Do nuns drive cars?

Just wondering as the spokesman of the Police Association, Greg O'Connor wants muslim women wearing burkas banned from driving. He says if their belief is that strong they should stay out of cars. Driving in a burka is just plain dangerous, he said.

Baby Boomers threat to road safety

This article misses an important point. While the growing number of ageing baby boomers will crowd the roads, and their accident rate is higher, even higher is the accident rate of young drivers and there will be fewer of them.

Scalping the scalpers

Re the Rolling Stones show - Initially fans were told all the tickets had gone. I missed out after a morning spent just trying to get onto the Ticketek website. Then about two weeks ago a radio news report said more had been released. Forget the internet this time. I rang immediately and got 4. The cheapest at that stage, "gold", were $150. I notice in the paper this morning that more tickets have been released for the Wellington show. These are "diamond" at a cost of $350 each. This must be the new strategy for beating the scalpers.

Let the Private Sector in (2)

Heavens. Another. New Police Commissioner Howard Broad first hit the headlines when he devised a plan for a private police force. He says he will continue to think outside the square.

Let the Private Sector in

The Dompost reports on board member Peter McCardle's suggestion that the Hutt Valley DHB pays up to thirty percent of people's surgery costs if they go private. "I believe our hospitals and clinicians are doing a great job but the reality is across the nation that there is great need, particularly for people on active review. We must do better and we need to look at other ways of trying to help these people."

Peter is an ex ACT man (as well as being a former Minister of Social Welfare in the National govt and NZ First MP). Hutt also has two councillors who are both former ACT staffers. All good people pushing it up hill.

PM - We're all in this together

In this week's Listener the Prime Minister says,"The post-Orewa period was very unpleasant, but, in a sense, it was therapeutic. A lot of people were able to get a lot of things off their chests. Eventually, a period of reflection sets in and people think,'Okay, all these things have been said, but at the end of the day, I go to work with Maori, I live in the same street as Maori, I'm in the same community organisations, the kids go to school with Maori, aren't we all in this together?'"

Absolutely. So why the Maori seats? Why the separatism?

Violent Crime

Not the best graph but it illustrates well the Labour spin.

Left side shows total violent crimes (from zero to 50,000)

Right side shows offences per 10,000 population (from zero to 140)

The lower line has flattened. Violent crime is steady.

The top line continues to grow. Violent crime is up.

Alice Springs Hospital

Came across this story about a NZ nurse's experience working in Alice Springs in the Taranaki Daily News. Dreadful state of affairs.

Two jokes

This is the "joke of the day" from the Adam Smith blog:
A man awoke one evening to discover prowlers in his storage shed. He immediately called the police, giving his address, to report a possible burglary. The operator at the other end asked "Are they in your house?" He replied they were not, only in his storage shed in back of the house. The operator said there were no cars available at that time. The man thanked the operator, rang off and waited 30 seconds before calling again.
"I just called you about prowlers in my storage shed. Well, you don't have to worry, as I just shot them all dead!" Within seconds there were 3 police cars, an ambulance and fire engine at the scene. After capturing the prowlers red-handed, the policeman asked the caller, "I thought you said you had shot them all?" The man answered, "And I thought you said there were no police available."

And is the "joke of the day" from the DomPost:Man hunts down car thief while police busy. John Creser is not surprised crime has risen in New Zealand – when his car was stolen, the Titahi Bay man had to investigate the theft himself.

Tertiary "education"

Michael Cullen will today announce new funding plans for the tertiary sector. They want to clamp down on low grade courses (think Wananga).

Ministry of Education figures show about 38,000 domestic students completed non-degree courses in 2000. By 2004 that number had risen to more than 80,000.

But institutions are largely funded on enrolments and those figures do not take into account the vast numbers of students who fail to complete a course.

Labour are now entering a new period where they can no longer blame a previous administration for the problems they face. Watch the numbers on the dole start to rise.

DBP Interview with the Jobs Letter

Excerpts from an interview with DBP in the latest Jobs Letter (my comments interspersed).
On WINZ offices; They're quite positive places. I joke that even the security guards smile and when we don't need them it will be even better.

When we don't need them? When we will that be?

But they are very welcoming places. And they've integrated Housing in a lot of those offices, and are now trying to convince IRD they want them there as well for obvious integration with taxation and the Working for Families issues. So that model now is going to Cabinet with a view to rolling it out across the whole country. It's called the New Service Model for want of a better name.

Convenient. Like a grand state redistribution one-stop-shop. I hope they have drive-through. And I guess they can all share security guards.

On the biggest challenge for the next three years; The biggest challenge for MSD is not in employment related matters, but the issue around the reintegration of Child Youth and Family. In the wider social sense I think that's a critical thing for the country. Cabinet took that opportunity because the chief executive went back to Canada unexpectedly and suddenly there was an opportunity and I guess it's a compliment to the operational level and delivery level of the Ministry right now that we felt they were able to do this. So I think that's their biggest challenge.

There are no problems - only opportunities. But hang on. What happened to the introduction of the Single Benefit?

Does he trust himself to do the job; I'm constantly touching base with my colleagues who have been there and know where we got to, so I don't go off on a harebrained idea that's mine and not appropriate.

Remind me again what is the point of this guy? It must be DBP's worst nightmare, doing something that's not appropriate.

On why do we need more young Maori and Pacific Islanders in work; I think when we realise the demographic change that we've got with the huge change in the percentage of young Maori and Pacific Peoples in this country, you and I need them to be working, to be purely selfish, to fund our superannuation in three or four decades.

Don't tell me we are going to have this guy around until he's in his nineties! Labour really are convinced they are the party of government.

On why we still have skills shortage; I think the first thing is the reliance, in the 90s on the free market to provide the training..... which — in typical free market fashion — didn't deliver. I'm not being trite or simplistic when I say that when no one's got the responsibility for work force supply, you end up with the problems we've inherited.

It's official. Benson Pope can do a better job than the market.

On preparedness to work; The simplest way we can enhance people's choices around getting involved in the workforce is to have places where their sons and daughters can be properly supervised and looked after. There are big social issues here and we're certainly not trying to force anyone in to work who doesn't want to work.

Run that by me again.

We don't actually try to make people do things, what we do try to do is make sure they have a freer choice about what they do — whether that's opportunity for young people to get schooling or opportunity for you or me or a carer who would like to work to be able to do so because the options are available. So no one's being forced off to the workforce. That's not to say we're not going to support people who need it … because we're the Labour Party, that's what we do.

Hello. Around two million working Kiwis are forced to pay tax so your clients won't be forced to get a job?? That's the Labour Party - that's what you do.

And (eventually) on Steve Maharey's grand plan, the single core benefit; while I can't say that we will be delivering a single core benefit certainly the system is going to be hugely simplified.

After all the song and dance, the media, the seminars, the hoopla, they are quietly dropping it. Be careful Mr Benson-Pope. Are you sure that's appropriate?

Unwarranted whinging

According to Stuff a new study released by the Human Rights Commission shows there are still too few women in leadership jobs.

Equal Employment Opportunity commissioner Judy McGregor said she "surprised and incredibly disappointed. . .the results show dismal progress".

The survey showed:

A total of 63 of the top 100 New Zealand companies had no women on their boards (46 women out of 645 directors), compared with the total workforce being 47 per cent women.

But women only make up 37.5 percent of the full-time workforce.

Full-time Part-time
Men 1,025,400 (90%) 113,800 (11%)
Women 617,400 (64%) 349,000 (36%)
Total 1,642,800 462,800
Overall % 78% 22%

"I'm not hard on it having to be 50-50, but I would ask why is half of New Zealand's potential ignored in terms of governance?"

Well clearly half of NZ's potential is not being ignored. 37 of 100 New Zealand companies had women on their boards and 32.2 per cent of Members of Parliament are women. Given thousands of women take time out of the workforce to raise families I would have thought these figures looked pretty good (if you care about gender representation anyway.)

What does Tariana mean?

Stuff reports; The Maori Party is warning National against continuing with its campaign to abolish the Maori seats in Parliament.

National leader Don Brash is worried about the number of Maori seats increasing and says getting rid of them is an important policy for his party.

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said today Maori were "sick to death" of political opportunism.

I don't know what she means. Genuinely. I don't. Do you?

Support for prohibition

A TV3 poll found fifty percent support for banning tobacco. Maori Party MP Hone Harawira is apparently delighted. Many have obviously forgotten (or never learned) their lessons about prohibition and its effects.

"Expert" would turn back the clock

It was not enough to tell people to change their diet. The Government should change food pricing so that unhealthy foods were more expensive and "good" food was cheaper.

So says an overseas "expert". So all the people who eat "unhealthy" food in moderation should be penalised because some people stuff themselves with it. Come to think of it, who will decide which foods should merit higher taxes because they are "unhealthy", when they are only "unhealthy" when consumed in large quantities day in and day out?

Apart from which this guy doesn't understand that the international trend is towards economic liberalisation and away from govt intervention in markets. The answer lies in persuading individuals to eat better by making them responsible for their own health - not in govt market manipulation.

On the Money , Don

Newsroom reports, National Party Leader Don Brash has attacked an Electoral Enrolment Centre campaign to sign Maori onto the Maori Roll as "state sanctioned separatism ... that ultimately encourages a racially divided electoral model."

I have no doubt that one of the reasons 100,000 Maori live in Australia is our increasingly separatist, cultural-identity politics. They are destructive politics. Mercifully we have a high profile politician prepared to say so.

Addicted to welfare

Muriel Newman refers to a new book which compares the rates of teenage pregnancy, cohabitation, divorce and sole parenting across the continent;

In Britain, where an anti-marriage agenda is being strongly promoted by the public service, universities and government funded social agencies, family problems are rife, with Britain topping the league tables in several of the most worrying indicators of breakdown, including divorce and teenage pregnancy. In Sweden, where a comprehensive social engineering programme has transferred many family responsibilities to the state - to a degree unseen outside of the Soviet bloc - there are even higher rates of out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation than Britain.

Italy, however, has effectively had no government intervention into the family, and is still the home of the traditional family unit. Divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, including teenage pregnancies, are extremely low. Cohabitation is so rare as to be difficult to measure. Young people live with their parents until they get married, and, for most women, marriage will represent their first living-together relationship.

But what about the role of Catholicism?

James Bartholemew addresses that; Benefits influence behaviour in a big way. I suggest that the different benefits policy on lone parenting in Italy has been the primary reason for the low incidence of lone parenting there.

It will be said that no, it is all because the country is Catholic. But I believe, though I have not got the figures to hand, that Ireland has a much higher incidence of lone parenting, even though it, too, is Catholic. Also it is wrong to suggest that Sweden did not previously have a strong tradition of protestant religion and a culture of marriage and 'upright' behaviour. That culture has been undermined. Cultures, even ones heavily influenced by religion, can be changed and have been changed very dramatically around the world in the past 100 years.

Then a commentor on Bartholomew's blog points out that the fertility in Italy is very low at 1.2 (The replacement rate is 2.1) Who will pay for pensions, he asks?

See the bind we are in. Where sole parenting is subsidised birthrates are higher (but not necessarily the quality of parenting). So once again the welfare state perpetuates itself. The more of it we have, the more of it we need. The western world is addicted to welfare.

Support for Rodney

Good to see some support for Rodney Hide in this editorial from the Gisborne Herald. I disagree with Roger Douglas that ACT would have won 7-8 percent of the vote if it had stuck to policy. The election was a two horse race. The public has reverted to first past-the-post mentality. That is where the battle lies. But if Sir Roger wants to run post mortems what might have made a difference was Rodney being supported to go for Epsom in 2002.

The tail wagging the dog

At a public meeting last year I unintentionally caused considerable offence to one lady (and maybe others who weren't prepared to say so) when I said, "The poor in this country are the tail wagging the dog." Of course, if you were mindful of everybody's sensitivities nothing would ever be said.

What I wanted to convey is, because some people can't afford to pay we have designed our entire system, with government as the middle man, around that premise. But we should let those who can pay sort out their own requirements and treat the needs of the poor as an entirely separate issue.

Everybody would benefit.

The Welfare State We're In

James Bartholomew has a website under the same name as his book, with regular updates pertinent to the welfare state.