Lee Ka Sheng is worth a bob or two. About US$25 billion at the last count. Quite why he wants to buy a few power poles in the infrastructure basket case of the Southern Hemisphere, Wellington, is beyond me but it's his dosh and he can do what he likes with it. Or not as the case may be. Here in Clarkistan you have to have approval from History Boy to spend the folding varieties - just ask the Canadian Pension Fund.
The smarmy, arrogant, big eared git decided for pure political expediency to block the sale of Auckland Airport last month by putting the goalposts on the back of a truck and driving said truck into his own back garden. Auckland Airport was a 'strategic asset'. So the entire power infrastructure of the nation's capital isn't? You can't dismantle either piece of kit (an airport or a power grid) and take it away and why the hell would you buy something and then run said asset down - it makes no commercial sense. But that wouldn't matter to a bunch of socialists time warped in the economic ideas of the 1950's as nothing they do has any relevance in the pragmatic world of the 2000's. A shameless act of economic vandalism in the name of political gain is nothing to these ratbags. Shareholders sit and watch in horror as Cullen scythes dollars off their investments just so he can score political points. We are supposed to applaud from the touchline as the useless wretch ruins international confidence in New Zealand as a place to invest just so his bunch can march onwards to the socialist utopia at the end of the rainbow.
So it is alright for a mega rich chinaman to buy Wellington's power system but it is not OK for those well known international terrorists the Canadian Pension Fund to buy Auckland's airport. There has been a deafening silence from the Beehive over the sale of the electrons. I presume SWMBO is putting the final touches on that condescending smile she gives us proles when explaining something we cannot be expected to understand in mots du weasel of one syllable. If I see that bloody smile again (and I surely will) I'll kick the cat. Or perhaps History Boy is fine tuning 'Arrogant Bastard Look #3' before telling us, the great unwashed who fill his personal piggy back, to STFU and don't argue with him. Poisonous little toad. I saw him at the airport (how apt) a couple of weeks back and I felt all sorts of uncharacteristic and unhealthy personal violence thoughts wafting over me. I had a sudden insight into the concept of the Red Mist.
The country is going down the tubes under the stewardship of this incompetent bunch of left wing ideological bigots and they spend their entire time social engineering. Fuel prices going through the roof - lets pass the antismacking bollocks. People can't afford a block of cheese - we need the Electoral Finance Act so we can try and cling on to power. Violent crime out of control - we really need to legislate against packets of chips in school tuck shops. Health system falling to bits - we'll get the Health Minister to say it's nothing to do with me and ban Grand Theft Auto (or whatever it's called). And I see in the online version of the Herald a suggestion that the answer to all this economic doom and gloom is increasing benefits and more government spending. Duh.
The Singapore President is in town at the moment. I know this because part of the entourage is a friend of mine. He has more than a passing influence on how a proper company, I mean country, is run. He was sitting on my balcony a few years back reading the Herald. 'Can you explain what this DPB is all about?' 'Well not really but I can tell you what it is'. I then proceeded to outline the bare bones and added as a codicil that one in three New Zealanders receive a hand out from the Government in one form or other. 'You mean 60% of the country is supporting the other 40%? Not sustainable.'
He moved on to see how Manchester United were doing.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Petrol and tax
In case you hadn't noticed petrol and diesel are a tad more expensive than they were, well yesterday for instance. And the day before that and the month before etc. etc. To be perfectly honest I don't care. I chose to drive a gas guzzler (in fact I have not one but two four litre cars at present and would dearly love a six litre jobby). I was a little surprised at the weekend when a can of 91 for the quad and other powered odds and ends and a couple of cans of diesel for the tractor came to $63 but I didn't contemplate running a hot bath and advising my survivors to buy shares in Gillette. I long ago learnt (not long ago enough to be fair) that worrying about things over which you have no control is a recipe for mental instability on a biblical scale. I personally can do nothing about the price of gas. I can chose to either buy it or not - end of story.
However there is a bloke in this land who could with one stroke of the pen influence the price of fuel and it would not be by writing out supermarket vouchers for all. The AA (the car mob not the ex -boozers) has come out today saying 'The gummint must do something'. The something they have in mind is waiving the GST on the excise levied on petrol. Good stuff this; tax on a tax that they can say is nothing they can do anything about. A barrel of crude goes up in price the excise charged as a percentage of that automatically rises as does the fixed GST on that excise. You couldn't print money faster but as the government does that as well they don't have to. The AA reckon this would reduce the price of gas by about five cents a litre instantly.
What is the reply to this call for a bit of commonsense from my least favourite man on the planet? Cullen says that to do this would involve compliance costs that would have to be passed on to the consumer and they wouldn't see any benefit and in addition 'If the New Zealand Government had changed GST rules along these lines 12 months ago, no one would have even noticed as the benefits would have been wiped out almost immediately by the global rise in oil prices'. If you can understand that you are a better man than I Gungadin. The arrogant dismissal of a suggestion from a group bloody Cullen is supposed to be serving is couched in terms that suggests he thinks we should be grateful that he hasn't cut GST on petrol excise. If we ask him nicely perhaps he could double it for us.
I really don't (and don't want to) understand how someone like Cullen works. What the hell goes on inside his head? Why does he behave like he does? He has no qualifications whatsoever for the job of running a country's finances and he runs the thing like his own personal wallet. He takes money off us and then makes it look like a big favour if he gives any of it back in any form. The country (who after all elected the slimy toad to parliament in the first place) has been well and truly shafted on the tax front for years and are crying out for some relief. 'Tax cuts' are bandied about as what we all want and are pinning our hopes on. Bloody Cullen has had nine years to deliver something along these lines and has flatly refused to do so. He has even given a bit and then snatched it away again - cruel and unnatural punishment. He is apparently now saying we can't have any relief this year because it doesn't fit in with what he, know it all big eared financial dick head, wants. Well sod off. For once in your pitiable life listen to what other people want and get of your patronising 'I know what is best for you' high horse. In fact, of course, tax cuts are not what we really need - although I won't be turning one down. What is really required is a realignment of the tax brackets. Having the top tax bracket cutting in for the rich pricks at $60000 is a joke and has to be fixed. I mean how much petrol can you buy for $60000 this week.
However there is a bloke in this land who could with one stroke of the pen influence the price of fuel and it would not be by writing out supermarket vouchers for all. The AA (the car mob not the ex -boozers) has come out today saying 'The gummint must do something'. The something they have in mind is waiving the GST on the excise levied on petrol. Good stuff this; tax on a tax that they can say is nothing they can do anything about. A barrel of crude goes up in price the excise charged as a percentage of that automatically rises as does the fixed GST on that excise. You couldn't print money faster but as the government does that as well they don't have to. The AA reckon this would reduce the price of gas by about five cents a litre instantly.
What is the reply to this call for a bit of commonsense from my least favourite man on the planet? Cullen says that to do this would involve compliance costs that would have to be passed on to the consumer and they wouldn't see any benefit and in addition 'If the New Zealand Government had changed GST rules along these lines 12 months ago, no one would have even noticed as the benefits would have been wiped out almost immediately by the global rise in oil prices'. If you can understand that you are a better man than I Gungadin. The arrogant dismissal of a suggestion from a group bloody Cullen is supposed to be serving is couched in terms that suggests he thinks we should be grateful that he hasn't cut GST on petrol excise. If we ask him nicely perhaps he could double it for us.
I really don't (and don't want to) understand how someone like Cullen works. What the hell goes on inside his head? Why does he behave like he does? He has no qualifications whatsoever for the job of running a country's finances and he runs the thing like his own personal wallet. He takes money off us and then makes it look like a big favour if he gives any of it back in any form. The country (who after all elected the slimy toad to parliament in the first place) has been well and truly shafted on the tax front for years and are crying out for some relief. 'Tax cuts' are bandied about as what we all want and are pinning our hopes on. Bloody Cullen has had nine years to deliver something along these lines and has flatly refused to do so. He has even given a bit and then snatched it away again - cruel and unnatural punishment. He is apparently now saying we can't have any relief this year because it doesn't fit in with what he, know it all big eared financial dick head, wants. Well sod off. For once in your pitiable life listen to what other people want and get of your patronising 'I know what is best for you' high horse. In fact, of course, tax cuts are not what we really need - although I won't be turning one down. What is really required is a realignment of the tax brackets. Having the top tax bracket cutting in for the rich pricks at $60000 is a joke and has to be fixed. I mean how much petrol can you buy for $60000 this week.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Lies, lies, obfuscation and lies
I don't know about your mum but mine always told me not to tell lies. Lies are a bad thing and reflect poorly on your whole persona. Tell a little lie and you end up telling an escalating portfolio of untruths to just cover the first tiny indiscretion. If you start off with a whopper you end up with lies on a biblical scale pretty sharpish.
Mike Williams is in this camp already. How can he stand there in the face of recorded evidence and claim he never said what he said? He is just plain lying. What a pity Guyon Espinor waited eight hours before playing the tape and didn't drop it on Williams live. How he can continue in his current role as titular head of a major political party is beyond me. However it is not beyond Dear Leader and as far as he is concerned that is all that matters. She has told him to STFU and leave the politics to the big boys (sic) wot understand this sort of thing. She stands up on her hind legs and placates us, the great unwashed, by telling us poor Mike was confused, couldn't hear properly and other assorted bullshit. It is just not good enough. Similar cock ups by lesser beings, even in this administration, have seen them walking the plank but Dear Leader needs Williams for her nefarious election strategies so she stands up and lies for him. She, as leader of the People's Republic, can say what she bloody well likes of course and the proles will hang on her every word.
The suggestion that the Labour Party use government funded brochures to circumvent their own Electoral Finance Act was being played as though it were the suggestion of junior and naive party apparatchik have also been blown out of the water. The suggestion from the floor that Williams didn't hear and had him greatly confused came from Ruth Dyson's husband. I wasn't aware that Cabinet Ministers were allowed old fashioned husbands and had to have them converted into civil union partners but no matter. SWMBO just laughs this off.
The standards of behaviour of the whole lot of them is just unbelievable. However it is looking more and more likely by the day that they will reap that which they sow later in the year.
Please.
Mike Williams is in this camp already. How can he stand there in the face of recorded evidence and claim he never said what he said? He is just plain lying. What a pity Guyon Espinor waited eight hours before playing the tape and didn't drop it on Williams live. How he can continue in his current role as titular head of a major political party is beyond me. However it is not beyond Dear Leader and as far as he is concerned that is all that matters. She has told him to STFU and leave the politics to the big boys (sic) wot understand this sort of thing. She stands up on her hind legs and placates us, the great unwashed, by telling us poor Mike was confused, couldn't hear properly and other assorted bullshit. It is just not good enough. Similar cock ups by lesser beings, even in this administration, have seen them walking the plank but Dear Leader needs Williams for her nefarious election strategies so she stands up and lies for him. She, as leader of the People's Republic, can say what she bloody well likes of course and the proles will hang on her every word.
The suggestion that the Labour Party use government funded brochures to circumvent their own Electoral Finance Act was being played as though it were the suggestion of junior and naive party apparatchik have also been blown out of the water. The suggestion from the floor that Williams didn't hear and had him greatly confused came from Ruth Dyson's husband. I wasn't aware that Cabinet Ministers were allowed old fashioned husbands and had to have them converted into civil union partners but no matter. SWMBO just laughs this off.
The standards of behaviour of the whole lot of them is just unbelievable. However it is looking more and more likely by the day that they will reap that which they sow later in the year.
Please.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Included in a list of things I really need is..........
....one of these
Now, don't get me wrong, I am entirely satisfied with my lot. Life is going along swimmingly. I like the rump of a job I have maneuvered myself into, I live in a house that fits the bill perfectly, there are no family dramas on the horizon and I have a circle of very agreeable friends. My major worries are around my current dearth of inner skirts for marlin lures coloured 'Dorado' and whether it will stop raining long enough tomorrow for me to get the tractor out. But, having said all that, I really do need a DB9. I love the Jag but a gunmetal grey Aston would look just perfect nestling up against the XKR in the garage.
So it was I found myself perambulating around 'TradeMe.co.nz' pretending to be looking for airbrooms, electric fence posts and drill presses. There is a 2005 object of my desire for sale in Auckland. Mileage a bit high at 26,000 and so the asking price would have to be scythed - but it is gorgeous. Cream leather as well. I was having a quiet drool when my attention is distracted by this:
This vehicle has a fuel consumption of 16.6L per 100km, an annual fuel cost of $4,300 and a fuel economy rating of 1.0 out of 6. (Source: Fuelsaver)
There is then a link to a bloody government website. There is a new regulation that demands (good old compulsion) fuel consumption is prominently displayed on any car advert. If you are physically advertising the car at the side of the road or something you are supposed to have one of those puerile eco friendly stickers like you get on a new fridge stuck on the car. It is despoiling an Aston Martin putting a rego sticker on the windscreen and it is certainly just not on putting a greeny weird beard sticker anywhere near such a fine piece of automotive engineering.
Several things. Is there no corner of my life into which this damned administration won't stick its beak? It won't even let me think about buying the car of my choice without wagging its finger at me and telling me I should be buying a 6 star car that runs on a thimble full of linseed oil a fortnight. Any car this government would have me drive I wouldn't touch with yours. If I want to buy a 6 litre V12 and spend $83 a week on petrol I bloody well will. I am delighted the Aston only gets one star. Hang on, no I'm not - I wish it got none. Also the government is a bunch of dick heads because there is no way you could get 16.6L/100km out of a 6 litre V12. I average about 15L/100km doing far too much town driving in a supercharged 4 litre V8
What pleasure is there left in the real world? The more I think of it however I am getting closer to a solution. I now live out of the city, I have some land, I can see no one once the gates shut behind me and I drive the 300m to the house. I have power, am self sufficient of water (as long as it rains now and then) and have the internet. I will buy what ever cars, power tools and boats I fancy and the rest of you can do whatever you please.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am entirely satisfied with my lot. Life is going along swimmingly. I like the rump of a job I have maneuvered myself into, I live in a house that fits the bill perfectly, there are no family dramas on the horizon and I have a circle of very agreeable friends. My major worries are around my current dearth of inner skirts for marlin lures coloured 'Dorado' and whether it will stop raining long enough tomorrow for me to get the tractor out. But, having said all that, I really do need a DB9. I love the Jag but a gunmetal grey Aston would look just perfect nestling up against the XKR in the garage.
So it was I found myself perambulating around 'TradeMe.co.nz' pretending to be looking for airbrooms, electric fence posts and drill presses. There is a 2005 object of my desire for sale in Auckland. Mileage a bit high at 26,000 and so the asking price would have to be scythed - but it is gorgeous. Cream leather as well. I was having a quiet drool when my attention is distracted by this:
This vehicle has a fuel consumption of 16.6L per 100km, an annual fuel cost of $4,300 and a fuel economy rating of 1.0 out of 6. (Source: Fuelsaver)
There is then a link to a bloody government website. There is a new regulation that demands (good old compulsion) fuel consumption is prominently displayed on any car advert. If you are physically advertising the car at the side of the road or something you are supposed to have one of those puerile eco friendly stickers like you get on a new fridge stuck on the car. It is despoiling an Aston Martin putting a rego sticker on the windscreen and it is certainly just not on putting a greeny weird beard sticker anywhere near such a fine piece of automotive engineering.
Several things. Is there no corner of my life into which this damned administration won't stick its beak? It won't even let me think about buying the car of my choice without wagging its finger at me and telling me I should be buying a 6 star car that runs on a thimble full of linseed oil a fortnight. Any car this government would have me drive I wouldn't touch with yours. If I want to buy a 6 litre V12 and spend $83 a week on petrol I bloody well will. I am delighted the Aston only gets one star. Hang on, no I'm not - I wish it got none. Also the government is a bunch of dick heads because there is no way you could get 16.6L/100km out of a 6 litre V12. I average about 15L/100km doing far too much town driving in a supercharged 4 litre V8
What pleasure is there left in the real world? The more I think of it however I am getting closer to a solution. I now live out of the city, I have some land, I can see no one once the gates shut behind me and I drive the 300m to the house. I have power, am self sufficient of water (as long as it rains now and then) and have the internet. I will buy what ever cars, power tools and boats I fancy and the rest of you can do whatever you please.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Good grief - these are Cabinet Ministers
This is so pathetic that it goes way beyond being funny. It is is pitiable.
This is the level of contempt this damned government holds us in. Mr Whaleoil has added the 1950's propaganda intro and it is very appropriate. These four clowns, who are behaving like schoolgirls at the seventh form end of year concert, are those we apparently entrust to run the country.
I refuse to further allow this sort of nonsense to masquerade as a government.
This is the level of contempt this damned government holds us in. Mr Whaleoil has added the 1950's propaganda intro and it is very appropriate. These four clowns, who are behaving like schoolgirls at the seventh form end of year concert, are those we apparently entrust to run the country.
I refuse to further allow this sort of nonsense to masquerade as a government.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
A meddle too far
I used to think that the person for whom I had the greatest dislike in the entire solar system was Uncle Helen. I am now not so sure. History Boy has been making a strong run on the inside rail and is now almost certain to reach the winning post of being the most unpleasant piece of garbage I can think of. He has added to his already impressive portfolio of smarmy, arrogant, condescending and incompetent the 'do as I say not as I do' trait. We must all join Kiwisaver which will invest your money for you for the future. He then prattles on at every opportunity telling us, the proles, how successful the scheme is. He hasn't joined up - nor apparently have the vast majority of MPs (nor me). The bloody man won't put his money where his mouth is. He spends your and my money like a drunken sailor but when it comes to his own loot he suddenly grows very long pockets for those short arms of his.
We must all stop using the housing market as our investment of first choice and last resort and diversify onto the stock and share markets. He then with one fell swoop destroys any confidence anyone could possibly have had in buying New Zealand shares. His behaviour over the Auckland International Airport sale is bordering on the criminal. If you think Parker and Cosgrove made the decision not allow the sale to the Canadians I will be round your house this evening looking for the fairies at the bottom of your garden. Investing in anything is all about confidence. How do you destroy that? Well changing the rules half way through a set of negotiations would be a good start. Mr Maple Leaf is going about his business offering $3.60 or something a share and History Boy suddenly declares 'If your offer is accepted I won't let the shareholders sell' Mr M. Leaf, with every justification, says 'WTF is going on here?' Answer. Welcome to the People's Republic of Aoteoroa and the meddlesome socialist/communist ways of the 1950's.
Who the hell does bloody Cullen think he is? The Airport belongs to the shareholders and not the Government. The shareholders decided to sell it at a bloody good price. If suddenly Cullen thinks the Airport is a vital strategic asset that cannot be allowed to leave NZ hands he should go and bloody well buy it. What is he scared of? Are the Canadians (nasty lot the Canadians - long history of international skulduggery) going to pick up an International Airport and ship it to Toronto? Are they going to close it down? Of course they aren't.
If I was a AIA shareholder (which I am not) I would be ropeable at the moment. I have just been offered $3.60 a share for my investment, the weasel has said I can't sell and I watch helplessly as the share price plummets to $2.10. All so Smarmy Vomit Boy can stand up and pretend to those who are so blind that they cannot see that he is saving the country's asset from evil foreign ownership.
It is complete bullshit.
We must all stop using the housing market as our investment of first choice and last resort and diversify onto the stock and share markets. He then with one fell swoop destroys any confidence anyone could possibly have had in buying New Zealand shares. His behaviour over the Auckland International Airport sale is bordering on the criminal. If you think Parker and Cosgrove made the decision not allow the sale to the Canadians I will be round your house this evening looking for the fairies at the bottom of your garden. Investing in anything is all about confidence. How do you destroy that? Well changing the rules half way through a set of negotiations would be a good start. Mr Maple Leaf is going about his business offering $3.60 or something a share and History Boy suddenly declares 'If your offer is accepted I won't let the shareholders sell' Mr M. Leaf, with every justification, says 'WTF is going on here?' Answer. Welcome to the People's Republic of Aoteoroa and the meddlesome socialist/communist ways of the 1950's.
Who the hell does bloody Cullen think he is? The Airport belongs to the shareholders and not the Government. The shareholders decided to sell it at a bloody good price. If suddenly Cullen thinks the Airport is a vital strategic asset that cannot be allowed to leave NZ hands he should go and bloody well buy it. What is he scared of? Are the Canadians (nasty lot the Canadians - long history of international skulduggery) going to pick up an International Airport and ship it to Toronto? Are they going to close it down? Of course they aren't.
If I was a AIA shareholder (which I am not) I would be ropeable at the moment. I have just been offered $3.60 a share for my investment, the weasel has said I can't sell and I watch helplessly as the share price plummets to $2.10. All so Smarmy Vomit Boy can stand up and pretend to those who are so blind that they cannot see that he is saving the country's asset from evil foreign ownership.
It is complete bullshit.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Winston First and the FTA
I have to grudgingly admit that the Free Trade Agreement signed in Beijing yesterday has a lot more positives to it for us than negatives. It has been negotiated by this ghastly government of ours ans I suppose I ought to give them some credit for it. Hell, that grates like sand in a gearbox. SWMBO has done the right thing with the loonies like Keith Locke who have been walking around in their Tibet T shirts by totally ignoring them. There should be a lot more of this. The loonie left tail of this place does far too much wagging of the pragmatic dog thanks to the warped version of MMP under which we have to suffer.
Speaking of which, how totally stupid does Winston now look? His bauble was never more than that but is now a total joke. He is about to vote against the FTA and is the Foreign Minister. I can't think of any country in the world that will not be splitting its sides with laughter. Winston has surely reached then end of his political life. He rolled out that totally idiotic pom immigrant to give his xenophobic diatribe last week. This is standard Winston First MO for election year of course. A bit of racial hatred always gets the grey rinses in Tauranga cooing 'Oooh Winston' and doing their bit for him in the ballot box. Obviously this year even Winnie couldn't justify giving the speech himself wearing his bauble of the Foreign Ministry. No Winston tells his offsider to stick the boot in and gives the ludicrous ideas tacit endorsement by refusing to say anything from within a foreign bar. Oh, and by the way, paid the money back yet, sunshine?
Speaking of which, how totally stupid does Winston now look? His bauble was never more than that but is now a total joke. He is about to vote against the FTA and is the Foreign Minister. I can't think of any country in the world that will not be splitting its sides with laughter. Winston has surely reached then end of his political life. He rolled out that totally idiotic pom immigrant to give his xenophobic diatribe last week. This is standard Winston First MO for election year of course. A bit of racial hatred always gets the grey rinses in Tauranga cooing 'Oooh Winston' and doing their bit for him in the ballot box. Obviously this year even Winnie couldn't justify giving the speech himself wearing his bauble of the Foreign Ministry. No Winston tells his offsider to stick the boot in and gives the ludicrous ideas tacit endorsement by refusing to say anything from within a foreign bar. Oh, and by the way, paid the money back yet, sunshine?
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Why are we not surprised?
The Labour Party or members thereof break the law and nothing will happen. Again. Labour transgresses its own odious Electoral Finance Act and it will not be prosecuted. Well there's a surprise. The party is let off with a caution as the breach is 'inconsequential' but anyone else (read members of any political party that is not Labour) who does the same will be hauled up before the beak. Apparently the brochure in question cost $100,000. Could I please be given an inconsequential sum of money without delay. In fact give me four lots and I will buy a DB9 with it and have change for lots of luverly petrol 'cos a 6 litre V12 uses an awful lot - especially how I intend driving it.
The Dental Nurse then has the effrontery to stand up and say her favorite judicial tool, commonsense, is playing the role it should. This after she failed to front up in the Beehive to get an entirely justifiable roasting over the matter from the opposition. She let History Boy get too close to the fire and for once his smarmy, arrogant, I know best, creepy, vomit inducing personage had no smartarse answer in the face of cold hard fact.
This mob is totally beyond the pale. Count the breaches of the law that have gone unpunished or even failed to get to court. Speeding motorcades, Benson Dope and the tennis balls, Bovver Boy lumping Henare, SWMBO and Paintergate are cases that readily spring to mind. We have oodles of weasel words like prima facie case but no prosecution and not in the public interest but we never get the truth - 'I'm part of the Labour Government and I can do what I bloody well like.
Meanwhile Shane Adern drives a tractor up parliament's steps and it is in the public interest and the logical application of commonsense to prosecute him.
If you want to be a naughty boy (or girl) join the Labour Party and you get the ultimate 'Get of Jail Free' card. In fact you get something even better, you get a 'Never even look like going to Court' card.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - they have to go.
The Dental Nurse then has the effrontery to stand up and say her favorite judicial tool, commonsense, is playing the role it should. This after she failed to front up in the Beehive to get an entirely justifiable roasting over the matter from the opposition. She let History Boy get too close to the fire and for once his smarmy, arrogant, I know best, creepy, vomit inducing personage had no smartarse answer in the face of cold hard fact.
This mob is totally beyond the pale. Count the breaches of the law that have gone unpunished or even failed to get to court. Speeding motorcades, Benson Dope and the tennis balls, Bovver Boy lumping Henare, SWMBO and Paintergate are cases that readily spring to mind. We have oodles of weasel words like prima facie case but no prosecution and not in the public interest but we never get the truth - 'I'm part of the Labour Government and I can do what I bloody well like.
Meanwhile Shane Adern drives a tractor up parliament's steps and it is in the public interest and the logical application of commonsense to prosecute him.
If you want to be a naughty boy (or girl) join the Labour Party and you get the ultimate 'Get of Jail Free' card. In fact you get something even better, you get a 'Never even look like going to Court' card.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - they have to go.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Now this is more like it
I am greateful to Monsieur Whaleoil for bringing this photograph to my attention. Apparently an enlightend ute driver somewhere on Auckland's motorway. 
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Earth Hour
Two weeks since a post. Tsk, Tsk. Life has been a blur of new things. Carefully labeling the fuel cans in the barn so that the brush cutter doesn't get four stroke up its innards. Nor yet the quad get filled with 2 stroke. Then there's the mower.
I inherited a Shibaura SE4000 42hp tractor that had strapped to its PTO the scariest and most inappropriate mower I have ever seen. Hundreds of kilograms of offset flail mulching mower that would reduce a field of telegraph poles to matchsticks as soon as look at them was what I was supposed to mow the (admittedly very large) lawn with. Well I did once and had to go for counseling afterwards. This thing was all very fine and dandy for mowing under vines and mulching prunings when the property was an orchard but it was all wrong for turning aforementioned front lawn into the best short game practice facility this side of the Black Stump. Apart from being the wrong sort of mower it was too big for the tractor and it was offset - offset by about three bloody feet. Have you ever tried reversing an 'L' shaped vehicle through a shed door that is too narrow for the whole contraption but can accommodate each limb of the 'L' individually? It's enough to get me to take to the strong drink. Add to this the news that the damned thing needed a new set of blades and they would set me back the fat end of eleven hundred notes and it was a no brainer.
The WMD has gone. It was replaced yesterday with a brand spanking (red) Fieldmaster three rotor topping field mower. Now this is a whole lot better on all sorts of levels. Firstly you can reverse it back into its shed in a straight line. Second it actually mows the grass like what a mower should instead of gouging great parts of the countryside up and spitting them out as potting compost. We are not there quite though. The Shibaura has been orchardised - lowered, (I own a lowered vehicle) has smaller fatter tyres and a few other bits and pieces I don't understand. This means I have to get new restraining chain brackets attached to the rear of the PTO crankcase so I can have internal instead of external chains. External chains would just cut great holes in the tyres. The height of the two lower arms on the three point linkage isn't right as the mower raises on the hydraulics with a marked list to starboard and I suspect the top link is set (by me) at the wrong length as the skids don't 'float' over bumps like they should but dig in. Oh, and I need weight (and I mean heaps of it) attached to the front of the tractor as steering is light at the best of times and disappears completely when the mower is 'up'. Still Gatman's can sort all that on Monday. The lawn is mowed and it is all rather good fun.
What has distracted me long enough from all this agricultural and pastoral stuff to put finger to keyboard? I let the the mandatory fuel efficiency labels to be placed on cars pass me buy. If you want to buy the Jag and ask how fuel efficient it is you will be told 'Not at all, a dyed in the wool gas guzzler. And, you can't buy it now just because you even asked'. No the event that has stirred me from my blogging torpor is Earth Hour.
This bit of politically correct bollocks starts in sixteen minutes time. We are supposed to turn off all power for an hour to show we care about how we are destroying the climate with our profligate wasting of energy. There was a piece on the News about it just now. (I seem to have stopped reading the newspapers now that they don't arrive at Marmite soldier time - I might even cancel my subscription.) It is being pushed by the usual earnest worrying type that are always in the forefront of this sort of crap. What a load of nonsense - even they admit it will make no difference to overall global power consumption. The news reporter even had a spokesman (sorry spokesperson) from a hospital regretting they would be unable to join in as it might be dangerous. Spare me.
Well it may come as no surprise to you that I will not be turning of anything in eleven minutes time. On the contrary I will turn on every light in the house - and the barn. It is a warm(-ish) night so I will turn on every fan I can find. I think I can fire up seven televisions, six computers, three printers, a microwave, two ovens, three electric jugs, a toasted sandwich maker, two food mixers, a dishwasher, washing machine, clothes drier, four heated towel rails, four bathroom underfloor heating units, five mini stereo/ghettoblasters and that's just the house. Off to the barn and I'll have the bench grinder going (a few hooks to sharpen, you understand), the drop saw savaging some planking, a heat gun straightening some lure skirts and a couple of electric drills doing nothing in particular. Whilst I'm over there I'll fire up the quad and get the brushcutter ticking over in case I run across some emergency thistle clearing in half an hour's time. Then it'll be back to the garage to start both cars. A brick on the accelerator of the supercharged V8 should keep it at over fifty litres an hour with no problem. It's at times like this I regret selling the Landcruiser. I'll then spend the rest of the hour walking up and down the drive to ensure that the sensor lights on the drive don't time out and go off.
Sod off you stupid, stupid morons.
I inherited a Shibaura SE4000 42hp tractor that had strapped to its PTO the scariest and most inappropriate mower I have ever seen. Hundreds of kilograms of offset flail mulching mower that would reduce a field of telegraph poles to matchsticks as soon as look at them was what I was supposed to mow the (admittedly very large) lawn with. Well I did once and had to go for counseling afterwards. This thing was all very fine and dandy for mowing under vines and mulching prunings when the property was an orchard but it was all wrong for turning aforementioned front lawn into the best short game practice facility this side of the Black Stump. Apart from being the wrong sort of mower it was too big for the tractor and it was offset - offset by about three bloody feet. Have you ever tried reversing an 'L' shaped vehicle through a shed door that is too narrow for the whole contraption but can accommodate each limb of the 'L' individually? It's enough to get me to take to the strong drink. Add to this the news that the damned thing needed a new set of blades and they would set me back the fat end of eleven hundred notes and it was a no brainer.
The WMD has gone. It was replaced yesterday with a brand spanking (red) Fieldmaster three rotor topping field mower. Now this is a whole lot better on all sorts of levels. Firstly you can reverse it back into its shed in a straight line. Second it actually mows the grass like what a mower should instead of gouging great parts of the countryside up and spitting them out as potting compost. We are not there quite though. The Shibaura has been orchardised - lowered, (I own a lowered vehicle) has smaller fatter tyres and a few other bits and pieces I don't understand. This means I have to get new restraining chain brackets attached to the rear of the PTO crankcase so I can have internal instead of external chains. External chains would just cut great holes in the tyres. The height of the two lower arms on the three point linkage isn't right as the mower raises on the hydraulics with a marked list to starboard and I suspect the top link is set (by me) at the wrong length as the skids don't 'float' over bumps like they should but dig in. Oh, and I need weight (and I mean heaps of it) attached to the front of the tractor as steering is light at the best of times and disappears completely when the mower is 'up'. Still Gatman's can sort all that on Monday. The lawn is mowed and it is all rather good fun.
What has distracted me long enough from all this agricultural and pastoral stuff to put finger to keyboard? I let the the mandatory fuel efficiency labels to be placed on cars pass me buy. If you want to buy the Jag and ask how fuel efficient it is you will be told 'Not at all, a dyed in the wool gas guzzler. And, you can't buy it now just because you even asked'. No the event that has stirred me from my blogging torpor is Earth Hour.
This bit of politically correct bollocks starts in sixteen minutes time. We are supposed to turn off all power for an hour to show we care about how we are destroying the climate with our profligate wasting of energy. There was a piece on the News about it just now. (I seem to have stopped reading the newspapers now that they don't arrive at Marmite soldier time - I might even cancel my subscription.) It is being pushed by the usual earnest worrying type that are always in the forefront of this sort of crap. What a load of nonsense - even they admit it will make no difference to overall global power consumption. The news reporter even had a spokesman (sorry spokesperson) from a hospital regretting they would be unable to join in as it might be dangerous. Spare me.
Well it may come as no surprise to you that I will not be turning of anything in eleven minutes time. On the contrary I will turn on every light in the house - and the barn. It is a warm(-ish) night so I will turn on every fan I can find. I think I can fire up seven televisions, six computers, three printers, a microwave, two ovens, three electric jugs, a toasted sandwich maker, two food mixers, a dishwasher, washing machine, clothes drier, four heated towel rails, four bathroom underfloor heating units, five mini stereo/ghettoblasters and that's just the house. Off to the barn and I'll have the bench grinder going (a few hooks to sharpen, you understand), the drop saw savaging some planking, a heat gun straightening some lure skirts and a couple of electric drills doing nothing in particular. Whilst I'm over there I'll fire up the quad and get the brushcutter ticking over in case I run across some emergency thistle clearing in half an hour's time. Then it'll be back to the garage to start both cars. A brick on the accelerator of the supercharged V8 should keep it at over fifty litres an hour with no problem. It's at times like this I regret selling the Landcruiser. I'll then spend the rest of the hour walking up and down the drive to ensure that the sensor lights on the drive don't time out and go off.
Sod off you stupid, stupid morons.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Change
I blandly announced six days ago that I was 'back on the planet' and that normal service was about to be resumed. Normal service was to be commenting on wastes of space in who pretend to govern this country, going fishing and keeping a weather eye on the cricket. Well I have achieved none of the above - oh, I did have a bit of the cricket on for a while this evening. England's wicket keeper, who is about to score a ton, will be a good player when he leaves primary school.
It is the middle of March and I haven't been fishing this year yet. Am meant to be going for my regular 'best week of the year' on Saturday but forecasts of 25-35 knot sou'easters would seem to say otherwise.
What of SWMBO, Cullen, Keith Locke, Bovver Boy, Chris Carter and the rest of the wastrels? I see they are all behaving as badly as ever. I see they are lying like flatfish about anything and everything. ING has stoppped paying out on some of their products and History Boy assured us that the US sub prime collapse wouldn't affect The Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. More evidence, if it were needed, that he is an incompetent git - and I hear talk that he is plotting to roll Helen. I read of all this and I really couldn't give a stuff.
The change in life from suburban beach to rural is more profound than I thought it would be. We are only twenty minutes (if you travel at 0330) from our previous whare but the difference is vast. It is not so much the fact we are in the country and it is quiet (oh, is it fabulously quiet) and the nights are proper dark (it is blacker than the inside of a cow once the sun goes down). The thing that is fascinating me is the mixture of the old and the new. The balancing act we now have to perform between the rural traditional (what is the interval between spraying glyphosate and it being useless in a rainstorm) and the absurdly hi tech. I have spent $900 on cabling for one TV today which boosts the price of a high end LCD telly just a tad (but the result is stunning). I am swapping out a huge mulching mower (and I am talking seriously huge - it would reduce a field of telegraph poles to sawdust) for a pasture topper. I thought a pasture topper was an ice cream three weeks ago. And then I gave up trying to get a network printer running through the high speed switcher and decided to use it as a USB device and make it a shared printer wirelessly. I purchase a pair of Red Bands on the same trip as I get a fax machine.
I am loving it all (I even did a couple of hours of daytime job this morning) but I have come to realise that I couldn't give a fat rat's backside as to who is going on a junket to the Czech Republic. They are welcome to it I'll happily stay on my 11.8 acres north of Auckland and make some lures in my barn, or do a spot of spot spraying or get the tractor out or wirelessly listen to Kirsty McColl on the Polks in the rumpus room.
'Old' normal service has not been resumed and is unlikely to be. I am not sure what 'new' normal service is going to be. Early indications are that it will be much more betterer.
It is the middle of March and I haven't been fishing this year yet. Am meant to be going for my regular 'best week of the year' on Saturday but forecasts of 25-35 knot sou'easters would seem to say otherwise.
What of SWMBO, Cullen, Keith Locke, Bovver Boy, Chris Carter and the rest of the wastrels? I see they are all behaving as badly as ever. I see they are lying like flatfish about anything and everything. ING has stoppped paying out on some of their products and History Boy assured us that the US sub prime collapse wouldn't affect The Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. More evidence, if it were needed, that he is an incompetent git - and I hear talk that he is plotting to roll Helen. I read of all this and I really couldn't give a stuff.
The change in life from suburban beach to rural is more profound than I thought it would be. We are only twenty minutes (if you travel at 0330) from our previous whare but the difference is vast. It is not so much the fact we are in the country and it is quiet (oh, is it fabulously quiet) and the nights are proper dark (it is blacker than the inside of a cow once the sun goes down). The thing that is fascinating me is the mixture of the old and the new. The balancing act we now have to perform between the rural traditional (what is the interval between spraying glyphosate and it being useless in a rainstorm) and the absurdly hi tech. I have spent $900 on cabling for one TV today which boosts the price of a high end LCD telly just a tad (but the result is stunning). I am swapping out a huge mulching mower (and I am talking seriously huge - it would reduce a field of telegraph poles to sawdust) for a pasture topper. I thought a pasture topper was an ice cream three weeks ago. And then I gave up trying to get a network printer running through the high speed switcher and decided to use it as a USB device and make it a shared printer wirelessly. I purchase a pair of Red Bands on the same trip as I get a fax machine.
I am loving it all (I even did a couple of hours of daytime job this morning) but I have come to realise that I couldn't give a fat rat's backside as to who is going on a junket to the Czech Republic. They are welcome to it I'll happily stay on my 11.8 acres north of Auckland and make some lures in my barn, or do a spot of spot spraying or get the tractor out or wirelessly listen to Kirsty McColl on the Polks in the rumpus room.
'Old' normal service has not been resumed and is unlikely to be. I am not sure what 'new' normal service is going to be. Early indications are that it will be much more betterer.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Back on the Planet
Some of the more observant may have noticed that there has been no new entry on this blog for a couple of weeks - good job too I hear you cry. I have not been struck down with a sudden attack of rampant sloth but have been in the process of moving whare.
The Obalds have move from here
to here
and I have to get the hang of driving one of these
I haven't seen a paper for ten days, only got access to the Six O'clock News yesterday and have had the internet back for 48 hours. I have to admit being walled off from the wastrels who wold waste my money wholesale has been very relaxing and pleasant. But all good things must come to an end and I suppose I must give my attention to the ways of the world again.
But before we do that I have some lures to make, a couple of paddocks to mow and 476 cardboard boxes to unpack.
The Obalds have move from here
to here
and I have to get the hang of driving one of these
I haven't seen a paper for ten days, only got access to the Six O'clock News yesterday and have had the internet back for 48 hours. I have to admit being walled off from the wastrels who wold waste my money wholesale has been very relaxing and pleasant. But all good things must come to an end and I suppose I must give my attention to the ways of the world again.
But before we do that I have some lures to make, a couple of paddocks to mow and 476 cardboard boxes to unpack.
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'
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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