May 2011

NZ Post is in trouble, going backwards faster than the NZ economy under Labour.

New Zealand Post says its expected full year profit will be slashed by more than half due to the effects of the Christchurch earthquake on the business and ongoing weak trading conditions.

Group chief executive Brian Roche said the previously forecast profit of $60.8 million after tax for the year to June 30 would be undershot by between $35m and $45.

The quake had impacted on the state-owned postal services provider’s retail and postal businesses in Canterbury.

In a addition, Kiwibank had increased the amount it was provisioning for bad and doubtful debt to cover losses on mortgages in Christchurch.

The consequences of the earthquake would continue to flow through into the next financial year starting July 1 as the city rebuilt, Mr Roche said.

In particular bad and doubtful debt provisioning “could remain an issue well into 2012 [financial year] as the insurance as the insurance and “other uncertainties become clearer”.

Restructuring moves to reposition the business along with reduced asset values in other businesses would also add to the one off costs in the current year.

I see Dr Michael John Cullen is displaying all the competence of his previous job in running NZ Post and Kiwibank into the ground. I hope there aren’t any Australian companies out there trying to convince Cullen that he should pay 5 times the value of the assets of their company in order to improve the position of NZ Post.

Cullen should never have been given the job and based on his performance he should be sacked. Frankly his financial acumen is woeful, after gifting Toll Holding $800 million more than they deserved and tanking NZ Post, next thing we will hear how he can’t be sacked because he lost his shirt speculating in collapsed finance companies and needs the job.

When compulsory dog chipping was foisted on the nation it was all supposed to be for public safety. This was of course mocked at the time but studiously ignored by the politicians who knew best.

Now there are calls for compulsory dog registration and licences to own a dog. Sensible?  Possibly? but then when you look at statistics you realise that it is people who should be licenced to breed themselves and that parenting licences would have a far greater impact on child safety that more draconian dog laws.

The article even quotes two equally irrelevant politicians given us the dubious benefit of their equally useless opinions:

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide has pledged to reform dog control laws before the November election in the wake of the latest attacks.
He said laws were failing to protecting the public.

The architect of current dog control, former local government minister Chris Carter, yesterday said he believed current laws were comprehensive.

Given the parlous state of the Super City I look forward with relish to any solution Rodney Hide puts up to “protect the public”. He should instead look at licensing parents to havre children.Even Deborah Coddington thinks this is a good idea.

So if we get a Labour government we get a Ministry for Children instead of a Families Commission. Labour’s attempt to stop the killing fields, the feral “underbelly of intense violence in our community”, as Social Development Minister Paula Bennett calls it.

Even the Minister, with all her experts, has to plead for ideas through a newspaper column. You tell me what to do, she begged, seemingly bereft of new material. You can hardly blame her when others who’ve worked for years in the field see babies born to names like Cherish and Serenity get carted home to lives of anything but.

Nonetheless, amid news we’re on track for a record-breaking year of 6117 child abuse cases, we’re showing new Auckland mothers a DVD demonstrating the graphic effects of shaken-baby syndrome.

Nice try, but how about dragging some drop-kick boyfriends in, strapping them to a chair, withholding the methamphetamine for several months and force-feeding childcare lessons into them too?

If Rodney Hide wants to be remembered fondly rather than with derision then he could do worse than take up that particular issue instead of worrying about dogs.

More kids have been bashed, injured and killed by their parents or care-givers than ever been mauled by dogs and yet we seem to think it is ok to call for tightened dog ownership laws and ignore the killing and maiming happening to children before our eyes in the community, by animals far worse than a few mangy mutts. If Mrs Carruthers QC can see the problem, then why can’t others.

We need to get our priorities straight.

While I am on the this topic of needless law changes to solve problems that don’t actually exist the current Arms Amendment Bill is just such a law, with faceless bureaucrats re-writing our gun laws to solve a problem that simply doesn’t exist. I will post on that separately.

Cactus Kate has already waxed lyrical about Shelley Bridgeman. I was ho hum about her, thinking that she was trying to be the next Mrs Carruthers QC. However it seems she actually has a brain and isn’t afraid to use it. Today she explains the folly of court suppression orders in a modern age.

When are people going to realise that name suppression only excites the public appetite for information that, had it been reported in the usual fashion, would barely have interested us?

Exactly, something Ryan Giggs forgot about or the fools fighting over some bloody dogs.

Had Sandra Grant, a hitherto unknown lawyer, not been granted interim name suppression I bet she wouldn’t have warranted the colour photograph on page four of the NZ Herald that appeared once suppression lapsed. Her drink-drive conviction had become almost secondary to the main story which was the name suppression itself. We were affronted that someone with an inner knowledge of the machinations of the legal system should try to seek anonymity; the implication was that she was being afforded privileges that may not be so readily accessible to the rest of us. Had name suppression not been a factor, Grant would at most have warranted a passing mention in the newspaper. And I certainly wouldn’t be writing about her today.

The worst offenders of those seeking name suppression are celebrities and what I call establishment…lawyers, accountants and business people.

Broadcaster Martin Devlin similarly created an unnecessary amount of interest when he sought name suppression following a fit of disorderly conduct in Quay Street one morning. Had this been reported in the routine way most of us would have dismissed it as barely interesting.

But coming as it did after much speculation, our curiosity was piqued. Who was this celebrity and what exactly had he done? Chat at water-coolers and on message boards was rife with hints as to his identity and, of course, once his name was made public talk then turned to whether the guy was indeed a celebrity. To make matters worse, it was a strategy that seemed at odds with his persona. Devlin makes his living from the media and from having an upfront, opinionated demeanour. To suddenly become shy and retiring seemed disingenuous.

What is worse about Martin Devlin is his overly protective wife Andi Brotherston who clearly has google searches on her waste of space husband because she places calls to anyone who dares to malign his sorry arse and threatens them with defamation. She has busily been trying hose down the Jetstar story about his foolish ranting and getting himself tossed from the plane. The funny thing is she always says she is calling from TVNZ….without disclosing that it is actually a personal situation and that she is his wife.

It’s not just name suppression that can have the opposite effect to that intended. Any attempt to censor ideas or information, to keep the public in the dark, often leads to wider publicity and a greater audience than would otherwise have been the case.

This is called the Streisand Effect. It is well known and spectacular when it goes off.

Bottom line is that Simon Power’s silly re-write of the law won’t work. If the US Government can’t keep its most precious military and diplomatic communciations secret and Twitter and Facebook can bring down dictators like Hosni Mubarak and muammar Gadaffi then what hope do our politicians have in stopping people telling the truth about other people.

It is only a matter of time until there is an anonymous Twitter account broadcasting details of people before the courts with name suppression.

Rule 127 (b) has some guidance to the National Party about how it should run the list ranking process.

Regions shall arrange three (3) meetings in different parts of the Region to enable delegates to the Regional Conference to meet all available nominees in the period prior to the Regional Conference List Selection meeting. These meetings shall be conducted in the same manner as provided for in Rule 102.

The last of these meetings may be held at a time immediately preceding the commencement of the Regional Conference at which List Selection procedures will be undertaken.

National’s selection process has been held up by the Rangitikei selection and the Epsom selection. So the regional conferences are finished and the list ranking process prescribed by the constitution has not been followed.

This creates a potential problem for National. If someone doesn’t like their list position can they challenge the process? Or can an ordinary member challenge the process because they did not get to vote at their regional conference?

To be fair I have to feel sorry for Peter Goodfellow who is obviously under pressure with legal action, a tough business environment and Don Brash’s mates giving generously to ACT not to National.

Are polls telling John Key that National voters want a coalition with the Maori Party?

Prime Minister John Key believes voters have concerns about Act leader Don Brash holding the balance of power because he is an extremist, and they see the Maori Party as positive because it has worked constructively within the system.

The difficulty with polls is that they take a snapshot of the entire electorate.

Political parties do not try to win votes from the entire electorate. They have a target audience they have to win votes from, and they need to target this audience. The difficulty for Key is while 60% of voters have a positive view of the Maori Party, this is a very different question from asking National voters “Would you prefer a coalition with ACT or the Maori Party?”

This question is not one National will want asked of their supporters as it will create doubt in their minds that John Key will use MMP and his coalition partner to implement policies core National supporters do not want.

John Key suggested that the Opposition were muppets, he must have had some inkling. It turns out it may well be true that left-wingers are muppets, or at least get their inspiration from muppets.

Sesame Street, Friends and Happy Days are being used to promote secret left wing messages, according to a new book.

Conservative columnist and author Ben Shapiro accused television executives and writers of pushing a liberal agenda in several high profile American television entertainment shows.

His book “Primetime Propaganda” will show how the “most powerful medium of mass communication in human history became a vehicle for spreading the radical agenda of the left side of the political spectrum,” according to the publishers HarperCollins.

The film and television industry has always been filled with pinkos and many people have suspected this bias for many, many years.

Sesame Street has previously been accused of being left wing. In 2009 an episode mocked Fox News. The segment showed the character of Oscar as a reporter for the Grouch News Network and had a viewer telling him: “From now on I am watching ‘Pox’ News. Now there is a trashy news show.”

The Public Broadcasting Service ombudsman later said he “didn’t know what was in the head of the producers” and that they should not tell people what to think “through the kids”.

Yep…and we see this too from the kids like Bomber who always goes on about “fair and balanced Fox news” like bias is a bad thing. The hilarious thing is that Bomber himself is one of the most bias commentators in NZ, but unlike him I don’t think this is a bad thing. I’d far rather people showed their bias openly rather than use subterfuge to get their message across. All this goes to show how sneaky and furtive socialists will be to ge the message across.

Labour’s cool for the kids online game Let’s not has upset people, the sort of people who usually support them.

Clare Curran posted on Trademe expressing reservations over it and now Maia at Capitalism Bad, Tree Pretty writes:

The Labour Party’s Let’s Not game has been out for a few days.* I’m not linking to it, for reasons that will become apparent, but I do want to discuss one of the offensive parts of it.**

If someone puts their finger in someone else’s anus without their consent then that is sexual assault. This is still true if the two people involved are on a rugby field.

Ten years ago John Hopoate puts his finger in three other players anuses during a rugby league match. Apparently the people who were making this flash game thought “You know what we should do? We should animate this in an amusing way. That’ll help us win the election and be awesome.” Apparently people being violated without their consent is kind of funny if it’s men on the rugby field.

One of the basic rape-myths that help uphold a culture where sexual assault is endemic is that sometimes consent doesn’t matter. If you ever say that some people’s violation doesn’t matter – if you ever set some people up as unrapeable – then you, or in this case the Labour Party, are upholding that rape myth.

Now Maia it is fair to say is from the ba-shit crazy spectrum of politics but she does actually have a point here. What is also ironic is that Labour of all parties right now shouldn’t really drawing attention to sexual assault issues when they have one of their own number under police investigation.

Quite what is possessing Labour and their crippled strategy team is beyond me but they seem to be all over the place. It is almost as though they have a group pain-killer session and these are the results.

Update on the challenge.

I have accepted Trevor Mallard‘s challenge. He has rejected stepping in the ring (gutless) but has agreed to a re-match at Sporting Clays though that will have to be after the election. He needs to learn how to shoot and his shoulder is busted.

I don’t really care because I am going to kick his arse in the cycling on August 15 and he will have wrecked himself trying to man up in the cycling.

Just to update readers, today is day one for training and since I don’t yet have a bike sponsor I will have to rely on walking, running and visits to the gym to stationary bike.

So I went for two 10km walks today to get started. I wonder if Trevor managed to even get in his washing from last night? It’s probably still hanging on the line.

Now to line up the following:

• A bike
• Some gear to wear
• A route for the race
• Helmet cams
• Chase car (sponsorship deals available)
• Ambulance (that’s for you Trevor)
• Support crews (I suppose Trevor will be able to call on the EPMU)
• A diet
• An exercise programme (I wonder if I need a rowing machine, probably get one second hand off Trevor)

Google has added a new search feature to make searching for flight details easy. Now you can type “flights from [a city] to [another city] in the search window, and it’ll quickly display a summary of flight information right there on the results page.

So long as you know the city code it is easy. The results are useful.

If you put just “flights [a city]” then it gives you all the direct flights to that city. So for Auckland it looks like this:

There are more but I chopped the screenshot. This is very useful tool that will see a reasonable amount of use I would predict.

There were two mainstream polls tonight both with similar results. The 3News/Reid Research poll looks to have recovered from their rogue last time out so Labour can’t take much heart from their rise in that poll. It is nothing more of a correction to normal levels.

National down 4.5% to 53%
Labour up 5.7% to 32.8%
Greens down 1.2% to 6.5%
Winston First down 0.4% to 2.4%
ACT up 0.5% to 2.2%
Maori down 0.9% to 1.6%
Mana  steady at 0.5%

One News/Colmar Brunton have a similar result:

National down slightly to 52%
Labour no change 34%
Greens no change on 6%
Winston First down to 1.6%
ACT up to 2.5%
Maori steady at 1.4%
Mana steady at 0.9%

It is clear from these polls that Don Brash has much to do to save ACT and that Labour has failed to make a dent at all after the budget. Matt McCarten will be happy with these polls vindicating his call for Goff to be sacked.

If Labour couldn’t make a dent after that budget they never will. No wonder the doors were closed in his face in McGehan Close.

Goff primed each resident he spoke to with a patsy question about rising costs. But when he asked one elderly man what he thought about the rising cost of food, the pensioner complained tobacco prices were soaring out of reach. His $480 pension per fortnight could not keep up with the rising cost of smoking.

Goff moved to the next home.

Some residents bluntly refused to face the swarm of Labour types and television crews. When the cameras disappeared, they emerged to say they actually quite liked their street – despite its reputation – and were not keen on the attention.

Honestly it couldn’t get much worse than doorstepping a poor person and all they do is complain about the price of smokes.