How extremists damage causes

"An article by the pastor of a Wanganui church sent widely around New Zealand has alleged that Green MP Sue Bradford is "under the control of Satan" because she is advocating the repeal of section 59 of the Crimes Act."

Of course, who is giving this article all the publicity? Sue Bradford. She headlines her press release with;

"Accusations of Satanism show nature of pro s59'ers."

I oppose the removal of section 59 because it puts power in the hands of CYF and the police as opposed to the court. A point that seems to get overlooked in the hysteria which, when it suits Bradford, she will further inflame to her advantage.

Savage Youth Crimes

"Juvenile offenders seem to be becoming harder and more sophisticated and our short-term institutions have become over filled with a disturbing influx of remand cases," Minister of Social Welfare, Mr King.

Who???

Mr Norm King was Social Welfare Minister in the Labour cabinet of 1973.

33 years on and we have the Principal Family Court judge, Andrew Beecroft, warning that serious crime by young people is becoming more savage.

I don't post this as an example of, the more things change the more they stay the same.

Mr King's comments came on the eve of the introduction of a new Child Welfare Bill which sought to keep keep young people out of court except where is was absolutely necessary to otherwise.

Didn't work, did it.

How we measure up

Some up-to-date figures from the US as they relaunch their welfare to work requirements;

Based on federal figures, 4.45 million men, women and children - or about 1.9 million families - are enrolled in the $16.7 billion welfare program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The money includes cash payments to families, as well as subsidies for transportation to work, child care or job training.

Working on a straight per capita basis the US has 1.5 percent of its population on TANF. Doing a direct comprison with the DPB our figure is 6.8 percent.

What a lot of tosh

Political Commentator Graeme Hunt says Mr Benson-Pope has already come out relatively clean after one inquiry and it might be time to let the matter go.

He says National is clutching at straws by demanding the MPs removal and it is just another example of MMP allowing nasty allegations that have no substance, to be thrown around from both sides of the house.

What has this controversy got to do with MMP?

Not a dying business

Idle undertakers fear business is dying away. The already grim job of funeral directors is getting tougher as a lack of deaths causes a slump in business.

Oh Dear. Well, why not introduce Minimum Funeral Fee legislation?

Seriously, this is an industry which will just have to hold its breath for a wee while. With our ageing population they have boom times ahead. Undertaking has a big future.

Wellington - the subsidised city.

Leading the DomPost business pages today is a report about a survey which shows the majority of Wellington businesses approve of the rise in the minimum wage and the abolition of youth rates. This is at odds with a survey done in Auckland. Why would that be? You may recall that Wellington's economic growth is outstripping other regions. That's primarily due to the growth in the civil sector.

Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said the Wellington respondents were more likely than the Auckland ones to be involved in the domestic sector as retailers and small manufacturers, rather than in the exporting sector.

Considering the nature of the respondents' businesses, it was possible some would think an increase in the minimum wage would mean more spending, which could benefit them, particularly if they were retailers and small manufacturers.

It is also possible that those already paying over the minimum wage want their competitors forced to follow suit. There's the key word. FORCE. Notice that force is always used against the productive. We don't force people to get jobs but we force employers to pay those who do whatever arbitrary figure the govt wants to put on it.

Good on those employers who pay the extra. But why embrace turning choice into edict?

This morning Wellington is absolutely positively socialist.

Aborigines choosing welfare

Many supporters of the welfare state deny that people choose welfare over work, even when evidence is as conclusive as this;

The Australian reports;
AUSTRALIA'S peak indigenous land management body wants the welfare rules for Aborigines tightened, after revealing more than 40 per cent of its workforce is white because Aborigines are refusing regular paid work.

The Indigenous Land Corporation, a taxpayer-funded body charged with buying land and businesses to support indigenous entrepreneurs, has put forward a "get to work" plan after years of frustration at trying to recruit and retain workers from Aboriginal communities.

The situation is so dire the ILC has had to recruit backpackers to run some of its eight cattle properties and tourist resorts, which are intended to provide work opportunities and hope for indigenous Australians.

Reminds me of the situation here with backpackers getting special work permits to pick the fruit local beneficiaries won't. Crazy.

From the pen of Theodore Dalrymple

Dalrymple is technically a very , very good writer. But his stuff is dark. This is an excerpt from a piece entitled, "The Frivolity of Evil". Read the whole thing if you can stand it. It is, I gather, Dalrymple's parting serve to Britain which he left in disgust after 14 years as a prison and slum hospital doctor. To be fair, I am sure there are other parts of the world just as bad. By the way, I think he is wrong about "libertarians on the Right". As he points out himself, the market is not the same as the welfare state. You may disagree.

...... a man aged 25 came into our ward, in need of an operation to remove foil-wrapped packets of cocaine that he had swallowed in order to evade being caught by the police in possession of them. (Had a packet burst, he would have died immediately.) As it happened, he had just left his latest girlfriend—one week after she had given birth to their child. They weren't getting along, he said; he needed his space. Of the child, he thought not for an instant.

I asked him whether he had any other children.

"Four," he replied.

"How many mothers?"

"Three."

"Do you see any of your children?"

He shook his head. It is supposedly the duty of the doctor not to pass judgment on how his patients have elected to live, but I think I may have raised my eyebrows slightly. At any rate, the patient caught a whiff of my disapproval.

"I know," he said. "I know. Don't tell me."

These words were a complete confession of guilt. I have had hundreds of conversations with men who have abandoned their children in this fashion, and they all know perfectly well what the consequences are for the mother and, more important, for the children. They all know that they are condemning their children to lives of brutality, poverty, abuse, and hopelessness. They tell me so themselves. And yet they do it over and over again, to such an extent that I should guess that nearly a quarter of British children are now brought up this way.

The result is a rising tide of neglect, cruelty, sadism, and joyous malignity that staggers and appalls me. I am more horrified after 14 years than the day I started.....


....The state, guided by the apparently generous and humane philosophy that no child, whatever its origins, should suffer deprivation, gives assistance to any child, or rather the mother of any child, once it has come into being. In matters of public housing, it is actually advantageous for a mother to put herself at a disadvantage, to be a single mother, without support from the fathers of the children and dependent on the state for income. She is then a priority; she won't pay local taxes, rent, or utility bills.

As for the men, the state absolves them of all responsibility for their children. The state is now father to the child. The biological father is therefore free to use whatever income he has as pocket money, for entertainment and little treats. He is thereby reduced to the status of a child, though a spoiled child with the physical capabilities of a man: petulant, demanding, querulous, self-centered, and violent if he doesn't get his own way. The violence escalates and becomes a habit. A spoiled brat becomes an evil tyrant.

But if the welfare state is a necessary condition for the spread of evil, it is not sufficient. After all, the British welfare state is neither the most extensive nor the most generous in the world, and yet our rates of social pathology—public drunkenness, drug-taking, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, hooliganism, criminality—are the highest in the world. Something more was necessary to produce this result.

Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in the irresponsible and egotistical fashion that I have described, but also to believe that it is morally permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted. There has been a long march not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as "nonjudgmental." For them, the highest form of morality is amorality.

There has been an unholy alliance between those on the Left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the Right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an idea eagerly adopted by the Left in precisely those areas where it does not apply. Thus people have a right to bring forth children any way they like, and the children, of course, have the right not to be deprived of anything, at least anything material. How men and women associate and have children is merely a matter of consumer choice, of no more moral consequence than the choice between dark and milk chocolate, and the state must not discriminate among different forms of association and child rearing, even if such non-discrimination has the same effect as British and French neutrality during the Spanish Civil War.

The consequences to the children and to society do not enter into the matter: for in any case it is the function of the state to ameliorate by redistributive taxation the material effects of individual irresponsibility, and to ameliorate the emotional, educational, and spiritual effects by an army of social workers, psychologists, educators, counselors, and the like, who have themselves come to form a powerful vested interest of dependence on the government.

Who will replace David Benson-Pope?

These are the Associate Ministers for Social Development and Employment;

# Parekura Horomia - Associate Minister
# Ruth Dyson - Associate Minister
# Luamanuvao Winnie Laban - Associate Minister
# Mahara Okeroa - Associate Minister

Would one of these people step into his shoes? It would be most appropriate to have a Maori or Pacific Minister for Social Welfare. But Dyson is the most experienced. I'll put my money on her. When she and Judith Collins square off, things will get interesting.

Double vision

This piece, from Reason, has a similar theme to the one I posted yesterday from Maxim but it delves deeper into the philosophical thought processes;

How the neoconservative right adopted the worst errors of the left

".....neoconservative optimism about the prospects for global social engineering seemed to have triumphed any doubts that arose from that domestic skepticism."

The writer uses Thomas Sowell's theory of "constrained" (conservative) and "unconstrained" (left liberal) vision to show how the Bush administration has pretty much adopted the latter worldview. Not only in its approach to Iraq but in the domestic social programmes it is running.

Sowell's constrained vision in its purer forms is probably a shade too constrained, too ready to assume that old customs continue to serve their traditional functions under changed circumstances. But it is the worst features of the unconstrained vision—its hubris, its pretense to omnicompetence—that have taken hold of the right. And if there is wisdom in each of the two perspectives, it should be worrying that, for all the other differences between the major parties, between progressives and conservatives, in this one fundamental way the political landscape increasingly offers only half the picture—different refractions of the same unconstrained vision. With the waning of the constrained perspective's tempering influence, we're left with a political vision that's dangerously double.

Precisely. I suspect over the coming years, throughout the developed world, the only choice we will have is between big government and bigger.

Don't encourage them

From the Feminist Weekly News comes this revelation;

(A) survey found that single women have significantly lower incomes than men or married women, feel uninformed about politics, and doubt that their votes make a difference. Two-thirds of the women polled disapprove of President Bush, and the Iraq war, health care and the economy are their top concerns. Avis Jones-DeWeever, of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said, “Unmarried women don’t vote because the government doesn’t pay attention to them,” reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Gee. I wish the government would pay less attention to me. I wish the government would pay less attention to all of us, so we can live our lives. Maybe we all shouldn't vote.

Hand-wringing over prisons

The ODT and DomPost are running stories today about our failing prison system.

This is from December's Ombudsman report;

• Prison work has been cut officially from 43% to 35% of prisoners in the past three years, and only 19% are actually employed by the prisons’ business unit. The others have only part-time work, such as cleaning their cell blocks or serving the meals. • Education has been massively disrupted by overcrowding and resulting frequent transfers of prisoners when beds become available around the country. The prison education budget was underspent by 44% last year and training is forecast to be underachieved again by 33% in 2005-06. • Many prisons lack proper libraries and rely on donations of old books from the public or from public libraries. • Several prisons, including Mt Eden, Wanganui and Wellington, do not have gyms. • A new booking system for prison visits, combined with a doubling of prisoner transfers has cut visitor numbers, weakening prisoners’ links with family members who might motivate them to reform their lives. The crowding in jails has seen evening lock-up time brought back from 8.30pm to 5pm in many of the country’s 19 prisons, because guard numbers have not kept up with an unpredicted increase of almost 2000 extra prisoners since the Sentencing and Parole Acts were tightened in 2002.

This is terrible. Prisons without gyms.

Look, even I could be seduced by this kind of hand-wringing stuff. So I went back and read some of Stephen Franks stuff. Remember, we have been trying to rehabilate prisoners for decades to no avail - or very little;

Around 80% (of prisoners) reoffend soon after release.

That is up from approximately 45% when I started law practice over 30 years ago. Back then the idealists were claiming that prison didn't work. They used it to justify the loopy experiment we've been running for the last 30 years, hoping that if we are all nice enough for long enough to criminals they might decide to be nice back. It's been a complete failure.

Under the legal system we inherited from Britain, the State claimed the victim's right to retribution. "Leave it to us" worked for hundreds of years. Then the anointed in charge reneged on the bargain. They shudder at what they call "vengeance".

ACT does not. ACT shudders at the harm to the innocent since Sir Geoffrey Palmer's announcement 16 years ago that retribution had no place in the law of a civilised nation. We think the price for that political correctness is paid by the 45,000 bashed, robbed, raped or murdered last year, nearly 5000 per year more than when Helen Clark took over in 1999.

But here is a smattering of what various advocates are saying;

Being confined to their cells, they are restricted in what they can do. It’s turning them into vegetables, said the society’s secretary, John Whitty.

Howard League president Peter Williams said some young people would be psychologically harmed by being cooped up so long in cells which are about 3m square just big enough for a bed, a small desk on one wall and a stainless steel toilet with an attached hand basin on the pipe behind the toilet bowl.

In some older prisons, such as New Plymouth, Prison Chaplaincy Service manager David Connor said some cells are so small that you can stand in the cell and touch the two walls.

These same people champion the welfare system that produces many of our criminals. The only progress we can make is reform both systems. And I don't mean make them more generous. If we aren't tougher, as a society, we are going to keep on paying the rising social costs. Perhaps we just don't grasp what these costs are until personally affected. Then it is too late.

Quizz

For what was New Zealand ranked third in 2004, sixth in 2005 and ninth in 2006?

The answer is here.

Kids at school, still on benefit

Figures released under the Official Information Act show that 45,643 single parents with children aged 5 to 18 do not have even a part-time job.

Some of these parents will have genuine reasons for being unable to work. Around 4,000 are on a sickness or invalid benefit. Some may be involved in volunteering. But there is clearly a significant resource being wasted at a time when government has stated a clear priority to raise productivity.

At May 2004 37,000 single parents on the DPB had school-age children only but no other source of income. If the Ministry's figures are accurate, there is an increasing trend for single parents to stay on a benefit even after their kids start going to school.

The Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social Development and Employment, Peter Hughes, said in the letter containing these figures,"In many cases, (single parent's) social and environmental circumstances mean that seeking employment at this stage of their lives is not appropriate."

There is that word again. I guess it is appropriate for you to go to work so these people can stay at home.

Governments getting bigger

This is worth passing on. It comes from the Maxim Institute....I think:-) ;

My government is bigger than yours

The significant rise in public spending by the United States government seems to suggest that the party supposedly in favour of limited government, the Republican Party, now believes that big government is good government; as long as they are the ones governing. Federal spending is up eight percent since 2005, and 33 percent since 2001. The government spends more today per household than it has since the end of World War Two.

Closer to home, government spending continues with the roll-out of the Working for Families package. While the National Party continue to criticise administrative blunders, they have not articulately critiqued the assumptions regarding the legitimate role of government that underlie the package.

The question of legitimacy is all important when it concerns the use of power. Like the big-spending Republicans, all political parties make different assumptions about the value and nature of human freedom, and consequently, the degree to which government power should be both enforced and restrained in order to protect it. People are different and when free people act, they will experience different outcomes. This is why there is always a trade-off between freedom and equality which is usually paid for at the other's expense.

Two assumptions embedded in the extended Working for Families package are that take-home incomes should be subsidised in the interests of equality rather than need, and that it is a legitimate role of government to mitigate the outcomes of each individual's unique decisions. Raising a family is costly and couples who make that choice should be applauded and supported by the community which benefits from that decision. Thankfully, this is happening in New Zealand. Those tax-payers without dependent children already support families to a significant extent through the public provision of education and subsidised health-care. Society also provides a welfare safety-net for those in genuine need, but whether welfare should extend to income redistribution is an entirely different matter.

If we accept the assumption that the government is justified in using power to arbitrarily equalise incomes, what is left to restrain it from redistributing and spending further?

It is often said that oppositions have principles and governments have programmes. Sadly one assumption which eventually finds its way into nearly every cabinet room is that big government is good government as long as it is ours.

For a fleeting moment.....

A travelling salesman was passing through a small town in the West when he saw a little old man sitting in a rocking chair on the stoop of his house. The little old man looked so contented that the salesman couldn't resist going over and talking to him.
"You seem without a care in the world," the salesman told him, "What is your formula for a long and happy life?"
"Well," replied the little old man, "I smoke six packs of cigarettes a day, I drink a quart of bourbon every four hours and six cases of beer a week. I never wash and I go out every night."
"My goodness," exclaimed the salesman, "that's fantastic! How old are you?"
"Twenty-five," came the reply.

The Future US President?

My pick is private funding of education. But as long as the state is going to involve itself, vouchers are better than zoning. The following is a strange argument from Hillary Clinton described in Newsday


Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton slammed private-school voucher proposals yesterday, predicting that vouchers would eventually lead to the creation of taxpayer-financed white supremacist academies - or even a government-funded "School of the Jihad."

Clinton, a longtime voucher foe who earned the backing of the city teachers union in 2000, says government financing of sectarian groups would incite ethnic and religious conflict - and encourage fringe groups to demand government cash to run their schools.

"First family that comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School' and you say 'Great, wonderful school, here's your voucher,'" Clinton said. "Next parent that comes and says, 'I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist ...' The parent says, 'The way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy. ... You gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, under the Constitution, you can't discriminate against me.'"

As an adoring, if somewhat puzzled, audience of Bronx activists looked on, Clinton added, "So what if the next parent comes and says, 'I want to send my child to the School of the Jihad? ... I won't stand for it."

The former first lady said that vouchers would also accentuate divisions, singling out government-financed Protestant and Catholic schools in Northern Ireland and similar arrangements in the Netherlands as examples of poorly functioning systems.

She spoke during a breakfast at the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp., where she denounced Bush administration cuts to community development programs, offered advice to minority and women business owners and vowed to help bring more broadband access to the South Bronx.

Andrew Coulson, who works on education issues for the conservative Cato Institute, differed on the voucher issue, saying, "It's misleading because under federal law no one would be permitted to open a school that advocates violence against the country."

Appropriate

At last, a good use for a much over-used word. It is somehow fitting that one of Parliament's least effective MPs, NZ First's Barbara Stewart, should have a bill to reduce the number of MPs from 121 to 100 pulled from the ballot box. In fact, this is probably the most useful thing she has done in the three and a half years she's been there.

Abortion ban closer

South Dakota is moving closer to passing legislation that will virtually ban abortions. In nearly all cases abortion would become a felony carrying a five year prison sentence or an $8,000 fine on doctors or others who perform them.

Bans do not work. Not only do they fail to control the 'undesirable' activity, they produce other negative effects.

Point of interest; NZ has a much higher abortion rate than South Dakota. Ours is around 45.5 per 10,000 of population; South Dakota's is 10.6

Births outside of marriage (2)

As stated yesterday, 45 percent of births are now ex-nuptial. Part of the reason ex-nuptial births have risen so sharply is the rise in de facto relationships. A commentor asks, what is the percentage of children born outside a marriage or a committed non-marriage?

I'm not aware of any data that conclusively answers that question. But I'll have an unscientific go.

A NZ study looked at children born in 1993 who had been on a main benefit by age seven. There were 58,866 registered births that year. Sixty percent of the children born had contact with the benefit system by age 7. Of those, the study estimated 40.8 percent were included on a benefit at birth. That's 14,410.

By age two the percentage of all children born in 1993 that had been on a main benefit was 45 percent or 26,489. Sixty two percent of these children had a single care-giver. That's 16,423.

I would suggest that there were at least this number of children born outside of a marriage or committed de facto relationship (one that endures beyond 2-3 years) in 1993.

Children born in the same circumstances who didn't go on a benefit are ommitted. The number won't be very high and could be offset by those children in the statistics whose caregiver is on a widow's benefit.

So I estimate that at least 28 percent of children born in 1993 were born outside of a marriage or committed relationship.

Given DPB numbers now are higher and total births slightly lower I don't think my estimate will have decreased.

The future for American blacks

From Anthony B. Bradley of the Acton Institute, a conservative, religious US think-tank comes this piece which considers, in Black History month, the future of blacks.

Tragically, more black men pass through the criminal justice system than through America’s college and university system. In Baltimore, for example, 52 percent of black men in their 20s are either incarcerated, on parole, or on probation. Imagine what type of city Baltimore would be if 52 percent of black males were instead college graduates or in college or graduate school?

.....we are slowly approaching the possibility that there will be progress only among the black elite and the rest will be left behind, enslaved to dependency or incarceration.

Unbalanced reporting in the gun

Media gaining access to the Family Court was an important step forward. If there is bias in the court it needs to be exposed. The media's limited access will be valueless if the subsequent reporting is also subject to questions of bias;

TVNZ is under fire from the Principal Family Court judge for unbalanced reporting following a news item which screened last weekend, which criticised the court for taking a two-month-old baby away from its mother while she was still breast feeding.


Judge Peter Boshier says it was not made clear that the mother had left the child after a New Year's Eve party, to allegedly go to a hotel room with a man. He says she did not return home for several days.


Judge Boshier intends to write to TVNZ to point out the newsroom did not report in accordance with The Care of Children Act. He says decisions in the Family Court are made for good reasons and parents should not be able to use the media to promote their case.

Over-priced book

Who would pay $800 to read what is fairly obvious to anybody who takes an interest in politics?

"The book also claims Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope is regarded by some colleagues as a pompous prat, Education Minister Steve Maharey is not as smart as he thinks he is, and Auckland Issues Minister Judith Tizard is not the hardest worker...occasionally a bully."

Parliament delivers disservice to all NZers

Rodney Hide's bill to define the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi was defeated last night.

According to Stuff, Mr Hide wanted the principles to be legally defined as: That the Crown exercises sovereignty over Maori and non-Maori New Zealanders, that the Crown has a duty to uphold property rights, and that all New Zealanders have equal rights before the law.

Let's be clear on this. Labour, NZ First, The Greens, United Future and the Maori Party rejected these principles.

The Maori Party said it would not promote Maori interests.

Doesn't that say it all.

Reason vs Emotion

This is an excerpt from a submission written by Peter Zohrab on the Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill.

IRRATIONAL WOMEN

It is no accident that Sue Bradford has proposed this irrational Bill. As the Neuroscience article "Sex differences in functional activation patterns revealed by increased emotion processing demands*" shows, men's and women's brains process emotional stimuli in different ways. It states:

"These findings suggest that men tend to modulate their reaction to stimuli, and engage in analysis and association, whereas women tend to draw more on primary emotional reference."

To put it simply, women have evolved to get emotional about things, and men have evolved to be rational. Sue Bradford's Bill is evidence that women would be better off at home, indulging their emotions on their children, leaving the men to make decisions -- e.g. about legislation -- outside the home that require rational thinking in the face of emotional stimuli.

*by Geoffrey B.C. Hall, Sandra F. Wittelson, Henry Szechtman and Claude
Nahmias, in Neuroreport Vol. 15 2004, pp 219-223.

There is undoubtedly more than a grain truth in the assertion that females draw more on emotional reference. We see it in voting preferences. But to react emotionally is not to be irrational. There needs to be a balance.

I am reminded of something I read today attributed to Stalin; "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." Extreme rationality is as bad as extreme emotionality.

European vs NZ births outside marriage

The proportion of children born outside marriage in the UK has leapt from 12 percent in 1980 to 42 percent in 2004, according to the Office for National Statistics.

They haven't caught up with us yet. Our proportion in 2004 was 45 percent up from 21 percent in 1980.

Can't be bothered with it

Not often that I find myself in the majority;

A Stuff poll asks whether you will be watching South Park tonight.
The majority (at the moment) say,"No, I'm just not interested."

Equality myths

An article in Newsweek explores the effects of tax and welfare sytems on women in the workplace.

Here's a pop quiz on gender equality. In which part of the world are women most likely to reach the highest rungs of power? Choice A offers new moms 12 weeks of maternity leave, almost no subsidized child care, no paid paternity leave and has a notoriously hard-driving business culture. Choice B gives them five months to three years of paid time off from their jobs after having kids. Millions put their offspring into state-sponsored day-care centers for several hours a day. Government agencies, full of female directors and parliamentarians, protect workers at the expense of business and favor a kinder, gentler corporate culture. So which place is better for women who want to make it to the top? If you guessed A, the United States, you'd be right. If you chose B—Europe—think again.


According to a paper published by the International Labor Organization this past June, women account for 45 percent of high-level decision makers in America, including legislators, senior officials and managers across all types of businesses. In the U.K., women hold 33 percent of those jobs. In Sweden—supposedly the very model of global gender equality—they hold 29 percent.

Why is this? Simply put, Europe is killing its women with kindness—enshrined, ironically, in cushy welfare policies that were created to help them. By offering women extremely long work leaves after children, then pushing them to take the full complement via tax policies that discourage a second income, coupled with subsidies that serve to keep them at home, Europe is essentially squandering its female talent. Not only do women get off track for long periods, many simply never get back on.

NZ is mistakenly headed in the European direction.

Maori Party want to ban smoking

These are the most recent statistics from Te Puni Kokiri;

Māori smokers
Overall, Māori were twice as likely as non-Māori to smoke. Statistics from the 1996 Census indicate that 44% of the Māori population aged 15 years and over were smokers, compared to 21% of the non-Māori population (Table 1). Māori were also less likely than non-Māori to be ex-smokers.

Are Maori Party voters going to be angry about the now official policy to make smoking illegal? I have one received opinion which says, no. They are only interested in what the Maori Party can achieve in respect of the Treaty and property rights. Hone Harawira can get away with it because of his mana. He'll be seen to be doing what is best for his iwi.

I vehemently disagree. Otherwise I'd have to concede that Maori want to be told what to do.

Relevant Minister Missing

According to National MP, Judith Collins, Minister for Social Development and Employment, David Benson-Pope was supposed to speak at last week's international child abuse and neglect conference but was a late "withdrawal".

It was surprising to see the Prime Minister address the conference. Perhaps she delivered a speech that had been prepared for Mr Benson-Pope.

In it she said, "Children too need strong relationships and good self-esteem. They need to know that adults respect their rights, and that they have a voice."

It is fairly obvious the sort of cannon fodder this would have delivered to the opposition if Benson-Pope had said it.

Then again, given Clark's steadfast support for her Minister, perhaps the opportunity is not lost.

Peter Dunne - The Visionary

United Future began the year with a caucus and board retreat. According to united Future MP, Gordon Copeland, this is some of what Peter Dunne said.

“Here’s a vision.

It’s election night, 2008. A revived, re-activated, renewed United Future has campaigned hard at the general election, pointing out to the voters that

· we’ve held the Government together;
· we’ve achieved significant gains such as tax reform for business owners and charities;
· we’ve secured a commitment to income splitting;
· we’ve finally forced some commonsense into how we purchase and provide pharmaceuticals for ill New Zealanders;
· and we’ve reinforced our role as a solid, sensible, reliable centrist party that adds real value to any New Zealand government.

The public hears our message, responds positively and we gain 10% of the party vote, leading to a United Future team in Parliament of 12 MP’s.

That’s the vision; how do we get there?


Well, let's see what you did last time;

"During the election campaign Dunne and National Leader Don Brash publicly sat outside an Epsom café over a cup of tea as a demonstration to the electorate that Dunne could co-operate with the National Party. This demonstration saw the majority of National supporters in Ohariu-Belmont combine with United Future and other Dunne-supporters to return Peter Dunne with a comfortable majority. National comfortably won the party vote in his seat.

Dunne’s decision to work with Winston Peters also counterpointed Dunne's previous comments about Peters’ reliability. In one well-publicised press release Dunne reworded one of Peters’ well-publicised campaign phrases by saying "Can we trust him? No, we can’t!"

Words fail me.

Proof of global warming. The evidence is pretty robust...or at least, it used to be.

A different approach to poverty

Here British Conservative Leader David Cameron pits himself against Gordon Brown, Labour's PM-in-waiting. As political speeches go, it's really not bad.


"We desperately need new thinking if we're to tackle the problems of multiple deprivation.

We can't keep pulling the same levers and hope for different results.

We can't keep growing and growing the welfare state.

We must realise that Gordon Brown's ever-growing state cannot win the war on poverty on its own.

Gordon Brown says that only the state can guarantee fairness.

One look at his record exposes the hollowness of his claim.

If life in Calton and Drumchapel is his definition of fairness, I suggest he rethinks his guarantee."


Then he draws on the work of William Galston....


That much was demonstrated by William Galston, the liberal academic who inspired the Clinton-era welfare reforms.

His genius was to relate facts and figures to real lives lived by real people in the real world.

For instance, he found that three questions hold the key to whether an American citizen avoids poverty:

Did you finish high school?
Did you marry before having children?
Did you have children after 20?

He found that of the people who did all three, only 8% were poor; but of those who failed to do all three, 79% were poor.


....to sketch a plan for Britain. Worth a read.

Another unwinnable "war"

The collective war against child poverty is internationally fashionable. Another assault is about to be unleashed in London.

At the root of the London problem is one in three children live in a lone parent family but the ECPC (End Child Poverty Campaign) solution is, "A strong partnership between Central Government, the London Development Agency, the Greater London Authority, the Association of London Government and London boroughs is needed to devote greater resources to tackling poverty and unemployment in London."

Translated; through the vast and coercive machinery of state let's throw a whole lot more money at the problem.

It won't work, it has never worked. What will work is an army of self-deceiving do-gooders will experience salvational euphoria and jobs for life.

More NZers killing themselves

What a depressing headline.

In 2002, a total of 460 people died by suicide, compared with 507 in 2001 and 458 in 2000. The figure for 2003 has just been released. 515 people killed themselves.

Suicide rates for Maori are higher than for non-Maori.

Thirty five years ago the suicide rate for Maori was very low. Out of 237 suicides only 5 were by Maori. What happened?

High internet use explained

Business Analyst Roger Kerr suspects the reason NZers spend so much time on the internet is because it is so slow. New Zealanders are the secong highest users of internet in the world, apparently.

I disagree with his suggestion. Without broadband I would get tired of waiting for information to load, found using the internet a frequently frustrating experience and consequently used it less.

Is she planning any more?

With in vitro assistance, a 62 year-old californian woman has just given birth to a baby boy. When he's three she'll qualify for supplemental security income. Hope she can get by until then. Ooops. She already does qualify. She has been blind since birth.

University website security failure

Canterbury University's online services were shut down last night after a computer glitch made the private records of thousands of students available to anyone with a user code and password.

Looks like the Christchurch Press were tipped off about a Canterbury University computer problem.

"A Press reporter with a current student identification number yesterday logged on to the university's student web system and accessed several other students' details."

Isn't this a bit like admitting to looting. Has the reporter "stolen" information just because he or she could? Does it really matter when any of the other 12,000 students could have done the same?

The Varsity were very slow to shut down the system.

Clinton on Close Up

Well, if he isn't he should be.

If the taxpayer is going to bankroll the security for this week's Auckland engagement then why not a quid pro quo.

Go on State telly and tell us about your greatest achievement as President of the United States. A good shot at killing off lifestyle welfare...or formally, passing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation (PRWOR) legislation.

Bring on the day when NZ actually embodies the term Personal Responsibility in a legislative Act.

I Walk The Line

Went to see the movie this afternoon. I can't possibly say anything that would do it justice. The movie ends but much of the audience stays seated. Where's the rewind button? Occasionally a movie makes you feel an ache. You are missing the character like you miss a parent that's died.

The music was, if anything, better than the real thing. None of it was foreshortened, leaving you unsure whether you had just been to the best concert or the best movie.

It starts dark. His childhood was tough and tragic. So as his music emerges, literally dragged out of him in the Sam Phillips audition which nearly ends a career that has barely begun, you are lifted up with him.

Apart from the childhood years the entire movie is focussed on the middle years. And that's how you want it. The audience attachment to the youngish Cash character is so strong it would have been a mistake to break it.

I can't wait to see it again.

More on the growth of local government

One of the themes running in this blog is the growth of local government. (I see the Christchurch City Council is warning its rates may rise by ten percent.)

Reading the Listener I came across this, "In Britain, the Blair government last year announced plans to put more onus on local councils to provide childcare..."

It's true. The Telegraph reports, A separate Child Care Bill will place a new duty on councils to offer "affordable and flexible" child care for the under-14s. Local authorities will have to offer a minimum number of places, while Ofsted will have greater powers to inspect those caring for the under-fives.

Good grief. We can now see one of the ways the Local Government Can Do Anything Bill, passed here in 2003, may turn into a licence for much greater localised redistribution of income.

Amazing Dubai snowpark

A friend sent me a slideshow about the amazing Dubai snowpark which opened last December. This report is from the BBC.

The area under snow is the equivalent of three football pitches, with runs built inside a giant, slanting metal tube around 25 floors high.

All clothing and equipment is provided in the entrance price of $35, including black, knee-length padded coats for any Arabs who prefer to wear their traditional kandouras to visit the snow - but skiing in the robes will be banned.

The snow is made by shooting water at high pressure into an atmosphere maintained at around freezing point by coolers both below and above the slopes.

Until now Dubai has been a destination for warm beach holidays.

But the ski slope is likely to be most popular, especially for residents, during Dubai's harsh summer when temperatures reach well above 40C.

Crime comparisons

More British households have been victims of crime than American or Canadian. And North Americans have more confidence that police would protect them from violent crime than Britons.

In the UK, there has been argument about crime statistics for many years. Governments like to talk about reported crime statistics. But then a lot of crime goes unreported. Crime surveys, like these, reveal that the true level of crime is higher.

It will be interesting to see what our own Crime and Safety Survey 2006 produces.

Two completely different wars

If I understand this editorial correctly, the need to share intelligence justifies the Australian Federal Police tipping off the Indonesian authorities to the activities of the Bali Nine.

The international nature of terrorism, and indeed drug smuggling and other criminal activity, means that countries must co-operate with each other. In this region, a strong relationship with Indonesia is vital.

But if the Bali Nine had been allowed to reach Australia would the Indonesians have been any the wiser? What is the author of this piece saying? That the AFP would then have to answer to the Indonesians for thwarting any drug intelligence they might otherwise have gathered from the Nine? But if intelligence was the aim wouldn't the drug smugglers be far more likely to disclose information under the promise of a return to Australian authorities? That wasn't on offer.

So, the Indonesian authorities want a few Aussie heads before they would provide terrorist intelligence that might save many more Aussie lives?

I don't believe it. The AFP shouldn't have shopped those kids to the Indonesians. A genuine war on terrorism cannot be used to justify the false war on drugs.

Spoilt monkey

That's me. My husband decided, as I was spending so much time at the computer, I needed a new chair. Here it is;



The picture doesn't really do it justice. It's "Buffalo leather" , height adjustable, swivel, with arm rests and being quite small, I can rest my head back and find it perfectly cushioned. Geez. I feel like I've been upgraded to business class. I'll just swivel around to the bookcase to my glass of wine (experience has taught me never to leave it within cooey of the keyboard). Aaaah.

Two years ago the same husband told me he was giving me a "desk" for Xmas. I sulked. A piece of furniture HE wants for MY xmas present I grizzled to myself.



Well, it took him hours and hours to assemble it but again, it's just wonderful. In a small space it fits into the corner with all sorts of compartments, drawers and cupboards at my fingertips.

Both of these additions to the home came from the Warehouse Stationary. The chair cost $125. The desk unit was around $400. Isn't the free market a fantastic thing?

Oh and my faithful companion by the chair came from the SPCA.
Cost? The price of a spaying operation.

What should WINZ do?

35 people lost their jobs when an Otaki plastics recycling factory burnt down. Initially it looked like WINZ would subsidise a clean-up, which will take about six months and keep staff employed.

Now WINZ have said they can't financially help the employer.

So 27 will now have be made redundant.

Well, they will have to go and find new jobs, like anybody else who gets made redundant. And, if they wish to, return to their old jobs when the factory reopens. There will be plenty of other employers looking for staff in the region.

I just hope WINZ are as staunch in not allowing those made redundant to sit on a benefit for the next six months. Unfortunately I suspect this is exactly what will happen.

And from boycotts to blogs...

A much more uplifting subject, a lengthy but fascinating read just published in the Financial Times;

"At the close of 2002, there were some 15,000 blogs. By 2005, 56 new blogs were starting every minute. As I type this sentence, there are, according to technorati.com, 27.2 million blogs. By the time you read this sentence, there surely will be many more."

From Bans to Boycotts

If I am not mistaken this was the lead item on TV3 News last night;

Canterbury Health Board wants staff to boycott Christchurch's city-to-surf run, because of the events sponsor - Powerade.

The health board is "putting its foot down." The idea that sugary drinks are appropriate is not the message we want out there, said a spokeswoman.

At last years City to Surf 12km run around 600 health workers participated. Hundred's of CHB staff have been told to stay away from the event.

You can watch the video (if you can stand to) at TV3's website.

"National Velvet - The coming of John Key"

For goodness sake. What an overblown title for the fairly lightweight North & South article about John Key which I've just finished reading. Mostly it's an advertisement for National's economic prescription. There's a couple of descriptions of tough conversations Key had with prospective employers on his way up. Quite impressive until you picture him telling the story himself (which is how I imagine the writer got the information).

John Key seems to be Mr Nice and he may well be. His wife of 21 years, looks surprisingly yet pleasantly nice and ordinary which (perversely) improves my opinion of him. So why am I not singing his praises in tune with the writer?

My mistrust of National. Gareth Morgan is quoted in the article so I will let him say it for me;

(Morgan says) "Key is better than Cullen," adding he doesn't consider that a particularly high hurdle...... the challenge for National is to demonstrate principles, not simply follow populist policies as he believes they did in the election run-up."Remember the only true reformer of the past 30 years, Roger Douglas, was from Labour, not one of a bunch of conservative also-rans."

There was only one other paragraph that raised my eyebrows and turned the corners of my mouth upward.

John Key is not Parliament's only state house kid made good, although former ACT party leader Richard Prebble was maybe inadvertently perspicacious when he described him as "the candidate from central casting" - in Key's case, a nod to the perennial Hollywood theme of working class hero triumphs over adversity, with a touch of Mr Smith Goes To Washington.

Mr Smith Goes To Washington? Now that is taking things too far.

When Albert Einstein was making the rounds of the speaker's circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work. One night as they were driving to yet another lecture, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur that he was tired of speechmaking.

"I have an idea," his chauffeur said. "I've heard you give this speech so many times. I'll bet I could give it for you." Einstein laughed loudly and said, "Why not? Let's do it!"

When they arrived, Einstein wore the chauffeur's cap and jacket and sat at the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein's speech and even answered a few questions.

Then a pompous professor asked an esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to show off his expertise. Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, "Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me."

Prison sentencing

As prisons have been topical I've dug out some relevant statistics (just what I have to hand).

We hear that “crime is a young man’s game”. If we call young anything up to 30 years-old, fifty three percent of prison sentences imposed in 2003 were on young people.

BUT of all inmates 76 percent had FIRST been imprisoned as a young person. The most common age for first imprisonment is 17.

Of the 8,536 sentences 10 percent went to females. Up from 7 percent in 1999.

Exactly half of the sentences were imposed on Maori.

Going back to 1960;

3,057 sentences were imposed. The percentage of the population under 30 was fifty three; now it is only 43 percent. Despite today's population being considerably older the rate of sentencing per 10,000 of mean population, has increased by around fifty percent.

Bouquet or brickbat?

A caller to a radio programme awarded a bouquet to all those "patriotic" New Zealanders for supporting Kiwibank. Naturally I had to ring in and give the same people a brickbat. Kiwibank continues to grow on the back of NZ Post. People who use it are self-serving opportunists - happy to be subsidised by the taxpayer.

More state intervention on the way

This is from the Maxim newsletter. One of the more concise descriptions of the consequences of repealing section 59.

Supporters of repeal say that their intention is not to criminalise parents for what they call "trivial" smacking. Their intentions however are, to put it bluntly, irrelevant.

What matters is what the law will say.

Currently, section 59 gives parents, or those in the place of parents, a defence to charges that could result from a parent's use of physical force to discipline their child. The defence is a limited one; any force used must be "reasonable in the circumstances" and used "by way of correction". If section 59 is repealed, the law will say that ordinary smacking constitutes an assault to which parents will have no defence. The Police have confirmed that this will be the case. This is because the law defines "assault" very widely. Assault is a criminal offence for which parents could be charged if they do not have the protection of section 59. Other occasions in which parents touch their children for disciplinary reasons, such as putting an unwilling child into a chair for a five minute "time-out", will also constitute assault.

Many of those supporting repeal also say that the defence needs to be removed to prevent child abuse. However, child abuse is already illegal and is not protected by section 59. An analysis of cases involving section 59 shows that in the vast majority of cases, the limits of the defence are applied sensibly.

Hobson's choice

Researchers ask are we medicating away romantic love? Anti-depressents alter brain chemicals which blunt the emotions and interfere with the abiltity to feel romantic love and sustain long-term attachments. But if you are depressed, do you have the capacity anyway?

John Plewes, a medical adviser to Eli Lilly -- which manufactures Prozac -- says, "Patients who suffer from depression aren't in a position to make decisions about partners and life choices." Plewes added that antidepressants "allow the person to experience normal emotions when they get better from depression."

More bad behaviour at select committee

National MP, Nick Smith got rather excited at the Local Government and Environment select committee yesterday, when questioning officials about the costs of the Oceans Policy. Marion Hobbs is complaining about his "aggressive" questioning. Not to the chairperson but to the speaker. Now, will Margaret Wilson take a leaf out of Shane Jones book and rip up the complaint?

Hardly front page news...

...but the DomPost thinks so.

Wellington High School present kids who have a 100 percent attendence record with a $50 prize at the end of the year. Good idea. But some think not.

One parent said she was angry the school was spending money, including parents' $300 donations, on "bribes".

"I will be deducting the $50 that the school seems to think it can afford from my kids' school fees...It is outrageous."

What a whinger.

Sick of state worshippers

That's it. I'm laying a complaint. Hearing about Sweden is definitely bad for my health and I want a ban on the word - NOW.

Here are three references in the last couple of days alone.

1 Some countries, such as Sweden, had put a total ban on all advertising during children's television viewing times, while other countries had placed restrictions on the promotion of unhealthy foods.

2 ....Joan Durrant, a child clinical psychologist from the University of Manitoba, .... cited the example of Sweden, which removed the criminal defence in 1957 - nearly 50 years ago - and followed that up in 1978 with an explicit statement in the Civil Code to say children should not be hit.

So far 17 countries - including the Pitcairn Islands (infamous for a massive historic abuse case, which ended in the conviction of six men last year) - have followed Sweden's lead in explicitly banning physical discipline in their civil codes.

3 Sweden hopes to end its oil dependency within 15 years according to a new government initiative.

With oil prices fluctuating and the resource dwindling, the Scandinavian country plans to develop a range of bio fuels so that, according to government minister Mona Sahlin; 'No driver should need to use only gasoline' by 2020.

So has the Swedish state delivered nirvana?

Newsweek investigates; "An increasing number of Swedes do not recognize the socialist paradise-cum-economic wunderkind of Guardian headlines. The model is showing "visible cracks," says Klas Eklund, the Stockholm-based chief economist of SEB bank. Among them: the lack of incentive to work, resulting in a real unemployment rate roughly three times the official 6.3 percent; the failure to foster entrepreneurship (Swedes are the Europeans least likely to consider starting businesses), and the "total inability to handle the integration of immigrants," who face an unemployment rate one third higher than native Swedes. The disparity is among the widest in Europe."

Counting the hidden unemployed, including those on disability, paid leaves or "perpetual students" at tuition-free universities, more than 20 percent of the working-age population is out of work, according to some estimates.

However, Newsweek concludes, "Right now the Swedish model, for all its shortcomings and no matter how heavily questioned at home, looks about as good as it gets."

Aaaah. Definitely ban the mere mention of this place. It reminds me too much of New Zealand

Is this Maori Party policy?

Hone Harawira wants the manufacture and sale of tobacco made illegal.

That will make all the difference. We will then be able to control tobacco as effectively as we control cannabis.

It's not about Rodney Hide

New Labour MP, Shane Jone's treatment of Rodney Hide's letter of complaint is worthy of more than the flippancy Jane Clifton accords it in today's DomPost. I always read Jane Clifton. She's more astute and talented than most journalists. And given the undeniable antipathy some people feel towards Rodney Hide it's a piece of writing that won't go unappreciated.

But it's not about Rodney. This issue is about not just avoidance of process but a voluble contempt for it. Going before a select committee is tough. Members who don't like the content of your submission make it abundantly clear in a variety of ways. From direct personal attack through to an exaggerated display of boredom or indifference.

But I go knowing what to expect. Nobody can make me go - unlike Mr Fraser.

So there needs to be some constraints on the behaviour of committee members and submitters. If the chairman himself steps beyond the limits, and what Shane Jones said about Ian Fraser was extremely denigrating and highly public, then we have a problem.

Jane Clifton suggests that "ripping up" Rodney's letter of complaint is the way most New Zealanders deal with politics. She is probably right. And the more evidence they see of a process that is presided over by people who are a law unto themselves, the more they will keep well away.

Hone Harawira's challenge to all Maori MPs

"My challenge to you is to recognise that you were Maori before you were a parliamentarian, and that you will be Maori after parliament has no further use for you.

That is what should determine your position. Not the politics of your Party."

This, in a nutshell, is what shackles many Maori. Being Maori is more important than anything, anything, else. Even honesty. Watch Maori, at many levels and in different situations, draw in around a wrong-doer because whatever the misdemeanour, being Maori takes precedence. Loyalty to race is transcendent.

Think of the implications.

"(Being Maori) is what should determine your position. Not the politics of your Party. "

The Maori Party said they were a party for everybody. That's not true. They cannot be because their politics are based on race. No more, no less.

Harawira was bemoaning the poor Maori stats - higher unemployment, half the prison population, 25 percent of the drop-out rate. The quickest way to reduce those numbers is to stop the separatism. Stop the tribalism. Stop the excuses. Stop blaming racism one day and promoting it the next.

If Parliament is to be no more than an arena for fighting over group interests (who can get the most out of the state) then why not an Asian Party, a Muslim Party, a Gay Party, a Feminists Party (which many would say we already have.)

All the law needs to do is protect individuals, all with the same and equal rights. Think how much smaller the government would be. Think how much freer we would all be.

Indian giver

Looks like I won't get to open my packet of chewing gum afterall.




The Government's widely mocked plan to increase tax thresholds might not be implemented at all, Finance Minister Michael Cullen hinted today.

Crime is a growth industry

Astonishing. Some rehab programmes are making inmates more likely to reoffend.

WFF drives WINZ Crisis

Oh those unintended consequences. Government policies always throw them up yet nobody ever seeks to anticipate them. This one is the perfect example of the self-perpetuating welfare state. Where do you think some of those staff will end up? (I had a friend who worked for WINZ. She had a debilitating physical condition which required treatment. Her employer told her to go on a sickness benefit because they couldn't accommodate the treatment she needed to keep her on her feet. Go figure.)

The Government's Working for Families benefit scheme has resulted in heavy workloads for Work and Income staff, who are seeking counselling and resigning in droves, workers claim.

Almost two dozen Canterbury staff have undergone counselling in the space of five months, figures provided by Work and Income show.

"Frustrated and overworked" Canterbury staff have sent a letter to management saying the department is in crisis and staff morale at an all-time low.

Easy-to-understand economics

Good article here explaining the virtues of, indeed the necessity of self-interest.

It is fashionable to decry selfishness as responsible for every societal ill. But without the natural motivation for personal gain our economic system might fall down around us, or at the least produce much less prosperity for all.


This constant effort by everyone to get the best deal they can creates the productivity that fuels the economy. And that explains why people can both dislike Wal-Mart yet shop there.


Remember, those societies that have sought to ban such normal human impulses have been the worse for it. Just ask the billions of Russians, Chinese and Indians who have only relatively recently forsaken various forms of socialism, which sees self-interest as evil.

TV turn off

A group of influential grey power elites want a fully-funded public telly channel. One that would be advertising free and run quality programmes like "Close to Home" and "McPhail and Gadsby."

The group is led by former broadcaster Ian Johnstone.

There was a feeling of regret at the loss of such programmes as Close to Home, McPhail & Gadsby, Gallery and scores of other local programmes.

"I realise we are a bunch of old men and women saying it used to be better. But it was," Mr Johnstone said.

I'd rather watch the ads over that line-up.

Another signatory, Sir Douglas Graham, said the hours might be up, but quality was down.

New Zealand television seemed "designed for the lowest common denominator" and the news was too focused on crime and court stories.

TV designed for the great unwashed, the masses. Horrors!

Author Dame Fiona Kidman said public broadcasting "is an act of service to the viewers in this country" and should fund relevant programmes.

"A lot of the content now is cheap and easy. Quality drama requires quite a commitment of funding, and if everything is a commercial imperative to make money to keep the Crown-owned company afloat, it makes it much more difficult."

Somebody who knows what "quality" is wants to put their hand even deeper into your pocket.

National's state-owned enterprises spokeswoman, Katherine Rich, said New Zealand could not continue to look backwards to the "television experience" of the 1970s when there was first one channel, and then two.

"People are getting their media fix from a wide range of sources, not just Television One. It is unfair to burden a state broadcaster with meeting the needs of everyone."

It is unfair to burden the taxpayer with meeting the needs of a few. Which is exactly what these highbrows want.

Delusions of grandeur

Belusconi compares himself to Jesus
14 February 2006

ROME: First it was Napoleon. Now it is Jesus Christ.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Belusconi has compared himself to both, prompting the open scorn of his political opponents and even the quietly raised eyebrows of his coalition partners.

"I am the Jesus Christ of politics," Italian media quoted him as saying at a dinner with supporters on Saturday night. "I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone."

Hey. At least he is still talking about himself in the first person.

What business thinks

84 percent of surveyed businesses agree with the statement that New Zealand has too many bureaucrats. The following is a breakdown of the areas considered to be the biggest offenders.


Area | Percentage saying yes |
|----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|
|Social Policies | 81.0% |
|----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|
|Welfare | 77.8% |
|----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|
|Environment | 61.0% |
|----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|
|Health | 59.5% |
|----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|
|Education | 52.4% |
|----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------|
|Trade & Enterprise | 31.7% |

"The strong reaction against welfare bureaucracy was probably also indicative of built-up annoyance and perceptions about the number of people given welfare payments of various types."

Notice though that business was less unhappy about corporate welfare bureaucracy. Somewhat self-serving. The principle behind corporate welfare is the same one that's behind social welfare. The government redistributes taxpayers money to suit its own agenda and to buy votes.

Green agendas

Earlier this month Green MP Sue Bradford said, "...we accept the forecasts of rising unemployment over this year and the years ahead."

With that knowledge the Greens, along with UNITE, have chosen to target fast-food industry workers to agitate for higher wages. The outcome of their actions will have one of two results.

1/ A rise in minimum adult and youth rates will be forced by legislation which will lead to either fewer jobs (which they can claim was going to happen anyway); and/or reduced company profitability and/or higher prices to the consumer.

Fewer jobs won't really bother the Greens who embrace social security as a lifestyle for whoever wants it. And if Bradford can get the youth rate raised she will then move onto bringing benefit rates for 16 and 17 year-olds in line with adult rates.

Reduced profitability of any multi-national is highly desirable.

And increased prices will mean reduced consumption of fast-food. Kedgley will be delighted about this. Kedgley hates the food and Nandor hates the packaging.

2/ The campaign will fail but not without causing major disruption and agitation. Some consolation.

So ask yourself. Why the fastfood industry?

The extreme left are exploiting these particular workers to promote a number of their own agendas. Those workers need to know that if this campaign succeeds, on balance, they will find themselves no better off. Some will lose jobs, some will lose income support due to a larger pay packet, all will end up paying more as the costs of products and services goes up to meet higher wage bills across the board. They are just the meat in the sandwich - or the burger in the bun .....

Anti-feminist barred

Newly-qualified Wainuiomata father, Peter Zohrab, has been told he is not a fit and proper person to practice law. His role as a radical men's activist has provoked this criticism.

"His website also included a copy of his complaint to the United Nations human rights committee, that the body for training New Zealand judges, the Institute of Judicial Studies, indoctrinated judges against men.

The website quoted him as saying: "The law is not an ass – the law is a sexist bitch!"

Having met Mr Zohrab briefly, a couple of times, I found him extremely quiet and mild-mannered. I will watch this wrangle with interest.

Bradford finds a buddy

Canadian psychologist Joan Durrant will wade into New Zealand's sensitive smacking debate today with a Government-funded speech about the success of Sweden's anti-smacking law. She said Sweden provided education for all new parents on alternative ways of handling stress caused by children.....

When she lived in Sweden with her baby son, now aged 9, the state provided protective rings to put around the stove to stop her child getting burned.

"Parent education is universally accessible and universally accessed. It's not just for at-risk parents. The Swedes recognise that all parents are at risk because of the stresses of life."

The Herald's Simon Collins looks at both sides of the argument.

Another one bites the dust

One of the last pharmaceutical manufacturers in New Zealand has just announced its closure. Two hundred people work for Pacific Pharmaceuticals. Some administration and marketing staff will remain but up to 180 Auckland employees will lose their jobs.

In the last fifteen years thousands of jobs have been lost in NZ due to Pharmac's monopoly on pharmaceutical purchasing. I explain why in this article published in the NBR in 2003.

Sharple's split-personality

This speech, from Pita Sharples, is a real disappointment. It's back to the old "blame somebody else" business.

"The poor are not the creators of poverty, the poor do not have an investment in being poor. If the poor did not create poverty we all need to ask each other, than who did?"

People who literally create poverty are those who keep having children while on a benefit, some 5,000 a year. People who smoke, drink or gamble away their benefit money create poverty. People who won't take a low-paid job to get on the ladder create poverty. Politicians who tell them not to take "dead-end" jobs create poverty. Politicians who tell people they are not the master of their own destiny create poverty, Pita.

"What sort of Government puts in policies which act against the 250,000 poorest children in Aotearoa? We know that more than one in five children live in low-income families - which is nearly twice the level of the late 1980s. What do we currently have - a ‘Working for Families’ policy which discriminates against beneficiary parents....That is why the Maori Party supports the Child Poverty Action Group for their landmark case to bring legal action against the Government over its discriminatory policies."

Why did I know these guys were going to go down this path? Exactly like the Greens and Sue Bradford. While the government is at least attempting to make working pay more than being on a benefit, these guys want to subvert that.

Remind me what Pita Sharples was saying just the other day? Something about vowing to wage war against welfare dependency;

Dr Sharples said there was too much dependency on welfare in Maoridom - something Labour had not addressed.

"It's like a kid - if you keep giving your kids everything, at the end of the day they don't have the skills and knowledge to do it themselves."

This man has a different tune for each audience.

Late last year he told parliament,"I need to remind this House that Maori have always questioned the handout mentality.

I recollect a song of protest by one of my Ngati Porou whanaunga, Tuini Ngawai, who in the 1950s, wrote a song of protest at the introduction of a universal benefit.

She said at the time, 'he patu tikanga, he patu mahara, he patu mauri'; that the benefit would undermine our customs of self-help, our concern for each other, and the very essence of our lifeforce. When I look around to some of our people, I can see the wisdom of the words of Tuini Ngawai. She warned against dependency, and she would turn in her grave if she knew that what she warned against, has now happened."

Sharples, sharpen up. One day you tell Maori they are "benefit-mad" and the next you demand more money for them. Decide what it is you really believe because at the moment you aren't helping anybody.

A woman was walking down the street to work and she saw a parrot on a perch in front of a pet store. The parrot said to her, "Hey lady, you are really ugly." The woman was furious. She stormed past the store to her work. On the way home she saw the same parrot and it said to her, "Hey lady, you are really ugly." She was incredibly angry.
When next day the same parrot again said, "Hey lady, you are really ugly," the woman was so ticked off that she went into the store and said that she would sue the store and kill the bird unless it stopped. The store manager apologized profusely and promised he would make sure the parrot didn't say it again.
When she walked past the store that day after work, the parrot called to her, "Hey lady."
She paused and said menacingly, "Yes?"
The bird said, "You know."

Put your money where your mouth is, Dr Cullen

Standing in for the PM this morning, Michael Cullen was asked by Paul Holmes what he thought about the Soulan Pownceby affair. Cullen said if people have done their time, as Pownceby has, they deserve a second chance. He also said that he deplores the "growing" attitude of New Zealanders that once you have committed an offence, you are marked for life and cannot be rehabilitated.

So what are you going to do about the public transport drivers who recently lost their livelihood over historic sexual or violent offences they'd already been punished for? A number of people who heard the interview were quick to put the question. One says he is going to e-mail Dr Cullen. I think I will join him.

Training teachers to spot child abuse

The merits of this sort of suggestion are questionable. It worries me that a paranoia about abuse might be encouraged and over-zealous or imaginative types may raise false alarms. (I won't mention the case which is still the subject of much controversy today.)

Abuse meeting wants teachers' help

"Police, teachers and academics are meeting in Wellington for an Australasian conference on preventing child abuse.

The conference is particularly aimed at showing teachers ways of recognising signs that children are being abused.

Australian-based child abuse expert Professor Freda Briggs says teachers are an untapped resource when it comes to dealing with abuse. Ms Briggs says children will often give off subtle indicators of abuse and teachers need to be trained to look out for them."

Bad news masquerading as good

Wellington's economy is outgrowing others. Rah, rah.

We all know why.

"Jobs growth came from the construction, government, property and business services and retail trades - together creating an additional 8885 jobs in the year to February 2005.

Growth in the government sector has helped fuel a commercial construction boom as developers have moved to build and refurbish offices to house more workers."

More bureaucrats, administrators, policy analysts, consultants. Just what we need.

Keith Locke does it again

Keith Locke makes a habit of defending almost indefensible people. While he is justified in upholding Soulan Pownceby's right to get on with his life, having served out his sentence for the manslaughter of his 5 month-old daughter, he needn't be glowing in his support for the man.

"Soulan was very brave in carrying through his Olympic campaign two years ago, in the face of considerable hostility in New Zealand....I wish Soulan well in his efforts to bring home a gold medal from Melbourne."

Personally I have my doubts about this character. I've read the reports from his trial. But he has been punished and the chances of him staying out of trouble (not posing a danger to anybody he shouldn't) will be better if he is rehabilitated.

Residents advised to be doubly- panicked

A row has blown up in Whitby, a middle-class suburb, just north of Wellington. Unbeknownst to neighbours, a group of mental health patients have been moved into a home in a "quiet" street. Apparently similar community homes have been established in the region over the past three years without problem. But certain residents in the street are very unhappy. Here is what the Mental Health Commissioner, Mary O'Hagan, had to say to them;

"If the residents of Whitby are so concerned about their safety, why aren't they in a panic about the drunk young men, violent husbands, drug dealers and burglars who undoubtedly live in their suburb? They are far more of a threat."

Welfare Australian-style

The Australian Centre for Independent Studies has expanded its operations to encompass New Zealand. Muriel Newman's website features an article from them about Australia's latest welfare reforms and what NZ can learn.

The reforms are tame.

But maybe if CIS continues to publicise their welfare reform efforts our national fervour for beating the Aussies may be usefully provoked. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The government’s preferred answer (to single parent dependency) was to require new Parenting Payment claimants to work part-time once their youngest child turned six years of age (as with the DSP changes, the new rules would not apply retrospectively to existing claimants). However, this proposal met with predictable uproar with single parent groups, welfare groups and opposition parties all howling about the unfairness of expecting single parents to work part-time while their children are in school.

Just how unfair is it to expect single parents to work when their children are at school?

NZ and Australia have the lowest employment rates for single mothers, respectively 32 and 30 percent. The employment rates for married mothers are 53 and 48. When did you last hear welfare groups and opposition parties "howling" about the unfairness of married mothers working?

By the way, because of the protests the age of the youngest dependent child was revised to eight. And still no mention of time-limits. If the mother doesn't want to work for a living and the youngest is approaching eight, she'll know what to do.

Why we have big government

"One reason why government grows is that its programs often impose small costs on a wide population while granting substantial benefits to relatively small interest groups. This gives the beneficiaries a powerful motive to support the program, and the cost-bearers little motive to oppose it...... (but imagine that) everyone's taxes will go up by a dime. Now multiply this process by the number of potential interest groups and the capacity of members of Congress to propose laws, and you'll start to understand why we have such a large government today."

Well put by R.W.Bradford who discusses how best to get rid of big government here. His closing comment is interesting.

"The libertarian movement is too decentralized, and libertarians themselves too ornery, for all of us to choose one path. But if we let a hundred flowers bloom, some of those blossoms may well to bring us closer to liberty."

Ornery!! libertarians??

Ashraf Choudhary

OK. I've amended the previous post because the blog linked to is a spoof. But it was provoked by Ashraf Choudhary's comments on 60 Minutes last year when he refused to denounce the practise of stoning homosexuals. My point is that while Ashraf talks about setting up an agency "capable of punishing the media for attacks on minorities" (see Rodney Hide) he was prepared to peddle his own anti-gay views on TV.

Win with Willie!

Yes. That's the slogan that won the Lib Dems Scottish seat, Dunfermline - their first triumph in a Scottish by-election for nearly a century. This is a huge embarrassment to Labour and Gordon Brown in particular, who has a home in the electorate. As far as I can ascertain the Liberal Democrats are further to the left of Labour. They opposed joining the war in Iraq.

New MP Willie Rennie said the result showed the Lib Dems could challenge Labour anywhere in Scotland. "People are fed up with Labour," he said. "They've taken our country for granted for too long - there is too much spin, not enough delivery."

Sounds familiar.

Tragic event

This is an awful story that will grow legs. Yesterday morning, a 40 year-old man, walking with his 16 year-old son, was killed in a hit-and-run incident. They were earlier passengers in a vehicle driven by a young woman whose car keys were confiscated at a drink-drive checkpoint. The man and his son then proceeded to walk 7km home on a state highway in torrential rain. Lots of unanswered questions here.

Update; Relatives say the pair were refused a lift home by police. And the police put their side of the story.