August 2011

Greenpeace are plonkers, any sympathy people might have had for their cause was destroyed when they essentially graffiti’d, vandalised and littered Auckland yesterday with their leaflets and posters:

Volunteers who spent several hours yesterday giving Ellerslie’s town centre a spring-clean ahead of the Rugby World Cup say posters put up by Greenpeace overnight is ”like a kick in the guts”.

About 130 people, mainly locals from Ellerslie, joined forces yesterday afternoon, working for four hours tidying up the town centre, including scrapping old posters off poles, in order to prepare the town for the Rugby World Cup celebrations.

This morning those volunteers woke to find that Greenpeace activists have plastered many of those poles which had been scrapped clean with its latest campaign, targeting the fisheries company Sealord over its use of tuna.

That campaign may prove to be a costly public relations disaster for Greenpeace, with angry Ellerslie locals demanding they pay for the clean-up.

One of the organisers of yesterday’s clean-up, Denise Krum of the charity Tableside, said she had been fielding angry calls from volunteers all day.

”Overnight, our good friends from Greenpeace have plastered the town.”

Krum said the joint clean-up was an initiative with the Ellerslie business association, the Auckland Council and Tableside and had attracted a number of families who spent their afternoon cleaning.

Krum said one mother who had spent yesterday cleaning up told her she was ”fuming” at Greenpeace for undoing all their hard work.

Krum said seeing the posters appear ”overnight was a kick in the guts”.

”We worked damn hard for four hours and the very next morning they have plastered the very services that people had been scrubbing. We had been taking off old adhesive off old posters, so they had a clean slate [to stick posters on].”

Ellerslie Business Association manager, Sally Eustace, said she was disgusted with Greenpeace’s actions

”It’s tantamount to vandalism.”

They should be charged with vandalism, and billed.

Really Al Gore really believes this:

One day climate change skeptics will be seen in the same negative light as racists, at least so says former Vice President Al Gore.

In an interview with former advertising executive and Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky broadcasted on UStream on Friday, Gore explained that in order for climate change alarmists to succeed, they must “win the conversation” against those who deny there is a crisis.

Since Len Brown seems fascinated by spending large amounts of other  peoples money to realise his dream of a light rail system. How appropriate then that a reader sent me a link to this article about the Light-rail Disease.

Forget AIDS or SARS, there’s a new billion-dollar contagion popping up across the country. Symptoms include visions of grandeur, severe loss of reality and a propensity to enact massive tax hikes. It’s called LRTS: Light-rail transit syndrome.

And while the surest cure for this new ailment is a large application of public input and a quick dose of common sense, the antidote appears in extreme short supply.

Patient zero in the current Canadian outbreak of LRTS is southwestern Ontario’s Region of Waterloo, a high-tech hub as home to BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion and the University of Waterloo. The diagnosis was confirmed this June when the region, population 500,000, approved an $818-million light rail transit project.

Uh-huh, sounds very familiar.

Light rail transit is beloved by bureaucrats and planners for its sleek and modern look that provides the aura of a big-city amenity. Those susceptible to LRTS claim it can transform modest cities into booming metropolises by instantly boosting transit usage, curbing congestion, spurring rapid downtown development and attracting young mobile workers of the Richard Florida ilk.

Sounding real familiar.

But like any fixed-track mass-transit system, light rail is best suited to moving high volumes of commuters to and from dense downtown employment cores, as is the case in Calgary. It requires specific densities and geographies to work effectively and even large cities such as Baltimore and Buffalo have struggled with light rail. And it’s expensive.

This is getting eerie.

City planners infected by LRTS, however, come to believe tracks have the magical power to transform drivers into eager transit users, regardless of local evidence, density or geography. The region claims transit ridership along the traffic spine will triple the first year that tracks open. It seems implausible, given that this would require more rail transit riders in Waterloo Region than currently exist in Minneapolis, a city of three million.

Local politicians suffering from LRTS come to see a rail system as crucial to their future success (and a handy monument to their own forward thinking). “A failure to move forward will doom us,” Waterloo Region chairman Ken Seiling warned darkly in advocating light rail transit last December.

Is Len channelling this place?

Of course LRTS requires favourable conditions to incubate: namely politics and other people’s money. Ottawa has pledged $265-million and the province $300-million. Ottawa’s commitment may seem a puzzle given the dubious nature of the plan and the federal government’s recent claims to fiscal probity. Then again Waterloo Region has that medium-sized urban profile Conservatives find very attractive: In the past two elections it has delivered a full slate of Tory MPs.

Local taxpayers, however, tend to find LRTS rather unnerving. Even with higher-order funding, Waterloo Region taxpayers are still on the hook for $253-million, or an equivalent 10.5% increase in local taxes. And with federal and provincial funding capped, any overruns will be the sole responsibility of the local tax base. Legendary cost overruns on the St. Clair light-rail project in Toronto — a $48-million project ended up costing $106-million — is a grim reminder that much can go wrong with light rail, even in big cities.

Increased rates and a white elephant are almost guaranteed with light-rail.

And now the disease is spreading. Victoria, BC, with a smaller metro population than Waterloo Region, has begun planning a bigger and even more expensive light-rail transit system — its $950-million light-rail transit plan makes no sense based on city size, geography or transit usage. It is similarly dependent on massive contributions from higher levels of government and it is driven by grandiose dreams of area politicians. And once again the taxpaying citizenry, in the form of the local chamber of commerce, is demanding a referendum.

Hamilton and Winnipeg are also showing symptoms of LRTS. And given Canadian politics, how long will it be before Quebec City is feeling a bit flush as well? With Waterloo Region setting the precedent that billion-dollar fixed rail transit systems are no longer the exclusive domain of major metropolitan centres, every Canadian city of a certain size will soon be demanding its slice of federal government track cash. The promise of a big-city image paid for by other levels of government should prove highly contagious.

For anyone wondering about palliative care for terminal cases of LRTS, consider an earlier outbreak on the other side of the Atlantic:

Edinburgh, Scotland, population 490,000 was infected by LRTS a few years before Waterloo Region. Its $870-million light-rail transit project was also presented to local taxpayers as the means by which their city would boldly march into the future. And it would be free — paid for by higher levels of government.

Today three-quarters of the budget has been spent but less than a third of the infrastructure is in place. With cost overruns entirely the responsibility of local taxpayers, this summer Edinburgh city council (after rejecting calls for a referendum) debated tearing up the whole thing and forgetting it ever happened. In the end they decided to shorten the route substantially. And they still need to come up with $438 million.

Don’t let Light Rail Transit Syndrome happen to you.

It seems to already have spread to Auckland City.

The government is going to chase student loan defaulters.

Thousands of student loan defaulters living abroad could be threatened with legal action as the Government seeks to recover millions of dollars of outstanding debt.

The Government today announced an Inland Revenue pilot scheme targeting loan defaulters across the Tasman would be expanded to target a further 50,000 debtors in Australia and the United Kingdom.

More than $4.7 million had been recovered in the 10-month pilot scheme, which had targeted 1000 Australia-based debtors.

The expanded scheme would involve contacting 50,000 loan holders either directly or through a nominated contact person in New Zealand, to seek payment of arrears or to set up a payment plan.

Legal action would follow if borrowers failed to comply.

The NZ Herald has released another poll that shows that the step-change Labour were looking for is in fact going the wrong way just three months out from the election.

Labour’s support dropped among decided voters by almost two points to 31.5 per cent – its second lowest since 1999.

This follows a three-point drop the month before. Its lowest was in July 2008 when it polled at 30.8 per cent.

National remained steady on 52 per cent in the poll of 750 eligible voters – enough to secure it 65 seats in Parliament and govern without requiring support from other parties.

Labour would have 39 seats.

The Green Party and NZ First were the main beneficiaries of Labour’s fall. The Greens went up by 1.5 points to 9.8 per cent – their highest in the poll since mid 2002, and enough to add three more MPs to the nine they have.

NZ First went from 0.9 to 2.4 per cent after its annual conference.

…

Among the minor parties, Act support dropped from 1.4 to 1.2 per cent, meaning that if Epsom electorate candidate John Banks wins he will carry only party leader Don Brash to Parliament from the party list.

Hone Harawira’s new Mana Party is on 0.2 per cent – down from 0.4 per cent – meaning that if Mr Harawira holds his Te Tai Tokerau seat, he will be in Parliament on his own.

The Maori Party was on 1.8 (down 0.2) and United Future was on 0.1 (down 0.5).

With three months to go before polling day, undecided voters had dropped from 11 per cent to 9 per cent this month – well below the same point before the 2008 election, when 17 per cent were still undecided.

The poll of 750 eligible voters was between August 19 and 26.

Even the NZ Herald sees that this election is about three main parties and the rest, signalling the problem that National’s leadership cannot see past this election.

This flyer was being circulated at the Upper Hutt markets at the weekend.

Labour had these pamphlets face down, so the punters could only see the $100 notes.

They’re campaigning heavily on their election bribes – so much so, here they are again bragging about giving taxpayer money away.

But when you read the small print you can see they’re targetting a family of 5, with 3 kids, where both adults are on the minimum wage.

They’re clearly desperate to lock down their core voters, with a set of flimsy promises that the country can’t afford.

Next time you hear them say Labour’s policies will give them more money, Kiwis should be very suspicious.

What’s missing from this pamphlet?

Doubling the cost of the ETS (that means petrol & power will go up). Regional fuel taxes.  Increasing rents as a result of capital gains tax. The 4,000 to 6,000 job losses that are forecast from raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour (the family of 5 might lose one of the earners). The complexity of fruit and vege exemptions from GST – will canned and frozen be exempt too? – and how will Labour account for seasonal price variations?

This is classic Labour.  If they know how to do one thing well, it is spend other people’s money on election bribery.

As our SAS boys bury their own hero, the Aussies have repatriated the body of Matthew Lambert.

Matthew Lambert was an Aussie sniper killed in Afghanistan. Here is his ramp ceremony from Afghanistan.*

*If there is anyone with video of Doug Grant’s ramp ceremony I would love to post it to honour our Kiwi hero.

via the tipline

Here is a draft cover of The Swallow Men.