September 2011

A Proverb for Labour, Trevor Mallard and Clare Curran in particular.

Proverbs 29

¹ Whoever stubbornly refuses to accept criticism
will suddenly be destroyed beyond recovery.

Somebody punked the LA City Council with an old Simpson prank.

As Nelson Muntz would say – HA! HAR!

Len Brown and other useful idiots like Nikki Kaye are pushing hard for extended rail, trams and other expensive things that people won’t travel on. Have a check at the pain Sydney is going through:

BEFORE the government allowed weekly and pensioner transport ticket holders free rides on light rail this year, Sydney’s only tram line was in a slump.

Figures released this week by one of the investors in the light rail company showed patronage on the Central to Lilyfield line fell last financial year, while usage of Sydney’s monorail line has also been tumbling.

The private owner of the two lines, Metro Transport Sydney, does not release its patronage figures. But the annual report of one of Metro’s investors, Australian Infrastructure Fund, described the fall.

In the year to July 2008, there were 6.5 million journeys on both light rail and monorail. But in the year to July this year, there were 5.8 million journeys. In contrast, patronage has grown over the rest of Sydney’s public transport system.

The largest drop has been on the monorail line, which charges $4.90 a trip for every passenger over the age of six. The Australian Infrastructure Fund puts the monorail patronage drop – more than 4 per cent for two years in a row – down to a dip in the tourism industry.

…While Metro will not reveal the extent of the patronage increase since then, industry speculation suggests that at least 25 per cent more people are riding the tram line. If the patronage keeps growing, the company will come under pressure to put on more services as trams start to fill up.

However Metro does not have any more trams available to let it increase frequency. It will only buy more trams when the state government has approved and commissioned the delayed extension of the light rail line from Lilyfield to Dulwich Hill.

The government has capped the compensation it will pay to Metro for MyMulti and Pensioner Excursion holders using the line at $2 million a year.

Just like here they bribe the greedy oldies with free travel and then when they take it up in huge numbers they cap the subsidies for the operators.

Any service that needs a subsidy to operate should be closed down, it is clearly unprofitable.

I need to stop making a habit of agreeing with John Pagani, but he keeps on saying sensible things. This time on the Urewera issue and the Search and Surveillance Bill:

I’ve filed a longer piece elsewhere on this, but it’s worth a mention because of the deafening silence among other left blogs today:

Members of the “Urewera 18″ group threw Molotov cocktail fire bombs and fired semi-automatic weapons at training camps in the bush, court documents show.

This news demolishes the comfortable, smug analysis of Urewera that said the cops over-reacted and that the local cop could have just wandered up the hill and told them all to calm down.

No wonder they didn’t want the evidence to come out.

There is a twisted far-left narrative that goes: The cops needed to confect a conspiracy because they were so excited about a war on terror! Having a Terrorism Act they had to find some terrorists! They made it up!.

Anyone repeating this claim now discredits themselves.

Molotov cocktails and semi-authomatic [sic] weapons require lengthy and detailed explanations from the accused (and now acquitted) long before they require explanations from the police.

Yes, there is a right to silence in criminal law. But we are talking not about criminal sanction.

These people have demanded the moral high ground, and demanded the support of the left. Far to many gifted it too cheaply.

I now have a new found respect for John Pagani.

Weapons grade moaning is emanating from Labour right now after their filibuster was busted and Heather Roy’s VSM bill was passed.

Sue Moroney should go and have a cry to her leadership who thought that filibustering a bill to spite Act was a better effort than debating any other bills including her own. Labour preferred to die in a ditch than allow other bills to enter the house.

The arrogance of Labour knows no bounds.

Sue Moroney has a post at Red Alert, all bitter about the passage of the VSM bill.

The very first comment is a pearler, doubt it will last. Here is a screenshot. Feel free to comment here without moderation.

Heather Roy is delivering some great lines after delivering a great result last night:

Ms Roy savoured her triumph yesterday, saying the bill restored a “fundamental civil right – freedom of association”.

Ms Roy said students’ associations had become increasingly politicised in recent decades and were blighted by misappropriation of funds.

She ended her speech by quoting former student politician, unionist and fast-rising Labour Party star Andrew Little:

“I believe voluntary unionism – true freedom of association – gives the union movement much greater strength and a much greater moral authority.”

Last night while Labour tried one last time to scupper the VSM bill and ended up slaughtered in the bottom of the ditch they were trying to defend Phil goff was focussing ont eh things that matter to Kiwi voters…playing darts.

You have to look at the symbolism of that. Labour’s great parliamentary strategy to win against the government was to filibuster and prevent the progress of VSM. So on the night of the final debate and vote of the bill where was Phil Goff?

He was in a pub playing darts. He was playing darts on the night when his team was dying in the ditch for their big strategy.

Is darts the only way Phil Goff can score these days?

Phil Goff, focussing on the things that matter.

via the tipline

A loyal reader sent me the link (scroll down to 121)

Some of my favourites:

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

The opposite of success isn’t failure, it’s name dropping.

Most of what they call humility is successfully disguised arrogance.

In science you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.

I wonder if a lion (or a cannibal) would pay a high premium for free-range humans.

Most people write so they can remember things; I write so I can forget.

Corollary to Moore’s laws: every ten years, collective wisdom degrades by half.

I wonder whether a bitter enemy would be jealous if he discovered that I hated someone else.

Panda babies are so cute:

A giant panda breeding centre in China has shown pictures of its new crop of cute babies.

The giant panda breeding centre in Chengdu, in south-west China’s Sichuan province, started with just six pandas in 1987 and now has more than 100.

The centre looks after red pandas and other endangered Chinese animals as well.