Friday, February 22, 2008

Delightful

I really have had no time recently (and am likely to have even less in the upcoming weeks - we move house in six days) to chronicle the totally delightful spectacle of The Witch lurching from crisis to crisis.

I think this is a much better picture than the one that was on the front page of The Herald this morning of Bovver Boy keeping Money Bags away from SWMBO.



'I'll knee him in the groin, you nick his cape and we'll do a runner in his taxi'

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Obese children

A bad thing and lots of them about apparently. The government knows how to sort this out of course. Our gummint knows what is best for us at every turn. Just give them all your money and they will do everything for you in a fair and equitable way.

So how are we going to get these fat kids away from their computers and out doing Push Play (and what the hell is that?). You launch a website. Brilliant. You sit kids in front of a computer to tell them to get out and be more active. This brainwave is part of a program that is a steal at $68 million - of my bloody money.

This drive to make young people thin is enthusiastically endorsed by the sylph like Minister of Youth Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta



Hmmmmm

The RMA

I wasn't around when Geoffrey Palmer dreamt up the Resource Management Act. I am sure it was well intentioned and I think when it started out it worked fairly well. This is patently no longer the case.

I work in one of the very few tower buildings on Auckland's North Shore - OK it's North Shore Hospital. It was opened in 1983, I think, with the tower block housing the wards - as it still does. The population drained by the Hospital has increased a tad since then but New Zealand is not World Champion of letting infrastructure lag behind requirements for nothing. That the Haus Sik is vastly too small for its current needs is hardly a State secret. But those wily gents with the big hair and the shoulder pads thought ahead in the early eighties. They put the piles down for a second tower block should it be needed in the future. Clever, eh? Well I'll give you the tip it is needed now. Easy peasy pull off the piling caps and put another eight stories over the canteen. Impossible. The piling no good? Nope. The Resource Management Act. There has to be 'years' of resource consent hearings before the first wheelbarrow of concrete is wheeled on site. Even then the current regulations deem that a matching eight stories is not even being asked for.

It is stupidity on a biblical scale. Who the hell do you have to get consent from? People who are going to get sick and won't be able to be treated in the hospital that doesn't exist if they don't give consent. What 'resource' is being used to put a second tower on a building that already has one and has provision for the second? Air - maybe. But that is all I can think of and there is stacks of air about. You don't have to waste a single native tree (it is going on top of an already existing building don't forget) and I cannot see a godwit nest on the canteen roof as I look out of my office window. There is no pa or marae on the pharmacy roof that I can discern. Customary fishing rights for the laundry? Beyond me.

Pak'n'Save. Ghastly shop. Who would willing go to a supermarket where you have to put your own groceries in a plastic bag (I flatly refuse to buy with money a reusable eco friendly shopping bag). More parochial RMA nonsense but this of an even sillier kind. Woolworth's, Countdown and Foodtown have a nice little monopoly of supermarkets in the Takapuna/Milford/Forrest Hill neck of the woods. They don't want the opposition coming in on their patch. They have, and are continuing, to use the RMA to stop this place opening. I mean it is built - has been for years - but lies there empty of stock or customers whilst Woolworths et al obfuscate with appeal after appeal under the provisions of the RMA. They have managed to drag this out for - wait for it - fourteen years. Their latest tack is there are not enough car park spaces and they are doing this just to protect the poor citizen from something or other. Oh, and also the embryo supermarket is not sited in accordance with zoning. One. The empty purveyor of groceries is only just visible from the road across a vast expanse of tarmac on which you could land a 747. Two. The site is in the middle of Wairau Park which is a light industrial/retail sprawl that could only have been designed by a town planner on serious drugs - at about the same time they planned to put a second tower on North Shore Hospital.

The RMA is a crock. It has morphed into a totally impractical, ferociously expensive bureaucratic behemoth that stands in the way of any progress - be that sensible or loony. It has also turned into an ideal weapon for commercial enterprise to wage war on each other with when no resource needs managing at all.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Even more proof - if it were needed

We have a failed history lecturer as Minister of Finance. This initially struck me as odd but I later saw the light and came to view it as down right dangerous. History Boy has been telling us for years that even though we had surpluses around ten billion dollars (I don't think even I could spend all that) tax cuts were not affordable.

Now we hear that our surpluses are reduced by $1.7 billion and suddenly Tax Cuts are all the go. That it is election year is a complete coincidence of course. Dear Leader has Cullen's arm right up his back and he is forced to look even more of pratt than he really is.

Our national economy is in the hands of an incompetent ideological zealot who is now being forced to sell his nasty soul for a mess of electoral pottage.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

And now for something completely different



In case you can't follow it there are subtitles

'Who put the goat in there?' is indeed the question we are all asking.

I am not understanding

That dreadful woman stood up on her hind legs in Parliament yesterday and got the year underway. All good socialist stuff about making housing more affordable. More affordable apparently means that people who can't rub two farthings together will be able to buy a house. I'm sure she and Mean Michael would really like to just nick houses off rich pricks and give them to wastes of space whose only interest in life is free recreational pharmacology courtesy of my tax dollar. But even she has not come that far - yet - on her march to the Peoples Collective of Aoteoroa.

So what do we get instead? We get two fings wot I can't quite join together. First fing. The State becomes 30% owner of this new affordable housing. So I am about to buy 30% of crappy houses on crappy estates that I don't want. I will be getting no interest on this investment. Sounds great so far. But there is more. The 70% of these undesirable residences that I don't own will be the proud possession (or more probably not so proud) of the lower income group of the country that has a negligible track record on servicing debt. Smashing. Isn't this called the Sub-prime lending market - the very same that has been such a roaring success in the States?

OK, so far it sucks. Second fing. In order to bring the cost of houses down they think the supply side of things has to be freed up so there is more to buy. Even History Boy can grasp this economic principle - pretty please he can. They will do this by selling Crown land on which to put these cheap tacky dwellings. They will also force (don't this mob love their bit of compulsion) ordinary developers to put this crappy stock in the middle of their developments of nice proper houses. By this two pronged attack they are aiming to drive down the price of houses.

So the second fing is is aimed at driving down the price of the the fing wot we just bought as an investment in the first fing. I will buy a widget off you for a dollar. I will then make four thousand identical widgets so the widget price falls to seventy cents. I will then sell my original widget (price one dollar) for the new market price of seventy cents. I'll then do it again, and again, and again......... I don't understand. If they want to throw money away wholesale just give it to me. I see I didn't win Big Wednesday - again - and I really do need a DB9.

I'm just kidding - I do understand really. This country is being run by a bunch of fiscally irresponsible left wing loonies who shouldn't be allowed to run a corner dairy let alone a sovereign state. This is just the latest of a long litany of stupid populist election bribes that does not stand up to any sort of close scrutiny. This bunch of wastrels has had nine long hideous years to cure all sorts of ills and they have failed spectacularly at every turn. If anyone can't see the latest load of crap coming out as so called new policy for what it is they are even more stupid than I give them credit for.

They have to go.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Unemployment is down

Well of course it is as people are leaving the country in droves. The Gummint will herald record low unemployment figures as a result of their far reaching and successful policies. This is absolute nonsense. It is because the workforce is leaving for (mainly) Australia at a rate of one hundred a day. That a vast majority of these people are part of the productive workforce is not tricky to work out. I mean you are not going to get state houses emptying truckloads of beneficiaries bound for the airport are you? Why would they run away from a life sucking on the public teat.

And with what are we replacing these emigrants? The lady who had a go at the 'Take me to Cuba' trick on Friday is what. What a waste of space and a pitiable commentary on the immigration policies of this country. We have to be the softest touch on the planet. She apparently (and I use that qualifier consciously) had a rough time in the Sudan or somewhere a decade or so back and New Zealand gets all sympathetic and welcomes her here under her United Nations refugee commitment or some other such bollocks. For openers you have to look at the wisdom of relocating someone from sub Saharan Africa to the Waikato or the Wairarapa. It perhaps should come as no surprise that since arriving she has contributed precisely zero to New Zealand but on the contrary has done nothing but bludge off society for the entire time she has been here. Her current place on her career path is that she is holding down a position as a long term sickness beneficiary. She has apparently run up a serial criminal record, has imported a deaf sister (who now has to be looked after by some deaf place) and has fourteen (fourteen for God's sake) other rellies clogging up the immigration process so they can come here and also bludge off us.

It has to stop. Take chainsaw to the policies that are forcing useful members of society to flee the country and take flamethrower to our refugee commitment which is importing shedloads of wastrels.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Roll up, roll up - bribes, flip flops right this way

We are well and truly in election year aren't we?

Shall we start with the bribes or the flip flops? History Boy obviously has SWMBO pushing his arm right up his back. He was dragged kicking and screaming to the podium yesterday to announce Tax Cuts. God how that must have hurt. A bit like an Imam advertising pork chops, turkeys promoting Christmas or the Black Caps inviting the Aussies over for a Test series. 'But I can't announce Tax Cuts, we are communists, I mean socialists' 'It's election year you dement and unless you do as you are told we don't get another three years of wrecking the country and you get a knee in the groin'. So the Meanest Man in the Universe announces through gritted teeth that us, the great unwashed will be allowed to have some of our money back. But there are no details as to when or how much so that he can give us the meat (sic) nearer the election - I mean later in the year. Yesterday was a sort of an advert for a bribe. But History Boy has been here before - promising tax cuts and then reneging on the deal a while later. Well, if it worked before he hopes it can work again. With this in mind he has built in not one but four get out clauses. We only get the dosh (remember as yet undefined in amount, but I'm not renting an extra safety deposit box) if there is no borrowing to pay for them, they will not lead to cuts in services, they will not exacerbate inflationary pressure and they will not lead to greater inequality in society.

There you are we all get nix. He can persuade himself (and that is all that matters) that any one of those (let alone all four) pertains and the carrot is whisked sharply away. We've heard it all before and if anyone falls for it this time they are more insane than they were three years ago. Cullen would prefer spending three years sticking matchsticks under his fingernails than give one cent of the money he steals from us back to its rightful owners - i.e. you and me.

Isn't it marvelous what being Prime Minister can do for you when the value of your house is threatened by having a bloody great motorway being built in the back garden. Oh no, we can't have that so we'll put in a $1.8 billion tunnel under the prize petunias. Oh, and whilst we are being shameless, we will forget that as recently as last October we said that private money has no place in building roads. No we'll have a private/public partnership so that the thing can be built by 2015 and sod the references to us saying we would never do that. 2015 is supposed to make it look like it will be ready tomorrow. It's seven years away. It does not take seven years to build a couple of kilometres of motorway. It does, however, take seven years to wade through the labyrinthine bureaucracy surrounding building a couple of kilometres of motorway. But the bit with the large yellow machines takes nowhere near that long. If I was going to build a road anywhere the last people I would get to do it would be the New Zealand government and a few of their councils - they couldn't organise a nun shoot in a convent.

As a tasty codicil to this back track on nice big civil engineering projects we are to have to pay a toll to use the tunnel. Suits me but it must taste very bitter in the mouths of the commies from whom it is spewing forth. And of course this has Keith Locke and his loony mates spitting tacks. They want us all getting around town in tofu powered trams or walking shod in possum skin boots or.....who cares?

The things these weasels will do to stay in power - makes thirty pieces of silver look like an absolute bargain.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Hang on, you can't say that

The rise of the Maori party has been interesting to say the least. Spawned on the seabed and foreshores of the land they have been a tolerable part of the political landscape for a couple of years. They have Hone Whatsisface who is barking but you can just ignore him. Pita Sharples looked very good around the death of the Kahui twins and usually Tariana Turia has her greatest value in being the politician with the lowest centre of gravity in the world. I defy anyone to knock her over.

However she has shown a scary side of her persona with her opinion that tagging is not a crime but merely an alternative form of expression. Well, sorry lady the Crimes Act says that tagging is a crime and is punishable with three months in the slammer. Who the hell does she think she is, standing up and unilaterally declaring that she choses to ignore a part of the code of law? The vast majority of people (and I would definitley include myself in that number) regard the 'street art' as no more than wilful damage. Where is the distinction between her daft and irresponsible statement and my declaring that I don't regard speeding as a crime (which I don't - well sort of- well daft speeding - well 120 when I say so is OK - well you know what I mean). It was also noteworthy that Turia managed to squeeze the evils of the colonial subjugation of oppressed indigenous minorities into her whinings.

No the Maori Party have to go in the bin with the rest of them.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Never judge a book by its cover, but.........

Benson Dope. This bloke has to be the epitomy of dullness. Just look at him. He looks like a throw back to the nineteen sixties. The last time I saw someone who looked like the Dope was Harry Draycott who taught me O level physics in 1967. B-D has the lot - the facial expression, the demeanour, the party man persona, the 'rules is rules and I'm only doing my job' (exceopt when he is breaking them of course but that is also par for the course) contenance. In a physics master this manifests itself as the classic 'this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you' as you are lined up for six of the best. Yeah right. I can only too well imagine the Dope in his times as a schoolmaster. He wouldn't have been a teacher, a schoolmaster would have been his appelation. All the tennis ball and duct tape stuff is so very believable. But to cap it off he has that moustache. It's a ripper. Where would you go to find a collection of such finely manicured stubble 'taches? I would suggest a tobacconists. I think if you have one of those mos you are duty bound to smoke a pipe. Harry Draycoot had the tache and smoked a pipe. In fact the entire physics department smoked pipes - I'm sure Squadron Leader King insisted on both.

The we move onto The Dope's attire. I defy anyone to show me a picture when he is not wearing that nineteen sixties physics master suit and a striped tie. I'm sure he never takes it off. Sleeps in it, goes to Bar B Qs in it, mows the lawns in it lets his hair down and does the crossword in it. He's probably got a holiday version that is a shade of grey lighter and had has slightly wider trouser legs that can be rolled up so he can go paddling. The holiday version has a hidden pocket to carry the extra large hanky, knotting and wearing on head for the use of.

Anyway the Dope is goneburger. And good riddance. That he should have fallen on his sword on several occasions (not sure you can logically do that - no matter) is as plain as the rather large nose on his face. The man lied liked a flat fish for years and in any decent society would have done the honourable thing and resigned when he was found out. That doesn't happen in New Zealand politics and if you are of the political pink persuasion the only thing that can make you pack up your bags is if she says so.

As Benson Dope has just found out. Back to Newtons second Law of Motion for the Draycott look alike.