February 2009

Booyah! Check out this sniper system- The CheyTac M200

Commentators Matthew Hooton and John Roughan agree on super and the “Blue Chip” plan of Labour. John Roughan says;

If your income is down in the recession and you are taking on debt to maintain the family’s living standard, would you borrow a bit more to put into a superannuation fund?

Nor would I. Nor would John Key, Bill English, Phil Goff, Jim Anderton or Peter Dunne, I suspect. Sometimes the simplest decisions test the mettle of those who lead us.

Nope, no-one sensible would do it, so one wonders why Phil Goff wants us to implement Labour’s “Blue Chip” plan and borrow more so we can save it.

English said the question had yet to be seriously considered. Anxiously he added that a suspension of contributions would not affect payments to superannuitants.

This is where Bill English gives me the shits. He should have very quickly and very simply scotched the idea of borrowing to fund our future reitement plans and labeled it voodoo economics. But no, the Dipstick from Diptn prevaricates, his default setting.

Goff, smelling fear, declared Labour opposed to suspension and called on the Government to make its position clear. Anderton called it “raiding the piggy bank”. Dunne, minister of tax collecting, declared it “a very bad idea”.

Goff is acting like a desperate soon to be replaced fool, Anderton is perhaps the worlds best pratictioner of voodoo economics and if Peter Dunne thinks somehing is a good idea then it probably isn’t.

Matthew Hooton echoes these sentiments, but unfortunately the neanderthals at NBR don’t see the merit of putting Hootons pearls of wisdom online but chuck Farrar’s drivel up every week. Nevertheless I will re-type some Hootons best parts;No wonder Bill English appears confused over whether to suspend contributions to the Superannuation Fund: the economics is all one way and the politics all the other.

No rational household or investor, struggling to pay for their groceries – and forecast to spend more than they earn every year into the future – would borrow to invest in global sharemarkets, notwithstanding current interest rates.

Mr English knows this as clearly as anyone.

The only thing Bill ENglish knows is to prevaricate and to lose elections.Mr English is not making the presentation of the inevitable any easier in confusing its rationale.

This week, he said one of the factors driving his thinking is that the Fund has lost $5.5 billion in 18 months.

“We have to look at whether we are happy at the size of the investment losses we are incurring,” he said. “I mean, $5.5b of losses actually wipes out two years of contributions.”

This is the wrong way to look at the issue and it is extraordinary a Finance Minister would make such a basic error.

Past performance of an investment fund says nothing about its future performance, and if Mr English is so sure multi-billion-dollar losses are likely then he has an obligation not just to suspend contributions but to order the Fund to get the remaining $12 billion of our money out of global sharemarkets right now.

Yeah, and it is right about now that Hooton should ask that Bill English just STFU, but Matthew is much too polite for such crassness. I, however, have no hesitation at all in doing exactly that.

Hooton makes a good point, if what Bill English says is true then lets reef out the the other $12 billion and do something else with it useful.

It makes no sense at all to continue to borrow after Michael Cullen wantonly destroyed the legacy of Bill Birch and Ruth Richardson and left New Zealand facing a decade of deficits.

If the Police Minister wants to know why the public confidence in the police force has fallen to previously unknown depths then you need look no further than the story today about a “top” cop refusing to take a breath test.

Looks like there is one rule for them and another for the rest of us.

“One of the country’s top police officers has been cleared of wrongdoing for refusing to take a breath test after he was reported driving home erratically from a police bar.”

“Superintendent Graham Thomas, the head of police prosecutions at Police National Headquarters, has been cleared by a police investigation and is now on six months’ paid “medical rehabilitation”.

Six months medical rehabilitation – cop PR speak for drying out.

The papers regularly have lists of people convicted for refusing breath tests. The TV shows that have cameras following around Motorway cops show people who refuse breath tests being arrested and taken to the station. Why should this guy be any different?

Mmmm – Michael Wood, a former Labour candidate, City Vision candidate and union official is caught out using three month old information, now superceded by recently released public information, to lie to the public. Now that’s what I call dishonest…. but precisely the sort of desperate blather we expect from the hucksters, weirdoes and failed central government politicians we see in City Vision.

Poor Michael Wood – shut out in 2004, 2007 and no doubt thrashed soundly again in 2010.

“Woody” has an enviable record in general elections too, getting soundly thrashed by Maurice Williamson two elections in a row. His blogging experience hasn’t been much chop either with at least three failed attempts at blogging.

It seems he wants to take down Just Left as well by joining Jordan’s little bunch of merry “men”.

From this mornings post I have updates on more alarming incidents involving people suffering from Silly First Name Syndrome and just from a cursory examination of the news from the past couple of days. I fully expect the Greens to come out shortly calling for a ban on Silly First Names…..but oh hell….Russel and Metiria won’t be able to support that.

In Hamilton

Two young boys missing in Hamilton overnight have been found hiding in bushes at a school.

Taylor Jade Thompson, 10, and Devante Mihinui, eight, who had not been seen since 7.30pm yesterday, were spotted by staff at a Hamilton East school about 8.30am.

The pair have been referred by police to Child, Youth and Family.

In Auckland

Kim Knoll, 19, was found guilty last year of the attempted murder of her two-year-old son Lashawn.

A repeat burglar who became a teenage father in January was jailed today for a year and nine months.

Traan Kino, 17, reacted angrily when sentenced by Judge Paul Geoghegan.

I have noted previously that people with silly first names have an increased propensity to suffer from crimes or cause crimes.

It is therefore somewhat of a suprise to me that Whangareu Hospital wasn’t being more watchful over four-month-old Riot Cameron Martin went missing from the emergency department shortly after midnight on Thursday night. With a name like that this little girl was always going to be at risk.

I predict we will here more about this child in coming years.

With the news yesterday of Air NZ’s profit drop it is pertinent to recall why exactly it is that the New Zealand taxpayers own an airline.

Liberty Scott provides a superb rebuttal of leftist history in that regard.

Dr Cullen helped bankrupt Air NZ, because of his peculiar pursuit of the Qantas deal, and the delays in approving the Singapore Airlines investment proposal. You might ask yourself why Dr Cullen didn’t like money from Singapore, but liked it from Australia. Not xenophobia surely?

While it is all a bit more complicated than that, the truth is that the slow progress of Dr Cullen and the interference of Qantas has cost the NZ taxpayer dearly, as well as Air NZ. The Greens didn’t help either. Air NZ warned that the government’s approach created grave risks, and it was right.

So when Dr Cullen steps down, it is worth remembering part of his legacy – the legacy of the lecturer who couldn’t make a critical business decision, and surrendered a major strategic opportunity for Air NZ to be a significant airline.

and of course don’t forget the Kiwirail deal of the century!

The Dimpost is perhaps the best left blog in the country and that is because Dim doesn’t take a sychophantic line and often criticises his own team. He certainly isn’t a head nodding lickspittle of any party and today is no exception.

His post on the US spendulus, the Cullen Fund and political strategy is spot on.

I had a similar feeling when I heard Phil Goff speak out against the suspension of payments into the Cullen SuperFund; a lot of people have pointed out the vacuousness of Goff’s argument but I don’t think there’s been enough of a focus on how utterly fucking insane it is for the leader of the Labour Party to be demanding that the government borrow money to invest it in the stock market during a catastrophic  financial crisis.

Were the positions reversed and National were advocating the policy its not hard to imagine the howls of outrage from the left-wing blogs: ‘Slippery John Key wants to mortgage this country’s future so he can dish out the cash to his rich stockbroker mates’. Repeat at high volume until election day.

Not only is Labour’s policy bad economics it’s also very bad politics. The Cullen fund will almost certainly lose money again this year, and possibly again the year after, the Nat’s look set to suspend payments so each time a loss is announced the government will be able to crow about how much more we would have lost if Phil Goff were in charge.