The ice is not melting.<br /><br />The story building as it does on a real thing, the iceberg did calve and reinforcing as it must by the current ideology that the world is warming the ice is melting.<br /><br />
The story reinforces a mental reality at variance with the true reality.<br />As the desired reality departs further and further from the real reality<br />
there can only be one political outcome.<br />Those who disagree with the official reality must be silenced. They must be discounted,<br />
made into figures of hatred, of truth denial by the true believer and guardian's of the official reality.<br />We have two hopes for reality to be understod and the affairs of the world conducted in a dialogue of reason and rationaty addressing the reality that is.<br />
The internet and freedom of speech. <br />The Internet is robustly constructed.<br />
Freedom of speech is not.<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
I suppose one can only hope for another epiphany.<br />Like that point in 1989 when a billion people said that they had been lied to about reality.<br />And threw out communism.<br />A thomas Kuhn shift.<br />
<br />
<br />
http://realclimatescience.com/2015/08/todays-featured-climate-fraudsters-the-washington-post/<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-71401770519622551922015-08-19T16:11:00.002-07:002015-08-19T16:11:23.539-07:00One has to presume that at one point there is a change of paradigm, of understanding, a tipping point where what was once "truth" is seen in a new light for the falsehood it once was. <br /><br />One hopes but then Orwell's ghost enters the conversation and you are reminded that language is being devalued.<br />
That the currency of thought has been spent, the definition of reality has been turned upside down and inside out. <br />Looking at history you would have to say that even when the barbarians breached the gates, even when reason was banished for centuries betterment won out. <br />That however was when rulers were mortal men. <br />Now that all power has been vested in the Government empowered by the most powerful of technologies, and desiring to control even the most inconsequential aspect of human behaviour we risk the loss of distributed decision making, financial independence and individual freedom.<br />
<br />How are trends, fads, ideologies which wreak havoc halted? <br />How are the sectarian religions overcome by reason, humanity and decency? How is civilization preserved. <br />Who stopped the inquisition?<br />
<br />
http://www.cfact.org/2015/08/19/americas-big-green-wrecking-machines/<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-80950184435322217482015-08-17T20:41:00.002-07:002015-08-17T20:41:55.357-07:00There is the blind turning to one side when the unpleasantry from ideas once sound turns to ruin. <br />The Green religion is really failing to step up to the plate on this one.<br />http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/17/why-stefan-the-stork-died-in-vain-wind-turbines/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-32054026305303689512015-08-17T18:54:00.002-07:002015-08-17T18:54:06.808-07:00Indeed.<br />
http://www.informationlode.com/int/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-7168336541059686202015-08-17T18:29:00.000-07:002015-08-17T18:29:36.136-07:00It is like going into the attic and finding all sorts remnants.<br />
<br />
I wrote this site for an exam in the Onkaparinga Technical college long ago. I was getting a diploma in teaching Adults.<br />
<br />
Wonder if I was right<br />
http://www.informationlode.com/int/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-911753950357357622015-08-17T18:24:00.002-07:002015-08-17T18:24:43.134-07:00I think I will put a bit of my thinking, reactions and ideas here instead of bugging a lot of friends on Face book who sensibly arn't taken with these kind of notions<br />
<br />
Heres an extract from a magazine I ran in the nineties.<br />
http://www.informationlode.com/netwatch/ 28 May edition 1997<br />
<br />Still waiting for the idea to be taken up<br />
<h2>
A whole new industry?</h2>
Some days you feel your six months ahead of the rest of the world. You
recall the Internet site where some lazy students (the worlds greatest
inventions are by lazy people wanting an easier easy - C Benz) located a
camera facing their coke machine in the dorm basement and used the
Internet to see if it still contained cans.
<br />
<br />
From this I postulated there was a great industry coming where bored
housewives in Murmansk could use the Internet to monitor security
installations in Chicago, factories with cameras mounted watching the
premises wired to a site which measured movement and reported to Olga
when something was afoot. Well from the land of frozen haddock comes a
curious Internet site.
<br />
<br />
Enterprising hackers in Norway set up a Web cam and aimed it at the
door of an alleged establishment of salubrious entertainment ("horehus",
in Norwegian). The object of the exercise is to show that with a $75
Web cam and a Net link, you can keep public tabs on what or whomever you
like without permission or knowledge. Netsurfers Gazette <br />
<a href="http://www.informationlode.com/netwatch/www.sel.ikke.no/horer/"> www.sel.ikke.no/horer/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-54711099299461270072015-08-17T18:05:00.003-07:002015-08-17T18:05:52.905-07:00My My such a long time between posts <br />Life goes on. <br />Still wrestling with complex systems. <br />Economics is interesting in this area as is Climate Models.<br />
Making progress. <br />All the more reason for heuristic explorations. Poke it with a stick and write down the results.<br />Sir Francis Bacon was not wrong. <br /><br />Found an ex IBM anthropologist taking the same approach as I decided years ago.<br />Curiously I met him once.<br />
<br />
I am surprised to find have the
same difficulties semi physical sciences with the verification and validity of models.<br />
<br />I found this example of chasing down Von Neuman's elephant. Wonderful story, as told by Fermi to Dyson and recited by Feynman. Trying to add Shrodingers cat to my cat stories. elusive. On a Lewis Carroll note what if Schrodinger's cat, Von Neuman's elephant and Nassim Taleb's Black swans had a round table discussion. Might give us caution about what certainty we attach to what we think we know.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">And
making elephants dance is indeed what modeling in drug discovery runs the risk
of doing, especially when you keep on adding parameters to improve the
fit (Ah, the pleasures of the Internet - turns out you can <a href="http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/">literally
fit an elephant</a> to a curve). This applies to all models, whether they deal
with docking, molecular dynamics or cheminformatics. This </span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.cse.hcmut.edu.vn/%7Echauvtn/data_mining/Reading/Chapter%204%20-%20Classification/2004%20The%20Problem%20of%20Overfitting.pdf"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">problem of overfitting</span></a></span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> is well-recognized,
but researchers don't always run the right tests to get rid of it. As Derek
pointed out however, the problem is certainly not unique to drug discovery. He
started out by describing the presence of "rare" events in finance
related to currency fluctuations - these rare events happen often enough and
their magnitude is devastating enough to cause major damage. Yet the models
never captured them, and this failure was responsible at least in part for the
financial collapse of 2008 (this is well-documented in Nassim Taleb's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X">The
Black Swan</a>").</span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> -
See </span></blockquote>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And
making elephants dance is indeed what modeling in drug discovery runs
the risk of doing, especially when you keep on adding parameters to
improve the fit </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Ah, the pleasures of the Internet - turns out you can <a href="http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/">literally fit an elephant</a> to a curve)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. This applies to all models, whether they deal with docking, molecular dynamics or cheminformatics. This </span><a href="http://www.cse.hcmut.edu.vn/%7Echauvtn/data_mining/Reading/Chapter%204%20-%20Classification/2004%20The%20Problem%20of%20Overfitting.pdf" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">problem of overfitting</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
is well-recognized, but researchers don't always run the right tests to
get rid of it. As Derek pointed out however, the problem is certainly
not unique to drug discovery. He started out by describing the presence
of "rare" events in finance related to currency fluctuations - these
rare events happen often enough and their magnitude is devastating
enough to cause major damage. Yet the models never captured them, and
this failure was responsible at least in part for the financial collapse
of 2008 (this is well-documented in Nassim Taleb's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X">The Black Swan</a>").</span> - See more at: http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html#sthash.J6lQ6pFg.dpuf</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And
making elephants dance is indeed what modeling in drug discovery runs
the risk of doing, especially when you keep on adding parameters to
improve the fit </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Ah, the pleasures of the Internet - turns out you can <a href="http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/">literally fit an elephant</a> to a curve)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. This applies to all models, whether they deal with docking, molecular dynamics or cheminformatics. This </span><a href="http://www.cse.hcmut.edu.vn/%7Echauvtn/data_mining/Reading/Chapter%204%20-%20Classification/2004%20The%20Problem%20of%20Overfitting.pdf" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">problem of overfitting</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
is well-recognized, but researchers don't always run the right tests to
get rid of it. As Derek pointed out however, the problem is certainly
not unique to drug discovery. He started out by describing the presence
of "rare" events in finance related to currency fluctuations - these
rare events happen often enough and their magnitude is devastating
enough to cause major damage. Yet the models never captured them, and
this failure was responsible at least in part for the financial collapse
of 2008 (this is well-documented in Nassim Taleb's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X">The Black Swan</a>").</span> - See more at: http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html#sthash.J6lQ6pFg.dpuf<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And
making elephants dance is indeed what modeling in drug discovery runs
the risk of doing, especially when you keep on adding parameters to
improve the fit </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Ah, the pleasures of the Internet - turns out you can <a href="http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/">literally fit an elephant</a> to a curve)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. This applies to all models, whether they deal with docking, molecular dynamics or cheminformatics. This </span><a href="http://www.cse.hcmut.edu.vn/%7Echauvtn/data_mining/Reading/Chapter%204%20-%20Classification/2004%20The%20Problem%20of%20Overfitting.pdf" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">problem of overfitting</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
is well-recognized, but researchers don't always run the right tests to
get rid of it. As Derek pointed out however, the problem is certainly
not unique to drug discovery. He started out by describing the presence
of "rare" events in finance related to currency fluctuations - these
rare events happen often enough and their magnitude is devastating
enough to cause major damage. Yet the models never captured them, and
this failure was responsible at least in part for the financial collapse
of 2008 (this is well-documented in Nassim Taleb's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X">The Black Swan</a>").</span> - See more at: http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html#sthash.J6lQ6pFg.dpuf</div>
</div>
<br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And
making elephants dance is indeed what modeling in drug discovery runs
the risk of doing, especially when you keep on adding parameters to
improve the fit </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Ah, the pleasures of the Internet - turns out you can <a href="http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/">literally fit an elephant</a> to a curve)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. This applies to all models, whether they deal with docking, molecular dynamics or cheminformatics. This </span><a href="http://www.cse.hcmut.edu.vn/%7Echauvtn/data_mining/Reading/Chapter%204%20-%20Classification/2004%20The%20Problem%20of%20Overfitting.pdf" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">problem of overfitting</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
is well-recognized, but researchers don't always run the right tests to
get rid of it. As Derek pointed out however, the problem is certainly
not unique to drug discovery. He started out by describing the presence
of "rare" events in finance related to currency fluctuations - these
rare events happen often enough and their magnitude is devastating
enough to cause major damage. Yet the models never captured them, and
this failure was responsible at least in part for the financial collapse
of 2008 (this is well-documented in Nassim Taleb's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X">The Black Swan</a>").</span> - See more at: http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html#sthash.J6lQ6pFg.dpuf</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And
making elephants dance is indeed what modeling in drug discovery runs
the risk of doing, especially when you keep on adding parameters to
improve the fit </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(Ah, the pleasures of the Internet - turns out you can <a href="http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/">literally fit an elephant</a> to a curve)</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. This applies to all models, whether they deal with docking, molecular dynamics or cheminformatics. This </span><a href="http://www.cse.hcmut.edu.vn/%7Echauvtn/data_mining/Reading/Chapter%204%20-%20Classification/2004%20The%20Problem%20of%20Overfitting.pdf" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">problem of overfitting</a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
is well-recognized, but researchers don't always run the right tests to
get rid of it. As Derek pointed out however, the problem is certainly
not unique to drug discovery. He started out by describing the presence
of "rare" events in finance related to currency fluctuations - these
rare events happen often enough and their magnitude is devastating
enough to cause major damage. Yet the models never captured them, and
this failure was responsible at least in part for the financial collapse
of 2008 (this is well-documented in Nassim Taleb's "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X">The Black Swan</a>").</span> - See more at: http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.html#sthash.J6lQ6pFg.dpuf</div>
<br />
http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2015/02/derek-lowe-to-world-beware-of-von.htmlUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-70915368997093928982010-07-28T13:26:00.000-07:002010-07-28T13:27:37.135-07:00The hollowing out of Labour/LaborFrom todays Australian Newspaper<br />Ring any bells<br />"The Labor apparatus is a superb, slick, clever machine for delivering jobs and patronage to its supporters. <br />Certain unions exercise disproportionate influence over its deliberations and safe seats are now rotten boroughs doled out to reward faithful apparatchiks. <br />The branches are moribund and no longer have a genuine say in policy or candidate selection. <br />No wonder young, energetic idealists and activists of the Left are flooding into the Greens and GetUp!"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-56928524207609560292010-06-21T05:21:00.000-07:002010-06-21T05:23:53.399-07:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Thanks to the sanest man in Australian Journalism Andrew Bolt</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />US historian Shelby Steele on the slow death of the West:</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br /> One reason for this is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now. <br /><br />Today we in the West are reluctant to use our full military might in war lest we seem imperialistic; we hesitate to enforce our borders lest we seem racist; we are reluctant to ask for assimilation from new immigrants lest we seem xenophobic; and we are pained to give Western Civilization primacy in our educational curricula lest we seem supremacist. <br /><br />Today the West lives on the defensive, the very legitimacy of our modern societies requiring constant dissociation from the sins of the Western past—racism, economic exploitation, imperialism and so on."</span><br /><br />Just do not have the bottle to defend the enlightenment<br /><br />Wonder if they know what living in an unlightened society is like.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-12026933623871467332010-06-08T15:09:00.000-07:002010-06-09T13:16:56.261-07:00The ideological world versus the real worldThose who construct their reality from an ideology, like the marxists, or from a religion like say the Greens must occasionally look at the parts of the modern world which they have wrought and wonder at the current tragic consequences of the actions drawn from their unreal ideas.<br />Why have had such monsterous and evil consequences followed the lofty ideals of the left..<br /><br />The ideology that sprang form the 60's from the "New" Left and the environmental movement, their projected a reality, has come to pass. <br /><br />They hold the seats of power in governments, universities and the media.<br />These institutions have marched in lockstep with their brilliant ideas for a better and more enlightened future for us all. From saving Africa, ending poverty leveling out incomes, to changing the world's thermostat no project was too small for taxpayers money to be hurled in billions into the breach.<br /><br />We have funded billions and billions of dollars from the public purse for their solutions to conjured threats.<br /><br />The solutions they promulgated have been taken put in place at enourmous expense.<br /><br />Why then if the implementation of their ideas has been to their wishes has a grusome reality arrived that is so different from their claimed nivarna.<br /><br />What has actually come to pass is so different from that promised by the green doomsayers that you have to conclude that to continue to hold the views they do, so far removed from reality, is akin to madness. <br /><br />In the end though thankfully reality mugs them.<br /><br />They see a world of windmills, of centrally commanded social mores, of social justice and control by government.<br /><br />What they cannot ignore is the reality if what is actually there.<br /><br />The vast number of hard realities that governments can never control, for long anyway.<br /><br />Two things are certain.<br /><br />When the ideas of their rulers are so far removed from their reality of life every day people revolt.<br /><br />That, or the economic system collapses when fixing the imaginary problems takes all the money and meantime the real problems are starved of attention and resources.<br /><br />Take one example of a Green scare.<br /><br />The world population explosion is a core left bogey man, a frightener of small children and ill informed politicians.<br /><br /><br />The worlds population will peak at 2050. It will decline thereafter if present trends are continued.<br /><br />This is the reality.<br /><br />It is here already. Take the reality of what the deluded greens perceive of is an "overpopulated" Japan.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />"According to a U.S. annual report, Japan’s population peaked in 2005 and will plunge from its current 127 million to 89 million in 2050. That’s a decline of 30%. The median age in Japan today is 43 years old, the highest in the world. <br /><br />The average age in Japan in 2050 is projected to be 61. <br /><br />An increasing number of Japanese leaders are looking for an easy way out of the dilemma of rapid societal aging — as evidenced by recommendations by the Japanese Association of Acute Medicine to allow euthanasia for the terminally ill.<br /><br />On last year’s Children’s Day, the government noted that the number of children in Japan had declined for the 26th consecutive year. Over the past decade, more than 2,000 junior and senior high schools closed due to lack of students to teach. As I recently viewed a report on Japanese television stating that more than 60,000 teachers are unemployed, I couldn’t help but wonder if that teacher I met at the one-student school still had a job. That same program reported that nearly 100 children’s theme parks have closed in recent years and that more and more pediatricians are switching specialties to become geriatricians.<br /><br />Since the 1920s, when Margaret Sanger traveled to Japan to promote contraception and sterilization, the Japanese have embraced the modern notion of “family planning.” <br /><br />One recent poll revealed that 70% of young Japanese single women have no intention of getting married because babies are simply “too much trouble.”</span><br />http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/22739/<br /><br />So for the reason that babies are too much trouble for these polished young ladies of priveliege the race, culture, social and enttity called Japan will cease to exist in the forseable future. <br /><br />That is how the world ends, not with a whimper or a bang, not by fire nor by ice, not even with the babble of a small child.<br /><br /> It ends because girls whose Grandmothers and mothers made the deepest and hardest personal sacrifice two generations before to bring them their spoiled life of luxery, and whose Grandfathers and fathers, raised their Nation from paddy field poverty and serfdom by sacrifice, hard work and enterprise to be the second wealthiest in the world, find shopping and holidays so much more fun that the keeping of a messy husband and the tending of a bothersome child.<br /><br />The George Monbiot's of this world ponder how to get "rid" of four or five billion people, people like you and me, to avert impending catastrophe. Their ideology misleads them and hides the real reality. <br /><br />They rest easy, safe.<br /><br />They live the life of the priveleiged elite.<br /><br />They have constructed a world from words and ideas. <br /> <br />And it suits them well.<br /><br />Well 42 years have passed since the genesis of this thinking. <br /><br />The time of the test has come. <br /><br />Does the real world match their construct. <br /><br />Being unable to discern the difference between a world of fantasy and a world of reality is a symtom of madness.<br /><br />Read that piece about Japan above, that is reality not the phantoms of '1968" <br /><br />As my hero Deng Jioping said. <br /><br />We may agree or disagree about ideology, but we must proceed from reality.<br /><br />Taxpayers should refuse to spend their money on the green madness.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-41199564364458907482010-03-25T20:15:00.000-07:002010-03-25T20:18:22.137-07:00In light of business I thought i would post some comments i wrote in my ezine some 13 years ago.<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />The knowledge society</span><br />The knowledge society has arrived and few societies are prepared for it. The last great transition was when the cottage industries and crafts that supplied the humble wants of the rural based population were thrown into the cataclysm of the Industrial Revolution.<br /><br />In that era if you had two arms could stand upright and had a modest grasp of numeracy and literacy you could get a job, raise a family and pay a mortgage. So numerous were such people that Karl Marx forecast they would rule the world!<br /><br />We now move into a world where knowledge is currency Agriculture occupies under 5% of the population and manufacturing is falling below 30%. The Internet is a harbinger to the on line revolution and an indication that the transition has begun in earnest. To some the cottage lamps are beckoning again.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">But three groups suffer.</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Group 1:</span> The ignorant and illiterate school leavers Victims of the sad cult of whole context learning and self construction literacy training. This lunacy has harmed the median learners, not bothered the brightest but left those whose houses are not interested in books with less literacy than their grandparents<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Group 2:</span> A large number of young people are well educated but unskilled.. In a knowledge society the most precious commodity is knowledge of the job. Previous experience.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Group Three:</span> the older worker whose knowledge has been superseded and is redundant or who were the easiest to get rid of since they had more resources.<br /><br />The focus in gaining full employment has been to get these groups onto the bottom rung of the ladder All the schemes which might have worked in the depression of the 1930's have been tried repeatedly and failed.<br /><br />Why try and cram more unlearned or pseudo skilled entrants onto a crowded bottom rung. of the ladder<br /><br />Better to move those on the next rungs one step up. Make junior book keepers into accountants, ticket writers into graphic artists. The emphasis should be on giving those in the lower middle ranks a more skilled repertoire.<br /><br />The unemployable can then train for the first steps on the ladder knowing that there is a place there. While the first steps might be Mc Donald's or data input but the second and third are open for progress.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">There are opportunities for a number of players</span><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Universities</span><br />instead of sitting in beleaguered backwaters of education bleating about lowered income or touring the foreign student pools could to go to local enterprises and contract for online training in areas in real demand.<br /><br />Private training consultants instead of offering short term courses could provide substantial qualifications online<br />Prospective students could judiciously mix both options. . Education Al la carte. A skilled worker is both a capital asset and a public benefit.<br /><br />Enterprises could offer real educational and qualification packages as part of their enticement package to the advancing cohorts of the future skilled.<br /><br />The State would invest in upskilling the currently skilled to make room for those unskilled to begin the process. A far better investment than the training of a personal social worker for every unemployed and lifetime dole and social security payments..<br /><br />Real Philanthropists could endow Internet establishments offering such options as a tangible public benefit.<br /><br />The option is not only to design online MBA courses for the upper ranks but management courses for receptionists and stock broking for pay clerks.<br /><br />If the receptionist leaves the chair 3pm to online in a conference room would it break the bank to have a part time trainee from Group 2. For the day that she is a real earner.<br /><br />Group three have opportunities in the training and organisation of such systems, going on line themselves to become contract educators.<br /><br />Group 1, well its back to square one to achieve what was done in tin shed in small schools houses in the thirties. By rote learning through the screens teach them to read and write<br /><br />The wider challenge is to remove the notion that education is an activity conducted at specific geographical location to a specific age group at a specific time.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-24610649245100188332009-06-06T01:44:00.000-07:002009-06-06T02:57:11.581-07:00Fraser Colman Neil MacKay The CriterionI started long ago to put a lot of trust in handshakes.<br /><br />I think the first time I put some thought into the matter was when Fraser Colman the Minister of something other in the Kirk Government shook my hand in the Criterion pub in Onehunga.<br /><br />The Cri as it was called in Onehunga had tiles half way up the wall so if you threw up it was easy to clean and the carpets, and there were carpets, oozed their age, decrepitude and tiredness. <br /><br />Mostly you were allowed to stand against high tables and the ashtrays were old corn beef tins.<br /><br />The reason I lived in New Zealand was to some degree the lack of ceremony of such a place, but there are pubs all over the world where people don’t stand on ceremony.<br /><br />No what made New Zealand truly unique was the fact you could meet a Minister of the Crown in such a pub, with the chauffeur waiting round the corner and that you would meet and have few beers and spend an afternoon talking, all equals.<br /><br />That was what was so different about New Zealand and it was the rarest thing in the world.<br /><br />I had of course been shaking hands for years and was well aware of some pointers. <br /><br />I had spent a few years with shearers, wharfies, building workers, sailors freezer hands and even shook hands all round at the Taneatua pub.<br /><br />You shake hands after a fight to agree its over and will be forgotten. <br /><br />You shake hands to seal a bargain and to tell someone who you are.<br /><br />If you know the right shake either in an American ghetto or the Triangle in Onehunga you can do the special shake with out losing face and getting it wrong.<br /><br />It does not do to get it wrong.<br /><br />If you don’t trust the person you put your index finger up their cuff along their wrist.<br /><br />No wharfie or hard case drunk can crush your hand if you do that.<br />It lets them know that you know this. <br />It also lets them know that you don’t trust them.<br />But that’s a better risk than having some muscled hoon crushing your knuckles to a pulp.<br /><br />For if they do the protocol is that you just take it. <br />If you whinge and whelp you will termed a wanker and be drinking somewhere else.<br /><br />You take it because you’re not a crybaby and because you didn’t put your index finger out as a sensible man might do.<br /><br />The Cri was a great pub on a Saturday afternoon.<br /><br />It was where you could meet Neil MacKay. <br /><br />Neil was Scotsman and the cleverest man I ever met, and I have met a few clever men. <br /><br />He liked a drink. The Criterion was one place you could see Neil’s practical genius at work <br /><br />He had a biggish section up in Grey Street and instead of being an idiot and getting a lawn mower and wasting a good Saturday’s drinking time slaving over the business of a big section he bought a goat. <br /><br />So Neil was in the pub while the goat was dealing with a big dose of kikuyua. <br /><br />I know a bit about goats and was there when he announced quietly that he had solved the bloody kikuyua problem, <br /><br />Neil hated Kikuyua with a passion and when he went gardening, he did a spot of contract, gardening he poisoned it with diesel, a slower death, having been careful to charge the client a fortune for roundup.<br /><br />As I said I know a bit about goats so I knew he had half an acre and I knew about to the week, to the day when the goat would have eaten ever living thing about the place and MacKay smart as he was would have one of life’s intractable problems. <br /><br />What to do with a hungry goat who was going to get meaner hungrier and more cantankerous as the days go by?<br /><br />I was planning to, as you do the get the upper hand in a conversation; casually ask about the week after the goat got hungry, "hows the goat going Neil?"<br /><br />Anyway as usual I forgot but what did start to happen some weeks later was every now an again these Maori blokes would come up to Neil with a double whiskey. <br /><br />They would have a yarn and then wander off saying “good as gold” Neil.<br /><br />Well I eventually asked, eventually because MacKay’s affairs were complicated and involved and sometimes it would be embarrassing to ask and not get an answer why they were buying him whiskey?<br /><br />Oh, the boys, says Neil, to the Irish anyone in the pub is one of the boys and Neil knew the term, oh he says “I rented the goat to the boys. “<br /><br />“It’s going good.”<br /><br />It was going good all right what they call a win win win situation these days.<br /><br />Happy Maoris, they weren’t wasting drinking time mowing lawns either and the Local Authority, and the really local authority, the missus, wern’t getting on their goat about the long grass.<br /><br />And yes the goat. <br /><br />Every few weeks the goat faced new frontiers of happiness, blackberry and delicious tucker of every kind as he made a circuit of the whanau. <br /><br />Every time Neil came into the Cri all sorts of Maori jokers would come up and instead of digging a dollar or two out of Neil for the meat raffle they would buy him a whiskey.<br /><br />I reckon that goat went as far as Kaikohe and might have even crossed tribal boundaries and went south occasionally.<br /><br />Occasionally Neil would mention that it would be good if the goat could do a tour of Grey Street and sure enough some evening the goat would be dropped off the back of a Ute and settle into home pastures contented as you please.<br /><br />Anyway what surprised me about Fraser Colman’s handshake was that he nearly crushed my hand to a pulp.<br /><br />I just looked him in the eye, all the while suffering eye watering pain.<br /><br />There was little you could do.<br /><br />If he was a plain civilian you could do two things. <br /><br />The first was curl your other hand into fist and with your less useful hand try and smash him in the mouth.<br /><br />The second was that you could raise your knee and pull him towards you and crush his solar plexus on the point of it, or crush something lower.<br /><br />The first was for idiots who should have better sense than to go crushing your hand and the second was for lunatics who had no sense and more importantly no mates either.<br /><br />There was certain etiquette about starting a fight, you usually simmered over an insult and then after you had drunk your beer, you didn’t start a fight on a full glass, you would turn the glass upside-down. <br /><br />That was the equivalent of a touching slap with a velvet glove.<br /><br />Anyway you invited the culprit outside.<br /><br />It might seem a league of gentleman, it wasn’t, some people went outside and were thumped with a pick handle.<br /><br />But there were hardly any fights in the Criterion. Everyone had agreed that long ago and while occasionally fools might ruin the arrangement they were rare.<br /><br />The Tri, The Triangle down the road was another matter; people went there assured of a good stoush most nights.<br /><br />But Ministers of the Crown were another business altogether. <br /><br />I was with a mate of mine a young street wise MP called Mike Moore and he and Fraser were so to speak workmates. <br /><br />The crushing of Fraser's powerful hand was getting me and I was going to thump him Minister or not, mate of Moores or not. And he let go<br /><br />Anyway I let the matter pass and we had a drink.<br /><br />Fraser was a decent bloke, just didn’t know his strength it seemed.<br /><br />I often wondered if Fraser was just seeing if I was one of the boys or a soft handed well soft handed.<br /><br />Because the other thing about Labour Ministers of the Crown, was that they had calluses on their hands, thick calluses. <br /><br />Oh some had gone soft but the traces were there. And you could tell a lot from a handshake. <br /><br />It’s a very intimate thing a handshake.<br /><br />Of course the world I am talking of was long ago.<br /><br />The Criterion if its still there doesn’t have corn beef tin ashtrays, the boys if they are still there have to crouch along the wall if they want a smoke.<br /><br />And the tax on beer has gone so high it and only be afforded by people who drink fancy foreign stuff at insane prices well out of the reach of the workers. <br /><br />And anyway the mob that drank at the Cri have all been shuffled out on to welfare.<br /><br />And the best deal they can get is a $50 dollars bag of weed from the boys in the bush.<br /><br />And the boys in the bush supply the weed and with the money from their retail sales to the pakeha buy a stack of cans, a few bottles of spirits and every one gets totally rotten in all meanings of the word at long parties lasting days, at home, on their own.<br /><br />And the Labour Ministers raise the taxes on beer, drive the scarcity of weed sky high and bitch endlessly about the lowered morals of the poor and never put their foot in a poor district where if they did and if the poor could afford the beer taxes they would tell them a thing or two.<br /><br />There were few joys better than an afternoon at the Cri or the Kiwi when a beer was affordable by anyone and the boys had a few good jobs to do during the week.<br /><br />And everyone shook hands in the most ordinary way.<br /><br />As a sign of friendshipUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-24518200523982417082009-06-04T10:28:00.000-07:002009-06-04T10:32:47.681-07:00American Presidents and Ancient Dan<span style="font-family:arial;">A friend has extended the bait of commenting on Reagan as Pesident and I am rising to it. </span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> But you can’t do that without comparing him with the others who have struggled to make a fist of the hardest job in the world </span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Good guys,bad guys </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> What sort of people were they personally </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Did they do any good? </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Were their policies sensible and to the taste of Ancient Dan? </span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This rendition is a totally personal view and is interspersed with the then personal history of Ancient Dan in his travels and learnings in matters politic which may or may not explain some of the idiosyncratic conclusions made</span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> No apologies will be made for any statement</span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Nor will Ancient Dan be easily persuaded to another point of view. </span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Ancient Dan has the privileges of age. </span><br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> I am entering my well-earned and deserved curmudgeonly stage of life where I really can’t be bothered changing opinions unless it means cash in the mail or better tasting beer. </span><br /> <br /> <br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Anyways sometimes I was there and you were not. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Well Ancient I am and my memory of presidents goes way back. </span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.informationlode.com/ad/presidents.htm"> Much Much more</a></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-78553364680907078002009-06-03T00:49:00.000-07:002009-06-03T00:52:48.410-07:00RyanairYou've got to love O'Leary.<br /><br />He is brash and bombastic and the airlines is no fun but 58 million people got to where<br />they wanted to go at a price they wanted to pay because he drives Ryan air.<br /><br />Mind you there will be a few less sales of Guinness in the Airport lounges if that toilet charge comes in.<br /><br /><br />http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25580623-643,00.htmlUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-7505722363533338922009-06-03T00:37:00.000-07:002009-06-03T00:47:03.909-07:00Aussies getting real tucker to fight talibanGood heavens<br />It seems our boys in Afghanistan were being fed Dutch food.<br /><br />These bronzed Aussie lads have been going out to fight the wiley pathans on a belly full of yoghurt, muesli and pickled herrings.<br /><br />Spare me days. The saurkraut soldiers.<br /><br />Well things will change after the new tucker regime comes in.<br /><br />Finally the ADF has seen sense and the new food regime will have real food, "fried eggs, bacon, sausages and “barbeques”.<br /><br />"Diggers will get a dedicated Australian mess catered for by seven cooks to be flown into the joint-operated base. "<br /><br />Barbeques means steak an inch and a half thick with onions washed down with beer.<br /><br />Mate thats fighting tucker.<br />Taliban take note.<br /><br />http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25580830-601,00.htmlUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-87659903896571250302009-05-30T15:40:00.000-07:002009-05-30T15:44:32.216-07:00Wealthmakers LifesaversThe kind of people who create wealth and jobs.<br />Whose ideas and products make life better for their fellow human beings.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10575231&pnum=0">Prosperity makers</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-20380477124072413902009-05-29T18:20:00.000-07:002009-05-30T15:40:51.136-07:00Its academic<span style="font-family:arial;">I had for a time believed the wasting of the last nine years was the result of a socialist clique (sorry wash my mouth, democratic socialist, whoops wrong again, social democratic cabal wasting the country’s best financial boom in years.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I am not so sure. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I am slowly coming to the conclusion it was rather a government of academics who started life with fine theories and ideas and who led the country into an imaginary place where social justice was the order of the day.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So that the country of Norman Kirk, of working people, became prisoners in ghettos of despair, and the elites, who only turned left at 18 because they read books in a different corridor of the library from their Tory neighbours, were both ignorant and indifferent to the damage they had done.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">As George Orwell said some ideas are so silly and so preposterous that only an academic could believe them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Meaning I suppose the reality of the world disabuses the more sensible members of the community of such misguided notions.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The are a powerful group, academics, in a party of the working people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">They spend all day in their day jobs lecturing people who by certification know much less than they do.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">They have been selected and praised all their lives not for common sense and wisdom but for a mental agility and skill of thought.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So when you put them into a branch meeting in New Lynn there is not much oxygen for ordinary people.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">After a while they stay silent while their learned betters take the conversation away from the bread and butter issues that concern them to the arcane abstractions of achieving social justice, gender equity and diversity.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It becomes difficult to socialise as the party socials gravitate from beer, the drink of the workers, to wines and pinkie food that needs a lifetime of study to consume with good manners. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">When the beer and sausage rolls are gone and the workers are relegated to doing things like distributing pamphlets and getting out the vote the party ship can sail on to the balmy waters of abstruse arguments and theoretical debates.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Of course you would say the workers should bugger off and found their own party of honest toilers.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The problem with that is its soon evident that out there is a bunch of wilder academics who have read different more emphatic books split into realms of Trotskyites, Marxists, who found other corridors in the university library with the real gospel of social equity, class struggle.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Meanwhile the workers are diminishing anyway, (the academics like them in state houses and on the dole, tidier).<br /><br />The trade unions whom you could once rely on to have a hard headed appreciation of wages and conditions and the bread butter and jam issues have changed as well and the academics have arrived en masse in those sacred Trades Councils as well.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Instead of the hard bitten officials, who spent years on the job getting in the front of every stoush with good bosses, bad bosses and real bastards before becoming an official and getting a job with the union, there is soft handed Harold, who has a degree in social equity, union studies and who has written a thesis on the effects of the abolition of the Arbitration Act 1898.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">For much as I thought Pat Kelly, god rest his atheistic soul, wasn’t a labour man but a true and dyed communist for most of his life and who ran the poker school at Mere Mere, a grave sin, he had worked a day or two in his life and lived the life of the people whom he represented.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">But Harold is the new face of the union and he is all up for the workers, a mob he has recently met for the first time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And Harold or Haroldess is only there until a research job is freed up in parliament and then only until a job is free in a minister’s office and then until a safe seat comes along. But he will give it his best shot.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And Haroldess can go along to the Labour Electorate Committee as a fighter and toiler for the unions and the masses, where it helps that Harold is well connected and knows his wine.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">So if there is blame for the wasted nine years and if there’s culprits to be found I am all for blaming it on the academics, give democratic socialism a break and lay it at the door of the well meaning ideologues who left the hallowed halls of academia to teach the common people how to live their lives.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And don’t we owe them so much.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-34777614614596043712009-05-19T15:02:00.000-07:002009-05-19T15:07:10.875-07:00Second world infrastructureThe Desert Road is closed today, and its only the middle of May.<br /><br />It must be the only number 1 highway in the world that is regularly closed for snow.<br /><br />The country's main highway has corners in shaded gullies with a 25 km reccomended speed.<br /><br />It would take about 4 viaducts and maybe a couple of hundred million to have a weather proof number one state highway.<br /><br />Yet when the good times came in the last 9 years the new 15,000 state servants was thought a good place to spend money.<br /><br />Astonishing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-20454105566385814972009-05-17T01:46:00.001-07:002009-05-17T01:52:38.557-07:00Greens win FreemantleThe Green party won a by-election for Jim McGinty’s seat in the Western Australian State Parliament. <br /><br />The seat has been with Labor since 1924.<br /><br />This is quite an event. <br /><br />They have five crossbench senators in Federal Parliament, which is elected by proportional representation.<br /><br />This might be a sign of the parting of the ways by the insufferable latte socialists from the battlers in the Labor Party.<br /><br />Labor may lose a few central city seats in the next Federal election.<br /><br />The trendy wendys in these seats won’t forgive Kevin Rudd for watering down the Global Warming Carbon Reduction Trading scheme before the Senate.<br /><br />Meanwhile the battlers in the outer suburbs that Labor won back from Howard in 2007 and the miners and workers in the rest of the country will not acrifice one job for those 385 molecules in a million that have Green's leader Bob Brown so worried that he would let a wrecking ball loose on the Australian economy.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4739432754193705003.post-15572212189150300912009-05-17T00:44:00.000-07:002009-05-17T01:09:58.384-07:00Queen City - AucklandYet another campaign to tart up Auckland.<br /><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">More Auckland foolishness, an expensive rebranding to the Big little city - Sounds like someplace in Texas.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">They will run an expensive campaign , pay a lot of cash to the hucksters but won't actually change the reality.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Ancient Dan campaigned 20 years ago to have the area from the Gladstone Road Bridge to the Viaduct declared a development area, to put Quay Street underground, remove the red fences from Kings wharf toPrinces wharf and open the city up to the sea, with the casino at the old railway station.</p><p class="MsoNormal">What Auckland got was a casino where the Bus depot should have been, and a bunch of restaurants around the sump at the viaduct.</p><p class="MsoNormal">So the public got the use of the worst section of the waterfront, a tiny corner on the left hand side.</p>Wellington did just run a campaign.It changed the waterfront into an interesting place.<br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal">It spread poetry along the wharves.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Stuck little eateries and pubs there, built museums and entertainment centres.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> It is a pleasure to go there.</p><p class="MsoNormal">(And when they put the roof on Wellington it will be just peachey).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br />Auckland blessed with better weather and a wonderful harbour has for forty years kept the public away from their waterfront with those victorian red iron railings.<br /><br />Like a finger up the city's nose the port company parks used import cars right smack dab in the prime waterfront area.<br /><br />Vancouver, San Francisco, hell every port city in the world used the opportuniy of the change to container shipping to reclaim the waterfront for recreation and leisure. Not Auckland<br /><br />An advertising campaign won’t do it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">You actually have to change the physical reality.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The problem has been that Auckland's local body politics are steeped in childishness.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Getting the City, the region, the port company to agree open the waterfront up is near impossible.<br /><br />What they will do is try and turn that industrial tank farm miles away into a real estate rake off.<br /><br />The one city structural changes will not do it.<br /><br />Until the Auckland political culture changes or a leader like Robbie arrives progress is unlikely.<br /><br />Another tartup campaign putting make-up on the old whore will not work.<br /><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2