Luddites

Got no further than A2 today before the sound of the tractor firing up had me rushing to the fields. No matter as there is enough madness on the front page - and that without reading the headline story about a 'miracle baby'

A stoush between two lots of total idiots is reported from London. The Doom and Gloom Climate Change Wallahs versus the Greens. This throws up the interesting prospect of people fighting themselves. The Looney Left's one hand is saying we must save the planet and then the other hand cries foul when nuclear power is touted as a carbon neutral way of providing sensible amounts of power. They tell us that 'just substituting one form of technology with another form of technology is not good enough' and we should be having a paradigm shift towards sustainable forms of .......... I would really like to ask one of these dements how he would run an aluminium smelter off windmills. The Luddites were formed in 1811 but it seems the spirit is still alive and well. The 2007 versions are still thinking (sic) along the same lines. They want to halt technological advance for reasons that have nothing to do with technology but everything to do with political and social agendas. Smashing spinning jennies has been replaced by wanting to do away with everything of a technological bent that doesn't suit them. It always amused me that at the last election the Greens made great play of their minimalist approach to the world being promulgated on a CD ROM. They tell us all of the dangers of cellphone towers but I'm sure none of them would give up their Nokias. They pour scorn on my very nice stupidly overpowered motor car but still drive. Sure they ride bicycles from the Terrace to the Beehive but do they walk or take a horse when they want to go to, say, Hunterville? The bloke who founded Hunterville did - I read it on a sign at the gas station as I filled up on my way back from Wellington yesterday (driving a 4.2l intercooled diesel truck). These plonkers pick the eyes out of modern society embracing the bits they want and decry all the rest as nonsense. It's crap. They do the same with conservation of old buildings. Old (and New Zealand has nothing that is properly old) is good and should be preserved as it is culturally and/or historically important. New is bad and should be banned. Where is the dividing line? Old now is what was new when it was put up. Would the 1920 versions of Auckland City Vision Loonies be banning the construction of villas and insisting we all live in nikau whares?

These plonkers have to get themselves a big dose of pragmatism in a hurry. We are living in a modern world and the world does not stand still. If they want to live in a time warp, fine by me. Go to Great Barrier (for instance) live in a cave, smoke dope, worship native trees and snails, eat nuts and berries and just generally shut the f**k up.

Leave me on the mainland living in a market economy, driving a supercharged car with proper highspeed broadband. Oh, and I want some nuclear power and 50 foot Assegai whilst you're at it.

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Disjointed today

One of those busier than a one armed paper hanger days today so no real time. A pity because there are a few things that raise a little interest. Philip Field and Brian Tamaki. Hopeless. You don't campaign on anything with a neagtive. 'Our aim is to defeat Labour'. All very laudable and I agree but you yourselves have to have some policies. Stupid snails are costing the mining company $25 mil. One of the reasons for this is because there are about ten times more of the damned molluscs than the 'experts' thought there would be. Predictions by experts are about to cost this country and the world as a whole an amount of money that will make $25 mil look like small change. Rudman is nasally dislocated about something that doean't matter. House prices - why is this all bad? Fisher & Paykel 'shocking' the country by declaring they live in the real world. Much to ponder, but...........

Over riding impression of the paper this morning, however, is how wierd does Phil Spector look? In fact how wierd is Phil Spector, period? My mum always told me that modern music was bad for you - just look what the Wall of Sound has done to its inventor.

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More transport

10c a litre on petrol in the Auckland region. The easiest way to get this passed is to have a binding, voting compulsory nationwide referendum. There are still, well this week anyway, more people living outside Auckland than in and they would relish the chance to stick the boot into us Jafas. That this idea is getting the credance that it is is astonishing me for one reason only. It is hard on the heels of everyone saying that putting tolls on roads won't cut it in the eyes of Joe Public. A blanket 10c a litre on all petrol (including that you put in your boat or lawnmower) is going to be more acceptable or equitable? Nuts.

I've long said that I think tolls and central city surcharges are an excellent idea. They directly target the people who are using the facility you want to fund. Forget the stupid Greens (as usual) who say that any moneys raised should be barred from going into roading. Solar or tofu powered monorails are the only allowable benficiaries of any raised revenue - yeah right. Central city congestion charges work, they have a track record of doing so. London and Singapore are two cities that I have personal experience of where it has been shown to be effective.

Kick the 10c a ltire into touch and start building the gantries.

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Useless Carter

Vide supra governmental paralysis.

One of my favourite betes noir Comrade Carter gets his picture (mercifully a very small one) attached to a story about the growing unaffordability of housing in New Zealand in general but Auckland in particular. Apart from the suggestion that developers will be forced by legislation to develop low cost housing (great communist stuff that and true to form) Carter is setting up a Committtee of Inquiry that will report to another Committee taking opinions from all interested stakeholders and endangered birds. The results will be presented as a discussion paper to a Select Committee who will then report to............who bloody cares. They are a useless bunch of pratts and their modus operandi never ever changes.

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Auckland's transport woes

Severley time limited this morning due to a set of circumsatances that don't matter.

Front page is taken over by a piece talking about the amalgamation of the Aussie and NZ dollar. I didn't have time to read it but in my superficial reading of the proposition throws up many more positives than negatives. The main negative would appear to be sentiment and I am a little unsure as to how aligning an economy largely dependant on mineral wealth would sit being tied to an economy that still is mainly agricultural. My latter concern is amplified by the currnet parlous state of food production in Australia which is likely to get worse as the drought lengthens. This whole issue is a topic that merits a bit more study - I will do that, I think.

Public transport in Auckland is a joke. I can say this from a position of strength as I sit in the daily traffic wrecking the planet. We should all use public transport more. Who has beeen slipping the mind altering substances in the Marmite I hear you cry? No it is true, we should all be using the buses and trains more. There are good reasons for this all of which have nothing to do with climate change. If done properly it would save you, and more importantly, me loads of loverly dosh. It most certainly ain't done properly at present. There is a piece on page 2 this morning saying the government is looking more at the stick as opposed to the carrot to get us out of our cars. Best bloody idea they have had in eons. First get a decent public transport system in place (not present at the moment) and then get out the big stick to get us all to use it. Here's the go. Big, I mean seriously big - nick it from the DoC budget, money spent on railways, buses, monorails, ferries, helicopters - anything that works and then the big stick to get us to use it. Toll roads, city centre surcharges, f. expensive central city parking etc. I would happily concede to the latter if, and this is a huge if, the former were put in place.

As it is I can look forward to driving 390 bhp everywhere very slowly for the rest of my life because this and succesive governments haven't the balls to do anything other than organise talk fests about anything that really matters.

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Change afoot

In a somewhat philosophical mood this morning. Scanned the paper over the brekkies as is my won't and I really can't raise the enthusiasm for having yet another go at Helen/the global warming scam/OSH/ bureaucrats in general/dreadful law and order set up/ trees/ Keith Locke etc. etc.

Garth George is an oasis of common sense in the desert of daily life most Thursdays and today he does not disappoint but in a most unexpected way. Then a few moments later I had a rider from a most unexpected quarter that has reinforced my view that here is no such thing as coincidence.

Garth is leaving Auckland and uses his quarter page to give us his reasons. I won't go into these in detail but they revolve around the City having morphed from a pleasant metropolis to a unihabitable megaslum (my description not his) over thirty or so years. The inference from his piece is that the pace of change is set to increase and not slow. I then gave but a cursory glance to the rest of the Herald and checked my email inbox for overight arrivals. There, colour coded in purple for overseas friends, is a missive from my ex roomate from University days announcing that he has handed in his notice and will be retiring with effect October 31st.

As I said there no such thing as coincidence in this life. The Obald world is on the threshold of some major changes.

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Council idiocy

Thanks for the figures RH which, to be fair, are a little disingenious but the underlying sentiment remains. This is a rort we are well shot of. That this has died its rightful death is both excellent news and predicted by my goodself a week ago. Good riddance.

Jobsworths. Pitiable beings who are just that - deserving of pity. It is not their fault that they have to put the meal on the family table by 'working' at a totally meaingless task paid for by your taxes whether this be government, local council or whatever. Bureaucracies need Jobsworths by the shedload to function (sic) and, therefore, the Marxist State of Aoteoroa is awash with them and their number is increasing almost exponentially if plotted against time. These are the men and women immortalised over thirty years ago by Jeremy Taylor in his song of the same name. Did you know that Auckland has a City Council Service Request Manager? This bloke is a woman and has her fifteen minutes of fame this morning after she removed a couple of park benches adjoining that cultural landmark of the city, the red wraught iron fence outside the container wharf. These were placed by a tour bus operator for his customers to rest their weary bums upon whilst waiting for a bus. He put them in place (at his expense) because getting the 'proper consents' for a permanent place of repose would have taken over six months. 'We can't have people placing items of street furniture all over the place'. Who gives a fat rat's backside - pun intended.

I'll tell you who, the totally biased committee who is hearing submissions into the billboards this week. Apparently they have had about eighteen hundred submissions of which about seventeen hundred are opposed to the legislation. With opposition like that it is of course a gimme that it will be passed. We are watching another ersatz 'consultaton process' that is a specialitie du maison of this country. Make up your mind what you want to do, bore everyone witless whilst you sit through all interested parties saying they disagree with you and then do it anyway. This Committee is a lot more blatantly biased than most but the result will be the same.

Whilst we are talking about stupid bureaucracy for buraeucracy sake a tale from the golf club - yes it is that time of year already. I am a member of North Shore Golf Club whose course adjoins Kristen School. The fifteenth has to be moved to minimise the danger of balls straying into the school and injuring kids with all the legal and financial drama that would entail. The course is currently populated by lots of large yellow earth moving machines and there is works being done all over the show. The course is built on North Shore clay and so the drainage is parlous at best. The opportunity is being taken to improve matters at various sites and the Club has managed to get North Shore Council to pick up the bill for some of this. I have no idea how they managed this but it is all good. However work is delayed at present because one section of the drainage project needs an extra manhole that was not in the original plan. The North Shore Council is now waiting for the Auckland Regional Council to process the resource consents (plural) for this. One manhole in a massive drainage improvement project on a private golf course that already exists and has done so for fifty years. We have one set of council wallies waiting for another set to tell them can put in an extra manhole. Stupidity on a biblical scale.

There is some really naughty stuff on the front page of the World section this morning. The Tasmanian miners were rescued last year only after several mine safety rules were broken by the rescuers. Tsk Tsk. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum the world over.

Bloody Helen was allowed on our America's Cup boat yesterday. How apt that racing was abandoned. I only hope thay have fumigated the eighteenth man seat after she sat in it. I am fast coming to the stage when the mere sight of this woman is making me physically ill. When this was reported on the six oclock news last night I had to leave my tea and check the latest post on Fishing.net until my wife told me it was safe to return. Helen hates sport (pretends to like League but I suspect this has ulterior motives like everything else she does - working class man's sport etc. etc) and is there with cameras clicking in Spain. I see she dragged the poodle along with her - I wonder what Peter Davies did to get enough Brownie Points to be let out of the house.

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Plonkers to the left, plonkers to the right..........

I'm trying my best,I promise you, but I keep gettig drawn back to the climate change BS. Bloody Yellow Teeth is at it again. We should all sign a 'contract' with the governmnet to do our bit to save the planet. Like hell we should. We have to commit to only doing the washing in cold water (presumably down at a stream bashing the Karen Walkers with a rock), promise only to buy energy saving light bulbs (presumably on pain of being put up against a wall if you are caught not doing so) and there was some transport nonsense which I assume was walking every where shod in flax soled boots. Even the supporters of the 'man is wrecking the planet' stance wouldn't subscribe to this bollocks, surely. Signing meaningless 'contacts', pledge cards and the like, the left seem intent on ramming home the idea that they regard the proles as a kind of kindergarten class. 'Now we must all wash our hands together and make sure you take your towel off your hook and take it to the bathroom before you leave the classroom. When we get back we are all going to sign a big Happy Birthday card for our Dear Leader Helen so she can gaze down upon it in her dacha in Mount Albert and feel so warm inside that we, her obedient servants, love her so much'. F*** off.

There is a bloke writing about hybrid cars. Ho hum, I had better read this I suppose. Instead of saying that all motor vehicles should be tofu powered this joker actually says that hybrids are pretty much a waste of time or even if they do confer some eco friendly benefit it is not of the magnitude the doomsyaers would have us believe. He then goes onto list a whole swag of minor improvements that might make current cars better - ultra streamlining, recessed door handles, cameras instead of wing mirrors, getting rid of spoliers which create drag and negligble downforce at road legal speeds etc. All sensible stuff. Then he spoils it all and says there is no real pojnt in owning a car that is capable of doing two and a half times the legal speed limit and can get from nought to one hundred in six seconds. He is right of course. The reason I chose the coupe over the soft top of my current vehicular conveyance is that it will do nought to one hundred in 5.3 as opposed to 5.4. There is no point in owning such a car except that it is enormous fun. What a plonker.

About six months ago I was very worried. I was beginning to agree with a few things Rudman was writing. I am now a relieved man. The bloke is a complete tosser and is reassuringly back on form. He goes into bat with the superchargers on (vide supra) for the anti billboard lobby. His piece today is liberally spattered with left wing mantras and I can repair to the fields happy that world order has been restored. What a plonker.

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Same old crock

Stop it. Stop the effrontary on my visual sense by filling the Herald with rubbish.That the paper should be full of Jim Salinger's efforts of yesterday is no real surprise but it makes it no less palatable. We have been down this road before but I am afraid that we will have to traverse it many more times before the terminally stupid wake up. This is all crap. It is all computer modelling and is being presented as fact. Climate is a collection of lots of weather. Computer modelling of weather twenty four to forty eight hours out (and that is what weather forecasting as we commonly know it is) is notoriously unreliable and yet we are being told to believe predictions that stretch decades or centuries into the future. On top of this we are told to believe that all this fairy story doom and gloom is due to man's interfernce in the climate. We are told that this is so because a 'consensus' of scientific opinion says so. Well I'm sorry it doesn't work like this. Scince doesn't have consesnus, it has facts. Politics has consensus. Might there be a hint to the truth right there? Look, you stupid, stupid, people man couldn't change the climate of the whole planet if he tried. Enough of this, onto something else.

There is a piece on the comments page decrying the amount of medicine that is prescribed that is not backed by evidence as being efficacious. National Irony Day. This in the same piece of newsprint that announces that we will spending great globs of my tax dollar on the unproven predicitons of the politically driven IPCC. I am going to get really cross about all this soon and that is not good for me. I spent a very pleasant hour or two last night trying to understand common rail diesel technology and I think I'll stick to that.

An editorial today just emphasises the crock that is the state funding of political parties that Mr Rockhopper and I spent some time on yesterday. It well sets out the reasoning behind this popular instrument of left wing politicians and is worth reading on that score alone. This must not be allowed to happen and I don't think it will. If it does it won't be all bad as it will bang the final nail in this dreadful administation's coffin. They can't keep shafting us indefinitely and expect us not to notice. September 2008 is creeping ever closer and the nearer these travesties are to that date the better. How many ways do I hate you? let me count. Retrospective legislation, Philip Field, smacking, legalisation of prostitution, state funding of politics, Kyoto, carbon neutrality...........

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State funded politics

RH, as usual, is in front of the pack when it comes to sniffing out the bad smells. This has been mooted for months and I commented on it a while back. It stinks in every way but fortunately is less than likely to come into being. It stinks for the reasons Mr. RH highlights but also because it further distances the politicians from the population. Politicians are supposed to be wasting their time in Wellington on a mandate from us, the great unwashed. They are supposed to be responsible to us. If they have to raise their funds from us that at least gives them a small incentive to be reponsible in the policies they espouse. If we no likey the ideas we no givey the dosh. Central funding removes this last vestige of answerability to the electorate. If the money is coming from a central cesspit why should they give a toss what we think about their behaviour. It is also but a short step from central funding for political parties to central funding for approved political parties. The totalitarian state is only just around the corner. Chip, chip, chip - they are forever inching their way to a place where I would find it impossible to live. I wonder how Mrs O would feel about living on a 30 foot express boat.

That it is unlikely to get into law in its present form is a silver lining. This government is a minority effort and needs the bit players to keep it afloat. Can you see United Future sanctioning free cash for the Legalise Cannabis Party?

NIWA's Jim Salinger is going to stand up in front of a sycophantic press corp sometime today and sell his soul for thirty pieces of IPCC silver. He will present the regional version of that worthless body's latest report. There will be lots of handwringing to emphasis the graphics of tidal bores sweeping down Takapuna shopping centre. There will be that 'we know best' look to accompany the 'artist's impression' of the Canterbury plains as they will look as a dust bowl. As an aside, there was something over the weekend that said that the dustbowls of the midwest USA of the 1930's could return. The 1930's? We hadn't started wrecking the planet then surely, so how could we have dust bowl conditions? Well it was all our fault of course ('our' being generic here) as 'we' were pursuing poor farming practices. So let's get this straight. We have no industrialisation and an isolated pocket of piss weak farmers turn the wheat belt into a desert by poor work practices. They improve and then cause the same condtions because they are producing too much carbon dioxide. Who in their right mind can believe any of this? Just remember it is all nonsense. It is all done on projections none of which, I'll say it again, none of which has ever been born out by actually happening.

Sandra Coney is barking. She writes (more handwringing) a piece about how we should preserve a piece of the Manukau Harbour's shoreline that hardly anyone ever goes to from the scourge of human development. Why should this happen? So that we can preserve evidence of previous human development in the form of stone settlements or some such bollocks.

Man's (or in the case of Coney, woman's) progress if it happened a long time ago has to be worshipped (especially if it is by an ethnic minority or and 'indigenous' people) but is to be condemned out of hand if it is happening now. We must preserve inefficient ways of doing anything whilst pouring scorn on the modern, easier, cheaper way of doing the same thing. As I said, East Ham.

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Making money

No time for more than the most cursory perusal of the Herald this morning but I don't think I'm missing much. The Bazely report is everywhere (as I suppose it merits) as is that great Kiwi institution the apology. Poor Commisioner Broad. He must have been choking on every weasel word as he was uttering them. But he has to do what he has to do. As pointed out by Mr. Cosmo one of the more nauseating spectacles of the whole circus was Helen Clark (who was wearing an apallingingly cut jacket yesterday even by her dismal standards) not missing the opportunity to tell the proles that she single handedly saved the nation from Clint Rickards. Never misses a trick, does she?

Augie in the poo? Don't worry, he won't bat an eyelid. I totally agree with RH's assertion that we may be in for a bit of off the ball stuff. Exon. Strange how it is now a word that has gained the status of 'child molester' or 'darkest satan'. You've got to get your research money from somewhere and they are hardly going to front up to Jeanette Fitzsimmons for a sub are they? Exon is a big multinational company that is in the business for one reason and one reason alone. Driver Paul, my gamefishing mate, is retired from Ford where he ended up being head honcho of their Asian Agricultural division. On his first day with the company as a fresh faced graduate he was asked at an orientaton seminar the following question. 'What line of business is the Ford motor company in? Making cars? Trucks? Tractors? No . Answer - Making money. If Exon, whose method of making shedfuls of cash may not sit easily with those who would have us live in the romantic dark ages, chose to give money to support people who are able to come to conclusions based on evidence and not emotion then I am happy for an extra cent to be put on the price of a litre of gas.

By the way, living in the pre industrialised world was, for most people, bloody uncomfortable and generally unpleasant.

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Helen, Augie and a council wally

It is about time anthroprogenic global warming got another thrashing and the Herald comes to the party this morning and quite nicely links it to another load of bollocks that never changes, the headmisstress's obsession with staying power whatever it takes.

There are three articles realated to climate change this moring and let us not lose sight of the fact that this means there are three fairy stories in a newspaper. I want my money back.

The Transport Manager of the Auckland Regional Council features in a piece written in 'Noddy and Big Ears go to Town' type language. This is pathetic on a biblical scale. The style of prose is, however totally appropriate for fairy stories. This plonker, who is also a member of the Green Party (what a surprise), takes his rust bucket to a new carbon emission testing station in Browns Bay and is a little miffed that he only got a green sticker for his car and not the Gold one he was aiming for. But he will 'soon be rolling up his sleeves to fit the new set of sparkplugs that will fix this'. He will then be able to sport his new gold sticker like all the North Shore City Council cars managed to get 'much to the relief' of Mayor George Wood. I grew out of this style of journalism (sic) at about the time I got over my crush on Amanda Stoyle - which was well before England won the soccer World Cup.

Global warming part two is the avuncular Augie Auer taking on NIWA's Jim Salinger. Augie quite rightly points out that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with global warming and that Kyoto is a crock - you know, all the thinking man's stuff- while Jim witters on that the Northland floods are just a warning of what we have in store if we don't all become carbon neutral. Crap. I feel like taking my shoe off and doing my Nikita Kruschev impression. There is no bloody evidence, you plonker. Listen, will you? You and your ilk are peddling a load of bollocks. What you are selling doesn't exist. Man made carbon dioxide has nothing, nix, nada to do with climate change. Comprende?

Which brings us on nicely to Helen Clark, if you will pardon the oxymoron. You will see that Winston has looked up from the Bar on his latest overseas junket to decline his vote for adoptinig Trotsky Bradford's abbhorance. Helen now don't have the numbers and so the government drops the Bill wrapped in excuse number 452(b) - 'How to get out of something you wish you had never started without appearing to have backed down' for the use of. Colin James write a piece about Helen's new direction, that of leading Aoteoroa into the future as the world's first carbon neutral country. She will do this because continuing with same old same old is getting her nowhere fast. Health service a crock, the Police smelling horrible, NCEA incomprehensible etc etc. It is likely John Key will fare better batting on these wickets. So she nails her colours to the global warming mast. Two things here. Colin James points out something I had not stumbled on. In order to pursue this she has to back track on some of the things the socialists have stood for and, for example, Colin highlights the lifting of import quotas so the masses can afford vehicular transport. She now has to persuade her electorate that they have to forgo the 1984 Corolla in order to save the planet. Will they wear it? Some very clever politicking required here and even I have to admit that is what she is good at. It is also pointed out that she will have to do some fancy footwork surrounding the behemoth that is the RMA; but we needn't go into that now.

All this gives me some hope. Why so? Because she is effectively staking everything on a concept that is fatally flawed - there is no such thing as anthroprogenic global warming, remember? This is going to be a close run thing. At the moment the Emperor's new clothes are looking jolly fine all over the world. However, sooner or later something that is absolute crap will be recognised as such. We just need lots of small boys in the otherwise sycophantic crowd (maybe just one - Augie, Leighton Smith, me will do) to point out the bleeding obvious to those who are so blind they will not see.

And then she's gone. Luverly.

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